Light slowly crept into the woods, illuminating the corpses they’d created in the night. Bright green gnollish blood lay splattered across the brown tree trunks and the darker blue-green underbrush.

Instead of discussing the gnoll’s plans they’d spent the rest of the night snuggling and dozing, but now it was harder to ignore everything that had happened.

Jerome started rifling through their pockets, while Krystyna set about collecting crystals.

“We really messed them up, didn’t we,” said Jerome.

“Oh yeah,” Krystyna agreed. “I can’t believe you took down that giant one. And there was a mage? Their hunting groups are getting stronger. We need to figure out what exactly is happening with the gnolls.”

“It sounded like there were two groups. The giant one said something about ‘Katani’.”

“Katani?”

“He said ’if Katani tames you, it’s slavery for the rest of us.’”

“I think I remember… at the beginning, before they attacked, they mentioned selling the crystals to Katani… and selling us to Katani.”

“The King! In the capital, they said it was the king buying up all the crystals! Then when I was forced to do surgery, they told me to search for that woman’s crystal.”

“So the king wants to collect all the crystals from humans and gnolls—”

“To build a superweapon.”

“What?”

“A superweapon. Come on. You’ve played RPGs, haven’t you? Any time a villain is collecting crystals, it’s to power a superweapon. This is especially true if the crystals come from sentient creatures.”

She laughed in disbelief. “A superweapon? Have you seen their technology level?”

“A magical superweapon. Come on, keep up.”

“That would explain why he’s paying so much for them. With a superweapon, he’d be able to enslave the villages… but didn’t the gnoll say that they’d been enslaved if you were tamed?”

“Maybe he’s unclear on what Katani’s doing with the humans. If we have these powers it’s stupid to just cut us open; it would make way more sense for us to be tamed and used to fight.”

“Okay, let’s zoom out a little,” said Krystyna. “We don’t know exactly what Katani is doing with these crystals, but we do have a pretty clear uniting-the-tribes dynamic going on, so we can look at historical examples and try and use that knowledge to our advantage.”

“How?”

“Look at Otto Von Bismarck unifying Germany or Rome building its empire. There’s a common pattern of a strong leader arising in a central city, then playing rivals off each other while consolidating power. There’s a lot of violence at the beginning, followed by a long period of peace, prosperity, and oppression. We’re interested in the violent beginnings phase, and how we can best insert ourselves in that in order to rescue the humans.”

“And make sure Katani doesn’t develop a superweapon.”

“Yes, that too.”

“It sounds like we need to kill Katani.”

“We need to get stronger first, and maybe get allies.”

“Allies among the gnolls? Aren’t they all trying to kill us?”

“The alternative is to commit genocide. I’d much rather understand their culture and find a way to make peace. Even if we kill all of them, there are still those ockdine to worry about, and the ptau, and off to the east are the human settlement and the elves, all of which are trying to kill us. Either we figure out how to live with them in peace, or we commit to at least one genocide, possibly more. If we can free them from this Katani’s oppression, then that may buy us enough goodwill that our two species can live side by side.”

“Even if that was a good idea… how? Killing them all seems a lot easier. I’m getting really good at killing.”

“If diplomacy doesn’t work, we’ll kill them. But let’s try diplomacy first. You have the perfect skill to get inside their culture and understand them. You can impersonate anyone, provided you have enough knowledge to not give yourself away.”

“So I sneak into a village, stir up rebellion…”

“Not so fast. Villages are small, so everyone will know each other. A hundred gnolls on average. You got unlucky running into someone who knew you in the capital. In a village, that will take five minutes at most, and then what? Would you be able to imitate the gnoll whose body you stole and know the correct words to say that would inspire them to fight against Katani? Most tribes hate their neighbors, so you can’t imitate a gnoll from outside the tribe. Then what happens when the gnoll with the stolen body returns? There’s no way I can see that it doesn’t turn violent.”

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“Then we fight them. I get whatever information I can and then I fight them.”

“There are hundred gnolls in a village, on average. Let’s say that half of them are males — all the hunting parties have been male, so I’m assuming their women don’t fight — and half of those males are in fighting shape. Maybe you could kill them, but then what? You have a village with seventy-five gnolls that can’t fight, but do hate you for killing their sons, fathers, and husbands. Double-useless.”

“So I don’t infiltrate a village yet. What about just talking to them as a human?”

