The Truth Of Magic

by Stayrr

Zhao Xu goes back 10 years in time to the day when Arthur’s game servers opened. Only he knows that one year later, the earth will be destroyed and everyone on earth will transmigrate into the world of Arthur!

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The Truth Of Magic

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Zhao Xu goes back 10 years in time to the day when Arthur's game servers opened. Only he knows that one year later, the earth will be destroyed and everyone on earth will transmigrate into the world of Arthur! PS: MC is a double character class of Wizard and Archivist, training in both the arcane and the divine, includes metamagic/magic guards/spells/rubies/action points/hyperactivity/pause/temporary effect/activation/in-game purchases in the making.

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The Truth of Magic #Chapter 1 - Read The Truth of Magic Chapter 1 Online - All Page - Novel Next

?Chapter 1: Return to the Past

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

"Hey, have you pre-ordered your copy of Arthur yet?"

"Of course! I pre-ordered mine six months ago."

"Apparently the entire game is controlled by AI, and the players take the lead in world creation. Everybody says players have more freedom than in any other game ever developed."

"I watched some shots of the game from the trailer and the VR effects are super realistic."

"Didn't the developer say that you could stay in the game for more than four hours while you sleep? The last game that could do that could only do it for about three hours."

"The game servers open tonight! Remember to bring me along, my brothers!"

Zhao Xu looked in confusion at the university classmates discussing the game excitedly in front of him.

The youthful faces in front of him were the phantoms of ten-year-old memories.

And he felt like he had seen this scene before.

His heart tightened and his mind started racing.

Ten years ago to the day, Arthur's game servers opened.

Nobody realized that the curtains of the next era had been quietly drawn to welcome the future that was to come.

On the first anniversary of Arthur's release, meteorites suddenly appeared on earth and destroyed everything, reducing all signs of life to dust.

But humans found that, after the meteorite rain, they had transmigrated to the world inside Arthur.

Everyone who had played Arthur before inherited everything that they had set up in the game.

The players who had reached a high level in Arthur immediately became the most highly revered among the survivors, and all power and rank that anyone had had on earth were wiped out. A clean slate.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu hadn't really cared much about his game. He had been forced to join the game by his classmates nearly eight months after it had started so that they could make up the numbers for his class' gaming league.

He only played a few days a week, so by the time he transmigrated, he had only advanced to Level 2.

Most of the players who had started playing from the beginning were almost to Level 5. There were even some expert-level gamers who had gone past Level 10.

1And because Zhao Xu had entered the game late, he was only at Level 2.

But, out of the nearly seven billion people in the world, anybody who played the game before was already considered lucky, and Zhao Xu was now part of the upper class among the players from Earth.

Inside Arthur, thanks to his Character Class level and with the help of his classmates, Zhao Xu soon managed to help his family to settle in comfortably.

But lately, Zhao Xu's luck seemed to have run out.

The little town that he guarded was suddenly attacked by a Black Dragon three years after the transmigration.

More than a hundred people in the town died. He lost his family in that disaster, including his new wife.

1Zhao Xu's life was now void of color.

When the attack came, he had been called away to go on a mission and escaped his family's fate. But, ever since that day he had been driven by revenge.

Over the next six years, he spent every waking moment working hard to take revenge.

Recently, Zhao Xu had joined an Adventure Team that was out to attack the Black Dragon.

But before they could enter the Black Dragon's lair, their little team was suddenly attacked.

The last thing Zhao Xu could remember was the Black Dragon's breath coming for him. No revenge for him.

And, with those years of regrets he brought with him into death, Zhao Xu had been reborn and returned to this classroom he was in ten years ago.

He had gone back to the moment before the game officially started.

The entire world, and even the game developers themselves, were unaware of what was coming. No one knew, but Zhao Xu.

Nobody knew that Arthur was actually a real world.

After the transmigration happened, many people beat themselves up, wondering why they didn't play the game earlier.

Even those who worked at the game developer's company felt the same. If they didn't spend any of their free time playing the game, they were as at much of a loss as anyone else one year later.

Zhao Xu took a deep breath and snapped out of his daze. He quickly pulled his phone out to log into TC's game store to pre-order the game.

Arthur had to be paid for upfront, and it wasn't cheap either.

But, even though the game exploded in popularity after its release, there were no new items up for sale either.

As he thought about that, Zhao Xu looked at the packages available in the online store.

Arthur Regular Edition, .

Arthur Premium Edition, .

There was no need to explain what the Regular Edition was. In fact, majority of the players bought the Regular Edition.

The Premium Edition came with an additional piece of clothing for the player, so it was pretty much equivalent to paying an extra for a skin. Besides, this additional clothing couldn't increase your attack in any way.

But Zhao Xu wasn't concerned with this. One year later, the Earth would be destroyed and all the wealth anyone had amassed there would be worthless.

If it only took to get an extra piece of clothing in the other world, then that was like food falling from the sky. Only an idiot would give it up.

Zhao Xu didn't hesitate any more and immediately clicked on the link to buy the Premium Edition.

But just before he went through the iris scan to make the payment, his body suddenly trembled.

He suddenly remembered one thing.

Some years after the transmigration, he had run into a high-level player. This high-level player had told him a legend he had heard with great envy in his eyes.

Apparently, this game had a Double Elite mode. That meant that one player could have two Character Classes.

Dual Character Classes meant that the player could go down two different paths at the same time, but their levels weren't accumulative.

So if an ordinary player was a Level 3 Fighter but a Level 7 wizard, then he would be a Level 10 player.

But for Dual Character Class players, when they reached Level 10, they could choose to either be a Level 10 Wizard or a Level 10 Cleric.

Basically, they were a Level 10 player, but they had two Level 10 Character Classes at the same time.

They also had the Health, Hit Points, Feats, and Saving Throws of a Level 10 player.

But with the resources of an additional Character Class, they could become one of the top players in the game.

According to what that high-level player had said, this Double Elite or Dual Character Class system was something that was released later on. It was a new feature added to a newer edition of the game in order to attract more players.

When the game first started, the developers gave out a very few Tester Accounts on Double Elite mode so that it was easy for them to track how strong these players became and adjust the system accordingly.

As a Tester Account, the biggest advantage they had was that the player could play the game for free.

But the problem was that these accounts were taken back after a year.

That was to prevent some players from reaching a much higher level faster than everyone else. So, since the account had to eventually be taken back, there was a maximum to how many levels you could climb.

In fact, some of those players who initially joined in the testing saw how popular Arthur was becoming and gave up the chance to use this account that would be taken back. They just decided to buy the game instead.

But none of them knew that one year later, just before the accounts were taken back, every single person on earth would transmigrate into the game to become part of it, so their accounts wouldn't end up being taken back after all.

So the one-year testing period became permanent.

Such accounts were a bunch of unique accounts in the world of Arthur.

According to that high-level player, very few Testing Accounts held on until the end of their testing period.

But, as long as the player managed to hold onto it until they transmigrated to Arthur's world, then anyone who had such an account would be far more powerful than everyone else.

After thinking it through, Zhao Xu stood up and turned to walk out of the classroom. The bell was going to ring in a few minutes and it would be harder for him to leave after that.

"Zhao Xu! The next class is history class and Mr. Huang said he'd be taking attendance today. You're going to get into trouble!" Zhao Xu's roommate, Zhang Qi, called out after him.

Zhao Xu didn't even take his textbooks along. He just waved his hands and replied, "I need to attend to an urgent matter."

With that, he scurried out of the classroom and walked past all the students who were now slowly streaming into the classroom for class.

Zhao Xu made it outside and sat down on a nearby bench. He took out his phone and called TC's gaming customer service's hotline to ask about a Testing Account for Double Elites.

He had barely said three words the phone when his expression slowly turned grim.

He hadn't been able to ask much when the customer service person politely read off her script to reject his request.

She said that all the Testing Accounts had been given out two weeks ago.

All players involved in the testing were gamers who were invited by the company, and they didn't intend to open this up to everyone else for the time being.

Basically she was telling him that he could forget about it.

To be fair, no matter how bad a Double Elite Testing Account could be, it was still a free account that could let you become far more powerful than a regular player.

If they really opened it to the general public, then everyone would just want an account to try the game and wouldn't be affected by the two-hour limit to return the base game.

This reply from the company made Zhao Xu frown.

He knew he wasn't some pro gamer.

He had only entered the game about seven or eight months after it had started and even though he didn't get to play much before the transmigration, he had the benefit of having other players find out the games secrets and share all their tips for leveling up, and he also had friends who helped him along. With these two benefits, he barely managed to hit Level 2 after four months.

This one year was the most precious year, one where Arthur's world was still a make-believe universe.

After everyone entered Arthur's world for real, all the players started to level up extremely slowly.

It wasn't much of a stretch to say that this one year of effort would help him for the next ten years.

Zhao Xu was motivated by his quest for revenge, so after going through several dangerous missions and extending his lifespan, he barely managed to make it to Level 5. Otherwise, if he had continued with his ordinary lifestyle, he might have only reached Level 3 or 4 even after ten years.

Without the special abilities of a Double Elite, even with his past ten years of experience, he still wouldn't be part of the top tier among the players.

If he ran into that Black Dragon that could kill him as easily as a chicken from his previous life, then the Black Dragon only needed to breathe on him for him to die again.

He had to reach a sufficiently high level to make sure he was able to protect his family.

After Zhao Xu took some time to calm down, he opened the xFish app.

Besides being able to sell your second-hand items on xFish, many people were also selling all sorts of services and brand new items, and you could even ask the users for something you wanted to buy.

Zhao Xu put up a request for Arthur's one year Double Elite Testing Account.

When it came to the part about how much he was willing to pay, he ignored all the other options and typed into the field, which was the price of the game itself.

That was as good as telling the seller that he could use his one-year Testing Account to exchange for a Premium personal account. The only difference was that the paid account wouldn't have the Double Elite characteristic.

There were all sorts of other types of Testing Accounts besides those that could support Double Elites. There were also some that were no different from an ordinary account.

That's why Zhao Xu had to specify that he wanted a one year Double Elite Testing Account, and that was the longest testing period offered.

As expected, once Zhao Xu had put up his request, several messages came in through the app since his credit rating was high enough.

"I've got a six-month Powerful Races Testing Account. Do you want it?"

Of course, Zhao Xu knew about Powerful Races. They were introduced to the game later on as well.

The good thing about Powerful Races was that they had more features than the base races and the player could even go up against someone who was at Level 4 or Level 5. It was helpful for closing the gap between new players and those who had been playing for a long time.

The biggest selling point about Arthur was the fact that it was open to everyone.

But since it was an account that would be taken back after six months, it would be meaningless to get it now.

The length of the Testing Account didn't start from the day it was activated, but the day the game servers went live.

Otherwise, he could buy it now and leave it for a good friend to use later.

After Zhao Xu rejected that offer, more messages came in.

There were even offers to sell a 24-hour Testing Account for just . Zhao Xu couldn't even be bothered to reply to those. Then there was this one:

"Bro, would you be interested in a six months Double Elite Testing Account? I'll take just ."

Zhao Xu happened to open one of his messages and was initially excited when he saw the words 'Double Elite'. But when he realized it was a six-month account, his joy vanished.

There was actually a six month Double Elite Testing Account in the market.

"This is a really good deal because only veteran level gamers would get a chance to own this account. Mine is six months and it's considered a long timeframe already. There are many others holding onto accounts that can only be used for three months."

After Zhao Xu saw the reply from the seller, he decided to be more patient and try to get more information from this seller even though he didn't want this account.

The seller was offering only because an account like a Double Elite account would become powerful only at a later stage.

If you couldn't continue playing for a long time, you would remain low in level and you wouldn't be able to fully display how powerful a Double Elite could be.

If you could hold on for three or four years, and assuming the game you were playing didn't die out along the way, many major gaming leagues would be willing to invest more than ,000 or even ,000 into such an account.

After exchanging a few more messages, the seller could sense that Zhao Xu wasn't interested in buying and didn't say much after that.

This went on until night. There was only half an hour more to go before the game officially opened at 8 PM, but Zhao Xu still hadn't gotten his hands on a one year Double Elite Testing Account yet.

According to the information he had right now, it seemed like a Double Elite Testing Account was even rarer than he had initially imagined.

Suddenly, Zhao Xu's phone vibrated. Someone had sent him a private message through xFish.

"I have a one year Double Elite Testing Account, and it includes Action Points points."

Action Points points?

Zhao Xu froze for a while. He had never heard of this feature. But it didn't matter, as long as the account was a Double Elite one.

But, judging from the way the seller spoke, the seller was trying to ask for a higher offer.

In reality, no matter how much it was going to cost, Zhao Xu was willing to pay. Even if it cost him ,000, he would persuade his parents to loan him the money.

He wasn't trying to buy a gaming account here. He was trying to buy his life.

"How much?" Zhao Xu didn't offer an amount immediately.

",000." The seller doubled Zhao Xu's offer.

"That's too much." Zhao Xu immediately replied to the seller.

Even though he was already finding it difficult to suppress the joy in his heart, he still wanted to try and bargain with the seller.

If he agreed too readily, then the seller might suspect that the price was too low and end up creating more trouble for Zhao Xu.

So Zhao Xu proceeded to pretend to haggle the price down, but he didn't dare to go too far, in case the seller ended up ignoring him.

After a bit of haggling, he finally sealed the deal at . This entire process was even more tiring than writing a bunch of essays for school.

After the seller agreed to the price, Zhao Xu got him to send him the product via xFish and Zhao Xu transferred the funds to the seller.

There were no hiccups throughout the entire process.

When Zhao Xu saw the game activation code from the seller, he couldn't help being giddy even though, mentally, he was already past thirty years old.

That string of simple numbers was going to be his future.

CREATORS' THOUGHTS

Vicky_

From 15 Feb 2020, Coins spent on books that aren't selected will be refunded within 30 days. However, Fast Passes will not be refunded.

The selected book will have a mark on the corner of the book cover in 30 days to indicate continuation.

Thank you for your understanding.

58 s

Chapter 2: Palace of Character Creation

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Zhao Xu had spent the afternoon doing a lot of research. Every account was tied to the player's iris scan, so once he logged in, the seller couldn't take the account back.

After completing his research, Zhao Xu went right back to his dorm room.

VR headsets had become mainstream over the past few years. It had replaced the laptop as a standard item for every college student to own.

On top of that, VR headsets could now engage in a few hours of activity during the user's light sleep stage, so the sales of these headsets exploded.

Zhao Xu had bought one because the headset could make use of his sleep time.

His mind was filled with nothing else but the game, so he gobbled up his takeout in a few bites and focused on all the game strategies he could find online as he started going through his own memories of the game.

At almost 8 PM, his two other gaming dormmates put on their VR headsets and lay in bed without moving.

Their last roommate was gunning for a postgrad course, so he had gone to the library to study in order to get away from the gaming atmosphere that was building up in the dorms.

The entire floor was silent as everyone got themselves ready for the game servers to go live.

Zhao Xu scrambled onto his own bed and put his VR headset on.

Over the past ten years, these types of VR headsets had advanced past relying on sight, they were actually directly projected onto the user's brain.

Zhao Xu was no stranger to TC's games. He only took a few seconds to log into TC's game platform. He found the game Arthur, then used his brain to control his actions in the game.

He keyed in the activation code he got from that seller on xFish and, after it was verified, Zhao Xu reached the game's homepage.

The servers hadn't gone live yet, so there was just a countdown timer on the page.

Those who had spent either or would have their activation codes keyed in automatically by the system at the verification page.

Once Zhao Xu's activation code was successfully verified, he breathed a small sigh of relief.

Since there was still a bit of time left, Zhao Xu opened the account menu and started reading everything of note.

After looking at it for a while, he flipped to the last page, which listed the conditions for a Testing Account.

After a few seconds, Zhao Xu couldn't help but burst into laughter.

No wonder he could still buy an account today. The catch was hiding in the fine print.

The thing about Arthur that players were most unhappy with was the fact that the punishment for reviving your character was very heavy.

Arthur's players didn't go down by a level after dying in the game.

But, each time a player died, it would deduct one Revival Stone from the player.

Once all five Revival Stones a player had were used up and no other revival skills or spells could be used, the player would be removed from the game altogether.

The player would have to use his account to recreate a character and start all over again from Level 1.

This sort of cruel punishment for dying kept most players at a low level.

There were many people who didn't even make it to Level 2 before they had used up all five Revival Stones that were tied to their account and there was no way to exchange anything for them.

The even more troublesome part was that every account had limits on the character you could create.

Each account could only create a 28 point character once, a 22 point character thrice and a 15 point character as many times as you liked.

Once the player had used up his one chance to create a 28 point character, he could only create a 22 point character three times or just create a 15 point character.

In other words, if you wanted to create another 28 point character in the game, you had to fork out another for a new account.

The Testing Accounts' rules were even crueler because you could only create one 28 point character and nothing else.

Once that character died, there was no way to create a new character with the same account, and the system would take the account back.

Zhao Xu wasn't very gifted at gaming, but he was familiar with how to avoid being caught in a situation where one might suddenly die.

No matter how dumb he was, he had an additional one year of gaming experience and nine more years of actual experience in the world of Arthur compared to everyone else right now.

After everyone transmigrated, their Revival Stones were taken back and the player just had to make sure he didn't die more than five times within a year.

1The game's countdown timer was down to the last minute.

Zhao Xu felt his heart tense up.

This one year would determine if he was going to make it big or die miserably.

When the countdown timer finally hit zero, Zhao Xu's field of view was completely covered by a white flash of light.

"Dear Adventurer, welcome to the Palace of Character Creation."

The white light faded and a familiar scene appeared before Zhao Xu's eyes. He was in an incredibly magnificent palace with a long staircase in front made from countless gemstones cut and placed together. The staircase continued into the space above the palace and he couldn't see the end of the stairs.

There were sculptures and paintings of various gods around the palace, and their eyes were all currently focusing on him.

Unlike the other players, who were either overly excited or nonchalant about this part of the game, Zhao Xu quickly bowed before the sculptures of these gods to show his reverent attitude to them.

But, after he had bowed, he was slightly stunned by himself.

He wasn't in the real world of Arthur anymore.

11 s

Chapter 3: Race and Alignment

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Arthur wasn't a real-world yet, but, because Zhao Xu has deen how powerful the gods in the game really were, he didn't dare be disrespectful, even if they weren't real yet.

He quickly focused his attention again and looked at the instructions before him.

Once a player finished the initial setup page, he could go up the stairs and enter the world of Arthur.

If a player died, he would come back to this Palace of Character Creation again before losing a Revival Stone.

Zhao Xu looked at the prompt in front of him and didn't want to waste too much time. He used his thoughts to enter the same username he had used in his previous life: Zhong Xia.

After keying that in, the next menu was a series of races to choose from, and seven floating images of the available races appeared in front of him.

They were: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Half-orc, Halfling, Half-elf, and Gnome. Each race had differences in Character Class, Ability Scores, and Racial Traits.

"Human." Zhao Xu chose it without hesitation.

1In all honesty, Humans were considered a strong race in the world of Arthur. Humans came with a bonus Feat and a bonus Skill, but too many players looked down on this race in the beginning.

He didn't intend to live the rest of his life as a different race, even though an Elf could live for a few hundred years.

As long as his plan succeeded, he would have plenty of ways to extend his lifespan.

On the other hand, there were a number of people who went crazy after they transmigrated and took on the form of the race they had chosen, especially those who chose to be gnomes.

The system had chosen "male" for him already, and this would also prevent any mishaps after transmigration.

His size was medium, which corresponded to most human beings.

He didn't change much when it came to eye color, skin color, and hair color, just making a few small adjustments. The system wouldn't allow him to make too many changes anyway.

After that, the last screen was Alignment selection.

Arthur's Alignment table had Law, Neutral, and Chaos on the x-axis and Good, Neutral, and Evil on the y-axis.

The two axes formed the Nine Major Alignments. A player could choose what Alignment to start with, or he could go through a series of questions to determine his Alignment.

Zhao Xu chose Neutral.

Actually, he was considered a Neutral Good sort of person, but these days, Alignment determined everything from one's Character Class to spells and even NPCs.

So, he went for Neutral, which gave him the least limits on his choices, and he could push his Alignment in a different direction depending on what came his way later on.

As for his religion, he temporarily fixed it as his Alignment.

The game didn't force the players to choose early on, either. Even Clerics were allowed to use their Alignment as their religion. Most people only decided which deity they believed in after playing the game for a while.

After going through a few rounds of selection, his final stats menu appeared:

Name: Zhong Xia

Race: Human/Living organism from a different world (Earth)

Age: 22 years

Sex: Male

Size: Medium

Weight: 76 kilograms

Height: 183 centimeters

Background: None

Alignment: Neutral

Religion: Alignment

Eye Color: Black

Skin Color: Yellow

1Hair Color: Black

Base Walking Speed: 30 feet per round (Around 9.1 meters every 6 seconds)

Languages: Not set yet

Race Traits: Level 1 will receive 4 Skill Points. Every level increase will earn you 1 Skill Point. Level 1 will automatically receive 1 bonus Feat.

After checking to make sure that all the details were correct, Zhao Xu exhaled quietly.

Many people would have picked a Character Class and entered the game by this time, but Zhao Xu had seen for himself how, after everyone on Earth eventually transmigrated following the complete destruction of the planet, those high-level players had become such important and revered characters, and top-level wizards had managed to change the direction of a battle all by themselves.

He knew very well that in the world of Arthur, how powerful one's character was would decide one's fate.

There was no point in trying to rush through the front to gain more time to play, because he would get dragged behind by the basic Character Class training that was coming up next.

Those who finished the training fast completed it in several hours, and there were many who took an entire week.

And that was according to the fastest player of each Character Class.

The stats menu slowly faded in front of Zhao Xu's eyes, and the palace was filled with singing that sounded like a holy chant of sorts for the first time.

Six identical Ability Score pillars of light stood in front of him: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

Zhao Xu's chest tightened. This was the most stressful part of character creation for him.

After transmigrating to the world of Arthur, everything in that world was decided entirely by these Ability Scores.

Intelligence affected how high one's IQ was. There was a Half-orc player who started with 8 points, but because of a racial disadvantage, he was left with only 6.

Before transmigrating, as a gamer on earth, he could use his own intelligence, which was likely to be equivalent to at least 10 points in the game, to control his character.

But after he had transmigrated, he inherited the 6 point Intelligence, making him pretty much mentally disabled.

Many players just pushed their Ability Scores to the max here, but Zhao Xu didn't dare do that.

Being able to use each Ability Score to its fullest was an advantage that Zhao Xu definitely had over all the other players.

The Ability Scores in front of him all started at 8 points, and the pillars of light were stuck at the 8 point height.

His Testing Account came with 28 points.

If an Ability Score was anything between 8-14 points, he could exchange 1 point for an additional point on his Ability Score.

If the Ability Score was between 15-16 points, he needed to exchange 2 points for an additional point on his Ability Score.

If the Ability Score was between 17-18 points, he needed to exchange 3 points.

Eighteen points was the maximum an Ability Score could reach at the beginning.

If he wanted to increase his Ability Score later, he would have to count on leveling up as well as gaining equipment that would help him.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu only managed to get hold of a 2 Strength belt, and there was a chance to increase one's Ability Scores only every four level-ups.

Zhao Xu looked at the right side and saw that there was a 4 beside his total of 28 points.

That meant that he had 32 points. That was a special prize for those players who logged into the game within the first 24 hours of the server going live.

This would also be the only time 32 points would appear in the game.

Zhao Xu didn't have such luck in his previous life. He had started with only 22 points and had ten points less than those who started from day one.

But he was still lucky. There were millions of ordinary people who didn't even have a game account when they were suddenly transmigrated to the world of Arthur. They didn't have any miraculous encounter, so their Ability Scores were all at an average of 10 points, which was equivalent to a 12 point character.

Knowing what the next ten years would hold made Zhao Xu the biggest cheat of the Arthur game.

18 s

Chapter 4: Ability Scores

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Zhao Xu had already spent the entire afternoon thinking about how to assign his Ability Scores.

Other players would have been utterly confused, but he knew how to determine his Ability Scores based on his Character Class.

In his previous life, he had started the game without knowing anything. His classmates wanted him to be able to catch on quickly, so they recommended he become a Fighter.

It wasn't difficult to become one, and the training time was short.

Character Classes that could cast spells, like Wizards and Clerics, got the players stuck at the beginning as they struggled to learn spellcasting. Even after Fighters had reached Level 2, many Wizard players were still not done with their apprentice training.

It was like getting stuck in some beginner course.

But, after being transmigrated to the real world of Arthur, Zhao Xu slowly began to realize that in this world, the ones who could cast spells were the ones with the real power.

Spells could go up to Level 9, and those were the type of spells that could decide the fate of a battle and really make an impact.

Whereas, even when Fighters reached a higher level, they were like random soldiers compared to Advanced Wizards and Advanced Clerics.

And that was why Zhao Xu was intent on choosing to be a Wizard.

Even though that meant he couldn't draw on his previous experience as a Fighter, he didn't care.

If his account was really a Double Elite one, then he was going to choose Cleric as his second Character Class.

He was going to insist on becoming a spellcaster.

During the adventures he went through toward the end of his previous life, he had seen how magic was the best way to go.

But the most important Ability Score for a Wizard to cast spells was Intelligence, while a Cleric's most important Ability Score was Wisdom.

Arthur's calculation model was based on Ability Modifier scores.

One's Ability Modifier score was equal to taking 10 points off the Ability Score total and dividing that new total by two.

So if one had 10 points of Strength, then the Strength modifier score would be 0. If one had 12 points of Strength, then the modifier would be 1.

Any decimal points would be rounded down to the nearest whole number.

As such, odd-numbered Ability Scores were at the losing end at the beginning, but a player could increase his Ability Scores as he leveled up to make them an even number.

Zhao Xu started assigning his Ability Scores according to his plan.

He didn't bother about adjusting Strength and left it at 8 points. He would adjust that later.

He spent 5 points on increasing his Dexterity to 13 points. That Ability Score affected his attack, defense, and Saving Throws, so Zhao Xu was willing to spend on increasing this.

He spent 6 points to increase his Constitution to 14 points and this was reasonable too.

Since Intelligence was the most important Ability Score for a Wizard, Zhao Xu used 10 points to increase it to 16 points.

It wasn't a high score among the high-level Wizards, but it was enough for him to gain a strong footing among Wizard players in general.

As for Wisdom, Zhao Xu hesitated for a moment and eventually only spent 6 points to make it 14 points.

Instead, he spent 5 points to increase Charisma to 13 points even though this aspect didn't seem very important.

Zhao Xu's final Ability Scores were as follows:

Strength: 8 (-1)

Dexterity: 13 (1)

Constitution: 14 (2)

Intelligence: 16 (3)

Wisdom: 14 (2)

Charisma: 13 (1)

Zhao Xu looked quietly for some time at his final set of Ability Scores, especially the figure in the brackets. After a period of silence, he finally confirmed his selection.

Even though Charisma would affect everyone's look and demeanor, as well as how friendly others were towards you after the transmigration, Zhao Xu was more focused on making sure he stayed alive, and his Charisma points weren't a deal-breaker.

After transmigrating into Arthur, an adventurer like him with an actual Character Class in the game already had trouble staying alive, never mind those ordinary people who had never played the game before the transmigration.

Zhao Xu didn't even mind being disfigured if he could stay alive, so he wasn't concerned about external appearances.

The real reason why he decided to allocate the points meant for Wisdom to Charisma was because he had heard some high-level players mention before that Charisma held a very special meaning for Clerics.

He had no idea about Clerics in his previous life and didn't know what this really meant, but he decided to believe these words when he had to allocate the Ability Scores.

