The Proper Way to Use a Cheat

Rein had advanced to the Transcendent realm, so there was no need to keep hiding it.

After daybreak, he heard activity in the neighboring laboratory and stepped outside.

The laboratory was quite large, over a hundred square meters. It was already the most luxurious building in the Weasel Gang's base.

The room was divided into two sections. One half was a potion workspace filled with test tubes, crucibles, distillation flasks, and other containers; the other half was an operating room with scalpels, hemostatic forceps, syringes, and all manner of medical equipment.

Dense circular bookshelves lined the walls, mostly stocked with basic medical and Potionry texts.

White lamps hung overhead, casting bright light throughout the room.

At that moment, the early-rising Piscis was dissecting a Sawtooth Rat corpse on the operating table.

Whether one was a doctor or a potioner, extensive hands-on training was necessary. This profession was no easier than any other combat-oriented Transcendent path.

When the old man saw Rein emerge, his peripheral vision caught the sight of those bulging, knotted muscles. His brows rose slightly as he asked, "You successfully advanced to the Transcendent realm?"

Rein nodded, unable to hide his delight. "Yes! I only succeeded because of the high-quality potion you gave me, Teacher."

"Mm."

Piscis nodded expressionlessly, though the corner of his eye twitched.

He had wasted a high-quality potion on someone who was supposed to die soon, and still had not gotten what he wanted. That was rather irritating.

Piscis looked at Rein and said, "Since you are my disciple, I will begin teaching you medical knowledge from today onward."

After a pause, he pointed to the bloody rat on the dissection table. "Every operation in surgery is founded on an understanding of biological anatomy. Therefore, dissection and suturing are fundamental skills every doctor must master."

He thought that since he had agreed to take this newcomer as a disciple, he ought to at least put on a show.

Medicine and Potionry were both vast fields of knowledge, as boundless as the stars and sea. Even basic anatomy alone was enough to keep a medical apprentice busy for months.

He figured he could teach the boy a few things over the next few days and muddle through. Introductory knowledge like biological dissection, which could be taught in a day, was perfect. It would also keep the kid from idling around, overthinking things, and causing some other trouble.

"Watch carefully."

"Okay."

Hearing that, Rein walked over to the dissection table. Looking at the rat that had been cut open, he remained calm and said, "Please instruct me, Teacher."

The more skills he had, the less he had to worry. Since he would be following the Battle Doctor Sequence in the future, medical knowledge was naturally something he needed to learn.

Since the old man was willing to teach, Rein was naturally willing to learn.

At that moment, the Mind Core's system notifications began sounding continuously.

Ding! Automatically recording 'Basic Anatomy Skill.' Recording visual details.

The more urgent the situation, the less eager he could appear.

And so, Rein obediently played the role of Piscis's disciple and began making himself useful around the laboratory.

The laboratory was only so large. Whether Piscis was brewing potions or conducting Potionry research, it all happened right in front of Rein's eyes.

The old man was not afraid of having his techniques stolen and made no effort to hide any of his procedures. In his eyes, this newcomer only had a few days left to live anyway.

Besides, what could an apprentice who had only just started learning, and still needed to be taught how to hold a scalpel, possibly steal?

But he had not expected the Mind Core to record everything.

Whenever Piscis was in the laboratory, Rein behaved like a qualified apprentice, helping out, passing materials, and working without complaint.

Of course, Rein had not forgotten his true purpose.

The reason he had become Piscis's disciple was so that he could use the laboratory openly!

Although Piscis also possessed a Storage Ring, one with only a cubic meter of space could not hold everything.

The laboratory still contained a great number of potion ingredients and professional manuals.

Then, whenever Piscis left the laboratory, Rein began frantically flipping through the books on the shelves!

He could finish flipping through a professional manual as thick as a fist in one or two minutes. As long as his eyes passed over the images and text, the Mind Core would automatically scan and record them!

In less than half a day, Rein had "read" all of the more than one thousand basic medical and Potionry manuals Piscis had collected over the years!

Fundamentals of Anatomy, Introductory Potionry, Surgeon Skills, Detailed Guide to 100,000 Magical Beast Species, Introduction to Potionry, Basic Potion Material Refinement Skill.