“You saw the result of that when we met. I was lucky it was just two that chased after me.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll do the city thing. But when I infiltrate the city again I’m getting some better armor for you and some more scrolls for both of us.”

“Good. Now here’s the things I want you to look into…”

Would you like to accept the quest “Mystery of the Crystals”?

Conditions: Figure out why King Katani wants crystals and what he’s doing with them.

Rewards: 2000 XP

Would you like to accept the quest “Gnollture”?

Conditions: Gain insight into Gnoll culture. Valuable insights to gain: where they keep the women and children, the alliance structure (if any) of the gnoll tribes, how King Katani enforces order, history of Katani’s conquest, etc.

Rewards: 600 XP for each helpful insight.

He accepted the quests.

After they were done planning the infiltration and looting the bodies (not much good except some money and the crystals) they went back to practicing.

Jerome tried the giant gnoll’s Heavy Armor, but even though it reshaped itself to fit to his smaller body it was still really heavy. At his skill level it made all of his movements slower and use more SP, and when he changed shapes it would disappear in favor of whatever his target was wearing, so after reaching level 2 in the skill he decided that it wasn’t worth training. But he didn’t remove the skill completely, because he could very well have another target with heavy armor, and the extra level would be useful. The +1 STR he got from the training wasn’t bad either.

Because Jerome was in Krystyna’s form, most of the day was spent practicing the skills they shared: grappling, unarmed strikes, Recoil Burst, and dodge. She showed him more grappling moves, focusing on ones that could be done standing up, and he picked them up extremely quickly due to his high combined skill level.

When night fell she placed her head on his ample chest. “This is nice,” she said. “Soft.”

“Now you understand how I feel.”

“It’s weird. I’ve always wondered what…” she trailed off, and then went in for a kiss. “Those are softer too.”

They’d kissed while he was in her body before, but this time they took the time to really explore and see what was possible.

The experience for Jerome was subtler and stranger, but ended up being more intense. There wasn’t the rush to completion that he’d felt the first time, the frantic desire to finish the act in one glorious burst. Instead it was a slow build of give and take, playing and discovering.

Midway through he transformed into his base body.

“Good, you’re back,” she said. “I think I like this form of you better.”

“Really? I think I look better in your form.”

“I like me a lot, don’t get me wrong, but my curiousity has been satisfied. I like you best as you.”

The urge to finish returned quickly upon transformation, but he held it back and instead focused on building up the energy further. They might or might not try Krystyna-on-Krystyna again, but he’d learned enough from those couple of hours experiencing how her body felt that he could conduct the the Jerome-on-Krystyna experience better and make her moan even louder and more insistently.

Eventually Krystyna grabbed him and squeezed him in tight so that he couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer. It felt even better than the first time because of the buildup, and better than any single point of time from the last couple hours.

“We made so much noise,” she said after they finished. “We’ve learned nothing from last night.”

“I think we learned a lot,” Jerome replied with a wink. “Maybe if we make more noise we’ll learn even more.”

“You can keep going?”

“No, not for a little while.” It had taken more out of him than the first time — probably because it had lasted so much longer.

They agreed to go to sleep, and when they woke the sun was shining brightly and they hadn’t been killed by gnolls.

Jerome leveled up and applied his points, putting 10 reserves points each into HP and MP, then putting one point each into everything but Dexterity, and putting the extra point into Connection. More MP recovery meant more training, especially if he wanted to train magic skills.

It was another day of hard training — this time focused on the unique skills and magic skills that Jerome didn’t share with Krystyna, since he was back in his own body — and then another night of hard, wild, but quieter (for safety) sex.

“We have to get you as big of a bonus as possible,” said Krystyna, “just in case you run into trouble.”

He wouldn’t complain about that.

The next day she loaded him up with a list of items and knowledge to acquire, taking the form of four quests.

Would you like to accept the quest “Survival Gear part 1.5”?

Conditions: Give a Bag of Holding (for real this time) and a new set of light armor (better than her current gear) to Krystyna.

Rewards: 500 XP for each item.

Would you like to accept the quest “Scroll Up”?

Conditions: Visit the scroll shop and buy at least three useful scrolls. To count they must be learnable by either Krystyna or Jerome.

Rewards: 1000 XP.

He accepted the quests and then he was on his way.

His second infiltration of the capital city. This time, he promised himself, it wouldn’t end in disaster.