DOONG...DOONG...DOONG...

Once he had confirmed the allocation of his Ability Scores, the once quiet Palace of Character Creation suddenly rang with the sound of bells. It echoed through the halls.

"Please proceed up the stairs to begin Character Class selection."

13 s

Chapter 5: Natural Flaws and Feats

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

From the beginning up to this point, everything that Zhao Xu had seen so far was about the same as what he had done back when he first created an account 8 months after the game had started.

Zhao Xu continued to think as he walked towards the long staircase.

The extremely quiet atmosphere inside the palace made Zhao Xu feel how real Arthur really was.

Many players had gone around to check out the areas around the sculptures of the gods to see if they could activate anything special.

But Zhao Xu knew that there was nothing special to be found in this palace and didn't waste any time doing that.

Or, rather, he wasn't sure if the gods were already watching all the players in the game at this time.

"Please take a step."

The moment Zhao Xu placed himself on the first step of the stairs, a bright white light covered everything before him. It looked like a warm glow had come down from the endless sky and given him a new life.

"Please choose if you wish to go through the Class Prescription Test or if you wish to choose a Character Class directly."

Zhao Xu could hear the voice of the prompt in his ears as he walked up the steps, and it sounded as if someone was whispering right beside him.

Eleven adventurer statues about half his height appeared in front of him. They formed a circle and floated in the air.

These statues were: Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Rogue, Bard, Ranger, Paladin, Druid, Cleric, Wizard, and Sorcerer. Those were the eleven Base Character Classes that were released in the first edition of the game.

Those last four, in particular, were the grandmasters that would eventually be able to cast Level 9 spells.

According to Arthur's average player levels across the board, many Wizards and Sorcerers found it difficult to reach high levels. Their poor health scores and limited spells at the beginning made them regulars at the Palace of Character Creation.

The stairs he was standing on right now gave him the choice to either select his Character Class immediately or allow the system to choose for him depending on his inclination.

Every time he took another step, the system would automatically ask him a new question.

And according to his answer to that question, the system would try to analyze the player's inclination. For example, if the player enjoyed melee battles, then the Fighter statue would automatically become brighter, while those Character Classes that were better at long-range battles or spellcasting would become darker.

The last statue left lighted would naturally be the recommendation the system had.

Zhao Xu knew that it was best to go through answering the questions.

Druids, Clerics, and Paladins required the player to be of a particular religion, and even a purely fighting role like the Barbarian had requirements for the player's Alignment.

Once the player went against the requirements for that Character Class and Alignment, then the player would be unable to rise in level for that particular Character Class and would have no choice but add on another class. And that was the best-case scenario.

In the worst-case scenario, like for a Paladin, the player would lose almost all the features of that Character Class.

That was the terrible lesson that countless players had learned.

If one chose a role that went against their true self, then they had to be prepared to behave that way for the rest of their life.

Zhao Xu chose to go up the stairs without hesitating at all, because he had heard an urban legend in his previous life...

On the first day of the game, if one answers all the questions given by the system until only one statue is left lit and the player chooses that as his Character Class, then he would get the chance to exchange a Natural Flaw for a Feat.

Feats were a different sort of bonus system, and players could only receive Feats at Level 1 and at any level that was a multiple of 3.

After Arthur had officially started, it was apparently entirely run by an AI.

At first, very few people understood how valuable Feats were.

There were even players who managed to eliminate all but one statue and still decided against choosing that Character Class, so they missed the chance to enter the Natural Flaw system.

There were also players who felt that the list of Natural Flaws had overly heavy consequences on their character and they didn't accept them. So they gave up the chance to exchange them for Feats.

Some of them were very careful and only exchanged one Natural Flaw. They gave up the chance to choose two Natural Flaws to exchange for two Feats.

If there were no limits on Zhao Xu's choice, he wouldn't mind even if he had a few dozen Natural Flaws, as long as he could exchange them for the same number of feats.

But the problem Zhao Xu had right now was how the system was going to assign him his Double Elite Character Classes.

Did he have to leave one statue or two statues lighted?

And if two statues remained lighted, did that mean the system wouldn't activate the Natural Flaw system anymore?

Zhao Xu had raised a leg earlier but left it suspended in the air and still hadn't put it down yet.

This Natural Flaw system was apparently only available for the first 24 hours of the game starting. So, essentially, it was the only chance that players had with their first account.

After some people heard about this, they gave up their original account and opened a new one to try the next day, only to find that there was no such thing. They even went back online to curse at those people who talked about it and called them liars.

If he missed this chance, then two Feats that couldn't be bought with money were going to slip from his grasp.

Zhao Xu's expression became grimmer and grimmer.

7 s

Chapter 6: The End of the Stairs?

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

After being reborn as a human once again, Zhao Xu didn't take too long to think about this, and immediately decided on a course of action.

He could just sort-of answer a huge number of different questions and make sure he was left with only the Wizard statue and the Cleric statue.

The game might activate the Natural Flaw system when he was left with only two statues since he was a Double Elite.

Even if he made the wrong guess, it didn't matter. He would just continue answering more questions until the Cleric statue was also eliminated.

It was a bit more difficult to do something like this, but he didn't feel nervous about it at all.

Answering a bunch of questions couldn't be harder than fighting monsters anyway.

You could choose more than one answer for each of these questions and answer vaguely. Even though this would slow down the final selection process, it was a chance for Zhao Xu to leave both Wizard and Cleric as his choices.

Zhao Xu took the next step to answer a question on the stairs.

He wasn't a Wizard before this, but he had seen them before.

He was the only one right now in this world who had come into contact with Wizards and Clerics before the game started.

So, besides those who were truly suitable to take on this Character Class, no one would be as sensitive to each Character Class as Zhao Xu was.

Actually, toward the end of the game, the players had gone through a lot and would naturally understand which Character Class was most suitable for themselves.

A lot of people just skipped this step of letting the system recommend a Character Class and doing so didn't affect their gameplay after that.

In the end, things went as Zhao Xu expected. The brightness around the Wizard and Cleric statues kept getting brighter, while the light around the rest slowly faded.

The statue of the Fighter, which was Zhao Xu's Character Class in the past, was the first one to go out.

And Zhao Xu had even sort of grasped the logic behind the questions that the system gave him.

After understanding this, Zhao Xu found it even easier to answer the questions.

By the time he completed 500 steps, he had already extinguished the lights of half the statues.

The light had gone out but it was not completely eliminated. Once his answers went in that particular inclination, the statue would light up again.

Zhao Xu was like a kitchen helper helping the chef to chop vegetables and just kept repeating cut after cut.

It looked like a completely mechanical process, but only he knew where the catch was.

Most people would be able to see which statues were brighter and could choose one after about 30 questions.

If one wanted to be more careful, then by the time one reached 100 questions, most of the statues would be rather dim and the statues that were still lit were usually as bright as a light bulb.

But the Natural Flaw system would only be activated if the system saw that ten of the statues were completely extinguished, not just dim and nearly extinguished.

Otherwise, Zhao Xu would have achieved his aim within 200 questions.

The system would only completely extinguish the statue if it was sure that this Character Class was definitely not suitable for the player and would never recommend it at all.

And that was also why there were very few players who managed to activate the Natural Flaw system.

He had gone through more than 900 questions.

The statues in front of Zhao Xu were mostly on the verge of being extinguished.

The Wizard and Cleric statues were already so bright that they hurt his eyes, but the Druid statue still had a little light in it and refused to go out completely.

Even after Zhao Xu had answered at least another 50 questions, none of his answers had made the Druid statue's light waver at all.

He knew that the AI wasn't picking on him, but these irrelevant and useless questions were starting to stir up anxiety within his originally calm heart.

A Druid could also attain Level 9 magic, and the player had to maintain a neutral stand between Law and Chaos, as well as between Good and Evil.

So, in a way, this Character Class was quite close to Zhao Xu's own way of thinking as well.

So unless there was a question that definitely eliminated the Druid class, for example, if the system asked if you hate nature or animals, it was really hard for Zhao Xu to extinguish that last bit of light in the Druid's statue.

The even bigger problem was that Zhao Xu had underestimated the number of questions. He didn't think that so many irrelevant questions would appear towards the end and he might even have to throw the Cleric out.

Also, this staircase only had 2000 steps.

After going through 2000 questions, the system wouldn't give him any more questions, even if he wanted to answer more.

As long as the player answered the questions seriously, nobody would hit 2000 questions. No matter how picky one was, only one statue would be left lighted up after 1000 questions and the system would stop giving new ones.

If the player really didn't like what the system recommended, the player could still choose to extinguish that statue anyway.

Zhao Xu had to start weighing his pros and cons. If he still couldn't eliminate the Druid before he hit 1500 questions, he was going to throw out the Cleric as well.

In order to make sure he definitely got Wizard at the end, he had to ensure he had 500 steps as a buffer.

Zhao Xu continued to answer the questions.

The total number of questions started to slowly go up. 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400.

In the time before he hit 1500, the Druid statue reached the very brink of being extinguished several times.

But Zhao Xu didn't manage to follow it up well, and the light grew brighter again twice.

Otherwise, he would have gotten rid of this statue by the 1300th question.

When he saw that he still hadn't attained his goal after 1500 questions, he sighed and decided to go according to his original plan, and his answers started to lean towards eliminating the Cleric instead of the Druid.

Most people would think that since he'd come this far, he might as well try for another ten or twenty questions. For all you know, he might manage to put the Druid statue out.

But Zhao Xu had never been much of a risk-taker.

If he went into a casino and bought 1000 chips, he would definitely leave if he lost everything and wouldn't think of trying again to recoup his losses.

The questions continued on. 1510 questions, 1520 questions, 1530 questions.

When it was close to 1550 questions, Zhao Xu finally noticed that the brightness around the Cleric's statue was becoming significantly dimmer.

After that, Zhao Xu finished answering an ethical question concerning an oncoming train. He had to choose between saving one child who obeyed the rules or five children who flouted the rules.

He made a choice entirely based on the perspective of a wizard.

1But strangely enough, instead of causing the brightness around the Cleric to dim, this answer caused the last bit of light around the Druid statue to finally go out.

"Player's Double Elite Character Classes have been confirmed. The question and answer system will close automatically."

"Starting Natural Flaw System. Please choose if you wish to take on Natural Flaws."

Zhao Xu felt his heart leap for joy.

He had made the right bet.

9 s

Chapter 7: City of Magic

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

"Please choose from 0-2 Natural Flaws. These Natural Flaws cannot be removed, so choose wisely or give up this selection."

It was quite strange, but the prompt from the system seemed to be in a hurry, as if none of this was supposed to exist.

A selection of Natural Flaws slowly appeared in front of Zhao Xu's eyes.

Thankfully the staircase was covered in bright white light, otherwise anyone with a fear of heights would find it impossible to choose anything.

Zhao Xu's attention was drawn to the number on the bottom right-hand corner.

10.

9.

8.

7.

Zhao Xu didn't need to be a genius to realize that this was a countdown timer for him to make a selection. This system was very well hidden and the time given for him to make his choice was even more limited.

And the system didn't even explain what were the pros and cons of doing this.

And the language used by the system sounded ambiguous too. It made it sound as if there was no loss if you decided not to select anything.

"Easily Hurt."

"Clerical Worker."

Zhao Xu didn't have the energy to read through all the words and could only find two Natural Flaws in the list that were related to melee attacks.

Easily Hurt: You are not good at protecting yourself.

Effect: -1 level in Armor Class.

Clerical Worker: You are not good at melee attacks at all.

Effect: -2 level in all melee attacks.

Once the countdown timer hit zero, the entire Natural Flaw system disappeared.

Zhao Xu's character stats had the description of the two Natural Flaws he just chose, and they were placed inside the same area as his list of feats.

Feat (bonus feat for Humans): Yet to be decided

Feat (Level 1): Yet to be decided

Feat (Natural Flaw 1): Yet to be decided

Feat (Natural Flaw 2): Yet to be decided

Feats in Arthur were usually given to a character after they had completed their Character Class training. If the player didn't choose to be a Human or didn't have the perseverance and luck to activate the Natural Flaw system...

Then those players would have three fewer Feats compared to Zhao Xu.

According to what some high-level players had said in the past, Feats were an ability that he could choose to use at any time.

And he now had three more than other players.

As for the consequences of these Natural Flaws, Zhao Xu thought about them for a while and decided that he could accept them.

Armor Class was his armor defense value. Every player started with 10 points of defense, then you could add on to it with things like the Ability Modifier score of Dexterity.

The number of hit points a player had depended on the character's starting value as well as other additions, such as the Ability Modifier score of Strength.

In Zhao Xu's previous life, he was a Level 5 Fighter, so his hit points were at Level 5. He had 4 Strength Modifier points, so he could increase his hit points by four levels. So his final hit points were at Level 9.

Arthur used a D20 system. D20 referred to a 20-sided die that had the numbers 1-20.

In the same way, D6 referred to a number on a 6-sided die.

3D6 referred to the total value of throwing three 6-sided dice.

The Natural Flaws that Zhao Xu had chosen had sacrificed some hit points and defense points, and it looked like he had a strategy for the later part of the game.

As Zhao Xu was thinking about the pros and cons of what he chose earlier, the image in front of him went blurry.

The world started to dim as if he was falling into a deep sleep.

He suddenly got a shock.

Zhao Xu woke up with a start to find that he was wearing linen from head to toe and was standing on some stone steps. It was clearly afternoon, but there was a huge shadow over him as if there was a gigantic cloud in the sky.

Zhao Xu carefully looked at the world around him. Most of them were characters that belonged to the world of Arthur and many of them looked at him curiously. Players that were dressed like himself were strangely few.

The streets were generally clean, but there were many mysterious symbols all over the place that he couldn't understand.

At the same time, the message board on his character stats kept refreshing.

Character stats and the message board were an assistant tool for all players in Arthur.

It would state the player's character stats as well as other information on the current situation.

"Hint 1: Please follow the recommendation letter in your bag and go to the Magic Academy in this town to proceed with the Wizard apprenticeship course and complete your training."

"Hint 2: Please follow the recommendation letter in your bag and go to the Neutral Alignment temple in this town to proceed with the Cleric internship course and complete your training. (You are recommended to head for the Temple of Sisylvana, Goddess of Magic)"

Zhao Xu now noticed that there were things inside his backpack.

There were many players walking about the large towns in the world of Arthur after they had chosen a Character Class at the long staircase earlier.

Arthur didn't have a Noob Village and was only split between towns and villages. In general, all players would be allocated to a large town because only these places would have organizations for the various Character Classes and had the resources to train the characters.

That meant that everyone had the benefit of having the system arrange all these things for you right now. After one year, getting into these training organizations cost a hefty price.

If you really didn't have money, then you would have to sign a contract to work for the organization for a fixed amount of time after your training was complete.

And the more realistic part was that these towns that they appeared in actually, truly existed. Even the people walking around these towns, who everybody thought were just NPCs in the game, turned out to be real humans just like themselves after they had transmigrated.

But even though Zhao Xu knew what he planned to do, he had to face the hard facts right now.

All these towns truly existed within the world of Arthur, so they weren't copy-paste jobs like most Noob Villages. Zhao Xu knew his way around the place he appeared in during his previous life, but he had no idea where on earth he was right now.

Never mind where he had to go to get his training.

But judging from those high city walls, he figured he wasn't in some tiny town.

With that, he just pulled out the two recommendation letters from his backpack.

The letters would definitely tell him where he was.

Zhao Xu had 3 Intelligence Modifier points, so he would be able to grasp three additional languages without having to really learn them and just needed to go through the motions. He didn't really understand those languages either. The system would just automatically translate those foreign languages for him.

But after the transmigration, each person would truly be able to understand the languages without the system.

Across the world of Arthur, every single race used the language 'Common', and that was the language that every player knew by default and wasn't considered an additional language. He could decide which other 3 languages he wanted to learn later on.

Most people only had one recommendation letter, but because Zhao Xu was a Double Elite character, he had two.

He smiled and unrolled the parchment in his hands to see where on earth he was right now.

"Mystra." Zhao Xu's hands couldn't help but tremble when he saw this word.

Mystra, the place where the Goddess of Magic became a goddess.

In this place, magic directed everything.

Zhao Xu suddenly understood where the strange shadow beneath him came from and immediately looked up.

Floating cities hung above him, suspended in the air by magic.

20 s

Chapter 8: Archivist

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The floating city far above Zhao Xu hung like a vast cloud in the sky.

Even though he had heard about how mysterious and majestic this city of magic was in his previous life, Zhao Xu still couldn't control the excitement in his heart.

The world of Arthur used magic, an otherworldly power that was incredible and mysterious beyond belief.

But an ordinary person could only rely on the most primitive forms of strength like human strength, the strength of water, and the strength of animals.

If you wanted to travel far, you either had to walk or take a horse carriage. Zhao Xu was a Level 5 Fighter before he died the last time, so that was equivalent to being able to take down a small village.

But in the last ten years he spent endangering his life in adventures, he had only used a Teleportation Gate once or twice.

Ancient civilizations were limited by their methods of communication and travel.

In the world of Arthur, there were no modern modes of transportation like Earth had. So the vast majority of the people were limited to wherever their legs could carry them.

Even those who had played Arthur were no better. There was a Teleportation Scroll, but Teleportation itself was a Level 5 Arcane Spell.

Even though there was no price to pay, unlike another Level 5 Arcane Spell, Raise Dead, that incurred penalties due to its ability to revive the dead, the only ones who could cast a Level 5 spell were Wizards or Clerics that were at least at Level 9.

And you could only find or come into contact with spellcasters that could do this in a large city.

Only such places had organizations for the various Character Classes.

Most Wizards had to do some research, so they normally hid in lesser-known places to avoid being disturbed.

Even the poor could have distant relatives living deep in the mountains suddenly appear to look for them, so where would a more advanced level Wizard go?

The floating cities suspended above Zhao Xu's head were the places where the Wizards did their research.

These floating cities were very high in the sky, so you either needed a Teleportation Gate or a Teleportation Spell to get up there.

Zhao Xu had relied solely on his legs in his previous life, and even though he had been forced to move from place to place in the last six years to take revenge, he had never come to Mystra, the mecca of the Wizards.

Back then, he was mostly limited to the northern regions.

Just like most players, he had moved about only within walking distance of his city all his life.

In his previous life, his class' league was able to gather together because Arthur tended to allocate players according to region.

So, all the players from the same university would often end up appearing somewhere near each other.

That was why Zhao Xu was so stunned when he realized that he was in Mystra, far to the south.

That meant that he was now away from his friends. If he had to go on a mission or level up or fight monsters, he wouldn't have the help of his classmates.

You could only be considered an advanced level Wizard only after you hit Level 5.

A Level 1 Wizard could cast Level 1 spells, a Level 3 Wizard could cast Level 2 spells, a Level 5 Wizard could cast Level 3 spells, and so on.

There was a big difference in power between each increase in spell level.

Zhao Xu had no team with him now and a low-level Wizard could only cast a few spells.

So in such a situation, it was going to be hard on him until he reached at least Level 5.

The only thing he could count on was probably the fact that he was also a Cleric at the same time.

At least now he had additional Divine Spells for his spell slots, and his number of spell slots would increase too.

Zhao Xu started reading the recommendation letter carefully. There was a simple map of the place on it and it circled the place where he was right now.

Zhao Xu looked at the map and realized that the headquarters of the Wizard Organization in Mystra, The Arcane Gate, was actually right next to the main temple of Sisylvana, the Goddess of Magic.

But then again, that made sense too. Sisylvana herself was an incredible divine force who was once a Legendary Wizard.

Even many arrogant high-level wizards believed in the Goddess of Magic and viewed her as the first person to go down the road of magic.

Zhao Xu looked at his recommendation letter and his hands started shaking.

This particular Magic Academy was supposed to be the best in the world.

Maybe it was too much to say that they had as many Legendary Wizards as dogs, but there were definitely as many rare high-level wizards as dogs here.

At the same time, most Clerics were trained in a temple, and he had been recommended to the main temple of the Goddess of Magic to start his training.

That was like getting a guaranteed space in an Ivy League school.

Zhao Xu knew that those who went through the Class Prescription Test would get a better recommendation depending on how suitable one was for their role.

But the places in his recommendation letters weren't just good, they were pretty much the best.

It was little wonder that there were very few players along the streets. Most other players weren't good enough to be sent here.

Even a year later, not many players could set foot in Mystra either.

As Zhao Xu picked up speed, more and more people appeared on the streets.

Hotels, scroll shops, material shops slowly appeared along the streets, meant for both wizards and adventurers.

Now and then, a group of guards riding horses, dressed in magic robes, would ride by to patrol the city.

When Zhao Xu looked at their robes, a blue so dark it was almost black, he slowly realized who these men were. They were Mystra's Magic Guards.

This was the only place in the world of Arthur that was able to afford to use wizards for guard patrols.

Or rather, the Prestige Class 'Magic Guards' was a famous one.

Having a Prestige Class was something that countless players of Arthur dreamt of.

There were few Prestige Classes for Wizards in particular. Without joining a group and contributing sufficiently, it wouldn't be possible to get one.

There was one gamer who went through a lot of trouble to finally obtain sufficient credit in Mystra to become a Magic Guard.

That same player had also put up a long post about it, and you could sum up the entire article in two words: Don't bother.

It was thanks to that post that the name of Mystra spread far and wide throughout Wizard circles.

To Zhao Xu, the most beneficial thing to himself about being allocated to the large city of Mystra was that he could get a Prestige Class easily, as well as some of the secret features of the base Character Classes.

There were also powerful Feats here that he couldn't learn anywhere else.

Zhao Xu's list of Feats was still miserably empty.

As Zhao Xu walked on, he looked at the other things in his bag.

In the end, he found two insignias at the bottom of the bag.

He picked them up to have a look. The words inscribed were in Common and he still remembered how to read them. "Mystra/The Arcane Gate/Apprentice/Zhongxia".

Zhao Xu squeezed the insignias in his hands gently and immediately realized that they were made from mithral. It was a material that one could add to their armor to reduce the chances of their spells failing, and it was more expensive than gold.

But, because Wizards needed to get into certain positions in order to cast spells, higher grade armor worked against one's ability to get into the required stance and it could cause a 25% failure rate in spellcasting. That was why Wizards generally just walked around in robes.

The other insignia was the one for the Cleric. The polished reflective surface had his identity and name on it as well.

Zhao Xu put both tags on himself. For many players, after going through a period of training in their respective Character Classes, they either felt that this particular Character Class wasn't suitable for them, or they were still unsure about whether they wanted to continue down their path, and would normally engage in other training at the same time.

Either way, you had to meet the minimum requirements at the end of the training before the system would consider you a Level 1 player.

Before that, you could go through as much training as you liked and it didn't matter. That was why the system also allowed one to choose a Character Class directly.

If you didn't want to try this role out in your head, then you could try it out physically.

But Zhao Xu wasn't thinking about all these things. His attention was focused on the feeling that these two insignias gave him. Could they really be Magic Items?

Magic Items in Arthur had to go through a period of activation before one learned what they really were.

But a period of activation didn't affect their use anyway.

Something like this that could increase Ability Scores would be useable after carrying it around for 24 hours.

He wasn't blind. He just had to check his character stats the following day to find out.

But, just after taking a few steps, Zhao Xu slapped himself on the forehead. These things were considered a 2 item that could increase his Ability Scores and were worth 4,000 gold pieces in the market.

How could it be possible that the system was going to give him 8,000 gold pieces right from the start?

Zhao Xu continued walking to his destination while trying to figure this puzzle out, and it wasn't far now.

But Zhao Xu didn't know at this point.

He could receive these two insignias only if he went through the Class Prescription Test and made sure that only the Wizard and Cleric statues were left lit.

As long as someone with these two insignias was allocated to Mystra, then he could take on Arthur's most mysterious Base Character Class, a Wizard with supernatural powers – an Archivist.

110 s

Chapter 9: Double Elite

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The number of users logging into Arthur this first day wasn't as high as the numbers the game eventually saw.

The game peaked around a half a year later, and the game became a trending topic. Whenever a player unlocked a new achievement in the game, the news would immediately go viral.

There were guides and posts for a player to read details on all parts of the game during this period.

But players had no mode of communication within the game itself, and any connection to the internet was cut off.

So if anybody ran into any special scenario, the player had to rely on themselves or the various knowledge and skills within the system to figure out what to do.

If you really had to log off in order to look it up, you not only had to wait for the right time to log off, there was also a waiting period of 20 minutes in between logging off and logging in again, so this was enough to stop most people from using external info sources.

But even so, before some of the leagues were able to afford Communication Spells, they still used the good old method of logging off to communicate before going back online again.

Many players were completely lost when they first started the game. Some of them didn't take the initiative to ask for directions and still couldn't find their training center even after going round in circles for days.

Zhao Xu was likely to be the first player in the entire game to actually understand the symbols on the parchment maps and know how to follow them.

Since it was his first choice, Zhao Xu decided to go to the headquarters of the Wizard Organization, The Arcane Gate, first.

There was more than one Wizard Organization in Arthur.

But the one seated in the city of magic, Mystra, was the largest and had the most members. They had branches in several cities across the continent.

The other Wizard Organizations were only equivalent to one-tenth of their power. For example, the Red Robe Wizards only covered one area.

The only Wizard Organization here was The Arcane Gate, so it didn't need to be explained.

Any mention of a Wizard Organization would naturally refer to the one in Mystra.

After Zhao Xu handed over the relevant documents at the main lobby of The Arcane Gate, the apprentice in charge of showing him in used a simple spell to verify the secret key of his recommendation letter and confirmed that he was indeed supposed to be there.

Some had, or rather, would dare to use Forgery to try to scam the Wizard Association, but the quickest group of Rogue players were probably still unable to grasp the Skill at this point, much less use their low-level skills to attempt a scam.

To the characters that pre-existed Arthur, this group of players from Earth didn't suddenly drop from the sky, and the NPCs weren't all brainwashed to accept that they were originally part of Arthur.

In reality, players would later realize that this entire world was run logically.

The characters of Arthur were told by the temple a number of years ago that these players were projections from a different realm called Earth.

Other realms weren't an unknown concept to the characters in Arthur nor to any of the Adventurers within Arthur. In fact, anywhere that the gods existed was considered another realm in itself.

Wizards could even call on creatures from other realms to be projected into Arthur in order to participate in battles.

The players from earth were different in that they could go online and offline and had a special collection of five revival stones that the characters in Arthur didn't have, so the players from earth were just treated like another projection.

At the very least, they wouldn't be blocked off by an Antimagic Field or be completely wiped out.

Zhao Xu had even heard that top-level Wizards didn't even go on Adventure Trips personally. Most of them would just summon projections that were as capable as themselves and send those out on adventures in their place.

The transmigration after one year turned everyone on earth into actual characters within Arthur, so they went from being projections to becoming actual people in the game.

Zhao Xu waited for less than ten minutes when a wizard in a black robe came out to bring him further into The Arcane Gate.

He instructed Zhao Xu not to run off by himself, in case he ended up triggering some trap and ended up having to revive himself. Other than that, the wizard remained silent.

Everyone within The Arcane Gate was quiet and walked around in a great hurry.

In less than ten minutes, the wizard had brought Zhao Xu to an empty courtyard.

He pointed at the brightly lit gate in front and said, "That's the gate for Wizard apprentices like you. Don't think too much and just keep walking."

"A Teleportation Gate?" Zhao Xu exclaimed in surprise when he saw the three-meter tall, brightly lit gate.

He expected the training ground for those like himself to be in Mystra itself, but they actually had to go through a Teleportation Gate.

Besides having a limit on the size it could take and the fact that it was usually only able to teleport to one destination, there were no other limitations on Teleportation Gates.