Under normal circumstances, these were the professional manuals of the Surgeon Sequence. They leaned toward support and healing, with almost no combat martial arts.

These manuals were meticulously categorized and highly detailed, encompassing all kinds of foundational texts compiled by the Oma Empire's Potioner's Association and Royal Medical Academy.

They were not merely books, but an almost complete introductory learning system for medicine and Potionry.

Like textbooks, they progressed from simple to advanced and could quickly guide someone into the field.

Rein did not know that this was Piscis's personal collection as a Royal Two-Star Potioner and Senior Doctor. It was not something those scattered, unsystematic professional manuals available outside could compare to!

This had originally been exclusive knowledge for Royal Academy students and nobles, doctor profession manuals that could not be bought on the market at all.

Yet now, Rein devoured and recorded every last one of them.

Rein did not deliberately conceal his "book-flipping" behavior, so Piscis naturally noticed that his books had been moved.

But even after noticing the signs that they had been handled, the old man did not care.

Leaving aside the fact that Rein was a dying man in his eyes, merely reading through these manuals would require a great deal of time and effort.

Under normal circumstances, an apprentice would need at least half a year to a year to finish reading them all. To fully understand the knowledge within, they would need years, perhaps even decades, of painstaking study.

Clearly, every book on the shelf had been flipped through, but only casually skimmed once.

The old man thought Rein was probably searching for a way to detoxify the Zombie Potion.

Heh, what a naive idea.

Just as expected, these manuals contain no information whatsoever about the Zombie Potion.

With the Mind Core's search function, Rein did not need to look through them manually. He only needed to flip through them once to easily discover that none of the thousand-plus manuals contained any records regarding the Zombie Potion.

Of course, this was within his expectations.

He had not "read" these manuals merely to search for clues about an antidote. More importantly, he truly wanted to learn!

Because the Mind Core, one of the greatest inventions of the twenty-first century, possessed another bug-like ability: the Deep Memory Learning Function!

This was also its most important function as an essential technological product in his previous life.

Research showed that the ratio of time passing in a person's deep sleep to reality was roughly one to twenty!

By making full use of that dream time, one could extend one's life horizontally by nearly twenty times.

But most of the time, once you woke up, you would not remember what had happened in your dreams. Those memories had not truly vanished; they were merely stored in the brain's deep memory layer.

The Mind Core's function was to actively interfere with a person's deep dreams and activate those "lost memories"!

Once a program was set in advance, after the host fell into deep sleep, the Mind Core would guide them into predetermined dream content—for example, studying knowledge!

Then, after waking up, the Mind Core would activate the contents of those deep memories, allowing the person to remember exactly what had happened in their dreams the night before.

That was why Rein had trained for one year in the Weasel Bandit Group and raised nearly all his basic thief skills to "max level."

During the day, he trained with the instructors, while the Mind Core automatically recorded the martial techniques they demonstrated, their angles, and the sequence in which their muscles exerted force.

Then, at night, Rein continued practicing in his dreams.

With the Mind Core's full video recordings, automatic system comparison, and error correction, it was equivalent to having an instructor personally guide him at every moment.

When he woke in the morning and his deep memories were reawakened, his mind possessed theoretical experience equivalent to twenty times the time others had.

In reality, he only needed a little practice to let his muscles familiarize themselves with the "experience" his mind had acquired. Very quickly, it would form muscle memory and become a martial technique he truly mastered!

For example, suppose you had once been an exceptional swimmer, but your soul transmigrated into the body of someone who could not swim. Once you entered the water, your movements might feel awkward, but you would still possess the skill of swimming. Your muscles only needed to become slightly familiar with the movements in your mind before you could swim freely again.

With twenty times more learning time, even a fool would achieve several times the results of an ordinary person!

This was also Rein's greatest cheat for surviving the New Recruit Training Corps, where the death rate exceeded sixty percent. His experience practicing all the basic thief skills was ten to twenty times that of others.

He had cultivated diligently for a full year without ever slacking off, and now, today—

Setting actual combat experience aside, in terms of martial technique alone, not only was he no worse than the other newcomers, he was not even inferior to any instructor in the gang.

If he had not deliberately concealed his abilities, Rein would absolutely have been the standout super genius of the Weasel New Recruit Corps, rather than the quiet, forgettable "background character" everyone took him for!