The Rat was a small-time thug, true to his name. He was also a thief, but what he stole was not objects or items, but intelligence. He liked to walk in the darkness, peering into others’ privacy from shadowy corners.
Through this, he had already amassed a large fortune, but he himself still engaged in those despicable, contemptible deeds that outsiders scorned and spat upon. Moreover, he had developed some underlings and quietly formed an organisation, which was named after him. Every member in the organisation also bore the same title as him: Rat.
Regarding this vast city of the imperial capital, no one understood it better than he did, and no one knew its secrets as thoroughly as he. Thus, countless people came to him seeking all sorts of hidden information. He had heard people say that someone like him would have a more appealing name elsewhere: “intelligence merchant”. However, the Rat preferred the name Rat.
Only a rat could represent the identity of his trade, or so he had always believed.
Recently, he had received a very weighty commission, a major job unlike any he had taken in all these years: the secret behind why Ye Chui was so strong?
As an archmage who had only risen to prominence in the past few months and whose name had recently echoed throughout the entire imperial capital, Ye Chui had aroused the curiosity of almost everyone. Therefore, many people had approached him, wanting him to investigate exactly why Ye Chui was so powerful. Among those clients, there were several quite formidable figures…
After hesitating for a few hours, the Rat finally decided to take the job, and this time he would handle it personally.
Ye Chui had seized the Skeleton Walker Magic Guild’s residence, although they claimed to have bought it at a fair price. Who would believe that? It was said that the Skeleton Walker Guild’s president, Reyes, had been burned to ashes. To manage such a large estate, servants and maids were surely needed, so the Rat applied for a servant position in the manor.
Servants needed to be vetted, and it was best if they were ordinary people without sword aura or magic. Conveniently, the Rat was exactly that kind of person, and with his rather nimble hands and feet, he easily infiltrated the Name’s Whatever Magic Guild.
Everything had been so effortless. After several days of lurking, he seemed to have finally glimpsed some of the secrets behind why Ye Chui and his group had become so strong.
It was just that those secrets…
…
In the early hours of the morning, the Rat was woken up before dawn. His quarters in the castle were quite nice: a twenty-square-metre room with glass windows and basic furniture like a bed and wardrobe. This place was far superior to his own home, very comfortable, making the Rat, who rarely lounged in bed, feel the immense allure of the bedding every day.
If there was one thing not so good about this place, it was: haunted.
Sure enough, the Rat had now been woken by an undead. It was an old woman undead dressed in a maid’s outfit. Ye Chui and Debbie called her the undead head housekeeper. Now, the undead head housekeeper was holding a feather duster in her hand, constantly whacking the Rat with it: “Get up, you lazy sod, get up, you lazy sod, get up, you lazy sod…”
This was also a characteristic of the undead head housekeeper: she spoke in endless repetitions, unless one completed what she said.
The Rat shuddered all over, hastily climbing up from the comfortable wooden double bed. While rolling his eyes at the undead head housekeeper, he put on his clothes. When he first arrived, he had been greatly startled by the undead head housekeeper, but now he had gradually grown accustomed to her presence.
Yawning, he left the room and first went to the dedicated washroom for his ablutions. Ye Chui treated his subordinates well: not only did each servant have a comfortable room, but there was also a dedicated washroom, bathroom, and even a proper recreation room with chess sets, books, and other things for leisure. One must know, such facilities had originally been prepared for the members of the Skeleton Walker Magic Guild.
When the Rat was ready and began his day’s work, that familiar music started playing right on cue: “one punch…”
It was very strange, but equally quite compelling music.
The Rat, who was wiping tableware in the kitchen, perked up in spirit and glanced sidelong at the undead head housekeeper patrolling the kitchen, as well as the other maids and servants working. He quietly cast his gaze towards Ye Chui and his group, who were doing certain exercises on a platform outside the castle in the morning light.
To spy on the secret of why Ye Chui and his group were so strong had been even easier than he imagined. From the very first day he arrived after applying for the job, he had already noticed some things, but those secrets truly left the Rat full of bewilderment. It had now been a full week.
The things Ye Chui and his group did every morning were all the same. Seeing how seriously they took it, there was no doubt it was some shortcut to honing their strength. But was it really effective?
100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and then running laps around the castle, ten laps in total, which amounted to about 10 kilometres…
And these were the secrets behind why Ye Chui and the others were so strong? Today, he was to meet one of his major intelligence-buying clients, but this secret, even he himself could not believe it when saying it out loud…
…
Doing push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and the like could still be endured, but the 10-kilometre run was simply life-draining. Ye Chui and his group wore tight-fitting clothes convenient for exercise and started their morning run around the manor in the dawn light. He soon broke out in a heavy sweat.
What he could not help but sigh over was that Guni was running ahead of him with her fire ant greatsword on her back. The little girl was also exhausted, sticking out her tongue while running and complaining to Ye Chui: “So tiring, so tiring…”
At least you can still talk, right?
And that was while carrying a greatsword weighing one hundred and eighty pounds on her back… Ye Chui could not help but marvel at the swordsman’s innate superhuman stamina. Compared to her, Ye Chui, Debbie, Green, Raisa, Jacob, Denny, and Xilaisi were all on the verge of collapsing to the ground.