In just one round (6 seconds), players could use it to get to a particular destination. There was no need for anybody to assist the player and it didn't require any spells to be activated.

It just took one step to get to your destination. Teleportation Gates cost 100,000 gold pieces each and they were something that countless Adventurers wish they had.

The wilds in Arthur were incredibly dangerous.

If a player could just get away from a battle for 5 minutes, then he could go offline without any risks and wouldn't have to spend the night in the wild.

Most players who used revival stones early on used them because of accidents that happened in the wild.

Even the characters within Arthur wouldn't leave a town to go into the wild if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

"You've seen one before?" The wizard in a black robe lifted his head slightly to look at Zhao Xu. He wasn't sure if the expression on the wizard's face was a good one or a bad one.

He suddenly realized that this wizard was probably not one of those super low-level wizards who guarded the main gate outside.

The majority of the wizards here knew very well that players like him were 'Adventurers' from Earth.

Logically speaking, these players had just come into contact with Arthur and should know very little.

But Zhao Xu knew that the best way to deal with the situation wasn't to explain but to keep asking.

"This door leads to the place above?"

Zhao Xu used a finger to point upward as he spoke. Even though the huge courtyard had a ceiling, it was obvious what Zhao Xu was referring to.

"You're pretty quick-witted," the wizard in a black robe looked at Zhao Xu carefully.

But Zhao Xu could feel that the wizard's eyes had fallen on the two insignias on his chest.

"Very interesting indeed. No wonder I was told to bring you here," the wizard in a black robe said.

"What does that mean?" Zhao Xu's sensitive mind realized that he might have just stumbled upon something very important.

Every character that existed within Arthur was an actual human being. They weren't mindless NPCs that only spoke to you because you had activated some mission.

But, in general, high-level wizards were usually more aloof and wouldn't bother wasting too much time on some lowly Level 1 apprentice.

Even though Zhao Xu was now at the highest-ranking academy in the world of wizardry, he would be treated the same way.

The wizard's cloudy eyes met Zhao Xu's.

Zhao Xu went into a daze for a while. He felt like he was looking at a wise old man.

But the wizard's face and hands were unwrinkled. He didn't look more than middle-aged.

But that didn't stop Zhao Xu from lowering his own head a little.

He wasn't like other players who came into the game fearing nothing at all. Other players couldn't be bothered and the worst that could happen was to either try again or just quit altogether.

But, eventually, everyone on earth would have to find a way to survive in Arthur, so if he was arrogant now, he might do himself more harm in the long run.

"If I were you, I wouldn't wear the Cleric insignia for the time being. You'll get less unnecessary attention that way," the wizard suggested.

"Why do you say that? Isn't it possible for the players to go through two Character Class trainings at the same time?" Zhao Xu asked the wizard even though the other players probably didn't know that this was possible yet. But he knew about this and he was absolutely sure of it.

There were players just like him. If you were left with more than one statue at the end of the Class Prescription Test, you would be given more insignias so that you could participate in more than one training course.

Others had to eventually weigh their pros and cons and choose which insignia to keep and go for training.

But because his was a Double Elite account, he could keep them both.

The wizard in the black robe was just like him and didn't answer his question directly. Instead, he replied in a low voice, "Just ten minutes ago, there was a female player just like you. She also had two insignias, but she was sent to the Teleportation Gate in the next room."

The world of Arthur would only become real one year later, so that meant that Zhao Xu's 16 point Intelligence on his character stats wasn't real yet.

He still had to rely on the intelligence he was born with to try to figure out what the wizard was trying to tell him.

Zhao Xu had calmed down now, and he started wondering if it was some hidden mission or some other trap.

So the wizard was saying that he should have gone to the other Teleportation Gate just like the female player?

Why would anyone build two Teleportation Gates to get to the same Magic Academy?

Even if the Wizard Association had money, this wasn't a good way to spend it. There was no point in building two gates next to one another that would lead to the same place.

Which meant, the two gates must lead to two different places.

If he were in some other city, he could explain it away by saying that one of the doors was for sending the best apprentices to Mystra.

But The Arcane Gate was already the best Magic Academy and legend had it that the mentors were all Legendary Wizards.

If you wanted to top that, then was this gate going to send one straight to the goddess?

The Cleric training school was in the temple next door, and he didn't have to go through a Teleportation Gate to get there.

Zhao Xu suddenly understood what was going on. He had tried to show off and wanted the people at The Arcane Gate to notice that he was different, and so he had purposely worn both insignias to prove his worth.

And something different really did happen after all.

Or, perhaps he didn't have to wear these insignias and this would still have happened after he stepped into the main gate of the Wizard Association.

But what did this have to do with two different Teleportation Gates?

Zhao Xu suddenly remembered something else.

Hidden Base Character Class!

Someone with two insignias could take on a Hidden Character Class besides being a Wizard and a Cleric!

But, between the gate in front of him and the gate next door, which one was truly the one headed for the Hidden Base Character Class?

Zhao Xu was about to ask the wizard to confirm this when he looked at the wizard and stopped himself.

The answer was already there without him saying anything.

If it was really a Hidden Character Class, he would have said so by the time he reached the Teleportation Gate.

So the gate next door was the one that was headed for the Hidden Character Class.

So now he had another question. Why was someone else sent to the Hidden Character Class while he was headed for becoming a Wizard when both of them had two insignias each?

"Looks like you've thought of it?"

A Wizard was more respected since it was one of the Base Character Classes of this universe.

"Think about it first. What's so special about you?"

Zhao Xu lowered his head and started thinking. What was so special about himself?

16 Intelligence points was considered high, but there were others with 17 or even 18 points.

Oh! Double Elite!

Zhao Xu suddenly thought of it. But, logically speaking, the wizard shouldn't be able to tell at all.

Weren't the players immune to the Detect Thoughts spell for the first year?

The wizard suddenly raised his head and looked into the distance, as if he could see past the Teleportation Gate.

"Don't worry, you Adventurers from Earth are immune to many things here. I'll let you know one more thing. Besides knowing how to cast spells, Wizards are also skilled in Intelligence and Knowledge."

Zhao Xu knew what the wizard was saying. If NPCs were able to read the minds of the players or do anything worse to the players than that, it would be utter chaos.

So this sort of immunity was actually a form of protection the gods had given to the players in general, and it was effective for one year.

It was also a form of protection for Zhao Xu.

Otherwise, he might as well have written the fact that he had been reborn on his face when he went in front of the Legendary Wizards.

So the wizard knew what he was thinking about based purely on his Intelligence and Knowledge?

Zhao Xu nearly slapped himself on the forehead. He had forgotten the existence of the skill of Sense Motive.

His expressions were too obvious and he had to counter this by increasing his skill points in Disguise in the future.

After Zhao Xu got it all figured out, he nodded and walked toward the brightly lit gate.

Just when he was about to step in, he suddenly stopped to ask.

"After I complete the training to become a Level 1 Wizard, then I'll have to come back here to go to the Teleportation Gate next door?"

He didn't say that he was a Double Elite, but he was sure the wizard knew what he was talking about.

The wizard wouldn't think that after becoming a Level 1 Wizard, he would decide to give up Level 2 and take on the Hidden Character Class instead.

"No. You will continue on the road to becoming a Wizard," the wizard said. "As for the other road available to you, you will first become a Level 1 Cleric before moving on to becoming an Archivist."

Character Class path 1: Level 2 Wizard

Character Class path 2: Level 1 Cleric/Level 1 Archivist.

Zhao Xu imagined the paths that the wizard was talking about and now he also knew what the Hidden Base Character Class was.

He suddenly spun around and asked, "But why?"

"This is the will of the goddess."

14 s

Chapter 10: Entering the Gate

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Zhao Xu found it difficult to explain the thoughts going through his mind as he walked through the Teleportation Gate.

He had speculated that a player with two insignias who reached the Wizard Association's headquarters in Mystra would automatically get the chance to become an Archivist and keep going down that path.

But, when the wizard in a black robe mentioned the term 'Archivist', Zhao Xu was shocked.

Before this, he had never imagined that a Base Character Class that was no poorer than a Wizard or a Cleric would be something players from Earth would come into contact with from their very first day.

The good thing about the game Arthur was how popular it was on Earth.

Since it was popular, many gamers who did live broadcasts were more than happy to reveal the various secrets of the game.

And, because this content wasn't restricted and was broadcast on the internet, someone who didn't know anything about the game like Zhao Xu could understand how to play.

The difference between holding two Base Character Classes and Prestige Classes was that you could add your levels up while Base Character Classes couldn't.

Based on what the wizard in a black robe said, he definitely had to continue on the road to becoming a Wizard.

But the problem was, in order to become an Archivist, he had to become a Level 1 Cleric first, then continue on to become an Archivist who also made use of Divine Spells?

If he had to become a Level 1 Cleric first, that meant that his road to becoming an Archivist would always be one level slower than others.

Level 1 Wizards could learn Level 1 spells, while Level 3 Wizards could learn Level 2 spells.

Going by this pattern, Level 5 Wizards could learn Level 3 spells, and the majority of spellcaster Classes worked like this.

So while other Level 9 Clerics could cast Level 5 Divine Spells like Revivify, he could only play with Level 4 spells.

By the time Zhao Xu had completed one round and appeared in the floating city, he had already calmed back down.

He roughly understood what was going on.

'The will of the goddess' was a strange thing to say.

It was the will of the goddess to let him become an Archivist.

It was the will of the goddess to make him be a Level 1 Cleric first.

Once Zhao Xu understood this, he immediately opened up the Religion section of his character stats and changed it to the Goddess of Magic, Sisylvana.

He was 90% confident that, from the time he was creating his character all the way until he had chosen his Character Classes, the goddess had been watching him the whole time.

The sculptures of the various gods in the palace were filled with divine power, as he had sensed at the time.

The gods used the Palace of Character Creation as their main focus and had already started picking their followers.

Zhao Xu had probably been chosen because of his Double Elite status.

Or, perhaps there was a deeper reason he didn't know.

In any case, since the goddess wanted him to become a Cleric, then that meant that she wanted to strengthen her communication with him.

Clerics in Arthur were all people who believed in divinity since they believed that there was a god. But it didn't mean that they were truly pious.

But, if a person was the Cleric of a particular god or deity, then you wouldn't doubt their piety at all.

That was because their level as a Cleric was a testament to what their god had given them.

The gods could grant their Clerics their Character Class levels.

As such, the churches and temples in Arthur were well trusted by their disciples and the things they did and said were completely consistent with one another. So it did really look like a utopia here.

Since that was the situation Zhao Xu was in, he immediately switched his religion to the goddess.

Religion was a very serious matter in Arthur.

But the gods were still quite forgiving when it came to superficial believers. They were only very strict when it came to selecting Clerics.

A Cleric needed a god or deity to acknowledge him before rising in level.

Clerics that were exiled by the god or deity they believed in would lose most of their powers, including Divine Magic.

When that happened, only Dark Gods and the Abyss and Hells would accept these fallen Clerics. To them, the souls of rebel Clerics were the most delicious of all.

There was an exception to every case after all. Otherwise, the Clerics should have remained completely faithful. But the gods weren't all-powerful.

The gods could forcibly make a fruit sweet, but they couldn't make a fruit sweet naturally all the time.

Zhao Xu guessed that if he didn't truly believe in the goddess with his heart and soul, then the goddess wouldn't let him become a high-level Cleric either.

But to only allow him to be a Level 1 Cleric was probably still permissible for someone she had chosen.

That was also why he had chosen his religion boldly like this.

Otherwise, she would have gotten him to just become an Archivist right away. There was no need to also be a Level 1 Cleric at the same time.

The goddess needed Level 1 Clerics, while he needed the favor of the goddess so that he had the upper hand when the time of the great war came in the future.

1As for whether he could become a Cleric despite not being truly pious, that would depend on whether the goddess wanted to do him this favor or not.

If she didn't want to, then he would switch his religion to his alignment and remain a generic Cleric.

In four years, the north would start to go to chaos. The Abyss and Hell would make an attack again. If Zhao Xu hadn't reached Level 10 by the time that happened, he couldn't guarantee that his family would be able to stay safe.

It was because of this unrest that Zhao Xu had been summoned to leave his family in his previous life.

In the end, his hometown had been destroyed by the Black Dragon while he was gone.

That huge unrest had caused countless deaths in the north.

Many of those who had gone from Earth to Arthur and were only Level 1 ordinary folk, were killed in that chaos.

That was also the time when everyone who had transmigrated from earth fought tooth and nail to become a Character Class that could be involved in battle.

Non-fighting classes like Mentors, Nobles, and Experts became completely useless.

By the time Zhao Xu had finished thinking through all of this, he had been teleported to his destination.

He slowly walked out and found himself in a hall at least ten times bigger than the one he had come from.

There was an identical Teleportation Gate, and the room looked like a huge museum.

An entire row of Magic Guards stood by one side of the hallway, there to maintain order in the huge hall.

Now and then someone would walk out from the Teleportation Gate.

On the wall across from the Teleportation Gates were a row of staff at their desks, working busily.

Before Zhao Xu could ask any questions, a servant came up to him. She looked fairly pretty and reminded Zhao Xu once more of the standards of beauty that he had cultivated after spending 8 to 9 years in Arthur.

"Honorable Wizard Sir, please come with me to register," she said as she stood to one side and waited for Zhao Xu to follow her.

Basically every gate would have a servant girl like her to wait to receive each person and lead the way.

Come to think of it, that wizard in the black robe earlier had probably come specially to attend to him. Did that wizard just want to see what he looked like?

Zhao Xu felt terribly cold when he thought about it that way.

The servant girl continued to wait patiently by his side and didn't seem annoyed at all. Zhao Xu felt bad for making her wait and quickly followed after her.

As they walked, he asked, "Those high-level wizards don't have to end up using this gate to come here as well, right?"

Zhao Xu knew that going through the gate was the safest.

It was the safest for both the wizards as well as the defenses of this floating city.

Mystra had paid a tremendous price in order to raise these floating cities. Besides being a satellite city for the main city, it was probably a way of keeping their species alive even in war.

Teleportation was something out of reach for most people.

But it was something that couldn't be overlooked in a battle that involved high-level players.

Zhao Xu had witnessed one battle where a group of high-level adventurers had used Teleportation to drop from the sky.

According to what Zhao Xu knew, this floating city was gigantic, but its shadow didn't cover all of Mystra. So, the only explanation was that this floating city was too high and no flying creature could get here by flying at all.

So the only way onto this place was via teleportation.

"All these cities are protected by mythal and only those who are recognized as our own can use teleportation to get in." The servant girl spoke in a voice just loud enough for Zhao Xu to hear her without disturbing the others in the hall.

Zhao Xu was stunned. He had never heard of this in his previous life.

The number of players who had been allocated to Mystra was too few. This group was right at the top of the pyramid.

He suddenly remembered that post that talked all about being a Magic Guard and mentioned something about having a mark of sorts. The post said that the mark didn't have any powers and was just used to prove his identity.

Zhao Xu got it now. So one feature of this Prestige Class was actually to be able to get through the mythal around these floating cities.

As far as Zhao Xu knew, class features were the hardest to imitate.

This was an even more stable way than a symbol of sealing that could send one into the floating city.

That was because every Magic Guard had been carefully selected.

Anybody who betrayed their role would lose their class features.

When he thought about this, Zhao Xu became extremely solemn.

Those cities that could continue to survive in Arthur despite multiple attacks were indeed very powerful in themselves.

Zhao Xu finally made it to the desk in front.

The person at the desk quickly verified his recommendation letter and the insignia on it before handing him a set of keys. He told the servant girl to bring Zhao Xu to the dormitory he would stay in before turning to deal with another person.

After Zhao Xu heard all this, he followed the servant girl along with confusion all over his face.

He continued to go in circles inside this castle-like place and didn't even get to breathe outside air before he reached the dormitory.

The servant girl didn't say much, just took her leave to attend to the next person. Zhao Xu was even more confused now.

In his previous life, he had undergone Fighter training, and he was dragged to the training grounds immediately upon arrival. There were muscular men making them train who came around to correct their fighting stances as well as teach them how to avoid attacks.

After that, he got to learn a technique and practiced it until it became part of him.

One round of training was followed by yet another round with no breaks in between. There were some players who would be able to go out into the wild by themselves for some adventure before it was time to sleep tonight even.

It wasn't like how Zhao Xu was sent straight to the dormitory with no explanation of his course or anything like that.

He wasn't going to spend the night in Arthur either anyway. Why did he need a room here?

Zhao Xu shook his head and pushed the room door open to walk inside.

Then he was rooted to the floor.

6 s

Chapter 11: Start of the Apprenticeship

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The hostel room that Zhao Xu had in the game was way larger than the four-person room that he was currently living in on campus.

After everyone on earth transmigrated, the first problem they faced was the issue of housing. So many were horrified that after working so hard to finally get their own houses on earth, they had to go through it all over again in a different world.

Many people ended up living hand-to-mouth and wandering outside. They were no different from homeless people.

But Zhao Xu had settled his accommodation issue just like that.

There was a sturdy wooden table in the middle of the room, and the waist-high table had some simple alchemy tools laid on it.

His simple rectangular bed was to the left of the table. The sheets and blanket were already neatly folded and stacked on it.

On the other side was a large bookshelf that spanned three walls and was high enough to reach the ceiling.

Zhao Xu scanned the shelf. Simple Spellcasting, The Motivation for Becoming a Wizard, Discussion on the 8 Arcane Schools, Transmutation Spells...

Every book was on wizardry, but Zhao Xu knew that no matter which book he opened, he would find that all of its contents would be highly detailed and actually useful.

At first, many people were shocked at how detailed Arthur was. Later, when some of the contents of books on spells started circulating, some started wondering if the AI technology had advanced to such a frightening stage that it was able to create a fully functioning system like that.

Even though this sounded like a ridiculous discussion on magic books, it was shockingly rational.

This definitely wasn't just some random copy and paste job from books on magic from the middle ages.

But these things alone weren't enough to make Zhao Xu's jaw drop to the point that he nearly couldn't close his mouth again.

In front of the desk stood a female Wizard in a Wizard robe and cloak. She stood there and looked at him as if she was watching time pass before her.

Zhao Xu wondered to himself, "Don't tell me Wizards in Arthur are so numerous that they end up even guiding new players like me one-on-one."

"Hello, Mr. Zhongxia." The lady didn't remove the cloak around her head, and her face was still buried in the dark shadows of the hood. Her entire body gave off a mysterious aura.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Antonya, your mentor to guide you through your Wizard apprentice course. While you're here, I will be the one helping you to finish your training as a Wizard." The mysterious lady's voice was clear and soothing.

"Mystra has so many Wizards that they can do things like this?" Zhao Xu asked in surprise.

He knew that even though he was at the most powerful Wizard Association headquarters in Mystra, this place still conducted its training of Wizards via small group classes that each apprentice could choose from.

The traditional method of having a mentor take on one disciple each was only used for those disciples who were going to become Legendary Wizards and stand at the top of the world. Otherwise, the effects of private tutoring wouldn't be as good as the current mainstream method of focus group teaching.

The only one-on-one mentorship that existed these days were those wandering witch doctors in villages.

So, when he heard her mention this sort of teaching style, his first reaction wasn't pleasant surprise, but puzzlement instead.

If he was just playing a game, then it wouldn't have mattered to him, but he had to make sure he learned everything properly right now. Even if other players went up to Level 2 and he was still stuck here, it didn't matter.

The time spent in the academy could possibly be the only time in his life where he could gain knowledge without paying a price.

"No need to worry; I'm just a guide who's in charge of answering all your questions in the beginning. For your actual courses, you can refer to the lecture timetable on your desk and attend the necessary lectures according to your requirements."

She said this as she passed the paper over without looking at it, as if she knew everything on the document by heart.

Zhao Xu didn't look carefully at it after taking it from her either, just stuffed it into his bag. His eyes kept glancing at her cloak from time to time.

There was a glow around the cloak, as if it was made from starlight, and he couldn't help but make a guess.

The mysterious lady, Antonya, noticed that Zhao Xu seemed more interested in her cloak than herself, so she couldn't help but remark, "If you're so interested in this cloak of mine, then after you're done with your training, I could give you an identical one."

"Really?" Zhao Xu's voice went up in volume without him realizing it. Could he really be able to snag the legendary prize meant only for the best graduates?

"Of course. This cloak isn't valuable anyway. It's just decoration," said Antonya.

Zhao Xu nearly stopped breathing when he heard this. So much for his incredible imagination.

A legendary item that couldn't be bought even if one had the money had come to mind just a moment ago.

The Starmantle Cloak was supposedly able to protect one from any attacks by a weapon that wasn't powered by magic. And even if one was attacked by a magic weapon, as long as it passed the activation process, one could reduce its damage by half. It was listed at 130,000 gold pieces, but it was never in stock, and there was nowhere to buy it from even if one offered a higher price.

But that was to be expected. According to the discussion forums in his previous life, the biggest prize any graduate received for doing well was a Greatsword that was worth only 50 gold pieces.

Everyone else generally only received a weapon that wasn't worth more than 10 gold pieces.

Over the next few hours, Zhao Xu quietly sat at his desk and read the beginner's book that Antonya had passed to him: Road to Arcane Magic.

There was a strange drawing on the front cover of the book. It looked like a huge net that connected countless dots together.

But the material of this book didn't come from modern times. It felt ancient to him.

Even though, traditionally, the older a book was, the more powerful it was, this book wouldn't sell for much if he tried to sell it.

The fact that the author of this book was stated as Antonya alone had completely undercut its value. Zhao Xu sighed to himself. Human nature throughout the ages had never changed, and Wizards must have had some ulterior motive for inventing a way to make things look old on purpose.

He read through its contents while asking Antonya about the various aspects written inside.

This was exactly what stopped many players from choosing to become Wizards in Arthur.

Everyone was here to play a game, not to study.

So, before everyone found out how powerful a Wizard could be, a lot of them were discouraged when they realized how crazy the training was going to be and immediately switched to a different Character Class.

The worst part was that even being a Level 1 Wizard was terrible.

A Level 1 Wizard had a hit dice of D4, which was the poorest among all the Character Classes. Even a Cleric had at least D8.

1Given that each player had a limited number of revival stones, attempts by a Wizard to level up by fighting monsters without bringing anyone else along was as good as throwing their life away.

So, besides those who had an interest in dark arts or teenagers who were deluded about themselves, very few were able to set their minds to sitting down and studying knowledge about magic in a game properly.

The players only realized how powerful Wizards were after the first Level 5 Wizard appeared. Then there was a Level 7 Wizard, followed by a Level 9 Wizard, and a Level 11 Wizard.

These Wizards slowly shifted the players' perception of Wizards, and they slowly began to push this Character Class up the ranks to become one of the top classes.

It wasn't as though players had never come into contact with what they thought were NPC Wizards though. However, in other such online games, NPCs and players didn't follow the same system, and there were even NPC Wizards who were powerful enough to destroy the entire universe, so when everyone saw powerful NPC Wizards in the beginning, nobody was bothered by them.

They didn't know that the NPCs rose in level just like the rest of the players. The NPCs also relied on a combination of their race, character class, feats, skills, spells, hit dice, health, and equipment.

Zhao Xu knew all these things, but it didn't alleviate the pain of going through these books that looked like Greek to him right now.

Didn't the schools teach these things by allowing the players to listen to a lecture in a group then slowly guiding them along the way?

He was going through self-study right from the beginning, which was really odd.

The only comforting part was that even though this Road to Arcane Magic looked like Greek to him, he could still sense that this book had been written pretty well.

Especially because this entire book had a deep sense of how timeless Arthur was.

It took a long time, and Zhao Xu just asked question after question. The female Wizard answered his every question in detail.

But he still felt that this whole process was very awkward. It made him feel like he was going down a desert road with no destination in sight.

After turning several pages, Zhao Xu decided to push her. "Why aren't we starting with learning something like cantrips?"

Cantrips were Level 0 spells for Wizards. Basically, every Wizard would be able to grasp all the cantrips.

Wizards learned higher level spells later, according to their ability.

Actually, it was already a little perplexing that Antonya hadn't started from explaining some basics of wizardry to him and just dove straight into the beginnings of arcane magic from the minute he stepped in.

No matter how difficult the course was, there would be a proper order of things. They would start with the basic concept of magic, how to prepare spells, and how to cast spells.

Sure, it could be boring for the players, but at least one could see where it was going.

But Antonya remained elegant and replied, "What's there to talk about regarding the preparation of spells? Isn't that something that comes naturally eventually?"

Zhao Xu was shocked. "What do you mean by 'it comes naturally eventually'?"

According to the records in his previous life, the first player to finish the Wizard course took an entire week.

And that was the first player, not the average player.

One could imagine what the rest of the players were like. There were even those who hadn't completed their training after Zhao Xu entered the game eight months late.

In order for the system to recognize the player as a Level 1 character, the player had to be able to display every skill that the character class was capable of.

For example, a Wizard had to be able to copy down all Level 0 spells and three Level 1 spells, as well as cast a Level 1 spell. They also had to be able to Copy Scrolls, successfully summon a Familiar and learn how to speak Draconic.

And now she was actually saying that all this would just come naturally?

He really wished that these big shots could empathize with noob players like himself. The players from Earth didn't have the actual intelligence of their character stats and couldn't really absorb this knowledge so quickly. All this would only come naturally one year later when everyone inherited the body that really matched their Ability Scores.

9 s

Chapter 12: Spell Slots

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The Wizard Association would ensure that new wizards would only learn how to cast spells like how you would only learn commutative laws and associative laws in elementary school.

But now he was studying theory from the beginning, so that was as good as getting him to use Peano Axioms to prove the entire number theory.

It wasn't useless, but it wasn't necessary at the moment.

Zhao Xu had ambition, but even if he had an excellent foundation, he didn't have the time to spend years or decades to just become a Level 1 Wizard like the characters that were native to Arthur.

All the players were basically on an express route and just went straight to learning when and how to cast spells. It was like how one just memorized a bunch of derivative formulas in high school instead of really studying calculus for itself.

As long as it worked, it didn't matter how they got there. Otherwise, the first wizard to finish his apprenticeship would have taken a year, not a week.

Becoming a wizard quickly was a special right that Arthur gave to the players from Earth.

After all, after a year, all the players would enter the world of Arthur for real and their intelligence would be as high as their character stats, and they would also absorb all the relevant knowledge of magic.

Then they would be able to challenge a wizard already within Arthur who was at the same level as themselves easily.

That would be considered a natural process.

So since Zhao Xu knew that he could cheat the system one year later, he didn't want to go through all this hard work now.

In his previous life, after all the wizard players had transmigrated, they had mostly taken about a year and a half to fully digest all the knowledge that the system gave them. Before they were done digesting this information, very few of them were able to level up.

"The way The Arcane Gate teaches is different from ordinary academies," said Antonya. "If we just wanted to create a batch of low-level wizards in bulk, we have our own way of doing that. Or rather, you could say that that's what the other academies in other places are doing right now."

"So right from the beginning, we are grooming people to become Legendary Wizards. So there's no need to make you a Level 1 Wizard in such a hurry."

After hearing what Antonya said, Zhao Xu was a little stunned.

So he had a special notice of acceptance letter only to find that he was enrolled in an 8 year direct Ph.D. course after reporting to the school?

He already felt that his current course in the university was just academia right now. If he wanted to enter the workforce quickly after graduating, then he could have just gone to a vocational school instead. Basic degree courses like the one he was in right now were actually preparation for postgraduate school to pursue a path in academia.

Most people just finished the basic degree.

Zhao Xu could understand and even approved of this method. He had come to the best academy in wizardry after all. If he didn't even have some goal for himself, then he was wasting his time here.

