Leonidas finished his day of work avoiding Scabbers. He knew that this person might try to cause problems for him eventually. But, he felt that he should be fine for as long as his employee relationship with Lady Eve lasted.

After leaving the stables, having finished even earlier today than he had yesterday, Leonidas went right to the training field to begin his second round of training for the day.

Compared to the morning, there were more people on the training field. And, compared to Leonidas, they were also doing far more impressive things. But, Leonidas had never worried about it. He simply pushed himself forward, trying to best the mark he set the previous day.

Once again he set off on his trudge around the track.

After a day of trying to keep his back as straight as he could, his back muscles were inflamed to an extreme and seemingly wanted to remind him of this fact every time his feet landed and his body jolted.

It wasn’t long before Leonidas was breathing heavily once again. Some of the other Clergymen gave him side looks from time to time, but no one came to bother him. Everyone had their own business to deal with.

Still, that didn’t stop some from wondering just what Leonidas’ deal was. Usually, those with such poor physical fitness were only here in hopes of banking a job like caretaker or maybe an administrative role. They had never seen such a weak person waste their time here.

Of course, none of them had any idea that Leonidas, who looked to be at most 170 or so pounds was actually close to 450. It would be hard for anyone without supernatural senses to simply guess this by observing him.

“Oh well if it isn’t my favorite handsome Half-Beast!”

Daisy’s cheery voice came in from Leonidas’ side. But, other than giving her a glance, Leonidas was truly too tired to even respond.

It was quite the terrible contrast if Leonidas was honest with himself.

Not only was Daisy easily keeping up with his abysmally slow pace, she was even dragging a 20-kilogram stone weight to her back. The comparison couldn’t have been more depressing.

Daisy didn’t seem to be offended by Leonidas’ lack of a response. In fact, she found it to be a bit amusing.

Leonidas, though, didn’t understand why this woman kept bothering him. This wasn’t the first or even the tenth time she had attempted to ingratiate herself with him.

It would be one thing if he thought that Daisy wanted to get in his pants. Leonidas might barely be able to accept this, after all there were too many bold women who did exist in this world. However, he didn’t believe this was it.

Not to mention the fact that relations between Clergymen were banned, this woman seemed to flash with all sorts of red flags Leonidas’ mind was telling him not to forget.

However, this was exactly why Leonidas was completely at a loss. He didn’t have anything this woman would want. He had no status, no money, and he was weak. Plus, he didn’t have enough charm in the world to make a woman waste ten silvers just to sleep with him.

It didn’t make any sense.

Leonidas thought himself into a frenzy as he continued to run and Daisy continued to chat about idle matters. Before he realized it, he was nearing his sixth lap.

His vision went blurry, his knees weakening. He didn’t even make it to the center field before collapsing this time, his world going dark.

When Leonidas woke up, he found his head on the lap of the brown-skinned Daisy. His crimson eyes looked up to meet her brown ones.

He should have probably been surprised, but it was hard for Leonidas to display that emotion even if he was feeling it.

He only nodded and pushed himself up.

“You know,” Daisy called out, “I noticed that you’ve been eating and training a lot, but I think you’ve forgotten the importance of hydration.”

Leonidas blinked. He looked toward Daisy, still sitting on the ground. He fell into slight contemplation.

‘Hydration…? Water…? Did I read anything about that…? I see, so I’ve been neglecting this.’

Leonidas nodded again. “Thank you.”

Daisy smiled sweetly, her scar dimming somewhat beneath her brightness.

Ironically, that night, Leonidas stumbled across another book on nutrition. Unlike the last one he read, this one also emphasized the importance of staying hydrated and how important water was to the body.

That day, Leonidas learned a few new things.

The shallowest of these new lessons was the importance of water to his training. As for the second, it was much more profound.

A part of Leonidas had been thinking of skipping over books that spoke about similar topics, thinking himself to have learned enough about them. But, he realized now just how important hearing different perspectives on the same topic was.

Neither of the nutrition books had been wrong, but only when the experiences of both were combined could Leonidas get a whole picture. No… Only then could he get a more complete picture.

All thoughts of skipping over certain books were tossed from Leonidas’ mind. From that point, no matter how redundant it seemed, he read them all.

***

A week later, Leonidas found himself right back in the stables just as early as he always was. This time, however, rather than beginning with his sweeping duties immediately, he went to Lady Eve’s mare first.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The mare snorted lightly in greeting, a gruff neighing acknowledging Leonidas’ existence.

Leonidas ran a gentle hand down its back before guiding it to its side.

When it came to caring for a horse post-operation, Leonidas wasn’t exactly an expert, he was simply making the best of the knowledge he had gained through several books. Luckily, though, these beasts had a small measure of intelligence all to their own, making Leonidas’ job easier than what it seemed to be.

Once Leonidas finished cleaning out the mare’s stall, he got to work.

Like always, Leonidas removed the bandages from the mare’s belly. After ensuring that there was no odd discoloration in the liquid the sown wound was producing, he nodded to himself and began to gently clean the area.

Once he was done, he placed down a new set of bandages and left the mare to its own devices, going about the rest of the work he had to do.

This time, Leonidas finished all the work he had to do in just seven hours. Leonidas felt that he would have to be superhuman to clean nearly 200 stalls of horses any faster than that, so he was quite pleased with his results.

He returned to the dirt track reserved for the Clergymen of the Church and began to run his laps as he always did. Unsurprisingly, Daisy was also here as well. However, she would only say a few words of encouragement to him as she lapped him before continuing on her way.

Leonidas felt that after this third week passed and he began to take both his nutrition and hydration seriously, he was running far faster than he had in the past. Of course, he felt that his fast progression was in large thanks to Yves’ Blessing, something that he took advantage of with a bitter taste in his mouth.