On the first day of training, they had nearly given their all just to finish the ten laps. The manor was enormous; running one lap along the walls was about one thousand metres. After completing the training that first day, they had spent the entire following day barely able to get out of bed from exhaustion. However, facts proved that these exercises were not without effect, because Ye Chui could almost feel the changes in his magic power.
Using a mana-intensive spell like [Second Company Commander’s Italian Cannon], he had originally consumed about 5% of his magic power, but after the first day’s training, his consumption dropped to 4%. This proved his magic power had increased!
And that was just from one day.
Now, when Ye Chui used [Second Company Commander’s Italian Cannon], the magic power consumed was only 2%.
With these exercises plus the effect of the BGM, the results were simply astonishing, like using some miracle fertiliser.
Of course, for Ye Chui, Guni, and the others who already had substantial magic power reserves, the enhancement was not all that noticeable. The most obvious effects were on Jacob and Denny, who originally had low magic power reserves.
Jacob’s magic power had originally probably not even matched that of a junior archmage. The first time he used a spell, he had fainted directly from exhaustion. But after the first day of exercise, when he used that [Gravity Space] spell again, he could persist for five minutes. After training for this one week, that time had extended to over twenty minutes, with impressive endurance, and he no longer fainted from magic power depletion.
The most impressive part was that he could now control this spell even more perfectly: when using it, people on his side would not feel the enhanced gravity, while only applying the gravity buff to outsiders. Was not this simply an ultra-powerful support magic?
And [Gravity Space] was just one of the countless spells Jacob possessed. His spellbook recorded a vast array of spells, with the strongest even capable of condensing a black hole. Before the Crown War began, Ye Chui needed to help him master more spells as quickly as possible.
When they finally struggled through the ten laps, everyone squatted on the ground, panting heavily. Ye Chui retracted his spellbook into his body, but then pointed at Jacob: “You do not rest yet. Go lift that sculpture and walk two more laps around the manor.”
As the key training subject, Jacob had extra training tasks every day.
Jacob’s face immediately turned deathly pale.
“Let it go for today. Jacob looks like he is about to pass out…” Denny immediately pleaded for her lover.
“You go with him too.” Ye Chui panted as he said, continuing to order Denny. Making Denny train with them as well, at first she had been especially delighted, but after the first day she could not persist. That evening, she had tried to climb over the wall to escape, but once on top she dared not jump down, and in the end Guni had simply dragged her down by the back of her clothes…
This woman lacked discipline the most.
In the end, ignoring Denny’s wails, Ye Chui and the group returned to the castle to enjoy breakfast. After breakfast, Debbie would summon the all-purpose housekeeper Afu to give them full-body massages…
Jacob was indeed a person with sufficiently firm willpower. Though he was so tired he could not straighten his back, he still persisted in walking to that grotesquely shaped masterpiece sculpture by Master Kandinsky, cast a [Light Body] spell, and hoisted the stone statue onto his shoulder.
The [Light Body] spell’s effect was to reduce an item’s weight; it was an intermediate gravity spell. Ye Chui making Jacob carry the stone sculpture for training naturally did not mean literally training his physical strength, but honing his magic. When Ye Chui and the group returned to the castle and looked back, they just happened to see Jacob with the sculpture, at least ten times his own size, slung over one shoulder, struggling to move step by step. The sight was truly awe-inspiring.
“Gravity magic is really powerful…” Ye Chui could not help but exclaim in admiration. He even wanted to learn this magic attribute himself, but unfortunately, among all the movie resources in the resource library, there were quite a few involving gravity elements, yet gravity was rarely the focus of the films. Ye Chui could not be sure he could successfully comprehend gravity magic from them.
“I never thought the most useless person in our guild would now comprehend the most useful magic.” Debbie also sighed. “In the future, when travelling, we can have Jacob cast [Light Body] on us.”
Raisa: “Miss, I think Jacob’s abilities are not just for travelling…”
Debbie nodded: “Mm, right, he can also move things.”
Raisa: “…”
Green watched Jacob’s figure, his eyes stinging with envy, especially since Jacob had a training partner girl, Denny, by his side. This made Green feel his own situation was even more miserable. He rubbed his damp hair, but his expression froze as he found a few strands in his hand, so he curiously asked Ye Chui: “Guildmaster, lately I do not know what is going on, but my hair keeps falling out nonstop…”
“Ah?” Hearing Green’s words, Ye Chui was startled and hurriedly touched his own hair. Raisa, Guni, Debbie, and Xilaisi also quickly checked theirs. Fortunately, their hair showed no signs of falling out… Ye Chui breathed a sigh of relief, thinking, could hair loss be a side effect of using Teacher Saitama’s miracle training method? But this side effect seemed random…
He hurriedly patted Green’s shoulder: “Let me tell you, bald men are the strongest. What is there to fear about losing a bit of hair? When your hair is all gone, you will be the strongest.”
Green’s body immediately stiffened: “Guildmaster…”