But the problem was, he couldn't afford to be like this now.

He had the patience to take a longer time to learn and it didn't matter even if he took a lot more time than everybody else.

But that was assuming that he would be able to learn more spells and be able to attain more hidden and powerful feats in order to lay the path to getting a Prestige Class later on.

He could use time in exchange for becoming more powerful in battle.

And not to be more knowledgeable in the ways of a wizard than the other players.

Becoming a Legendary Wizard was a great goal, but one that was too far away for him to reach it in a year.

If his knowledge of the system was solid, he would be able to draw models and understand how to adapt the concept of divination spells and how to maximize his level of evocation spells. But it wasn't going to increase the actual damage level of any spell in particular.

The only thing that could increase the damage level of spells was either the level of the one casting the spells or the capability of the Feats one had.

If Zhao Xu was going to go down this path of immersing himself in the study of wizardry in order to level up, then, honestly it wasn't a waste of time because this knowledge would go a long way in the future.

But unfortunately, he didn't have this choice. Maybe if everyone transmigrated to Arthur in 20 years instead of one.

But this wasn't enough for Zhao Xu to argue with Antonya.

After he understood what was happening, he could only frown and continue studying the book in front of him.

No wonder he had never heard of any wizard player who had been allocated to Mystra. They were probably stuck studying all the way until the transmigration.

Zhao Xu could only keep a wooden expression on at the scene before him. He felt like he had gone back to his final year of high school and the woolen cushioned chair he was sitting on suddenly started to feel hard and his butt began to hurt.

If the book 'Road to Arcane Magic' was a simple text on the history of magic, then he wouldn't have any trouble absorbing it. Zhao Xu loved reading anything from the history of game and animation development all the way to the history of physics and mathematics.

But even though this book did start from ancient times, it focused only on the evolution of magic and kept mentioning all sorts of concepts that he had no idea about.

After each player completed his character class training, he could look at his Skills and decide whether to use his modifier points or not.

But even if you wanted to do that, you had to fulfill all the requirements before you could proceed with doing so.

It was just like how leveling up wasn't something that eventually happened. You had to accumulate sufficient experience before you were allowed to even go through the stage that would allow you to level up.

One of the Skills available was Knowledge, and there were different categories that required separate points in order to level up.

If Zhao Xu's Knowledge (Psionics) had a modifier of more than 30, then he could go through a check to see if he could automatically remember some jargon.

Right now, he could only use Antonya as a walking dictionary to search and read continuously, so using something like this would be highly ineffective.

But Zhao Xu didn't know that the fact that he could open this book and not be completely befuddled was already because he had received a blessing of sorts in the first place.

As he continued reading, Zhao Xu didn't hope to fully understand and just kept reading first. He got more and more confused until he reached this part...

When he reached the part that said that spell slots were determined by the goddess of magic, he gasped.

The spellcasting system of Arthur relied on spell slots, regardless of what character class you were, and not the traditional way of determining how powerful you were.

Everyone had a limit on how many spells they could cast each day, and this depended on the character's level, as well as additional slots that their Ability Scores afforded.

At the same time, all Wizards had to rest a full 8 hours, then go through 1 hour of meditation to prepare spell before being able to utilize their spell slots.

That's right – Wizards and Clerics had to use an hour to decide what spells they were going to cast that day. There was no way to suddenly decide on the spot to use a Level 3 spell slot to cast a spell there and then.

Also, if they run out of spell slots, then they couldn't do anything and they wouldn't be available after just a short period of rest. They would have to go through those 8 hours of rest first, before continuing to prepare the spell slots the next day.

When Wizards studied spells, they had to copy them onto their own spellbooks, and that was the only way they could prepare spells.

As the level of the spell increased, the number of pages it took up also increased.

So, unless the wizards used a Blessing Book from the goddess to copy their spells in, they always had to bring a thick spellbook with them wherever they went.

If a wizard lost his own spellbook, then he would be like a chef without kitchen tools. You couldn't cook anything even if you had all the food in the world.

In general, a lot of wizards became very poor and desperate for money because they had to copy spells. They weren't like Clerics, who obtained Divine Spells from the gods, so they could prepare them anytime and didn't have to go through all this trouble.

But even with such strict conditions, Wizards were still able to turn the tides because their list of spells, Feats, Prestige Classes and Items were all ridiculously powerful.

But Zhao Xu was more concerned with what he was going to choose. According to Arthur's usual guidelines, new Wizards would usually be given an ordinary spellbook for free, and they could copy all the cantrips into it for free.

In general, one Level 0 spell would take up half a page in a spellbook, while a Level 1 spell would take up one page.

At the same time, they could also pick three spells to copy for free from the Wizard Association's library they were in.

Since everyone was super poor at the start, these three starting spells would determine how powerful a new wizard would be in battle.

Zhao Xu was reading the book in front of him, but he already couldn't stop himself from dreaming about which Level 1 spells he would choose to copy.

8 s

Chapter 13: Upper Limit of Intelligence

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

"The training to become a Wizard has got to be a joke right? They want me to memorize spells without telling me anything else? And if I refuse to memorize them, they tell me to get lost?"

"Same here. And we still have to pass the training to reach Level 1. Hello, we're here to play a game and not to let the game play us."

"After listening to the lecture for 10 minutes, I gave up. What a waste of my 18 point character. I've deleted it and restarted to become a Fighter instead."

"My Druid is still lost in the forest but I'm not a Ranger. Does anybody have a good strategy for me?"

"Dude, you're already listening to them talk about spells but pitiful me can't even find the Wizard Association. None of the NPCs in the village know anything and they can't even seem to be bothered about me."

"Dude, did the game allocate you to the wrong place? I suggest you look at the map on the back. As far as I know, a village wouldn't have a Wizard Association. You have to find the nearest town. But I wouldn't suggest you do that."

"Why?"

"That's because the minute I went out of the village, I got stabbed by a bunch of goblins on the way to the town and ended up back at the Palace of Character Creation. How painful. The system even told me that it's deducted one Revival Stone and I only have 4 more left. Does this mean what I think it does?"

"Yup. Congrats, dude. You have 4 more chances to revive before your character completely disappears."

"This game seems too inflexible. It's been 2 hours since the servers went live but not a single person has finished their training and come out to fight any monsters."

"From what I heard, one of the major gaming leagues tested out the game and decided not to put in any more resources to continue playing the game. They think that a game with such harsh requirements isn't suitable to become one of the top games and doesn't have that much potential."

"Can I check with you guys about something? All I did was whine about how one of their god's teachings was a bit backward and those clerics chased me out, saying I was a heretic. Then which Character Class should I take on?"

"I would advise all players who aren't masochistic or something to just go ahead and dump all your points into choosing a Barbarian. If you choose anything else, you're going to get stuck for days without being able to run around."

"Run around? Dude, you must be a Rogue, right? We Wizards are still quietly sitting in lectures. I can't believe I paid 300 bucks just to sit here and listen to a game talk to me about magic. I'll just take it that I've increased my religious score. Goodbye."

The majority of the players were still within the game and were unable to log onto any discussion forums to post anything.

But that didn't stop some of the players who had already decided to switch to a different Character Class or those whose characters died in an accident to log out of the game and go to the forums to complain.

The forum discussion reached its peak for the first time after the game servers opened at 8 PM.

Everyone was completely confused. When would they finally be able to fight some monsters?

Or at least send them on some mission to deliver some items or retrieve equipment or something along those lines.

They didn't ask to save the world, but wasn't there something they could do with their initial Character Class features?

Even the lousiest MMORPG would offer a weapon of sorts in the beginning.

But Zhao Xu was still working hard at his studies.

He quietly glanced at the female wizard walking up and down in front of his desk. But her robe was a little oversized and he couldn't see her figure clearly.

Antonya's observation skill was certainly not low. Before Zhao Xu had glanced at her for even three seconds, she turned around and stared straight at him.

Zhao Xu was finally able to make out the color of her eyes. They were black like his.

"Do you have a question for me?"

Zhao Xu didn't dare to say that he had been distracted by wondering about her figure, so he quickly changed the topic and said, "Mentor, I'm not sure if my 16 point Intelligence is enough?"

The Ability Scores in the world of Arthur went by a point system, and it was no secret to the characters native to Arthur. So of course someone like Antonya, who was probably at least a Level 10 Wizard, would definitely know about it.

Every point on one's Ability Scores made a difference. Each time a player's Ability Score increased, the player could feel an obvious increase in power.

But after Antonya heard Zhao Xu's question, she just nodded quietly and replied, "It's enough if you just have 11 points of Intelligence."

"Mentor, are you joking with me?" asked Zhao Xu.

For most of the Character Classes that could cast spells in Arthur, if you wanted to cast a Level X spell, you needed to have 10X number of points in the relevant Ability Score.

If Zhao Xu remained at 16 points of Intelligence without increasing it, this would only be enough for him to cast a Level 6 Arcane Spell.

If he wanted to cast a Level 9 Arcane Spell, he needed to increase his Intelligence to 19 points.

Because without this Intelligence score, you wouldn't be able to comprehend those spells at all.

11 points of Intelligence was just enough to meet the requirements to cast a Level 1 Arcane Spell.

Zhao Xu was no genius, but he knew that what Antonya meant was that he could always increase his Intelligence levels later on.

Each player could increase his Ability Scores once every four levels, so Zhao Xu wasn't worried that his 16 point Intelligence would never hit 19.

But Wizards wouldn't turn down having more Intelligence.

Intelligence brought along additional spell slots, and this was extremely vital since wizards didn't get a lot of spell slots to start with.

Many wizard players found it very tough to play in the beginning because they would finish using all their spell slots very quickly.

Unless you only fought one or two monsters a day, the number of spell slots wasn't enough.

In general, everyone just watched as new wizards finished all their spell slots, then just stood in one corner and shot at enemies with a crossbow.

But, because Wizards didn't have high Hit Points, their arrows didn't do much damage to monsters and merely scratched the surface.

If they stood too far in front, their teammates would end up worrying that they might accidentally suffer damage from the monster and just collapse on the spot.

"Guess how many points of Intelligence I have now? If your answer is no more than 5 points away from the actual score, then I'll give you a present. It's a really valuable present too."

Zhao Xu looked calmly at Antonya.

He had placed a lot of importance on the allocation of his Ability Scores in the beginning because it was so hard to get points for them.

In his previous life, he managed to get a 2 Strength belt. But unless he could get another 4 Strength item, using items to increase his Ability Scores wasn't possible anymore.

That was because items provided additional scores, and items with the same additional scores could not be used together.

There were apparently some 6 Magic Items in the market and these were supposedly the maximum additional scores you could get. He had only seen those on powerful Fighters who had passed Level 10.

So he could more or less calculate what Antonya's Ability Scores were.

This part of Arthur was very transparent. Once he knew Antonya's Ability Scores and Character Level, then he would also be able to calculate how many spell slots she had.

Zhao Xu started to think to himself, "Out of respect, I'll take it that you started with the maximum of 18 points of Intelligence."

"Since you're so young, I'll take it that you're a Level 12 Wizard, and that's already very impressive. That's enough for 3 additional points, so 183 would be 21 points."

"Then if I add on a Magic Item that all wizards wish they could get their hands on, a 6 headband, then 27 points would really be the maximum."

The methods to increase your Ability Scores in Arthur were very straightforward and there were no tricks you could pull.

"That's enough to affect the number of spell slots you have, right?" Zhao Xu asked carefully.

In order for Intelligence to be able to affect the number of spell slots one had, then it had to remain at the same score for at least 24 hours to take effect.

If the score could remain the same for 24 hours, then it would become as good as permanent.

He was just afraid that there was some spell he didn't know about that could somehow increase the Intelligence score in some other way temporarily.

"But of course."

"25 points?"

Antonya allowed him a variance of 5 points, so he would win as long as it was within 20 to 30 points.

So Zhao Xu deducted two points from his original calculation of 27 points, since that was based on the best-case scenario.

"Seriously? You're really underestimating me by too much. You could double that number."

"How could you have 50 points?!"

Zhao Xu found it a little hard to believe.

4 s

Chapter 14: Legendary Wizard

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

After hearing Antonya's reply, Zhao Xu nearly dropped the thick book in his hands.

Suddenly his 16 points of Intelligence seemed like nothing now.

Zhao Xu started to wonder if the players were really on the same system as the NPCs.

All living creatures in Arthur had Character Stats.

None of the NPCs had stats that were made up. You could trace exactly how each of them reached their current levels.

This would become common knowledge among the players in the future.

"Look at the look of disbelief on your face. It's so fun!"

Antonya suddenly laughed quietly and instantly went from being an aloof and mysterious high-level wizard to being a young daughter of an aristocratic family.

"So just because you're a wizard, you get to boast?"

Zhao Xu wasn't good at negotiating, but he thought he could use a couple of simple tactics.

But Antonya didn't care for this. "Your taunting is useless on me. But I'll tell you how to get to this stage, and that might be able to motivate you to work hard on completing your training course."

Zhao Xu felt his breathing quicken when he heard these words.

50 points of Intelligence.

That meant that he would have 20 points of Intelligence Ability Modifier points and his Difficulty Class would go up by 20 points.

Just looking at the number of additional spell slots it would grant him was enough. He would get five Level 1 to 4 slots, four Level 5 to 8 slots and three Level 9 slots.

This was about the same number of spell slots as a Level 20 Wizard.

"Firstly, my Headband of Intellect has an additional score of 12."

"Isn't the highest only 6?"

Zhao Xu immediately cut in with a question.

But Antonya behaved like all this was normal and replied him straight, "A Headband of Intellect made by a spell caster below Level 20 will only be able to hit a maximum of 6, but anyone who is at Legendary level will be able to hit a maximum of 12."

Zhao Xu knew that the Legendary level was truly incredible.

But he didn't know that it was that incredible.

Most ordinary people's intelligence might not be even as high as the bonus that that Headband of Intellect gave.

If one allowed a baby to wear that headband after everyone had transmigrated one year later, that baby was going to outsmart everyone else just by his intelligence alone.

Items with the same additional value couldn't be used together, so there was no point in wearing two headbands.

If you wanted to increase your scores further, then you had to think of another method besides this.

One 6 item that could increase Ability Scores cost 36,000 gold pieces.

A Level 5 Divine Spell Scroll cost 1,000 gold pieces, but the materials required for a Revivify spell made the price go up to 6,000 gold pieces instead.

That was the price of a person's life. 6,000 gold pieces were enough as long as the corpse was in one good piece and the spell was cast not too long after death.

Without the body, then one would need an even higher level spell – a Level 9 Divine True Resurrection Spell. The scroll itself cost 28,000 gold pieces.

In Zhao Xu's previous life, he couldn't come up with this much money. Or rather, he didn't even know where to get this money at all.

If you could exchange the resources on earth for resources in Arthur, then 50 gold pieces weighed around 45 grams, and gold was currently going for per gram.

So in the world of Arthur, 1 gold piece cost about ,100.

A Level 5 Raise Dead spell would already cost more than million.

A Level 9 True Resurrection spell would cost million. That was nearly million.

But of course, that wasn't how you calculated the value of items. He calculated it this way because earth valued gold more.

The current gold to silver value ratio was now standing at 1:100, but it was still 1:10 in Arthur.

Even if he went with the price of silver, .4 million and million weren't the sort of money an ordinary person would have to buy revival spells.

So when he thought about it this way, one 6 Magic Item cost 36,000 gold pieces and you would still have change even after purchasing a True Resurrection scroll. So even if you turned to ash, you could still be brought back to life.

So a 12 Magic Item would cost 144,000 gold pieces.

Wizards were an expensive Character Class.

Zhao Xu asked an honest question, "144,000 gold pieces?"

Antonya just laughed quietly when she heard this. "Multiply that by 10."

"1,440,000 gold pieces?!"

If Zhao Xu was suffering from some internal injury, he might spew blood out right now.

"That's right. That's how you calculate the value of legendary items. Why else do you think they're so rare?"

Zhao Xu stared at Antonya in shock. That headband alone was like a walking gold mine.

Didn't she find a headband that was worth 26 tons of gold very heavy on her head?

In gold, that would cost .4 billion and in silver, it would cost million.

Zhao Xu's teeth hurt just thinking about the price of the headband. And he also knew that he could forget about getting his Intelligence level up to 50 points now.

"Secondly, Prayer can increase your Ability Score by 1 point and you can cast this spell 5 times in a row, so it can increase your score by a maximum of 5 points," Antonya continued to explain.

It took additional material cost to cast Prayer as well.

Casting it once could increase his points by 1, and 5 points would be worth around 140,000.

It was certainly less than 1.44 million, but that was still a number that he couldn't get to.

But that didn't sound right. Zhao Xu looked at the lady in front of him. She was someone who could cough up 1.44 million and she only increased one Ability Score?

Zhao Xu couldn't imagine if she increased all six Ability Scores. 28,000 multiplied by 30 would be around 840,000.

But Antonya had already gone on to continue explaining.

"As for the third point, that's due to other spells such as Divine Appearance and Ability Score Transfer. These can last for more than 24 hours too."

"And point four is because I'm a Legendary Wizard and I get to increase my Ability Scores more than the three times that you calculated."

Zhao Xu had just listened to the first three points quietly, but when she reached the fourth point, Zhao Xu looked up with a start as if he was completely shocked.

This Antonya was actually a Legendary Wizard?

To be a Legendary Wizard, you had to be higher than Level 22 and you had to be able to cast Legendary spells.

Level 9 spells were enough to destroy the earth and there were even some that could stop the passage of time.

There were some that could send you to any Otherworldly Gate any time you wanted.

There were some that could morph the user into any living creature and take on its features.

There were some that could destroy any magical barrier – Mage's Disjunction.

There were some that could block any sort of attack – Prismatic Sphere.

In general, wizards who could cast Level 9 spells were nearly unstoppable.

Their defense scores were already beyond the usual level that could be calculated with points and were at the level of the concept of defense.

It was a level where people couldn't use any non-magical weapon to launch an attack and it would just look like some rough or poor tactic.

If enemies made a move, a spell could immediately stop that move and that would become the norm in playing.

When it came to the area of probability, they could even erase failed results and get another check.

And on top of all these, Legendary Wizards could also come up with their own Legendary Spells.

Even the characters native to Arthur knew very little about Legendary Spells. But everyone guessed that this floating city was able to float because of a Legendary Spell.

So this Antonya standing in front of him was actually an incredible wizard who could actually cast Legendary Spells?

For the first time, Zhao Xu felt that he could possibly really be the illegitimate son of the goddess of luck.

5 s

Chapter 15: Action Points

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

"Mentor, are there spells that are effective for making one look young?"

Zhao Xu had asked it in a roundabout way, but he was basically trying to ask how old she was.

He had a rough guess in mind.

There were spells to slow down aging temporarily in many Western legends, but they tended to have negative side effects or morally questionable ingredients.

"A wizard's age is a secret," laughed Antonya quietly. "But I've never slowed down the aging of my face."

Zhao Xu started laughing when he heard this. Did she think he was born yesterday?

If there was a way to look so young without the use of magic, then all the women in the world would go crazy.

"Kissed by the Ages," said Antonya.

Zhao Xu didn't understand what Antonya was talking about at all.

"It's a Level 9 Arcane Spell that uses a token to take effect. As long as the person receiving the effects of the spell continues to wear the token, then this person's age will be fixed at that particular age forever. My mentor cast the spell on me before I reached the age of 20, and that's why I still have the face and body I did at that time."

"But the price to pay is that this body will no longer grow, and it will lock one's wisdom as well. So if someone cast this spell on a child, he would always be only as wise as a child for as long as he wears the token. So I have been thinking about it for the past few years as well, wondering if I should just remove this necklace for a few years and let myself grow a little older first. Otherwise, I seem a little childish walking around with this face."

Zhao Xu quietly swallowed after hearing what she said.

He didn't expect a Level 9 spell to be enough to do this. So it didn't take a Legendary spell to be able to make human beings immortal.

And it seemed like it wasn't too hard to cast, and there weren't any side effects either.

Advanced Wizards really were incredible beyond reason.

Zhao Xu couldn't help but clench his fists as he thought these things. His desire to become a high-level wizard became even stronger than ever.

His parents and his future spouse all needed this sort of spell.

"Zhongxia, I'll give you a chance now. I can cast this spell on you."

Antonya's tone of voice suddenly became rather solemn.

Zhao Xu also became serious as a result.

What Antonya was really telling him was that she was offering him the chance to live forever with no consequences.

"And what price do I have to pay for it?" asked Zhao Xu.

There was no such thing as a free lunch in the world. Ever since his Double Elite identity had been noticed, he seemed to be involved in one trouble or another.

He was already being watched.

Some players like him might have thought that this was just part of the game's storyboard.

But Arthur existed for real.

Even the gods were watching them, never mind the various major powers of Arthur.

So the investment they made in the players had never stopped.

The characters native to Arthur didn't care one bit about being fair to every player.

But the prize that Antonya was dangling in front of him – eternal life in the game, would probably make other players wonder if this NPC's intelligence was fake.

Why would an NPC give them something that didn't seem to have any meaning?

But Zhao Xu knew very well what this meant.

As long as this universe was real, then gaining immortality was going to be real too.

"Join our organization. When we need you, you shall work for the sake of our ideals."

Zhao Xu was confused. "Your organization is...the Wizard Association?" He knew that was wrong a soon as he said it.

In general, most wizards would pay membership fees to the Wizard Association so that they could easily copy spell scrolls and find a place to buy scrolls and other magical materials they required.

The moment Zhao Xu became a Level 1 Wizard, he would automatically become a member and his first three years of membership fees would be waived.

There was no need to go in a roundabout way like this.

You had to spend 1,500 gold pieces if you hired someone you knew to cast a Level 9 spell, and if it was a lesser-known spell, you had to increase the offer.

A spell that could grant immortality probably costs a lot in terms of materials and the whole package might cost at least 10,000 gold pieces.

But the large majority would get stuck at just knowing a wizard who knew how to cast a spell like Kissed by the Ages and was willing to do it.

"The Wizard Association has several factions too. My organization is called The Final Scroll."

Zhao Xu's expression changed immediately. He quickly flipped the book in his hands back to the first few pages and started rereading the text on it.

Legend had it that the secrets of magic were originally recorded on a scroll.

The first owner of that scroll was Sisylvana, the goddess of magic.

The scroll could automatically record all the magic in the world, including Legendary spells.

Whoever owned that scroll held all the magic in the world in his hands. He could use that scroll to learn how to use legendary magic by himself.

But what made everyone truly covet this scroll so badly was...

The moment someone managed to decipher the final secret of this scroll, he could replace the goddess of magic to become the true god of magic.

The name of this scroll was 'The Final Scroll'.

The Final Scroll was an organization created to protect this scroll.

This scroll contained a secret beyond the supernatural, so it couldn't be taken out of Arthur, but it couldn't be sealed within the goddess of magic's magic kingdom either.

Zhao Xu suddenly felt that the weight on his shoulders had become heavier than before.

All he wanted was to focus on leveling up so that he could protect his family in the chaos that was to come.

He never imagined that he might suddenly be embroiled in such a phenomenal organization's power struggles.

The goddess of magic was the most powerful deity of this age. She was chief among the gods, the most powerful, and had the most believers.

So, she was a very reliable and powerful being to hold on to.

After Zhao Xu sensed that the goddess was watching him, he had switched his religion from his Alignment to the goddess without hesitation precisely because of that fact.

But then again, without having sufficient capabilities, nobody would dare to do something like that.

Anyone who had designs on the Final Scroll definitely had backing from either other deities or Hell.

Zhao Xu really just wanted to be an ordinary character and go through life normally. He never thought that he might get involved in such a high-level organization.

He suddenly understood why that wizard in a black robe said that he would become a Cleric.

The gods weren't omnipotent, but clerics were the spokespersons for their deities.

Divine spells were the most powerful connection between the two parties.

No matter what corner of the earth a cleric wandered to, the god he believed in would be able to find him immediately.

Even an antimagic field wouldn't make a difference because this was a connection that went beyond the supernatural.

So the goddess needed him to be a cleric.

But the first question came back to him...

"But why me?" Zhao Xu had to think this through logically.

He wasn't even a Level 1 Wizard.

It was true that many major powers would look for someone with potential to invest in.

But a special group like The Final Scroll didn't really need to expand their sphere of power.

There were many small matters that they could rely on the Wizard Association or even the church of the goddess to assist them with.

What they needed were only wizards of the highest level, or even Legendary Wizards. They needed Legendary Wizards who could fight.

Sometimes a middle school would pick some potential bright sparks from an elementary school, but a university wouldn't do something like that. They weren't running some prodigy class.

"My Double Elite status has greater potential than others, but to a top organization like yours, it's nothing much, isn't it?"

Zhao Xu's Double Elite status gave him the ability to train in both the arcane and the divine at very little cost to himself.

To many organizations, this was a valuable asset. They just needed to groom one person and they could reap twice the returns.

But that also depended on who it was. A group like The Final Scroll was the goddess of magic's last line of defense in this universe.

So never mind a Level 9 Wizard – they definitely needed a lot of Legendary Wizards and Legendary Clerics.

"Action Points," said Antonya suddenly.

3 s

Chapter 16: Why Me?

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Zhao Xu kept a calm expression on his face as if this part wasn't surprising to him.

But his heart was pounding and his thoughts continued to run away from him.

Action points?

They looked like just some freebies that came with this account, but it turned out to be something important to the person in front of him.

"Could you explain why?" asked Zhao Xu.

There were discussions on every single topic possible in his previous life, but Zhao Xu had never seen any content regarding action points.

Even after everyone had transmigrated, he had never heard anyone mention the term before either.

Otherwise, why else would a Level 5 Fighter the various names of Level 9 spells?

It was only because whenever everyone was bored, they would just sit around and do nothing but boast about all the information they heard from others.

"It's actually a special sort of gifting. Those who have it will be able to receive Action Points each time they level up, and you can use these action points to restore spell slots and increase the limits on how many times you can use certain class features."

Zhao Xu was puzzled after hearing this. It was indeed something incredible to be able to restore spell slots, and increasing the number of times you could use class features was even more amazing.

Or, at least, he didn't know of any other method that could do these things.

But no matter how shocking any of these things were, it was difficult to beat the fact that one could gain a few Action Points every time one leveled up.

Before reaching Legendary level, one would go through 20 levels. So if one received 5 points each time, then you'd get a maximum of 100 points. How was one going to ever finish using them up?

"You seem like someone from our universe, and you're very sensitive to the implications behind these various values," said Antonya suddenly.

"If you only get a few points each time you level up, then there's only so much you can do. And so, before this, we never bothered about anybody who had Action Points because they were only able to do a few things more than other Adventurers."

"That was, until a Legendary Wizard managed to find a spell that could help one obtain additional Action Points, and it's only a Level 5 spell too. Then everything changed."

Zhao Xu immediately understood the implications of that. Additional Action Points?

Would that mean that you could have unlimited spell slots?

Would that mean that you could use as many class features as you liked?

Zhao Xu found it hard to even imagine what a frightening wizard one would become if you could both attack and defend, have a way of dealing with every situation, and have no limits on the number of tactics you could pull on others.

Just casting a whole bunch of teleportation spells and then running off was a simple trick, but it was enough to drive most people crazy.

Health points in Arthur wouldn't automatically restore themselves. You had to either rest for a very long time, or you had to be healed, or you needed to possess some form of rapid treatment. Even monsters had to restore their health the same way.

Everything here was reasonable.

Zhao Xu immediately understood some things.

This organization, The Final Scroll, needed someone who had Action Points like himself to become a sharp knife that could be used continuously with no limits.

"But my level is too low right now," said Zhao Xu as he scratched his head.