Now, Leonidas managed to finish eight laps of the track in half an hour or so.

After reaching this point, he felt that rather than focusing on running further before collapsing, he should focus instead on running more laps in the same half-hour span. For Leonidas' current self, training twice a day was already asking for too much, he only dared to do so because he received a Blessing as a Half-Beast.

Likewise, rather than forcing himself to train for longer, Leonidas tried to push himself to do more in the same hour-long span, pushing himself during his weight lifting session as well. At least this logic made sense to him. If he came across any material that contradicted his thoughts, he would make an immediate change like he always did.

But, for now, he felt this was perfect. It gave his body 22 hours to recover in a day, plus ample time to eat, shower, and read.

After waking up from his blacked-out state, Leonidas began his weight training again, still focusing on his tail and readying his body to move around with more mass.

Half an hour later, he was once again in the showers, thoroughly cleaning himself.

Leonidas was greatly satisfied though his dead eyes didn’t seem to attest to this. He could finally raise his tail up high enough and for long enough to clean it thoroughly. This small achievement almost put a smile on his face.

From what Leonidas had read, he likely had a sort of obsessive disorder related to cleanliness. However, it wasn’t long after that that he read a book on the dangers of self-diagnosis. So, he didn’t put too much stock into it.

All he knew was that finally being able to clean his tail with this sort of meticulous detail, even though his fur wanted to needle through his delicate skin at every turn, left him feeling content.

‘I’ll have to add an extra 30 minutes to my shower time, 15 minutes for both the morning and evening…’ Leonidas mentally adjusted his schedule.

Once he was finished, he gorged himself on food in the company of Daisy before heading to the library once again.

This time, Leonidas found a book that was of great interest to him.

‘The Races and Synergy of Bloodlines.’

Though what Leonidas read made him somewhat bitter, he still felt better for having understood.

In theory, one would think that fusing two powerful bloodlines would always have a positive outcome. Or, if one fused two bloodlines that seemed to make up for each other’s weaknesses, the result would always be better than the effect of these bloodlines separately.

But, this was definitely not always the case. In fact, in the vast majority of situations, this was exactly wrong.

The clashes of a bloodline's ‘traits’ as the book called it, could easily come together in a way that a wholly inferior product was the result.

A given bloodline would have hundreds to thousands of traits, more depending on its complexity. Unless one did great research into bloodlines and their fusions, to carelessly meld two races together was almost as bad as incest.

What intrigued Leonidas, though, was that this ‘blood researching’ profession the book mentioned was redacted. Whenever it was spoken of in the book, there was nothing but a thick black line in its place.

From this, Leonidas could only assume that this profession was related to an Apostle rank even higher than Missionary. But, rather than disappointing Leonidas, his curiosity was only further piqued.

If this information was important enough to keep out of the hands of Clergymen, that only made it all the more important.

Compared to the other books Leonidas had read, he took special care with this one, even reading it three times over as though to imprint every single little thing in his mind. He had a feeling that it was among the most valuable books in this library. Leonidas definitely didn’t want to miss even the smallest detail.

It was all quite fascinating. As Leonidas learned more, he would compare and contrast his own body against what he read.

Leonidas didn’t have the tall, furry ears most Half-Beasts had. Instead, his ears were more human-like, though they carried the sharpness of some Forest Races.

This was an example of perfect synergy and something the book called a ‘Harmonic Trait’.

However, this was the only Harmonic Trait Leonidas had. The rest were either ‘Dissonate Traits’ or ‘Clashing Traits’, there were even some that bordered on ‘Crippled Traits’.

Leonidas’ heavy bones and weak flesh were definitely Clashing Traits. His twin hearts and his weak flesh, though, were borderline Crippled Traits. Leonidas would have died without intervention.

Then there were some odd in-between Traits. For example, Leonidas’ slightly violet blood. His blood itself was closer to red than it was violet. Red Fox Half-Beasts had red blood while Lower Ogres and most Giant Races had violet blood, though Leonidas wasn’t sure why.

According to the book, blood and bloodlines were not the same thing. It was technically possible to gain ‘Traits’ from any piece of the body, it was just the most potent and easiest to access in the blood, thus the namesake.

In this context, Leonidas’ blood, in conjunction with his lungs, decided how much oxygen content he could take in at once and use effectively. The more oxygen he could use, the better his stamina and recovery would be.

According to the book, blood also decided matters like how well one could fight off diseases and a whole host of other things.

Because Leonidas’ blood was more Red Fox than Lower Ogre from his own crude observation, he missed out on many of the benefits he would need to lug around such a heavy body. It could be said that many of Leonidas' issues could be fixed if his blood was just more violet, even if he had such weak flesh.

Leonidas shook his head; he already knew that he had an unlucky hand, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

‘Oh, but I guess I do have one more Harmonic Trait…’

Leonidas touched a finger to his canines. Though they weren’t very useful in normal circumstances, he had to admit that the synergy of his blood worked well here. His jaws and bite were quite powerful. Beyond that, he felt that he might also be decent at digesting food.

As for the rest of Leonidas' body, he had no way of knowing. It wasn’t as though he could cut himself open. And, even if he could, he wouldn’t even know what he was seeing in most cases.

What left Leonidas with something to ponder on as he went to sleep was the open-ended question of Intelligence the book ended on.

According to the book, Intelligence was one of the most difficult things for the REDACTED profession to accurately gauge. There were too many variables involved and no hard science and data to back any one position. To make matters worse, environmental factors could have a huge sway.

However, what the book did leave off on was a ranking of Intelligence based on different Races.

As one might expect, Lower Ogres were near the bottom of the barrel. As for Red Fox Half-Beasts, they could only be considered to be nothing special and shared a ranking tier with normal humans.