When La Luna staggered out of the study, Itefeil had already left. Luckily, before going, Itefeil had set the food they'd made by the kitchen door. But when La Luna took a bite, it was still warm.
Had they heated this up and left it here?
La Luna was puzzled. They'd never heard of anyone warming up a cat's food, and cats didn't eat things that were too hot, did they?
As La Luna chewed the egg and meat, they recalled how they'd used to eat nothing but dried fish or some kind of kibble. They'd even spent a long time eating starchy ham in a small town. It had all been fed to them by that captain.
The food at Itefeil's place really was good. There was egg and meat at every meal, with dried fish on the side, too. No wonder Itefeil had only thought La Luna was getting fat when their body changed.
Speaking of their body changing, La Luna realized that the last of their magic was almost gone. Once it was all converted into physical enhancement, they would have to start practicing a different kind of magic.
The magic they'd gathered through meditation before had been unrestrained, filling their body. But that only worked for humans. Human bodies didn't let magic strengthen them on its own, so anyone who wanted to enhance their body had to cast a strengthening spell using specific magic runes. The magic in a beast's body, on the other hand, strengthened it automatically. This was usually how unintelligent beasts in the wild grew stronger.
To change their body into a human one, they would have to store up a certain amount of magical energy, then release it all at once to reshape themselves.
After spending nearly half an hour flipping through a few basic books, La Luna finally figured out what unit of measurement the book was referring to.
A gugol fire: the amount of magic needed to cast one small fireball.
With plenty of mental energy, ten seconds of meditation was enough to gather the magic needed for one small fireball. A year had 31,536,000 seconds, so that meant 3,153,600 gugol fires a year… The book said shapeshifting required……………2,995,920,000 gugol fires!!!
La Luna's vision went dark. Their mind raced through the numbers, until at last they reached the final answer.
Nine hundred and fifty years!!!!
And that was meditating without eating, drinking, or resting. Not even once.
(Meow… Could a cat even live for a thousand years? Even nine lives wouldn't be enough, would they??)
La Luna felt like the book was talking nonsense. But thinking back on what it said, the shapeshifting magical beasts made up only a tiny fraction of the world's population. La Luna's bloodline was nothing special—in short, they were just an ordinary house cat who'd learned magic and undergone a tiny mutation.
There was no point comparing themselves to magical beasts born with an affinity for magic.
“Meow!!”
(Damn it!!!)
La Luna rolled around on the living room floor in frustration, with no desire to practice magic anymore.
Meditating nonstop for 950 years… La Luna suddenly remembered a group of young people in their previous life discussing how many years they'd have to work to afford their place in Beijing's Third Ring Road. They'd come up with such an outrageous number that people joked La Luna was living in a home others couldn't afford even after working their whole lives without eating or drinking.
Back then, La Luna hadn't thought much of it. It was just a place they'd picked out when they were young, and its price had only skyrocketed over the years. But now, they could finally understand those young people's despair.
A whole lifetime of hard work couldn't get you what someone else already had. What a bitter feeling…
Just then, Itefeil saw La Luna rolling around on the living room floor. They set the various fruits they'd just bought down to one side, then walked over and scooped La Luna up.
“Are you trying to mop the floor? I just gave you a bath last night. Want another one, huh?”
“Meow…”
Seeing how listless La Luna was, Itefeil felt a little surprised. This was the first time they'd ever seen La Luna so down—not just lazing around in the sun, but with their ears drooping, eyes dull, and limbs limp, as if they'd lost all hope for their life as a cat.
“Hey, buddy, what's wrong with you? I was only gone for a little while. How'd you end up like this?”
Itefeil grabbed the fur on either side of La Luna's face and tugged it outward, but La Luna didn't even try to fight back. Before, Itefeil would've gotten a swat for doing that. Now they wondered if La Luna was sick.
“No, I need to get in touch with Feilin and ask what's going on…”
Itefeil had been in a pretty good mood that day. As soon as they'd officially taken office as police commissioner, they'd demanded that Rigamis and his people be held accountable for their crimes. The police department had immediately started investigating, and it didn't take long to uncover that someone inside the department had colluded with outsiders to get Rigamis and the others released early. When the chief commissioner found out, they flew into a rage and immediately ordered the fugitives brought back in. A special task force had been formed to track them down, but now that Itefeil had been promoted to police commissioner, it wouldn't be appropriate for them to interfere with the task force.
Still, Itefeil could already imagine how things would end for that group. After taking care of a few simple handover tasks, they'd happily bought some fruit and headed home—only to find their cat looking terribly sick.
Their good mood instantly turned to worry.
Itefeil scooped La Luna up, hurried to the roadside, hailed a passenger carriage, and set off for Feilin's house. There was no other choice. Of all the friends Itefeil knew, Feilin was the only one who'd ever owned a cat. Some of their friends didn't keep pets, Miller liked small animals like squirrels, Justit had a golden retriever, and the other female police commissioners they knew liked keeping birds…
Itefeil suddenly realized they knew next to nothing about keeping a cat. They didn't even know the basics, like what cats liked to eat, what they didn't like, or what they shouldn't eat. So this time, while visiting Feilin to have a look at the cat, they decided to pick up a few basic tips for the future, just in case.