But he was secretly hopeful.

There were legendary people who were able to level up just by reading stuff, and even if you couldn't find them anywhere else, The Final Scroll would be the sort of organization with plenty of such people.

The best thing would be to let him just read through 8 books so that he could just jump straight to being Level 9 and able to cast Level 5 spells.

"No worries, as long as you join us, we will naturally provide you with sufficient tactics and make sure that you'll definitely reach Legendary Wizard," said Antonya.

Even though Zhao Xu told himself to remain calm, his heart wasn't cooperative at all, and it continued to beat wildly and faster than before.

"As for the other requirements the organization has, I'll leave that for another day. Also, the amount of power you'll have is directly related to the obligations you have, so I'll talk to you about these things after you've reached a higher level."

Antonya just said these things casually and didn't seem to realize that she sounded just like someone trying to induct Zhao Xu into a cult of sorts.

"Did you already decide on taking me in before I walked through the Teleportation Gate?" asked Zhao Xu.

"Strictly speaking, it was the very moment you walked through the Teleportation Gate."

Zhao Xu's pupils dilated a little.

The moment he walked through the Teleportation Gate was the same moment he switched his religion to the goddess of magic.

At first, he thought that someone already knew about his Action Points and so the wizard in a black robe was the first one to lead the way here.

But it seemed like his logic wasn't quite right.

Before ensuring his beliefs, the other side wouldn't let him join an organization like The Final Scroll.

But at the same time, Zhao Xu was also amazed at how quickly The Final Scroll acted.

The time between him walking out from the Teleportation Gate to the time he entered his room in the dormitory was no more than 15 minutes.

During this time, The Final Scroll had already gone through all the processes and gone through the top brass of the Wizard Association in order to arrange for a member of The Final Scroll, Antonya, to become his mentor.

Zhao Xu wasn't surprised that a super mysterious organization like The Final Scroll was capable of making such arrangements.

But to complete them within 20 minutes was something beyond his imagination.

Even though the world was so well connected now, you might not even finish a hiring interview in 20 minutes.

No wait, that wasn't it.

Zhao Xu suddenly understood what was going on.

It wasn't that the organization was highly efficient. It was...

The goddess. She had been watching him all this while.

Or rather, from the moment he switched his religion to the goddess, her eyes had returned to him.

He was originally a pawn that required further observation, but now he had been placed directly on the chessboard.

And it was only because it was the will of the goddess that he was chosen without the need for any discussion.

The co-existence of risks and opportunities were now being presented very realistically to Zhao Xu.

If he joined this organization, then he would definitely be involved in the schemes and plans of various powers. This was against his original plan of self-protection.

But he would be able to get powerful and useful resources only if he was protected by a large organization such as this.

Zhao Xu knew better than anybody else about how difficult it was to learn a more powerful feat when he was a Fighter.

Being selfish and keeping valuable secrets to oneself wasn't a trait unique to earthlings.

Wizard Feats were all like this or worse, so he had to get into an organization to learn them.

Otherwise, most wizards were too lazy to join an organization.

But then, if he didn't use a Feat, it would eventually expire.

"Mentor, what do you need me to do next?"

After Zhao Xu made a decision, he obediently waited for instructions from above.

"You don't need to do anything. Before you reach Level 9, you won't be of any use to us."

"But your Character Class path and all the Feats you will learn will go entirely according to our arrangements," replied Antonya.

"Sure. But can't you at least let me know what's going to happen next?" asked Zhao Xu with a big grin on his face.

Other players might have thought that an NPC was infringing on their right to choose.

But for someone like Zhao Xu, who knew the truth behind this universe, he couldn't wait for the other party to arrange all the necessary equipment for him.

"Very good. After you complete the training to become a Level 1 Wizard, then you will have to complete your training as a Cleric as well. When you can go up by another level, come back here and look for me, I will tell you how to become an Archivist at Level 2. From then on, the Character Class that you use to cast Divine Spells will follow the path of an Archivist."

"As for your Prestige Class, we'll talk about it again after you hit Level 5."

Antonya said every word very slowly.

12 s

Chapter 17: Realistic Game

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Even after three days had passed, Zhao Xu was still unable to calm down after hearing what Antonya told him.

Even the blow that he was dealt when he transmigrated wasn't as severe as this matter.

Transmigration was just a chance. Arthur was so complex, and there was nothing that Zhao Xu could do about it.

Even if he was able to persuade his parents to put everything they had into Arthur, the players at the beginning of the game were too poor to really exchange for anything valuable.

Zhao Xu himself had just gone back in time and he could only think of a general idea in order to give himself a clearer direction for the future.

That night, he read the book on magic until he was tired and went offline to sleep. He lay on his own bed and thought through everything that had happened earlier, and slowly began to realize that he had actually gotten lucky twice.

Zhao Xu's two other dormmates had logged out of the game earlier than him. The one in charge of the dormitory, Zhang Qi, had chosen to be a Fighter. He was the one who had sold that 2 Strength belt to Zhao Xu in his previous life.

By the time Zhao Xu logged off, Zhang Qi was still traumatized by the Fighter training course.

Basically all the players who chose to be a Fighter that night went through the same training course. After being threatened, their mentors started beating them with a wooden bat and all the Fighter trainees had to dodge their attacks.

The bruises weren't fatal, but Zhang Qi was in a daze after being hit like that.

There was no way Zhao Xu would be able to persuade Zhang Qi to switch to something more powerful.

In his previous life, Zhang Qi's Fighter character had carefully managed to keep 4 revival stones for a while, but he lost them all in the Battle of Meteorite Lake that would occur in two months.

That battle was the first time the players led and were involved in a large scale battle. And the magnificence of that battle was the thing that led to the first peak of the game after its servers had opened.

After that, Zhang Qi had tried switching Character Classes, but none of them gave him the motivation he had with his first character, so he eventually went back to being a Fighter.

Basically almost everyone who logged off that night was complaining about Arthur's training system.

A lot of people were complaining on the online forums that TC was too arrogant and too full of themselves, and was outrageous for playing the consumers like this.

The reviews of Arthur were also very poor because a lot of players had given it low ratings.

After three days, there were finally some Character Classes who completed their training. After the players were able to go out and engage in some activity, the wave of poor ratings slowly quieted down.

TC was also strangely quiet and didn't come out to explain anything. Instead, they started publicizing a new major release.

It was as if Arthur was nothing but a beautiful accident, and it wasn't the main MMORPG that the company was focusing on.

Basically, after Arthur fever reached its peak on the first night the game servers opened, it went into a period of calm.

When morning rolled around, the game was still in its first 24 hours of opening, so Zhao Xu told his parents a white lie in order to make them register for an account and got them to just log in to the point where they reached the Palace of Character Creation and they could log out after that.

Of course, Zhao Xu wasn't going to stupidly say that he came from a future ten years later, or that Earth would be destroyed in one year's time and everyone would have to live within the world of Arthur.

If he said that, his parents would drive him to the nearest mental hospital to get his head checked.

And even if Zhao Xu's report came back normal, he could forget about playing this game for the rest of his life.

So Zhao Xu just said that he could tell that this game had a bright future ahead of it, and told his parents to spend a little money to buy an account, and the account's value would rise in the future.

Before logging in the night before, Zhao Xu had a plan to buy up these Testing Accounts.

But, after he discovered that his Testing Account landed him in one of Arthur's top organizations and might develop into something more dangerous later on, he decided against the idea.

It was like how many parents who were doctors didn't want their children to become doctors. It wasn't that being a doctor was anything bad, but they would rather their children earn less and live a more peaceful and safe life.

After Zhao Xu's parents heard his explanation on how these accounts had collector's value, they didn't really care about how much the value of these accounts was going to go up by.

But this was the first time their son had displayed an eye for such things, so they supported him wholeheartedly. Forget paying for an account – even if it cost them ,999, they would have done the same.

Over the next two days, Zhao Xu was completely immersed in playing Arthur. He logged in every morning at 8 AM and only logged out at 4 AM.

In between, he would log out two or three times only to eat.

The players were considered just projections in Arthur and so they didn't need to eat.

The consequences of that were only realized one year later after everyone had transmigrated into Arthur.

Zhao Xu's blatant act of truancy was quite shocking to his dormmates.

But, since they weren't his parents, they could only try to advise him and cover for him.

Zhao Xu didn't intend to keep this up forever either. He just felt that the beginning part of the game required more time on his part.

Perhaps it was also because of the way the organization, The Final Scroll, had assessed him that Zhao Xu just immersed himself in Arthur every day with the exception of meals, and at night, he would study the magic textbook that Antonya had given to him fervently.

In the day, he would attend the lectures on magic that were held in the floating city. These were all selected by Antonya.

But Antonya didn't let him touch on anything regarding the preparation of spells, and she didn't let him touch on anything about spellcasting either.

Zhao Xu could also tell that Antonya was using the method that the native characters in Arthur used on their wizards to train him.

Unlike how the other players were being trained, she didn't spoon-feed him information while he was still at a level where he couldn't cast spells.

Most of those lectures on magic were too difficult for Zhao Xu to understand.

Even though Antonya had selected mostly lectures that were on theory and philosophy, he was still pretty confused.

But, at the same time, Zhao Xu didn't dare to take them lightly. Zhao Xu had seen several of these lecturers' names recorded in the history of magic.

For all he knew, one of these lecturers might be the head of The Final Scroll.

Zhao Xu didn't lie to his two dormmates about what Character Class he chose, but he just said that he had been allocated to Mystra.

Then he just repeated how the wizards of his previous life described their training course online to his friends.

His two dormmates gave him a look of 'oh, so you wizards get it hard too', and they could understand why Zhao Xu only spent a few hours in deep sleep every day and spent the rest playing the game.

Most people wanted to conquer the game.

But in the face of a game that tortured its players so much, some people chose to just give up.

Some of them endured the training process before turning around to complain that the game was trash and wasn't fun at all.

You couldn't say that anybody was right or wrong. Everyone just made a different choice.

Even Zhao Xu himself had no idea when he would finish reading those books on magic.

He could only try to remain patient and quietly observe the activity on the online forums.

There were players with Character Classes that were good at melee battles, and as long as they stayed logged in for most of the day, they would complete their training and hit Level 1 within three days.

There was a small peak in the Fighter and Barbarian classes, and there were players in practically every town who had completed their training.

But, after completing their training, the players realized that there were no NPCs coming round to give them any mission. There was no mission to beat up any pests at a neighbor's house or anything along those lines at all.

All of Arthur just treated them like they didn't exist. Or rather, the world just treated them like any other character in the game.

The players weren't special, and some players had already begun to notice this.

There were some experts online who had started to analyze the situation and felt that TC had a grander scheme and was using this new game as a step toward a particular direction in the future of games.

But to someone who had come from the future like Zhao Xu, this sort of theory was a joke to him.

If a player hadn't proven himself and become famous enough, plus he stayed in a well-protected and safe town, and didn't have any special channels to go through, there wouldn't be any missions for him to take on.

After about half a year, the players would become well-known enough and there would be plenty of missions.

Every time Zhao Xu took a break to eat, he didn't waste any time in scrolling through the online forums, even though Arthur did circulate some newspapers.

But, just after Zhao Xu had finished the last bit of his stir-fried pork and was about to throw his takeout box into the trash and go back into the game, he suddenly noticed a new post that was trending, and it was posted less than 20 minutes ago.

Zhao Xu quickly clicked on the link to read it.

The post's title was highlighted and bolded: Be careful when you take on a mission, this game does not come with a map for noobs.

"My dormmates and I have characters trained for melee battles, and since we were all done with training, we agreed to go into the wild to fight some monsters together. We happened to hear some sounds of battle out there, so, since there was a mission on our doorstep, we naturally went for it."

"We ran into ten goblins, of which six of them were holding a mace, while the other four were holding javelins and they surrounded another group and were attacking them. Since we're humans and the goblins weren't, of course, we went ahead to attack the goblins.

"But even after the four of us had cooperated with the other group and managed to fight off five of the goblins..."

"Suddenly another 100 goblins freaking came out of nowhere and some of them were even riding wolves. They were enough to cover the whole place and rushed toward us."

"And that group we were helping were also a bunch of assholes. They didn't say anything, just made a run for it, and didn't even call us along."

"But the biggest problem is, if the game places 100 monsters around the noob village, then how are we going to level up? Doesn't that mean that the players have to band together in groups of a hundred or more in order to even leave the village?"

Zhao Xu was quiet as he read the post from this player.

There were ers who asked what happened in the end. Of course, this was self-explanatory – they lost a revival stone.

Some players in the game still thought that the game contained a noob village.

It had already been three days and they were still stuck in this delusion.

As for the characters native to the game, forget running off and leaving their fellow fighters in the lurch – there were some who betrayed the players or even ran off with their mission rewards.

That was because this game had characters with an evil alignment.

The players had to suffer losses for up to a week before they understood this.

That was also why many players would rather take on missions from major leagues or major organizations.

Or they would take missions from NPCs with suitable alignments and trusted Character Classes.

There were many players who ed that this game was seriously realistic.

Zhao Xu just laughed bitterly at this. In his previous life, the game was so realistic that it had caused the death of his entire family. It was definitely extremely realistic.

But after Zhao Xu finished reading through this post, he noticed another post had started trending. "I need help! I got locked up after I killed an NPC, so I deleted my character and made a new one, but I was immediately assigned to Chaotic Evil alignment and now I can't become a Druid anymore. What can I do now?"

4 s

Chapter 18: High Level Teleportation

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

When Zhao Xu saw that post, he knew that this player was in big trouble.

To a player, they had just killed off an NPC and it was no big deal.

But all the NPCs in Arthur were real and alive, the players just didn't know about that.

There were many people who even married characters in Arthur after they had transmigrated.

All these NPCs were made from flesh and blood, and you could even trace their backgrounds and they all had parents. They didn't pop out from some rock or something.

That player thought that he had just killed off a piece of programming that would eventually revive itself. And he could only pray hard that he was really thinking about it this way, and just had itchy fingers and killed off an NPC thinking that the NPC would just revive.

If that was the case, then this player could just give up the account he had now and he would be able to restart his alignment. Otherwise, no matter how many characters he made, he would be stuck with an evil alignment.

And even after he transmigrated and wouldn't have a chance to change his account anymore, the evil glow around him would follow him like a shadow.

Zhao Xu knew that the best thing this player could do now was to repent and compensate for his deeds and allow himself to be jailed for a period of time. It wasn't really anything serious anyway. He could leave his character in jail and log out of the game.

Otherwise, the problem would only go away on the surface, and after the transmigration happened in one year's time, this player who thought that he had just killed an NPC would really suffer for it.

The Detect Evil and Good spell was a Level 1 spell, so the requirements were just slightly higher than a Level 0 Cantrip.

More importantly, it was a class feature for Paladins, and sometimes it was even the way Paladins greeted other players.

There was nowhere for low-level evil players to hide in Arthur at all.

Pretty much all the human towns and villages cast out any characters with a Chaotic Evil alignment.

Those ambitious ones who were Lawful Evil were still willing to pull dirty tricks within the rules of the game, but when it came to Chaotic Evil rebels, nobody knew who they might kill next.

Avoiding evil was something that the players learned the hard way after further education.

Zhao Xu didn't have the heart of a saint and wasn't going to teach this player what he had to do.

After he had logged off the first time, he was still feeling lucky and so he had actually written a post on 'Ten things Arthur noobs must avoid at all costs'.

But the other party clearly hadn't read this post.

That post didn't reveal any game secrets, and it was written more like some self-help book to tell the players what bad things they shouldn't be doing.

Zhao Xu knew that more than half of the players entering the game right now would finish all their revival stones and end up buying a new account.

And that wouldn't happen within a year. It was going to happen within a month.

But he still hoped that, as the luckiest person alive right now, he could throw a rope down and allow the other players to hang on to as much of it as they could.

The first thing on his list was to avoid evil.

But on the night he had posted that article, many ers scoffed at how Zhao Xu had written a lot of things that went against the suggestions that most people had for playing games.

Some even looked through Zhao Xu's previous posts and advised him to play more games and gather more experience before putting up a post like that.

Zhao Xu didn't bother about that post after he had put it up.

After all, the players would eventually realize that he was right after falling into all the traps he had listed in that post.

After Zhao Xu scrolled down and didn't find anything new, his incredible self-control started working again and he immediately returned to the game.

The other players were working hard without realizing it.

But Zhao Xu knew very well that he was trying his best to rescue himself.

If a player wanted to log off, they had to make sure that no battle was happening before them for five minutes before being able to activate the command to log off.

His body would then turn into sparkles within 10 rounds (1 minute) and disappear from the world of Arthur.

If you were in a hurry, it was fine if you didn't wait for 10 rounds to complete. You could just find a safe place to log off.

But if you were unlucky enough to be attacked during these 10 rounds of waiting, then you would have to sacrifice a revival stone.

Most low-level players ignored the warning prompts from the system.

But after they had reached higher levels, everyone started to cherish their accounts more. So, even if they were in a safe town, they would all wait patiently for their bodies to vanish completely first.

But sometimes one had to log off very suddenly, like if someone woke you up or the system told you that there was a phone call coming in.

It was possible to forcibly log off like that, but the problem was that the player's body wouldn't disappear and would just remain unconscious within Arthur.

But, regardless of how you logged off, you always needed to wait at least 20 minutes before logging back into Arthur.

Many players would eventually complain about how this requirement created a lot of inconvenience for the players just so that the game could keep its traditional ways of communication.

But this part would remain the same until everyone transmigrated, and 20 minutes was exactly the time that Zhao Xu allowed himself to eat and scroll through the forums.

But, even so, with this ability to go online and offline multiple times, player A could receive a message in the game, go offline to pass the message to player B, and player B could immediately go online to inform his group. Many players eventually used this loophole in the system and became a communicator of sorts.

In fact, sometimes characters within Arthur would get the players to do this sort of thing to convey a message in urgent situations. But after too many people used this way of going through a middleman, it was eventually stopped by some organizations.

There were also times when players were bribed into passing on false information, and so everyone ended up adding a password to their messages after this went on for half a year.

There was a bright flash of light and Zhao Xu appeared back in his room within the floating city above Mystra.

Players would reappear wherever they last logged off, regardless of what happened in that area. There was a player who logged off next to a volcano, and by the time he logged back in, he realized that the volcano had erupted while he was offline, and so his body ended up dying from being crushed by the cooling lava.

After appearing back in the room. Antonya also appeared in a bright flash of light, and she was still wearing the same wizard robe that she had worn for the past few days.

Over three days, Zhao Xu had found out that this floating city covered a pretty large area.

Antonya had also installed a magic alarm inside his room. Once he appeared in the room, Antonya would get the notification and reappear as well.

Although the floating city was huge, Antonya wasn't very far from his dormitory, but she was still willing to use a Level Teleportation spell to reach him instead of walking.

As for why she didn't use an ordinary Level 5 Teleportation spell, it was because there was some difference in the two spells.

Zhao Xu had also asked why she didn't just use the Level 9 spell of Otherworldly Gate.

The answer he got was that Mystra and the floating city had used all sorts of Legendary spells like mythals to prevent teleportation, and only people like her with a seal could get past them.

But even though she was spared, this sort of spell where she could travel across planes was still a sensitive one and she would end up on a surveillance list.

Antonya didn't want others to ask her where she came from and where she went to every day, so she gave up using that spell.

Zhao Xu even stupidly asked one more question about why Level 7 Teleportation didn't fall under surveillance.

The answer he got was that if you ended up on the surveillance list, you had to be checked, but since Level 7 Teleportation meant that you couldn't cross different planes and you had to be familiar with your destination and start from the same plane as your destination, too many people used it and you didn't have to be checked.

Basically, if they had to check even that sort of travel, then they might as well not allow teleportation.

Zhao Xu also suddenly realized why his friend who reached Level 5 Wizard stopped using his legs to walk after he had grasped the Level 3 spell of Phantom Steed.

Looks like laziness was in the genes of all wizards.

5 s

Chapter 19: Decide to Battle

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

"Mentor, do I have to keep reading The Road to Arcane Magic today too?"

Zhao Xu asked because he realized from the second day of reading the book that it was a magic book that had undergone some special process.

After he finished reading the book and closed it, the contents inside would change, so there was always new content whenever he opened it again.

And if he wanted to check on the content that he had read before, he just needed to remember a few things about it and it would pop up when he reopened the book.

Zhao Xu only came into contact with a book that had this sort of AI search function during this life.

In his previous life, he had only heard of how some equipment was able to speak to its owner.

Zhao Xu had spent the past few days just reading this book and attending lectures.

"No need," replied Antonya.

Even though they had spent the past few days together, Zhao Xu still hadn't gotten a chance to take a proper look at the face hidden in the shadow of the cloak around her head.

"Over the past two days, the organization had a bit of an argument about your path in the future."

Zhao Xu perked up and didn't feel the burden of being a chess pawn at all.

The only thing he wanted in life was to be able to survive.

"It's mostly because someone has a new idea, this one because of your Double Elite status."

"You may not know that there are those who don't take on a prestige class and just remain either a Wizard all the way or a Cleric all the way. They are the few who remain as pure base classes and they're not weakened because of it."

Zhao Xu knew what she meant. Advanced Wizards and Advanced Clerics were truly incredible people, and it was true that one couldn't be that weak if you trained hard in one direction even without going into a Prestige Class.

"After reaching Legendary level, a pure wizard can achieve a lot with a feat. Also..."

Antonya paused for a moment. "A pure wizard can have purer contact with magic, and this would be helpful in the research of magic."

"And so there are some people in the organization who have suggested turning you into a pure wizard and you wouldn't need to increase your fighting abilities for the time being."

Zhao Xu understood what she was saying. So, just after observing him for a few days, he looked like someone they could groom?

So instead of having to work and fight outside, he would become a researcher?

But after Zhao Xu thought a little more carefully about these things, it was true that everything that Antonya told him about had only happened after he stepped into this floating city.

So these new ideas in the organization really only took shape over the last two days.

Three days ago, nobody in Arthur knew of his existence.

"Before this, we insisted on deciding your future path because we were afraid that you might waste the advantage you had and end up in some useless prestige class. So, instead of making me use an energy drain on you to negate your character level, the organization is actually considered pretty flexible and so I'm here to ask you about what you think."

"Do you want to try for a Prestige Class and improve your fighting power, or do you want to become a pure wizard and remain in the floating city to do research?"

Zhao Xu listened intently to every word that Antonya said. His hair stood on end when he heard her mention Energy Drain.

You could go into a variety of affected states in Arthur, like Ability Score Damage, Ability Drain, Energy Drain, dizziness, blindness, deafness, feelings of being shaken, fear, panic, dilemma, hypnosis, tiredness, exhaustion, disgust, nausea, delay in reaction, staggering, collapsing, being captured, suppressed, entanglement, shock, numbness, immobility, being bound, sleepiness, put into a coma, being petrified, being paralyzed, etc.

The thing that players were most afraid of was this Energy Drain.

Energy Drain was a Level 9 Arcane Spell able to wipe out 2d4 of a player's level.

2d4 represented the values of two four-sided dice added together, so the total could range between 2 to 8 points.

Anyone who had suffered damage from that spell would feel the pain. If your level was lower than the total number on the dice, you would die on the spot.

If your level was higher than the total number on the dice, the spell would be effective for 24 hours and then incur penalties for every level that was lost.

If you could successfully use a Saving Throw, the negative level would disappear. If you failed, then the negative level went away, but the character would go down by one level permanently.

Going down by one level permanently was the real punishment.

In Zhao Xu's previous life, he had a really powerful friend who suffered an Energy Drain from a witch. He failed all the saving throws required and lost all his powers to become an ordinary person again.

So for people who relied heavily on their character levels to survive, like Zhao Xu, they were terrified of spells like that.

When Zhao Xu realized that he was part of an ideological fight, he carefully picked his words and asked, "Mentor, could I ask something? Was this topic brought up by people in the organization with a particular inclination?"

"Strictly speaking, The Final Scroll is only one of the major powers in Arthur's Wizard Association. The goddess is revered, but she doesn't have the last say. The ones who brought this up are some old researchers within the Association, and they've been stuck in one area of Divine Spells for a very long time. That's why they're hoping that someone who is able to develop both Arcane and Divine spells like yourself could join them."

Zhao Xu felt quite relieved after hearing this. People in research were usually not as quick to kill others, so even if he rejected their proposal, they probably wouldn't try to get back at him.

"I heard that Arthur has a Prestige Class called Mystic Theurge. That class can also cast both Arcane and Divine spells, right?" Zhao Xu asked after he suddenly remembered something from his previous life.

Antonya looked surprised and Zhao Xu could feel her sharp gaze even through the shadow of her cloak.

"The Prestige Class of Mystic Theurge has always been well hidden. I wouldn't be surprised if you players found out about it at a later stage, but I'm surprised that you know about it so soon."

Zhao Xu felt terribly awkward. He didn't think that his off-hand remark might actually give himself away.

In reality, Antonya and the rest of these high ranking people knew that Zhao Xu had a communication channel like the internet on earth because the gods had told them about this before. So whenever Zhao Xu randomly asked about things in Arthur, Antonya would always just explain it to him and never questioned him about it.

"Are you wondering why I'm asking you about it?"

Zhao Xu nodded quickly.

"The Prestige Class of Mystic Theurge doesn't have any class features. The only good thing is that each time one moves up one level, you can add the level to the arcane spellcasting class and divine spellcasting class you have."

After hearing this, Zhao Xu suddenly realized why the people from his previous life had said so many good things about Mystic Theurges.

A Level 1 Wizard/Level 1 Cleric/Level 10 Mystic Theurge was equivalent to a Level 12 character and would be able to cast spells like a Level 11 Wizard and a Level 11 Cleric.

Then what was the point of being a Double Elite like himself?

Or rather, weren't they capable of the same things as himself?

But Antonya quickly burst his dream bubble.

"You need to be able to cast Level 2 Arcane spells and Level 2 Divine spells in order to take on the Prestige Class of Mystic Theurge. Also, Double Elites like you aren't allowed to take that prestige class."

Zhao Xu realized that this was the catch. Players could only go for a Prestige Class after they hit Level 7, so it was impossible for him to hear about this when the game servers had just opened. It was little wonder that he had become suspicious.

In order to cast Level 2 Arcane spells and Level 2 Divine spells, that meant that the player would have to be a Level 3 Wizard/Level 3 Cleric, so a Level 6 character. Even if you could take on a Level 10 Prestige Class and maximize it, then even at Level 16, you could only cast Level 7 Arcane spells and Level 7 Divine spells.

By this time, a pure wizard would already be able to cast Level 8 spells and would be close to getting to being able to cast a Level 9 spell.

Slowing down in one area would result in slowing down everything. If he could become a Level 20 character immediately, then there was no problem with becoming a Mystic Theurge. But if he had to start from Level 1 and take on a Prestige Class that didn't come with any features, then Zhao Xu would have a terrible time playing.

This was the biggest advantage of his Double Elite status. He was able to have his cake and eat it too.

"Mentor, I choose to go for battles." Zhao Xu decided that there was no point in thinking about it any further. Since he had a Double Elite account, then he was going to take full advantage of it. If he didn't choose to battle, then he would have really wasted this one Testing Account that he had picked out of so many possibilities.

3 s

Chapter 20: Draconic and Spellcasting

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Zhao Xu didn't have to see Antonya's face to know what expression she had on right now beneath the cloak.

Zhao Xu figured that she was probably quite pleased with his response.

"Very good, you've made your choice. I hope that you won't regret it in the future. Compared to those wizards conducting research in the safety of the floating city, a wizard who has to go to battle might run into many potentially fatal situations."

After hearing what Antonya said, Zhao Xu just smiled nonchalantly.

During the days where he sought revenge, he hadn't gone a single day without attending to his wounds and training himself up.

"If I weren't sure that you're too low a level to change your appearance so much, I would have thought that you're a middle-aged man."

Zhao Xu's smile became a little more bitter than before.

"Fine, you can look at this book next then. Switch your language first, you should have some slots for other languages."

A thick and heavy book flew out from the bookshelf and into Zhao Xu's hands.

He knew that Antonya had used a Level 0 Arcane spell to do this.

The only thing that seemed strange to him was how Antonya didn't use any movements to cast this spell at all.

It was as if the book automatically flew just because she said so.

Zhao Xu weighed the book in his hands and gently touched the title of the book: Secrets to Learning Draconic.

He looked up at his mentor, a little confused.

"You want me to study a language now? I don't have to read any of those magic theory books anymore?"

Antonya casually sat down on a soft chair in the room. This was the first time in three days that she had actually sat down.

"Actually, you will be able to automatically understand some content in the future. I'm letting you read this right from the start in order to mold your character."

Zhao Xu didn't expect Antonya to have such intentions, and he looked at her curiously.

"Magic is a mysterious power. If you immediately head off to casting spells without any reverence for magic itself, then you'd just be a tool for using magic. You won't be much different from a cannon on a city wall. In fact, if you conduct research without this sense of reverence, it will only bring disaster to yourself and others."

There was a bitter tone to Antonya's voice. Zhao Xu wondered if the topic brought up bad memories.

"Actually, when you returned to your room on the second day and spoke to the other Adventurers from Earth, you should have already noticed that your training is a little different from the other players who chose to become wizards."

"Basically, we differentiate all the players, so there will be some who are going through the same sort of training as you and start from reading these ancient texts first. This group is the one that has been chosen for grooming."

"The difference is that those people who chose to read these texts did it out of their own free will, but you have been forced to do this by me. The good part is that you will definitely be on the right path and you will learn everything the proper way. The bad part is that I call the shots on when this part of your training ends."

Zhao Xu didn't expect that these few sentences from Antonya would have exposed such a large secret.

He was wondering why it had been so difficult for the wizards in his previous life to reach prestige classes and learn powerful feats.

So there was one more catch here. Those who studied theory first would have an association to help them arrange for their future.

But those who went straight into learning spells and trying to cast them would suffer slowly later on.

The time you took to prove your true nature would determine when you would be able to see how exciting and incredible the Wizard Association could be.

But this was something that nobody in his previous life had ever mentioned in the forums.

The most he read was that some of the high-level wizard players would advise the newer players to read more of the books on magic.

But Zhao Xu still found it difficult to understand.

"Isn't the way you choose the people a bit arbitrary?"

"So much for calling you mature earlier. There are so many powers in this universe, and the Wizard Association is only able to arrange a few feats and some possible prestige classes at the start for you players. Once you hit Level 5, then you will have to rely on the opportunities that come your way. If we really missed anyone capable, he would also be able to climb back up on his own strength."

Zhao Xu couldn't help but take a deep breath. Becoming a wizard had been difficult in the beginning for the players in his previous life, and these associations were probably partly responsible for that.

For a player like him, he had one feat as a Human, another two from the Natural Flaws system, and another one for being a Level 1 character. So he started with 4 feats.

Having 4 powerful feats was completely different from having 4 useless feats.

Zhao Xu could only say that because he had gone back to the past and naturally carried a sense of reverence towards Arthur, this attitude had helped him to pass Antonya's initial tests.

Zhao Xu focused his attention back on the book that Antonya had passed to him.

"Many ancient texts are written in Draconic, so all Wizards must learn the language. After you read through the book once, you can start converting to this language," said Antonya.

Zhao Xu understood what this conversion was. It was essentially activating the Draconic translation ability within the system.

Everyone would be able to grasp the Common language as well as the language of their own Race, and they could also learn as many other languages as the number of Intelligence modifier points they had.

He had 3 Intelligence modifier points, so he could learn 3 other languages.

Before this, he had lacked the opportunity, so he had no chance of learning Draconic.

Now that he thought about it, the book in his hand was the activation key to learning Draconic that other players talked about, and it could enable them to converse in Draconic.

But other players had things like dragon bones, dragon skin, dragon blood, and things like that on hand, while what he got was actually a proper book.

After some time, Zhao Xu finished flipping through the book and he realized that his character stats had refreshed itself too.

Name: Zhongxia

Race: Human/Living organism from a different world (Earth)

Age: 22 years

Sex: Male

Size: Medium

Weight: 76 kilograms

Height: 183 centimeters

Background: The Final Scroll – Secret Messenger

Alignment: Neutral

Religion: Sisylvana, the Goddess of Magic

Eye Color: Black

Skin Color: Yellow

Hair Color: Black

Base Walking Speed: 30 feet per round (Around 9.1 meters every 6 seconds)

Languages: Common, Draconic, To be Determined, To be Determined

Race Traits: Level 1 will receive 4 Skill Points. Every level increase will earn you 1 Skill Point. Level 1 will automatically receive 1 bonus Feat.

This was the first time Zhao Xu found out that he was a Secret Messenger. That was probably the lowest rank in the organization.

But Antonya didn't seem to relax at all after this. More books flew off the bookshelf and landed on his desk.

"Finish reading the first book, Foundational Spell Preparation, and the second book, Spells Gestures: How to Cast Spells, then continue to read the book right at the bottom last, Encyclopedia of Cantrips, and we're done. Once you finish reading these three books, I'll come back and confirm the choice of your first feat."

When he heard those words, Zhao Xu was really about to cry. He had finally made his first step towards casting spells.

After that, Zhao Xu started to calm himself down and turned on his studying mode.

Just like every new wizard in Arthur, since he wasn't able to understand spells, he had to memorize them. He had to blindly memorize the various ways of preparing spells.

Those books on the theory of magic were just input without any output in sight.

But these books meant that his progress in spellcasting was now at 1%, and it was only going to increase after that, so Zhao Xu was much more motivated to read these than the previous ones.

Antonya listened to him flip the pages and seemed to know what he was thinking about. She knew what he was looking at and what sort of questions he would have, so she slowly explained the contents to him.

In all the Magic Academies across the rest of this universe, there were countless students copying those spell preparations and chanting them. They were only allowed to listen to the next stage in spellcasting after they were able to rewrite them from memory.

According to those mentors, if you couldn't even memorize a few simple books, then what right did you have to become a wizard?

2 s

Chapter 21: Copying Spells

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

But when Zhao Xu started taking in all that knowledge, he realized that he had been thinking about this too simplistically.

There were so many players who chose to be Wizards, and the fastest among them took seven days to graduate from the training for a good reason.

It was like making a middle school student study high school math. It wasn't impossible, but it would be difficult.

The amount of studying needed in high school wasn't as much compared to university, but they had to go through it over and over again throughout their three years in high school, just so that they could apply it on the spot when they were faced with a question during the high school exams.

The time given for high school exams wasn't enough for each student to take their time and think about it, so many students were well versed in answering techniques and used their experience in tackling questions to deal with the lack of time.

Spells were like that, too.

The formation, words, and positions all had to become instinctive.

Zhao Xu had learned how to cast spells over the past few days of studying, and most of the work was done within that one hour he had each day to decide which spells he was going to cast.

The actual act of casting spells was like driving a car. The spell was already there, just like how the car was already assembled.

But this process required everyone to put their hearts and minds together.

Wizards couldn't possibly flip their spellbooks open at the last minute to check what they had to say in order to cast a spell when they were faced with danger. Their enemies would just laugh at them.

But Zhao Xu got a headache just reading the various words of a spell out loud.

But this didn't slow Zhao Xu's progress down too much, and he was still in line with the schedule Antonya had planned. This sort of thing required him to repeat spells several times to solidify the process in his mind anyway.

So he more or less finished looking through the two books on spell preparation and spellcasting after five days and moved on to the book on cantrips.

"The spellbooks that we wizards use are written in arcane texts and there are some similarities among them, but each wizard has to add on something extra to it. So even if I give you a spellbook now, you have to use an Arcana check in order to be able to decode the book and read it properly."

What Antonya was really saying was that every spellbook had an additional layer of protection and you needed the key to translate it into something you could understand.

Arcana was a skill that the characters in Arthur had. Just like Perception and Sense Motives, they were skills that required points and practice.

Zhao Xu hadn't reached the course on advanced Arcana yet, so it didn't matter for the time being.

"You're able to read the spells in this book because this Encyclopedia of Cantrips has been specially configured. Or rather, when the owner of the spellbook has allowed you to read it, you won't have to use Arcana."

"And using the cantrip Read Magic, wizards can also read spellbooks that haven't been specifically sealed by others without any problems."

Zhao Xu nodded as he listened. In other words, the Read Magic spell was the key to opening all sorts of spellbooks.

So it seemed like using arcane words was a way wizards tried to protect their spells. They made them complicated so that it would be difficult for non-wizards to read them, so then wizards came up with a spell that could decode the words.

They were protecting themselves against the other classes, not other wizards.

"But you must remember that a spellbook is the foundation of every wizard. You don't need a spellbook to prepare the Read Magic spell, but for all other spells, wizards must have a spellbook with spells already copied into it in order to prepare spells and cast them."

Antonya spoke very slowly and gravely.

Zhao Xu had heard about how wizards in his previous life had gone broke from copying spells, so he couldn't help but ask out of curiosity, "Mentor, is there a price to pay for copying spells?"

Antonya passed a book to Zhao Xu instead.

After Zhao Xu took it from her, he opened it up. It was also another thick tome, but this book was completely empty inside. He touched it and estimated that there were about 100 pages in it. But since every sheet was made from parchment paper, it looked pretty thick.

He looked back at Antonya a little confusedly and didn't understand what she was trying to tell him.

"Once you've taken one full day to study spells, you can start copying spells into your own spellbook. The number of pages required will depend on the level of the spell, and even a cantrip will require one page even though it's considered level 0."

Zhao Xu frowned when he heard this. Taking one day to study just one spell was already a problem in itself, but the other problem was that 100 pages were only enough to copy up to eleven Level 9 spells. These spellbooks ran out of pages very quickly, so he would have to carry many spellbooks on himself.

"Also, each time you copy one page, it will cost you 100 gold pieces. You rookie wizards get a special concession, and the association will cover the cost of copying all cantrips as well as three Level 1 spells. So you don't have to worry about that."

Zhao Xu had heard that the price of copying spells was high, but he didn't expect it to be this exorbitant.

"Mentor, who do I have to pay this money to?"

"It doesn't go to anybody. It's just the cost of the materials used. The spellbook for copying spells, the special goose feather pen required, the specially processed ink, and the incense sticks for lighting up the place where you copy the spells would average around 10,000 gold pieces for copying 100 pages worth of spells, and so we've all agreed that it will cost 100 gold pieces per page."

"If you don't cover these costs, then there's no way you could copy spells that carry magic in them and you wouldn't be able to cast them."

After Zhao Xu heard this, he could just sigh and say that wizards were really poor and led really difficult lives.

There were so many special requirements. No wonder nobody thought of mass printing spellbooks in his previous life.

If you didn't have enough assets, there was no way you would be able to spend money on reproducing spellbooks like that.

"That's the way it is if you either copy from memory or copy from a spell scroll. If you copy from someone else's spellbook, then you could get a check and the cost and time of copying would be halved to just 50 gold pieces a page. That's also the result of a calculation."

Zhao Xu perked up when he heard those words.

But he didn't need to see her face to know that Antonya was probably grinning away under that cloak of hers, just waiting for him to make a fool out of himself.

He had to pay membership fees even if he just wanted to stream a comedy online.

But these people weren't stupid. Even if another wizard lent you a book, and you could copy it at a faster rate than normal, it meant that the owner of the book wouldn't be able to use any of the spells in that book while it was being borrowed.

It took 50 gold pieces per page to make a duplicate of your own spellbook, and nobody would do something so dumb unless they had to.

Antonya didn't wait for too long and explained it to him directly. "Nowadays, borrowing a book just to read costs 50 gold pieces per page too. And some really rare spells require you to either pay more or you might not get to read them at all."

Zhao Xu nodded at her words. The cost of borrowing a book was exactly the same as the amount saved by copying from someone else's spellbook.

That meant that borrowing a book to copy spells would cost 100 gold pieces per spell.

"So now you have to make a decision between two choices."

"Your first choice would be to take the book in my hand." As she said this, Antonya suddenly pulled out another book from absolutely nowhere and sent it flying into his hands. It was a 30 by 15-centimeter book that was about 15 centimeters thick, and it had a metal cover with a lock on the side.

"That's the goddess' Blessed Book. It's a Wondrous Item. Because the process of creating it infused magic into it, you don't have to pay for the materials to copy spells. Each book has 1,000 pages and it's sold for 12,500 gold pieces. It's hard to buy because so many wizards want one."

Zhao Xu looked at the plain cover and couldn't imagine that there was an item that could actually reduce the price of copying spells to almost 10% of the original cost.

As long as you had this Wondrous Item, then the cost of copying spells would go down to 12.5 gold pieces a page. That was way better than the original cost of 100 gold pieces or even the 50 gold pieces required to copy from another spellbook.

As for the fact that the item was difficult to purchase, that was a problem for others. He had managed to get himself into a large organization, so there was a way to get his hands on this internally.

This was probably one of the special privileges everyone was talking about.

But Zhao Xu didn't get too excited at this point because he noticed that Antonya had mentioned he had a second choice.

"The other option is to activate your Enlightened Spellcaster feat."

"Once you use that, the spells will be copied into your memory and you won't need a spellbook anymore."

Zhao Xu couldn't stop his heart from racing. His path to becoming a wizard had begun, and the powerful feats that this organization held were finally being revealed to him.

3 s

Chapter 22: Without a Spellbook

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

When Zhao Xu heard that he wouldn't have to copy spells anymore, he started making calculations in his heart.

When it came to copying spells, the first problem for all wizards was whether one could find a spell to copy or not, and second was the cost of copying those spells.

But since he had Antonya at his back, he could go around borrowing spellbooks from others shamelessly. Even if the other party insisted on collecting fees, he would probably still enjoy a discount, so his main issue would be the cost of copying spells.

But this feat would save him all that, and he wouldn't have to think about it anymore.

Once he reached this conclusion, Zhao Xu nodded and said, "Mentor, I'll choose the feat."

Antonya was a little taken aback when she heard his response. After thinking about it for a while, she said, "Alright then. So now I'll..."

"Er...Mentor?" Zhao Xu was rather surprised when he saw how Antonya paused.

"Oh, I'm very sorry, I got confused. I realized that after that major disaster, Enlightened Spellcaster has gone from being a feat to being a class feature. When I learned it when I was young, it was still considered a feat."

Zhao Xu's eyebrows twitched a little. A class feature was something that a particular character class came with.

But there were also class features that could be selected.

The way to select these class features was by giving up some of the class features one already had in the first place.

Antonya was already beginning to explain things, "According to the new requirements, the price of gaining the special class feature, Enlightened Spellcaster, is to give up the class features of Scribe Scroll and Summon Familiar."

"Mentor, are these two class features very important?"

Zhao Xu wasn't very sure about the inner workings of being a wizard, but he could still ask questions.

"For Summon Familiar, it's not really a major issue if you're not the type to use Familiars. Besides, we intended to arrange another sort of feat for you to use, so it's not really a pity if you need to give it up."

"As for Scribe Scroll, that is a rather important class feature for wizards. Scrolls can replace the spell slots you have, so this avoids a situation where a wizard knows a spell but can't cast it because you didn't prepare it beforehand."

"So since it's not practical for wizards to be able to prepare spells daily to deal with every special or rare circumstance, wizards are all prepared with scrolls."

After listening to Antonya's explanation, Zhao Xu lowered his head and started thinking about it. If he gave this up, that meant that he would have to buy scrolls and wouldn't be able to make them himself.

"But of course, if you don't mind spending a feat, then you can use a feat to regain your Scribe Scroll ability."

Zhao Xu's heart slowly lifted after hearing this.

The class feature Scribe Scroll was also a feat that one could learn. He wasn't surprised to hear this. Otherwise, Clerics wouldn't be able to come up with Divine Scrolls in the market since they didn't have this as a class feature.

Those scrolls were created by Clerics who spent a feat to learn this.

Or you could also put it this way: A Level 1 Wizard got the Scribe Scroll feat for free.

But in that case, the cost of getting Enlightened Spellcaster was quite clear now.

It was the cost of one feat as well as the ability to call upon a familiar.

Summoning a familiar was also a feat since this was something only a Wizard or a Sorcerer could do.

What was this major disaster? How did it change the price of things?

Something that used to cost only one feat now cost two.

"On top of that, after you gain the feature Enlightened Spellcaster, you won't have to spend on materials for copying spells, but you still have to spend about the same amount of money on trying to increase your energy."

Zhao Xu's heart sank.

Why did she leave this part for the end? Was she just messing with him?

"Mentor, if that's how it works, who on earth is going to take this special class feature?" asked Zhao Xu as he emphasized every word.

He didn't have to spell it out. Everything was very clear now.

He could copy spells into his own memory, so that meant that he couldn't lend his spellbook to anyone else to copy, and he couldn't take any money as borrowing fees.

That was fine, but earlier on, Antonya had just explained this amazing item called a Blessed Book.

If he used Enlightened Spellcaster, then he wouldn't be able to enjoy the cost of just 12.5 gold pieces per page. Instead, it would go back to the original price of 50 gold pieces per page like those who had to copy from others' spellbooks.

So the price had gone up by four times for nothing.

If Enlightened Spellcaster also cost 12.5 gold pieces per page, then he didn't mind.

"Don't you think it's great if you didn't have to carry a spellbook around?" said Antonya. She sounded like she had no idea what sort of concerns Zhao Xu had.

"You have to prepare spells every day and you have to flip through every spellbook you have to do that. It's very tiring, you know? And these things are so heavy. Even if you've got a bag of holding, you'd still find it very annoying."

After hearing these words, Zhao Xu's emotions calmed a little.

Wizards needed spellbooks in order to prepare spells, so spellbooks were indeed vital to a wizard.

If you got attacked in the night, you had to grab your spellbook and make a run for it.

The cheapest bag of holding went for 2,500 gold pieces. Any player who couldn't get their hands on one would have to actually carry the spellbooks around physically.

But then again, even if you only had one bag of holding, the cheapest type could store 100 kilograms. A typical spellbook was around 100 to 200 grams, so you could store quite a number in that bag.

"Mentor, forget it then," said Zhao Xu after contemplating further.

It was tiring, but money was important.

"Sure. In any case, you can only choose this feature after you hit Level 1, so you still change your mind before you finish your training."

Zhao Xu's heart started to waver after hearing what Antonya said.

Sometimes, not having a choice helped one walk steadily on the same path.

But if you were like Zhao Xu and you had to choose between many options that other players didn't get to choose from, then you would really have a terrible headache trying to make a decision.

But Zhao Xu suddenly remembered that Antonya had learned Enlightened Spellcaster as a feat, so the price she paid would be one Summon Familiar feature less than Zhao Xu.

So that meant Antonya also paid 50 gold pieces per page for recording spells.

If a Legendary Wizard had chosen that path instead, surely there was a good reason, right?

"Mentor, was there another reason why you chose this when you were younger?" Zhao Xu asked.

Antonya was more than happy to answer all of Zhao Xu's questions. "Well, back then I was fighting all the way, so there's no way I would want to have a glaring weakness like a spellbook."

"Besides, you have an advantage too. If you become an Archivist after you hit Level 2 Wizard, then Scribe Scroll will be one of your class features too."

Zhao Xu nearly smacked his forehead when he heard this.

No matter how he thought about it, he felt like Antonya was just trolling him the whole way and purposely didn't tell him everything in one shot.

A feat was very expensive.

He had been awarded a bonus feat because he had chosen to be a Human.

Zhao Xu could only grit his teeth and reply, "Mentor, then I think I'd better choose to exchange my features."

Zhao Xu as going to settle for exchanging the ability to summon a familiar for the ability to never rely on spellbooks even though it was expensive.

"Sure, I'll get someone to bring over the activation method and all for the class feature later."

Zhao Xu scanned his room. Besides some incense rising slowly in one corner of the room, there was nothing special about this mid-century styled furniture.

Antonya had installed a magic alarm and he knew about that. But he didn't think that he was bugged too.

"What are you thinking about? I just cast a telepathic spell and you can already tell that I've cast that spell based on your current knowledge?"

Antonya laughed quietly.

Zhao Xu could only laugh awkwardly, but he started to think about what would happen in the future.

With this class feature, then at least spellbooks wouldn't be a problem for him. He wouldn't end up like other wizard players whose spellbooks were often stolen or destroyed, and they ended up being handicapped.

At least he wouldn't be afraid of being suddenly attacked during the one hour he needed to prepare spells.

9 s

Chapter 23: Activation Ceremony

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

In less than ten minutes, a servant girl knocked at the door.

Before Zhao Xu could stand up, Antonya opened the door. The servant girl didn't say much, just bowed her head politely. She quickly put a box down by the door and left.

Zhao Xu realized that the activation method Antonya was talking about wasn't reading a book but perhaps mixing some materials together.

"The method to activate Enlightened Spellcaster is very simple. Once I set the whole thing up, you just need to sit in the middle," said Antonya as she opened up the box.

Zhao Xu was puzzled. "That's it?"

The incantations required of a wizard were enough to torture him for hours. Some players already knew how to cast cantrips, but they were stuck at learning Scribe Scroll and Summon Familiar.

In that case, he had two problems fewer than others. After all, according to Antonya, all he had to do was just sit there.

Initially, he thought that he had to learn those two features fully and then give them up before he could exchange them for Enlightened Spellcaster, but it looked like that wasn't the case.

"Mentor, if I activate the feature Enlightened Spellcaster but I end up taking up a different base character class instead of remaining a Wizard, then doesn't that mean I've gotten an additional skill for nothing?"

Antonya's cloak turned a little and she was clearly glaring at him.

"What are you thinking of? If you don't become a Level 1 Wizard within a given amount of time, then all these additional abilities will be taken away from you. The only thing you'd have left is your Draconic, because that's attached to your Intelligence."

"You have to reach Level 1 for all your features to become part of your character class and become more powerful. Also, I'd advise you against attempting to look for stupid loopholes."

"Arthur has been around for so long now, everything that you can think of or even tricks you could never even imagine, have been tried by countless people before you."

"Including how many new wizards always think of how they can earn money from lending their spellbooks out to others to copy."

Before Zhao Xu had learned about Enlightened Spellcaster, he had the same idea too. Since he could earn some money by letting others copy spells, then only an idiot would decide against doing that. He wasn't the only one with spells either.

"Think about it," she said. "Why doesn't anybody just use a spell to duplicate these spellbooks? Or why not find someone with an incredible memory? He would be able to memorize everything in no time. Why do you need to study it for one day? Why can't you just copy without spending that day?

"When you copy spells, you have to fully understand how the entire spell and its components work, so every stroke you write down represents your understanding of the spell. But this sort of understanding doesn't last long, so you have to go through the understanding in your spellbook to be able to prepare that spell again. That's decided by the way wizards cast spells.

"When a wizard starts copying spells, he will understand this.

"But what they don't know is that if the original owner of the spellbook you borrowed was on the same path as you to prepare the spell, then there's no problem there. But if someone else tried to understand it in a different way, then the original flow of the form will be damaged. So there's the risk of damage to the original spell in the spellbook whenever it gets copied by someone else."

Zhao Xu's heart trembled when he heard this. So there was the risk of the original getting damaged whenever it was lent out.

If that happened, then even if the one who borrowed it was done with copying the spells he wanted but caused damage to the spells inside your spellbook, you had to spend either 50 or 12.5 gold pieces to borrow the spellbook from the one you lent the spellbook to to copy your own spell back into your spellbook.

This was ridiculous. At this rate, unless you were really good friends with a wizard, most people wouldn't lend their spellbooks out easily. Who knows how much damage would be done in the process by doing such a thing?

As Zhao Xu was thinking about these things, Antonya was already using the materials that the servant girl brought over to draw on the floor of his room.

For Wizards in Arthur to cast spells, besides making the right gestures and saying the right incantations, sometimes, they also needed certain materials.

But very few spells required someone to draw so much on the floor like that. So it seemed like Antonya wasn't going to cast a spell.

"This is a ceremony." Antonya finished drawing a six-pointed star, then continued to use a special chalk-like item to draw a few other strange symbols.

"Ceremonies are an independent system outside of spell-casting. It does have some things in common with spells, so you can spend a long time using several ceremonies to get a similar effect to certain spells. But because it takes too long to do that, it's not suitable for use in battles. But it's a way for ordinary folks with no spell slots to display supernatural abilities."

"Some ceremonies are like the one I'm preparing now, used to activate class features. They can be used for all sorts of class features."

"After going through this ceremony, the two features you were supposed to get when you hit Level 1, Scribe Scroll and Summon Familiar, will be removed in advance and you cannot get them back. Are you sure about this?"

Zhao Xu nodded, determined.

Since he had made this decision, then there was no reason to second-guess it now.

More importantly, Antonya had chosen this path for herself when she was in his place. He was sure he wouldn't get the short end of the stick.

"Sit down in the middle then."

Zhao Xu immediately stood up and sat down in the middle of the completed formation according to Antonya's instructions.

He looked at the lit white candles at the points of each of the six points of the star, then he looked at the mysterious powder Antonya poured around him, and finally at his own shadow, which seemed to be hovering between reality and illusion.

Zhao Xu couldn't help but get goosebumps. This looked totally like the way those western movies depicted their methods of communicating with the dead and those normally didn't end very well.

"Even if the king of the demons comes, I can kill it off. What are you worried about?" said Antonya.

Zhao Xu could only try to stifle his doubts.

It was true that, given Antonya's Legendary Wizard status, she wasn't boasting when she said that she could kill off even clones of the king of demons.

"Hold this piece of paper and read the incantation on it. After that, start meditating and imagine your heart as a long, endless path." As Antonya said these words, a piece of paper floated neatly into Zhao Xu's hands.

Zhao Xu started wondering exactly how many cantrips this mentor of his had prepared.

But after he looked at the crammed incantations scribbled all over the paper that almost couldn't fit into one piece, Zhao Xu suddenly started to suspect...

His mentor had a ridiculous 50-point Intelligence score. Had she chosen some natural flaw of sorts that made her forgetful? Why did she always give him things at the last minute?

Thankfully these incantations weren't too hard to pronounce. Under the pressure of this mysterious ceremony, Zhao Xu immediately memorized them.

After that, he shut his eyes and imagined that he was walking down a long and endless path.

Zhao Xu had shut his eyes and didn't notice that Antonya had taken out a sacred insignia of the goddess of magic, and she had placed it on one of the symbols drawn in the formation.

After that, she took out a bottle of holy water and poured it over the sacred insignia as she started chanting strange incantations without stopping at all.

The complicated formation that she had drawn suddenly seemed to have come alive. It glowed a bright red, as if it were on fire.

With a loud boom, Zhao Xu felt like his heart had been hit by a huge hammer, and the impact had crushed the depths of his heart open.

He opened his eyes with a start and he looked forward.

The glow of the formation on the floor completely disappeared the moment he opened his eyes.

The drawing on the floor faded like it was being rubbed away, and it collected itself into that sacred insignia.

Zhao Xu was about to ask Antonya if the ceremony was successful when he noticed his character stats.

In the field for class features, the words Enlightened Spellcaster were already sitting there.

2 s

Chapter 24: Cantrips

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

"I made it?" Even though Zhao Xu could see the result for himself, he still murmured in surprise.

"You could say it half worked."

"Half?" Zhao Xu was confused. You could do half a ceremony?

"It's probably because all of you are projections. To complete the ceremony, you probably have to wait for a chance to become real before you truly get this ability. But it doesn't affect anything at the moment, and you can already memorize spells."

Zhao Xu felt relieved. And as for that chance to become real that Antonya mentioned...

She was probably referring to how everyone would transmigrate to Arthur in a year.

Zhao Xu, and many other people on Earth, had suspected in his previous life that this game itself was just an initial selection.

If six or seven billion earthlings suddenly arrived in Arthur, it would be hard to deal with the sudden influx of people even though Arthur had plenty of resources and space and was practically boundless.

So the players who had knowledge of the world of Arthur were meant to be the guides for the rest of humanity.

As for how TC ended up being the ones releasing the game: Firstly, everything in the game was determined by an AI.

Secondly, there were plenty of arcane spells that could either manipulate others or confuse others. That wasn't a problem at all.

There were even some who suspected that some of the deities had gone to earth during this one year of gameplay in human form.

But none of these things had anything to do with Zhao Xu. Even if he knew who was actually a deity in human form, he wasn't going to do anything crazy like try to befriend that person.

He just needed to wait patiently now.

But, as for whether that super meteorite that fell on earth to destroy all mankind was a coincidence or deliberately planned, nobody could find an answer even after ten years had passed.

From the night the game servers opened on Monday until the next week, it took a full seven days before the very first wizard in the game could make it past his training.

Even though a lot of players already knew how complicated the training for a wizard was from the complaints posted in the forums.

But a full seven days was still beyond what many people had expected.

On top of that, the power of those Level 1 spells and the limited number of spell slots that wizards had disappointed a lot of people when they found out.

A survey in the forum discovered that-out of the new players who joined the game every day- the number of players who chose to become a wizard was falling, and now it was pretty much at the bottom of the list.

And this happened despite how wizards were traditionally popular and well-loved in most other MMORPGs.

Nobody knew that once you hit Level 5 Wizard, then a wizard would be on par or even surpass other melee attack classes. Once you hit Level 10 Wizard, then you were miles ahead of everyone else.

At the moment, it was impossible for the players to know how a high-level wizard could fight.

Besides scrolling through the forums and maintaining some form of exercise, Zhao Xu spent most of his time on Arthur.

He had finally gotten through memorizing the basic formations and all the incantations and gestures of spellcasting.

Now he had reached the point where he could start studying cantrips.

Zhao Xu wasn't trailing too far behind the first wizard player to complete his training.

Three Level 1 spells required 24 hours of studying, then he had to subtract four hours of deep sleep per day.

He would still need at least 3.5 days.

So that meant that the first wizard player to complete this only used 3.5 days to finish his study of spell formation, incantations, and gestures, and also mastered Summon Familiar and Scribe Scroll.

As for the skills training that came later on, apparently that player took a break first and was going to make up for it later. He just wanted the record of being first.

Everyone also found out that the association in any town would reward the first person in their town to complete his training course.

But there was no fancy halo on the player's head or any additional titles or anything like that.

Zhao Xu also spent 3.5 days and he was still stuck at cantrips. And this was despite not needing to learn the features Summon Familiar and Scribe Scroll.

This made him realize the difference between himself and those players who were truly cut out to be wizards.

But even though those naturally gifted players took the lead at the beginning of the game, Zhao Xu didn't really hear about them after that.

And that was including that player who was the first to complete wizard training.

The five revival stones were both a player's hope as well as a poison that numbed the players.

Only players who could revive would dare to gamble with their lives.

Zhao Xu was leaning against the desk with a magic desk lamp that would never go out to one side. He had one hand propped under his chin and the other held the Encyclopedia of Cantrips open for him to read.

From Read Magic to Mage Hand, there were a total of 19 cantrips and they were all spells that new wizards had to learn.

Some unorthodox wizards out there might skip a few, but as long as you were enrolled with a Wizard Association in a major town, copying these cantrips down wasn't anything difficult.

Zhao Xu had heard Antonya mention Read Magic much earlier on.

After casting that spell, you could read an arcane text without using Arcana, and the duration was ten minutes per level.

Even though Zhao Xu wasn't a Level 1 Wizard officially yet, he could be sort-of considered Level 1, so this spell would last ten minutes if he cast it.

If he could read one minute per page, it would be enough to read ten pages.

If reading about components of a spell was all about concepts, then the actual spells he was learning now could be considered the formula to solving problems.

Actually copying a cantrip only took half a page in a spellbook, and he just needed to copy the components.

But in this Encyclopedia of Cantrips, each article spanned a few dozen pages. All sorts of experiences, philosophies, and possible traps that the wizards before him had run into were all listed there.

Zhao Xu now realized that the 24 hours of reading time didn't include reading all these additional pieces of information.

If you were unable to completely grasp a spell within 24 hours, then some wizards would borrow some notes or summaries from others who had gone before them. They were available from local Wizard Association libraries.

The encyclopedia in Zhao Xu's hand was that sort of book.

Otherwise, Antonya just needed to provide him with a spellbook with nine and a half pages.

And he would only get the magic symbol of the Wizard Association if he successfully copied the spell into his own spellbook.

Once he could copy it into the spellbook, then he could prepare the spell the next day.

So it was easy to tell whether Zhao Xu could move into the first level of arcane magic or not. It just depended on when he could copy all 19 cantrips into his memory.

Cantrips were the only spells that he could copy without needing a potion to increase his energy levels.

But Level 1 spells were different. A total of three bottles of potions to increase his vitality, costing 50 gold pieces each, had been placed on his desk by Antonya while he was still studying cantrips.

As far as he knew, any wizard with some sort of alchemy skill could spend some money to brew these potions themselves, and the source of the ingredients didn't become a burden to wizards.

The materials for copying spells into a spellbook were also as readily available as the potions. Once a wizard reached a sufficiently high level, they could also use spells and spend some money to create the materials themselves.

Besides requiring a senior to guide them in learning spells, wizards enjoyed the fewest limits in other aspects. At most they could just learn a feat and create items.

2 s

Chapter 25: Actual Intelligence

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

As time went by, Zhao Xu finally realized the thing he had been worrying about all this while.

Perhaps he really didn't have the talent for this.

When he wanted to play Arthur in his previous life, his dormmates had analyzed the character classes for him. Even though Wizards were starting to become more powerful at that point, it was still too difficult for a noob like him, so his friends recommended he become a Fighter instead.

And so Zhao Xu never realized that he didn't have the talent for learning spells.

Besides needing basic intelligence, he also needed a certain knack.

Otherwise, any living creature with at least 11 points of Intelligence in Arthur could become a wizard.

After a month, nearly 100 players with 18 points of Intelligence would get angry about not being able to complete the training course and band together to protest by deleting their accounts, thereby pushing the number of new players who chose to become a wizard to its lowest point.

This period of learning in the floating city of Mystra was the first time Zhao Xu had any exposure to the wizard training course.

After everyone transmigrated in his previous life, everyone also lost their special privilege of restarting a new account. You had to just go along with whatever account you had on hand at the time.

So now, the feeling that he wasn't cut out to be a wizard made Zhao Xu feel conflicted inside.

It was like the time for an exam was almost up, but he still hadn't filled up all the answers and he even had a high-value question left undone.

It wouldn't be so bad if he was just going through this bitter feeling all by himself. Antonya was just sitting quietly in his room and waited for him to ask her questions every day as if she had nothing better to do.

She didn't go anywhere, just stuck around to guide him. The feeling of having someone watch over him while he didn't make any progress at all made him feel even worse.

If he fully understood the structure of the spells but couldn't copy them successfully, he could blame his own Enlightened Spellcaster ability.

But the problem was that, out of the 19 cantrips, he didn't understand a single one.

At first, Zhao Xu thought that the problem was the type of spell. But even after he switched to reading another five more, he realized he still couldn't understand any of them.

Antonya gave him a hint to feel the way the spell flowed as if it was calligraphy. Each stroke had its own movement and depth.

He could feel this but just couldn't put everything together. It was like trying to play a song based only on hearing it from the radio.

"Mentor, how long were you stuck here for?" Zhao Xu finally sighed and turned to ask Antonya about her experience. He had been reading posts by other players for the past few days and he had gone through a lot of them already.

He had logged in an hour late because he was trying to read more posts on how to tackle this area, but none of them was any help.

This problem of understanding was like a bridge he had to build to cross the river.

"Me? I copied them as I read them."

"Mentor, didn't you need to understand them?" asked Zhao Xu.

"Understand them? They're as clear as normal text to me. What's there to understand? It's not like Level 1 Arcane magic where there are risks involved, so for those, we have to study them for 24 hours to cancel out these risks."

"So cantrips don't have any risks?" Zhao Xu continued to ask.

"If they did, then they wouldn't be called cantrips. These 19 spells have been carefully selected and studied, and they are the simplest and safest 19 spells. There's no way anything would go wrong with these."

Zhao Xu felt as though he was the worst student in class talking to the best.

He couldn't help but try to ask another question politely, "Then Mentor, how long did you take to study magic before officially starting on learning these cantrips?"

"About three years," replied Antonya.

Zhao Xu gasped a little.

Antonya had grasped these so easily because of three years of accumulated knowledge, so he maybe shouldn't ask for too much, seeing as he only had one week of knowledge.

This was also why the folks in Arthur could research and develop magic, while the players just used it.

The entire process of developing Arcane magic and some Divine magic in Arthur was all recorded clearly.

"But why can't I understand it at all?" Zhao Xu finally brought up the problem he had.

Antonya laughed quietly when she heard his question. "So you finally can't stand it anymore and you want to know?"

"In Arthur, you'll be able to view your character stats after you reach Level 1 of your character class. You know that, right?"

Zhao Xu nodded. As players, they could see their stats even before they reached Level 1.

The characters native to Arthur could only see theirs after they reached Level 1, and they could attain more modules as they levelled up.

That was to say that every adventurer in the world of Arthur had their own character stats.

And that was why every single person in this world had things like levels, feats, and class features.

None of this was classified information.

"As for the six Ability Scores that you players have, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, and Wisdom, the system has already made up for any scores you lack in. Even if your Wisdom is actually low, whatever you feel right now is given to you by the system, so you will take on the same Wisdom score as per your character stats."

"The only score that the system didn't help any of you in is the Intelligence score."

"The real you doesn't have 16 points of Intelligence, so of course you can't comprehend all this so quickly."

Zhao Xu finally understood what was happening.

In other words, Intelligence was something that both players on earth and in Arthur shared, but things like Charisma and Wisdom weren't and so it was easy to understand if you held different scores in both worlds.

But if you felt that you were more intelligent in Arthur or you could become more intelligent by playing this game, then the system would be exposed.

And that was why Arthur helped them with everything except Intelligence.

So that was why wizard players were all stuck here for so long.

Most humans averaged 10 points of Intelligence, and were usually anything between 8 to 12 points. Zhao Xu figured that the maximum he might be was 13 points.

As for those with 16, 17, or 18 points, those were considered geniuses or people with photographic memories, so they were much rarer.

There were people who just couldn't become wizards even if they set their Intelligence score at 18 points. Because if your actual intelligence was less than 11 points, there was no way you could understand anything if the system didn't help to raise it to your game score.

Most people in Arthur probably couldn't understand this issue. Only a Legendary level fighter like Antonya would be able to see it.

"Mentor, I can accept that I'm not actually this smart. But is there a way to salvage this situation?" Zhao Xu had no choice but to acknowledge that he wasn't really at 16 points of Intelligence.

"Of course there's a way," said Antonya, and she laughed, as if she was happy to hear Zhao Xu admit that he was dumb.

"Then let me ask you. Why do you need to understand it?"

"If I don't understand it, how am I supposed to copy it onto my memory?" Zhao Xu was even more confused.

"If you know that a sword is coming your way, you just need to avoid it. Why bother about where it's coming from?"

Zhao Xu was suddenly shocked and could feel that he was approaching an answer, but he was like someone who was just learning how to swim and never stuck a leg out to actually start swimming.

When she saw how Zhao Xu was frowning, Antonya knew exactly what problem he was facing.

"If you're in a river, you don't have to know how to swim to cross it. You could take a boat too."

When she saw that Zhao Xu still didn't get it, she had to just tell him more directly, "Just write them out and go along with the waves."

Go with the flow!

Zhao Xu immediately understood and hurriedly turned the Encyclopedia of Cantrips back to the first page.

He forgot all the additional text inside.

He focused his heart on only the structure of the spell.

The entire structure immediately started taking shape like it was a living creature.

Zhao Xu's heart started dancing along with the various strokes.

Read Magic was successfully copied.

Detect Magic was successfully copied.

Dancing Lights was also successfully copied

...

Prestidigitation was copied too.

Eventually, all 19 cantrips were successfully copied into the depths of his heart, and they were like mysterious paintings glowing inside of him.

If there was someone else around, he would be shocked that someone could actually copy 19 cantrips in one shot!

9 s

Chapter 26: Enlightened Spellcaster

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

As Zhao Xu sawt the incantations of those cantrips floating about in his mind, he finally understood the feeling martial artists must have gone through when they trained hard for ten years and were finally ready to come out of the mountains.

He was no longer a fragile ordinary person, but someone with supernatural powers.

He didn't need weapons; a simple Ray of Frost was all he needed to severely injure an ordinary person with an average constitution.

Even though this was only in the game, it didn't matter because, after a year, this would become a real power he had.

Zhao Xu looked at the various descriptions of the spells and felt like he was a superhuman.

Anything lighter than two kilograms, he could lift using Mage Hand.

One Touch of Fatigue could make an opponent with no saving throws enter a state of exhaustion.

One Prestidigitation was enough to make him seem like a super magical being already.

Technology could sort of recreate some of the things that cantrips were capable of, but the spells at a higher level were completely beyond what human technology could do.

But everything that Zhao Xu would eventually be able to do didn't require him to rely on any external forces.

That meant that even if you put him into an apocalyptic era where resources were scarce, as long as he knew the relevant spells, he could create his own resources and live well.

Other character classes had to forage for food and look for water sources if they were thrown into a forest, but wizards could use spells to create actual food and have a good meal before moving on.

And that's why wizards were so highly revered and treated as legends.

Zhao Xu finally, truly relaxed. He had been able to copy spells and he had gotten over the part where countless wizards got stuck. He wasn't worried about the remaining Level 1 spells because he would just do the same thing as before.

No, but wait.

He had copied all these spells, but what about his spell slots?

Level 1 Wizards had to rest for 8 hours to cast three cantrips and one Level 1 spell.

And because of his Intelligence modifier, he had one more slot for a Level 1 spell. He had to level up in order to expend his spell slots for Level 2 and 3 spells.

So now he was like someone who had finally managed to master shooting, only to find that he didn't really have a lot of bullets.

"Mentor, what about my spell slots?" Zhao Xu didn't want to make any mistakes here, so he quickly asked for help.

"What spell slots?"

"My Level 1 Wizard spell slots."

"Are you a Level 1 Wizard?" Antonya shot back.

Zhao Xu was at a loss for words. That made sense. He was the one who had been too distracted with the joy of being able to learn cantrips.

"Don't worry, once you have completed all the requirements to become a Level 1 Wizard and you go through a ceremony, you will get your spell slots."

Zhao Xu just nodded awkwardly after hearing this.

The good part was that, even though he didn't actually have 16 points of intelligence, the system would still go according to these points and allocate the correct number of spell slots to him.

But after Zhao Xu calmed down and his thoughts sharpened again, he immediately realized that something was not quite right.

Over the past week, countless wizard apprentices had been stuck at copying cantrips.

There were even players who had successfully copied one but got stuck for a long time at the second one because he didn't know how he managed to do the first one in the first place.

Getting lucky once didn't mean anything. You could only prove that a player had truly grasped the spells after he had managed to copy all 19 cantrips in succession.

And that was why Zhao Xu's little heart couldn't help feeling smug after he had actually copied all the cantrips in one shot.

He was clearly much more amazing than almost all the other wizard players.

So here was the problem.

After so many centuries, countless wizards had spent so much time and effort researching and studying spells, so why hadn't anyone thought of doing it this way?

Antonya had just said two seemingly simple sentences to him, but it was like someone who could point out where to place your next pawn on the Go board, and that came from great experience and knowledge in this area.

But the next step was just one step and not how to win the entire game.

After so many centuries, surely someone would have stumbled upon this and end up doing the same thing in the same situation.

They might not have realized why, but they would achieve their aim.

So why hadn't anyone just used this method directly?

Antonya just walked over with light footsteps as she looked at how Zhao Xu seemed to be very confused. "Are you wondering why others have not been able to do this?"

Zhao Xu felt his heart shudder. He didn't think someone would be able to read his thoughts so clearly.

But then again, Antonya's Intelligence score was more than 50 points, so if she couldn't catch this, he would get suspicious too.

"That's why it's really troublesome to teach you players, because after you log off and compare notes, all of you would notice several areas that don't match up. Sometimes it takes so much effort just to fool you guys."

"Forget it, I'll just explain it to you. Copying spells by going with the flow is a special ability that only those with Enlightened Spellcaster can do."

After Zhao Xu heard this, he immediately made a few guesses in his heart.

So he wasn't the amazing one. It was his Enlightened Spellcaster ability that was amazing.

Antonya saw that Zhao Xu had begun to understand her, so she continued explaining.

"Any apprentice who has gone through some years of study would definitely grasp cantrips easily. So you players get stuck because you're on this super express route."

"The special fact that Enlightened Spellcaster enables one to copy spells without truly grasping them was something that many wizards only noticed when they reached higher levels and ran into spells that they couldn't understand easily."

Zhao Xu found this strange. "Mentor, so does that mean that everything you said doesn't work on copying spells into spellbooks?"

"For copying into a spellbook, if you just go with the flow, it won't flow anymore because you keep pausing to copy. Once the flow is broken, you wouldn't be able to keep copying. But because those with Enlightened Spellcaster copy the spells onto the depths of their hearts, there wouldn't be a problem of broken flow anymore."

Zhao Xu was finally enlightened. For those who had to copy into a spellbook, the flow would be broken the moment they lifted their pen off the paper.

So they had to fully grasp the spell and write on without pausing at all.

But what happened to him earlier was that he copied one section after taking it apart, then took apart another section before copying, and his Enlightened Spellcaster ability joined them together. So the difficulty in making everything flow was different for him.

"So why doesn't anyone publicize this ability?" asked Zhao Xu puzzledly.

This method was so amazing, it could create miracles on the spot.

And within Arthur, as long as their Intelligence was high enough, you could produce countless wizards.

And if he recommended this method to other players, he was sure that even his influence on earth would suddenly surge.

"Hoho, those who use this method will lead to the death of wizards," said Antonya.

Zhao Xu's face nearly drained of all color. "You're exaggerating, right?"

"If you could just copy spells without grasping them, then you wouldn't be motivated to study anymore. Any study and development of spells would come to a stop as well. Besides, even if you could cast a Level 9 spell, you would never be able to reach Legendary stage."

"One day, all spells would disappear because nobody would bother to understand them anymore."

So that was why.

Zhao Xu felt like his heart had been dealt a great blow.

What he just did was like a student copying answers and getting the question right without knowing how or why.

If every student made it through school by just copying answers, eventually nobody would know anything in that area and it would completely vanish.

For students, copying answers just helped them to complete their homework. For wizards, copying answers was like striking the lottery.

To put it in today's terms, this was like a chance to cheat at college entrance exams without the risk of getting caught at all.

So only a few people must know about this cheat and it couldn't be publicized widely.

Even if there were wizards who loved doing research, they would be less powerful than those who cheated, so all the resources would end up with those people who cheated and eventually drive out all the honest people.

Zhao Xu suddenly felt that the words Enlightened Spellcaster on his character stats were a little dangerous.

3 s

Chapter 27: Wizard Level Progress

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

If the Enlightened Spellcaster that Zhao Xu had in his stats was publicized, then it would cause a surge in the number of players wanting to become wizards.

Just this process of copying spells had stumped most of the players. Otherwise, his classmates would have recommended he become a wizard in his previous life.

There was nothing in Arthur that the native characters had and the players couldn't have. This was especially apparent after everyone on Earth transmigrated and they were put on the same playing field. One could do whatever the person next to him or her could.

Since Antonya was able to pass on this Enlightened Spellcaster ability to him, he was able to pass it to someone else, too.

This meant that Zhao Xu had the key to passing around a new battle strategy.

Zhao Xu found it hard to imagine that a native of Arthur would be so unbothered about a player like him.

Arthur was a place the people of Arthur had to protect. These players from Earth had no obligation to do that.

If this ability was given to another player who didn't know anything about the future transmigration, they might sell it off for a few hundred or a thousand bucks.

"Mentor, why do you trust me so much?" asked Zhao Xu slowly.

"No particular reason."

Zhao Xu was a little taken aback by her response.

"Just kidding. Your ability isn't complete, so there's no way you can pass it to others." Antonya smiled brightly.

Zhao Xu suddenly realized that this was what Antonya meant when she said he hadn't fully grasped this ability.

But in one year, he would be able to truly grasp it because of the transmigration, and he would become a hidden danger.

"Actually, you don't need to worry so much. There are plenty of other things that disrupt the balance," said Antonya as she looked at him and raised one of the arms hidden by her wizard robe to point towards Zhao Xu.

She wasn't like other wizards at all-she had no incantations and no gestures.

She was just pointing at him to cast a spell.

A golden beam of light flashed immediately.

Zhao Xu didn't even have time to duck. When the light passed, he noticed something new on his desk.

There were more than 10,000 gold pieces stacked up neatly in front of Zhao Xu.

There was the faint imprint of the business and fortune goddess on each gold piece, which meant that these were real gold pieces.

"That spell was Wish, and here are 25,000 gold pieces," said Antonya in a quiet voice.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu had never seen so many gold pieces at one time, so he held his breath in shock.

"That's what it takes to really break the balance, understand?"

Zhao Xu looked up at Antonya. Casting Wish came with a price-it would reduce experience points, and if one used it too much, one would go down in level.

He hadn't thought that Antonya would just create these gold pieces out of nowhere.

"You didn't have to pay the price for doing this?" asked Zhao Xu in disbelief when he considered this possibility.

"Of course I didn't. I wouldn't risk dropping a level to cast Wish just to show off in front of a kid like you."

"But that's crazy," Zhao Xu nearly exclaimed. So many people worked hard day and night but would still never earn the 225 kilograms of gold that was now sitting in front of his eyes.

This was a quarter of a ton, not four grams.

If this happened on Earth, it would be like a Level 9 spell creating a pile of gold worth eighty million dollars out of nowhere.

If she could continue casting this spell like that, without paying any price for it, then she could make the entire financial world collapse.

"Don't think so much about it. There aren't many wizards who can grasp this ability." Antonya looked deeply into Zhao Xu's eyes.

The gold pieces on the table were instantly cleared away into Antonya's bag.

"I shouldn't have told you all this so early, but I can see that you have a different destiny ahead of you, so I believe you can be trusted."

Zhao Xu sat there quietly.

When these Legendary Wizards said they could see his destiny, they weren't just saying it for fun. They could really see it.

Perhaps Antonya had already realized that Earthlings like Zhao Xu would eventually transmigrate into Arthur.

Zhao Xu knew that there was no use in asking for evidence. She had already told him everything she could.

No other player would be able to hear a prophecy as clear as this.

Zhao Xu lowered his head again. "Mentor, what do I learn next?"

After seeing what wizards would be capable of in the future, Zhao Xu's heart was filled with nothing else but these amazing abilities.

"Hmm?" Antonya made a soft and slightly surprised sound.

"I suddenly have something to attend to, so I have to leave now. You can rest first. Come back tomorrow."

With that, Antonya disappeared in a flash, as if she had never been there in the first place.

Zhao Xu didn't expect her to leave just like that. He had no choice but to pick up the Compendium of Level 1 Spells from the side and look through the explanations on the spells written inside.

He had to choose a few Level 1 spells from here, and those would be his real battle abilities after he walked out of this floating city.

Since Antonya wasn't around to watch him, nobody was able to provide him with an actual spell to copy, so he had to just look through the summaries and get a vague understanding of the spells.

After nearly two hours, all the lectures for the day would be over, so Zhao Xu had no choice but to log off and wait until the next day to tell Antonya which Level 1 Spells he wanted.

"Xu, what's the matter? You're actually not playing the game."

After spending some time downstairs with his girlfriend, Zhang Qi returned to the dorms and was extremely surprised to see that Zhao Xu wasn't logged in and was just reading quietly by himself.

"Just resting for a while." Now that Zhao Xu was no longer worried that he couldn't become a wizard, he started to spend some time doing other things.

"Xu, do you want to join our class union?" Zhang Qi quickly ran over to ask.

"You guys have enough to pay for the security deposit?" replied Zhao Xu in shock.

One didn't need approval or anything like that to set up a union in Arthur. One just needed to leave a security deposit with the head of the town where the union would be started.

After that, one could get people to join and start receiving missions.

But few players could afford to come up with the security deposit.

"Wow, I didn't expect your information to be so updated," said Zhang Qi in surprise. "Of course we don't have enough money. But players can set up a union in name only. We just can't take on missions."

"The union is set up by that Huang Daqiang. He's doing it to catch the attention of pretty girls from our class," explained Zhang Qi.

Huang Daqiang was considered one of the big shots in their class. He was quite well-to-do, and there were a number of students who were willing to do work for him.

Eventually, Huang Daqiang would do several things as chairman of this union that would anger his classmates so that they would lose faith in him and kick him out. After that, he would always go up against their class union.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu was also irritated by Huang Daqiang, and that was why he purposely started playing Arthur. He was waiting to help contribute to his class union once the union battles started.

"I can't; I'm still stuck at the Magic Academy."

Now that Zhao Xu had a new target, he wasn't interested in making trouble for Huang Daqiang, so he refused Zhang Qi's offer politely.

It was hard enough to stay alive, much less fight for pride. Besides, the class union was still headed by Huang Daqiang just then.

"Xu, you really should listen to me and switch character classes. Two-thirds of the wizards on the forums have given up on training and switched to something else already.

"Even our class genius, Li Tiange, purposely became a wizard because his goddess, Lulu, kept saying how hard it was to become a wizard. But in the end, he couldn't copy any cantrips today and decided to give it up. None of our schoolmates who chose to be wizards have been successful in copying those cantrips."

Zhao Xu was a little surprised to hear that some of these things happened when the game first started. Li Tiange was one of the top students in the school.

He had really underestimated how difficult it had been to become a wizard when the servers opened.

"So, Xu, what stage are you at now?"

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Chapter 28: Hall of Awakening

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Zhao Xu didn't tell Zhang Qi much.

He didn't tell Zhang Qi that he had already finished copying all the cantrips, meaning that he could be considered as one of the fastest among the wizard players.

Zhang Qi had a loose mouth, so if he found out how great of a wizard Zhao Xu was, he would make sure that the entire class found out so he could show his friend off.

The only thing that Zhao Xu did was pat Zhang Qi on the shoulders and tell him to play seriously.

Revival Stones were like school fees that the players paid to Arthur to learn their lessons, so, no matter how idealistic Zhao Xu was, he knew that Zhang Qi had to pay these stones each time he had to be revived.

The next day, Zhao Xu logged into the game and Antonya came promptly just like before.

It was as if her sudden disappearance the day before was just a special occurance.

By this time, Zhao Xu had already chosen three Level 1 spells: Protection from Evil, Color Spray, and Magic Missile.

When Antonya saw Zhao Xu's selection, she laughed quietly. "These are pretty good ones. You players have quite a keen eye."

That was right – cantrips and Level 1 spells were all spells that the players had to choose to learn, so there was already a lot of discussion about them online.

Nobody was too worried about cantrips since wizards had to learn them all, but you could only learn three Level 1 spells for free, and after you finished learning those three, you could learn more depending on how high your Intelligence modifier score was.

As for how to get a Level 2 spell in the future, that would depend on the individual wizard.

As a result, Level 1 spells in Arthur were no longer considered classified information, but from Level 2 onward, the list of spells described in the forums would be very brief and vague. There were even those where players only kind of knew the name of a spell but didn't know what it could do at all.

Analyzing the strength and power of various cantrips and Level 1 spells was the primary interest of many wizards who had not been able to copy cantrips.

Judging from the expression on Antonya's face, it meant that these spells, recognized as the most powerful by all the players in the forum that Zhao Xu had visited, were pretty good ones.

"I have the scrolls for all these Level 1 spells, you can just copy directly from them."

Antonya made three scrolls appear out of nowhere and passed them to him.

Zhao Xu took the scrolls from her and touched them. They were all made from high-grade parchment, the same as the ones he had come across in his previous life.

Each scroll was 20 centimeters by 30 centimeters, and the two ends of the scroll were held stiff by two long, thin rods and rolled inwards, making them look like those imperial edicts he saw in TV dramas about ancient China. But these scrolls were all written in magic text, and once the scroll was used to cast a spell, all the text on the scroll would disappear without a trace.

One scroll could be used to copy one spell or several, with a maximum of six.

"Mentor, why did you give me scrolls to copy from and not a spellbook?" Zhao Xu asked in puzzlement.

Scrolls were backup spell slots of sorts. Players could use scrolls to cast spells without using up a spell slot.

In theory, if a player had a huge number of scrolls, then he was like a walking cannon that could just keep firing indefinitely.

He wouldn't be like a novice wizard who could be taken out with just one attack.

But wizards could just copy spells from spellbooks and didn't need to copy them from scrolls.

Even though one Level 1 scroll only cost 25 gold pieces and was, therefore, cheaper than the cost of copying a spell, it wasn't as cheap as a spellbook that was already there and free of charge.

"It's just a bit of money anyway. It's much less effort to use these scrolls rather than to go round looking for a spellbook just to lend you," explained Antonya casually.

Zhao Xu had no choice but to accept this explanation.

The rich and powerful could call the shots. Besides, this was the woman who could create 25,000 gold pieces out of thin air.

"Before you start copying these scrolls, let me give you a piece of advice."

Zhao Xu hurriedly looked up. Instructions from a Legendary Wizard was like getting the dean to teach undergraduates a foundation class.

"There are no useless spells, only useless wizards."

"That's absolute nonsense, so don't bother remembering that."

Zhao Xu was still trying to understand the first sentence when he was shocked by the next thing she said.

He wanted to say that this was two pieces of advice, but then he started thinking about the deeper meaning of Antonya's words.

"There are some spells that are developed by trashy wizards to take up space and they're very weak spells. So as a wizard, we have to choose from the immense number of spells and find the ones that are most powerful and most suitable for our personal style."

Zhao Xu could only nod at her words and return to his desk. After he took the potion he needed to increase his energy levels, he started copying the spells just like how he copied the cantrips.

While he was able to copy all the cantrips in one shot, Level 1 spells needed to be properly studied for a full 24 hours to avoid the risk of an accident happening while copying the spell, so everyone had to abide by this system.

It had already been two days since the first wizard had passed his training course and many people had heard his story by now.

He was pretty much a prodigy and had a photographic memory.

But even so, just for the sake of being the first to complete the training, he gave up the additional Level 1 spell that he could have gotten because of his Intelligence modifier score.

Zhao Xu wasn't going for speed now. To him, moving along steadily was more important.

Nobody knew that the training schools were the safest place in Arthur.

He wished he could just stay here forever.

The feat awarded to a Level 1 character wasn't a prerequisite for the level, so the players weren't in a hurry to confirm their feats, and would decide according to the needs of the adventures they went through later.

But Zhao Xu was different. If he hadn't finished learning four powerful feats, he wasn't stepping out of Mystra.

For the next week, Zhao Xu spent each day going through the big task of copying Level 1 spells.

But after he had finished copying, he didn't see any special effects on his character stats.

Zhao Xu even specially asked Antonya for insider news and confirmed that even wizards who researched magic might not see anything special happening, never mind those who were just copying other people's spells.

In the time he took to copy spells, out of the genius players who had chosen to become wizards, a second and third person finished their training too.

In the second week since the game had started, Zhao Xu had finished learning the free Level 1 spells he had.

At that point, the number of Level 1 Wizards had just passed the 100 mark.

Zhao Xu had 3 Intelligence modifier points, so the Wizard Association would give him three more Level 1 spells for free.

This time, he asked for Antonya's opinion on which ones to copy, and she suggested Mage Armor, Ray of Enfeeblement, and Benign Transposition.

The first two were popular ones and were easy to explain, but the last one was a hidden spell.

That meant that this sort of spell wasn't in the public list of spells that the players could choose from. Only people like Zhao Xu, who had a private mentor, could learn it.

According to Antonya, under certain circumstances, this spell could make two people exchange positions.

Finally, the list of spells in Zhao Xu's mind stabilized. Or at least this list wasn't going to change anymore until he had the money to copy some more or he leveled up.

Cantrips: Resistance, Acid Splash, Detect Poison, Detect Magic, Read Magic, Daze, Dancing Lights, Flare, Light, Ray of Frost, Ghost Sound, Disrupt Undead, Touch of Fatigue, Mage Hand, Mending, Message, Open/Close, Arcane Mark, Prestidigitation.

Level 1 Spells: Protection from Evil, Color Spray, Magic Missile, Mage Armor, Ray of Enfeeblement, Benign Transposition.

He was only a Level 1 Wizard and he already knew 25 spells. It was no wonder a Wizard was difficult to fight.

"Are you ready?" asked Antonya after she saw that the words on her last Benign Transposition scroll had completely faded.

"Ready for what?" Zhao Xu was confused.

"To officially become a Wizard."

All the exhaustion and numbness Zhao Xu had felt over the last week instantly disappeared. The time had finally come.

"Let's go then, I don't have anything to pack."

Zhao Xu hurriedly stood up. He was all alone and a pauper with absolutely nothing except himself.

Even his spellbook, the one treasured item all wizards had, was intangible, written into his heart instead of on paper.

He saw that Antonya didn't turn to open the door, so he thought she was waiting for him to make a move first, and he quickly walked over to open the door.

Suddenly, Antonya moved with a flash.

In an instant, Antonya appeared in front of Zhao Xu, then a fair arm shot out from her wizard robe and grabbed Zhao Xu by the collar.

Level 4 spell – Dimension Door!

It was a spell that could teleport within a certain distance with just incantations and without any use of gestures. His Benign Transposition was the same type of spell, just three times weaker.

But Zhao Xu didn't have much time to think. He just felt that his collar had been grabbed and a force pulled on him hard.

Zhao Xu wasn't unfamiliar with the feeling. It was the same thing he felt when he went through the Transportation Gate.

He felt that he could resist the effect this sort of spell had on him.

But the caster of the spell was his mentor. If she wanted to kill him, she didn't have to use such complicated methods. She just needed to throw a ball of fire at him and Zhao Xu wouldn't stand a chance.

So Zhao Xu gave up any thought of resisting and just went along with the spell.

If he was going to cling onto a pillar of support, then he'd better hang on tightly and not second guess himself.

In that instant, the two of them turned into a flash of white light and disappeared from the ordinary-looking room within the floating city.

When Zhao Xu awoke from his daze:

He realized that he was standing in a hall the size of a theater.

There was a silver throne gleaming brightly in front of him.

The throne was surrounded by magic text carved into it. Even though Zhao Xu had studied magic for several days now, he couldn't understand a single word of it.

At the back of the hall were rows of seats arranged on an incline. If the room wasn't bright and spacious, Zhao Xu would have thought he had come to some luxurious cinema of sorts.

The soft chairs on the steps were filled with people, and the front half of the hall was fully occupied.

"Mentor, what is this...?"

"The Awakening of Wizards," explained Antonya.

"All of Mystra and its floating cities are protected by Legendary Spells to keep out any outsiders. If your identities weren't entered into the spell, then you novice wizards can forget about casting spells successfully in Mystra."

"So in other towns, their awakening ceremonies are very simple, and they just awaken novices whenever they arrive. But because, Mystra has to actually make edits to the mythals guarding the town, we can only hold this Awakening of Wizards ceremony once a month."

Zhao Xu finally figured it out. Everyone seated here was the total number of wizards Mystra produced in a month.

He gave a quick count and there were probably close to a thousand people here. That was crazy for a single month.

"Mentor, this floating city of yours can really produce a lot of wizards," said Zhao Xu as a compliment.

"It's not mine, it's ours," corrected Antonya. "Normally we don't have so many, but the wizard players were all rushing to make it for this round, so that's why there are so many."

Zhao Xu suddenly remembered that he had checked the information on the first ten wizards to appear on the forums, and absolutely none of them were from this city of magic, Mystra.

Logically speaking, the players with the best gifting for learning magic would be assigned to Mystra, besides someone like him who went through the back door.

Now he knew that the players in Mystra had to wait for a month for the change in the mythals, so there was no point in going so fast.

Zhao Xu had also noticed that there were many novice wizards murmuring among themselves about these two guests who appeared from nowhere while waiting for their turn to go through the awakening ceremony.

Everyone else had walked there. They didn't make a big show of teleporting themselves.

They had gone overboard in trying to look different from the rest.

Based on the players' clothes, Zhao Xu could guess that the people on the left side of the hall were from Earth.

Suddenly, his eyes widened

He spotted a calm, serious-looking young lady seated in the first row.

Wang Ningwei!

When the transmigration to Arthur happened, she was one of the highest-level Wizards among the players, so she also became one of the top leaders among Earth Powers.

So she had trained in Mystra, in The Arcane Gate in this floating city...

A few years after the transmigration, Arthur would face a great attack from the Abyss and Hell. So the Earth Powers sent a group of ambassadors to visit the Northern Alliance in hope that the Northern Alliance could help in protecting fellow citizens from Earth.

Zhao Xu was a guard in the Northern Alliance at that time. And because of him, his family was within the protected area, sent to live in a town far from the front lines. But. in the end, the Black Dragon made a surprise attack while Zhao Xu was out on a mission.

That was also the first time he had the chance to meet this genius lady.

But back then, he was just a guard for the Northern Alliance's headquarters and was at best a slightly higher level guard than ordinary soldiers.

On the other hand, the prominence of someone leading the transmigrated earthlings, and on top of that, her status as a high-level wizard was enough for the leaders in the north to treat her as an important guest.

Right now, Wang Ningwei didn't have the incredible presence she come to exude after long experience. She was just an ordinary player waiting for her turn to go up on stage to be awakened.

Zhao Xu suddenly remembered a rumor he had heard in his previous life. Wang Ningwei became a Level 1 Wizard only after 20 days, which eventually became a point of consolation for many new wizard players.

Now he knew why it took her so long to hit Level 1.

But, after counting, the game servers had only opened 15 days ago. Where did the additional 5 days come from?

Could the rumor be trying to exaggerate how amazing Wang Ningwei had become despite taking such a long time, so they purposely lengthened the duration?

After all, 15 days was enough to produce more than 100 wizards.

"Mentor, when was the last time you guys did this?" asked Zhao Xu in a low voice.

"25 days ago," replied Antonya.

"Didn't you say it's once a month?"

"I eat three meals a day, but sometimes I eat two. Why not?"

Zhao Xu was annoyed by Antonya's sarcastic response and said, "Mentor, even an outsider like me knows that changing a Legendary Spell shouldn't be taken lightly."

This was a given. Legendary spells were difficult to change.

"Oh, you're asking why, huh?" Antonya seemed to finally grasp what Zhao Xu was driving at.

But Zhao Xu knew she had done this on purpose.

"It's very simple. Because you've finished learning six Level 1 spells, they moved the awakening ceremony forward to today."

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Chapter 29: Elderly Wizard

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

If there weren't a lot of people staring at them from their seats, Zhao Xu wouldn't be able to keep from shouting.

After calming himself down, he figured that Antonya was probably joking with him.

There was a possibility that the sudden emergency she had to attend to the week before had something to do with this.

"Don't joke with me, Mentor." Zhao Xu made a face.

"I'm not kidding around. Actually, as long as there are enough Legendary Wizards to go around, we can change the spell easily. The last thing The Final Scroll lacks is Legendary Wizards, so as long as someone is willing to make the effort, headquarters won't have any objections."

"Forget once a month. You could do this once a day and it'd be just fine."

Even though Zhao Xu knew that he was now part of a huge and powerful group, he still gasped when she said that.

A Level 17 Wizard who could cast Level 9 spells could be a king, and if he wanted to, he could pull an army together and rule over these people.

Possible or impossible didn't matter to someone so powerful.

For a Level 21 or higher Legendary Wizard, the problems that they had to face every day were things as incredible as how to save the world.

When he thought about these things, Zhao Xu couldn't help but look a little sympathetically at the corner where Wang Ningwei was seated.

The fact that these players could sit here and wait to be awakened meant that in his previous life, they had all been delayed for five days longer for nothing, and some of them might have been delayed longer.

For all he knew, some of them had the hope of getting the honor and fame of being the first one to complete Wizard training at the Magic Academy.

But, unfortunately for them, they were in Mystra. For the past few centuries, the best and most talented wizard apprentices were all sent to this place.

No matter how much of a genius you were, you had to follow their rules here.

Zhao Xu's gaze slowly swept across the crowd and he looked at all the apprentices among the natives of Arthur.

He was a little surprised, and he asked, "Mentor, is there a way to use money to increase one's talent for becoming a wizard?"

Antonya followed Zhao Xu's gaze and glanced for a moment in that direction. "You've gotten the cause and effect the wrong way round."

"Let me ask you. If you were a leader or perhaps a king, would you prefer to send your own children to become a Wizard or a Fighter?"

Zhao Xu fell silent for some time.

All those apprentices among the natives of Arthur were wearing the same apprentice robe that everyone had and wore the same insignia as himself on their chest.

But because Zhao Xu had worked as a guard before, his eyes were exceptionally sharp when looking at these people.

He could tell immediately that several of these wizard apprentices were from aristocratic families.

The sheer number of them was strange enough that he couldn't resist asking about it.

"The most direct way of increasing one's talent for becoming a wizard is to increase the Intelligence Ability Score."

"But among the people over there, the number who could increase their Intelligence points by reading the Tome of Clear Thought or by getting Wish cast on them would be no more than five."

Zhao Xu turned back to look at Antonya.

Even aristocrats didn't enjoy the privilege of getting Wish cast on them lightly, but this lady in front of him had performed it for him just to show him what it could do.

If all these other players were present, Zhao Xu would have definitely remarked, "The rich happily hoard everything for themselves and become richer, while the poor are left to freeze and die along the roadside."

"Don't about it too much. I just showed it to you once. The maximum number of points you can add at any one time is 5 points, and not everyone can easily cast Wish five times in a row either.

"If wizards want to increase their Intelligence scores by the maximum of 5 points, then most of them do it by reading a 5 Tome of Clear Thought.

"If someday you actually manage to save up 135,000 gold pieces, I'll sell you one of those. You can't get that in the open market."

Zhao Xu mumbled to himself quietly. He wasn't going to be so greedy. He would be happy with just an additional two or three points of Intelligence.

He couldn't imagine casting Wish five times in a row.

But 135,000 gold pieces wasn't much better. Even if he could ship in silver from Earth in exchange for them, he would need million.

If he was going by the gold exchange rate, then he would need at least million.

In his previous life, most players struggled along the poverty line.

All of a sudden, the half-closed gate in front of him was gently pushed open by someone on the other side.

An elderly wizard who looked like he was nearly 80 years old slowly walked in, leaning on a walking stick that was nearly one meter high.

The moment everyone heard the sound of the door opening, all the wizard apprentices in the large hall quickly sat up straight in their seats and made sure they looked like they were all as prim and proper as possible.

When he saw this elderly man who looked like Gandalf, Zhao Xu felt a deep respect in his heart.

In most fantasy novels, wizards were usually more powerful the older they were, not counting the young lady next to him, that is.

"Mentor, that golden walking stick he has looks pretty cool. When I went for the lectures, I saw that many wizards have a walking stick. Do I get one after I officially become a wizard too?"

Antonya glanced at Zhao Xu.

"Sometimes you seem to know a lot, and then sometimes it seems like you know nothing at all. That's a Greater Quicken Metamagic Rod, and it will quicken your spells thrice a day."

Zhao Xu felt that he had been dealt several blows today. The moment he heard the word 'quicken', he knew it was valuable for battle. So he quickly asked another question, "How much does it cost?"

"170,000 gold pieces."

"How much?!" Zhao Xu thought he had heard her wrong.

"You heard right. That is the most expensive among metamagic items."

Zhao Xu had to fight to keep his agitated noises down.

"I knew it. The items that wizards use aren't measured in how many gold pieces are required. It's how many thousand gold pieces are required."

Since it was so expensive, it was impossible for anybody to have come across it within their first year of playing, and that's why he didn't know what it was.

Zhao Xu had only come across magic wands before. Those things were like scrolls and weren't even 30 centimeters long. He didn't know about something he had never heard of or seen before.

"Hmm?"

Zhao Xu suddenly sensed that the elderly wizard was slowly walking toward him, and there was a middle-aged wizard behind him too with a respectful expression on his face.

Zhao Xu was standing in the space between the stage itself and the seats. He turned around and realized that there wasn't anybody else standing behind him.

The wizards were definitely headed for himself and Antonya.

Were they going to chase them out?

Zhao Xu imagined that the elderly wizard was going to then realize that Antonya was a novice wizard and that everything so far had just been a joke on him, including the gold that appeared before him the day before by using the Wish spell. It was actually just some illusion spell.

But just as Zhao Xu's mind was happily putting a sordid drama together, he realized that even though that elderly wizard was moving very slowly, he was still coming closer to them, and Antonya didn't move an inch.

She didn't have any consideration for how old this wizard coming toward them was.

Then, just when the elderly wizard was only about half a meter away, he suddenly stopped.

The entire hall of seated wizard apprentices was focused on this movement, regardless of how proud they might have been in their hearts.

Their attention was captured by this elderly wizard who was about to conduct the ceremony for them.

"Mentor, you're as elegant as ever." The elderly wizard bowed his head and his white beard brushed the floor.

"Couldn't you use a Dimension Door or Dimension Hop to get here?" remarked Antonya.

"Mentor, spell slots are every wizard's trump card. It's a waste to use a spell just to walk a few steps," replied the elderly wizard politely.

"Hmph. Hurry up and get everything arranged, I don't have much time."

The elderly wizard's eyes then fell upon Zhao Xu. "Mentor, the people you pick are always outstanding."

Zhao Xu didn't know if he was seeing things, but he could see a particular sort of emotion coming from the old man's gleaming eyes.

"Young man, you can just sit on the Arcane Throne in front."

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Chapter 30: Female Wizard

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

After Zhao Xu heard those words, he turned around to look at Antonya, wide-eyed.

But she still looked as mysterious as ever under her cloak and didn't seem to object.

Zhao Xu still felt something amiss about this elderly wizard, but he didn't hesitate for long, just started walking forward.

All the other apprentices in the hall were still seated properly in their chairs, and they kept looking at Zhao Xu as if he was getting food before the rest of them.

Even the most competitive players would have angrily deleted their accounts and left the game after being stuck in Arthur's wizard training for two weeks. The players who remained and made it through were the ones who had the most perseverance, so they didn't lack patience at all.

But there were many players who couldn't help grumbling. Didn't the company say that Arthur was a game with no in-game items for purchase? And that it was wholly dependent on individuals' performance?

So how could an ordinary-looking guy like Zhao Xu. who didn't exude any aura at all, receive special treatment? Why was he allowed onstage without having to say anything?

Whereas the apprentices native to Arthur were all silently analyzing, wondering where this young man could have come from.

Two weeks ago, they had heard about how a group of adventurers would be projected into Arthur from a different universe called Earth. Many of the wizard apprentices from aristocratic families would have received this information.

Even though they didn't set foot outside of the floating city, they had their own private channels of communication.

On top of that, over the past ten-odd days of interaction, they knew even more about these people who called themselves 'players'. They watched as these players swiftly completed wizard training and managed to reach a stage that they had only achieved after a year or more of hard work.

Zhao Xu's face turned a little red because of all the people staring at him. He finally understood how the hat sorting scene in Harry Potter must have felt like.

Finally, Zhao Xu slowly made it up the stage.

His gaze fell upon the silver chair in front of him, which the old wizard had called the Arcane Throne.

The stage floor wasn't flat and the stone surface wasn't carpeted, so the various carved symbols carried signs of wear and tear.

There were many wizard apprentices like him in Mystra. After persevering through the tough training course, they would finally be able to step onto this stage and begin their own personal adventure.

When Zhao Xu walked up to the throne, he realized that this throne was already covered in a web of scratches.

He had no idea how much impact from spells this throne had taken.

Then his eyes suddenly widened even further.

This throne's backrest alone was already the height of two people, and the entire thing was made from mithral.

Zhao Xu's brain started racing again immediately. Mithral sold for at least 1,000 gold pieces for every 500 grams, and this throne had to weigh more than a ton.

Did that mean this throne alone was worth more than 2 million gold pieces?

It might be worth even more than that by now.

That's all it took for one to become nouveau riche.

Zhao Xu laughed a little. His world had expanded and now he had finally touched something that was worth more than a million gold pieces.

Just like that 12 Legendary Headband of Intellect that was constantly hidden under the hood of Antonya's cloak, hidden from view just like her face.

"Don't be dumb and stop calculating how much this thing is worth. Hurry up and sit on it. I still have to bring you out to witness wizards battling later."

Zhao Xu's body went numb as Antonya's voice suddenly rang out within his own head.

But he managed to stay calm and not spin around to look directly at Antonya.

Even though he had never tried this, Zhao Xu focused his attention on the halo around his character stats and then started talking to himself like some lunatic, "Mentor, can you hear me talk to you?"

"Of course. This is a Level 5 spell, Telepathic Bond, so two-way communication is possible."

Zhao Xu calmed himself down and turned around to plop down on the Arcane Throne.

He looked down and met the eyes of several of the apprentices seated below the stage and he felt an illusion of looking down at his subordinates.

Zhao Xu could feel the coldness of the metal on his butt, and he stretched a hand out to touch the armrest of the throne.

"This throne belonged to an ancient king of arcane magic, King Earnest. We later brought it over to be used as a medium for the awakening ceremony. This throne can increase the success rate of the awakening ceremony to more than 80%."

"Mentor, are you saying that the success rate of awakening isn't 100%?"

"Have you ever seen anything that's always 100% successful?"

Zhao Xu couldn't help but curse about how hearsay might be the death of him.

In his previous life when everyone was happily bragging to one another about the things they did after they all moved into Arthur, nobody ever told him about anything like that.

If it wasn't 100% successful, wasn't that just like trolling them?

Why hadn't anyone mentioned this in the forums over the past few days?

But before Zhao Xu could think any further along these lines.

A bright beam of light streamed down from above his head, and the scattered rainbow halo of light shone on his entire body.

The light flowed to the floor like water, following the markings of the symbols on the floor.

Everyone watching from below the stage couldn't help but watch dazedly with the mouths open wide at this scene before them.

Even the elderly wizard's hand was trembling slightly.

He started to think about who else had been able to produce this scene over the past hundred years.

But Zhao Xu didn't feel anything at all. The scene in front of him had changed to a gigantic round library, countless books stacked to the sky.

In front of all the books stood a female wizard. She wore a deep red coat adorned with golden brocade and seemed inexplicably in harmony with everything.

She seemed to be bathing in the long river of time, representing both the beginning and the end.

For the first time in his life, Zhao Xu felt that he understood what the word perfect really meant.

The lady slowly walked over to him and looked like she was going to bend down to serve him.

Zhao Xu suddenly shut his eyes very tightly.

He remembered that he was here to receive a ceremony that had a chance of failing.

There were heavenly spirits from other worlds that appeared during the awakening of wizards. Or rather, there were temptations from the demons of the abyss.

Zhao Xu was afraid that this was a test, so he started to chant the Level 1 spell he had copied recently, Protection from Evil, over and over again in his heart.

At the same time, he was also mumbling to himself, "Please don't kiss me. Please don't kiss me."

He didn't have any spell slots, so he couldn't actually cast any spells, but he was just trying anything he could think of.

Zhao Xu had been involved in a battle against the demons of the Abyss and Hell, and he knew that creatures like demons were able to morph themselves into beautiful and pitiful looking young ladies, and would use this sad and pitiful look to fool men.

He had a comrade who had been attracted to one such demon. He had dropped from Level 5 to zero, and his body rotted away on the spot.

"How very interesting. I'll be waiting for you in the future."

That voice sounded like a holy, ethereal chant.

Zhao Xu didn't move because of that voice. Slowly, he started to feel the coldness of the metal throne on his butt again.

"Open your eyes, the ceremony is over."

Zhao Xu was about to listen to that voice when he suddenly shuddered violently and cursed himself for being stupid.

Antonya was still using telepathy on him moments ago, so why would he now hear her voice in front of him?

These demons were really excellent at morphing themselves. They even sounded exactly like Antonya's voice.

But Zhao Xu didn't make any sarcastic s at the other party.

He continued to guard his heart and mind with all sorts of determined thoughts.

"Am I really going to get shown up by an idiot like you?"

This time, he heard Antonya's voice from within him.

Soon after, Zhao Xu felt someone grab his hand and he felt the warmth from that person's palm.

The familiar feeling of being teleported entered his heart and he chose to accept it.

Zhao Xu only finally opened his eyes after the feeling of being teleported had fully worn off.

He looked out at the vast and boundless sky.

"The Obelisk."

"This is the highest point of the floating city."

Antonya said these words as she appeared next to him.

"But before we go and see the battles, tell me what you saw earlier."

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Chapter 31: Swimming Upstream

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

After hearing the way Antonya spoke, Zhao Xu slowly realized that everything that happened earlier might not have been as simple as he thought.

He quickly recounted everything he saw earlier, from how the demons had morphed themselves in a female wizard to seduce him all the way to how he had kept himself calm and persevered in chanting incantations.

"PFFT!"

Zhao Xu was interrupted by Antonya's incredulous laugh.

"Let me just start by saying that you'd better make sure that nobody else ever hears you say the things you just said for the rest of your life, otherwise, even if you become a Legendary Wizard in the future, nobody will ever let you forget this. HAHA..." Antonya didn't hold herself back and just burst out laughing.

"Hey hey hey. Players have the right to be egotistical too ok," complained Zhao Xu.

"Firstly, without any spell slots, there's no use in chanting those incantations at all. If you run into demons in the future, what you should do is immediately make a run for it regardless of the situation, and not sit there and chant useless incantations."

Zhao Xu was immediately terribly embarrassed. So those incantations were just helpful in convincing himself.

"But despite not coming into contact with any information on demons, your first reaction was actually to make sure you didn't get kissed by a demon. That's pretty sharp of you."

Zhao Xu could only treat these words as a compliment so that he wouldn't be so utterly embarrassed.

"But the place you were at earlier. Was there a huge round dish right at the top like those mechanical watches?"

After Antonya asked him this question in return, Zhao Xu fell into deep thought. His attention at the time was all on that female wizard.

The intense impact of seeing all this for the first time caused an image to flash across Zhao Xu's brain and he immediately kept away the light in his eyes.

"That's right. It wasn't the sky or stars, but a round dish. It looked like it was carved with some markings like a watch, but I don't remember the rest clearly."

Antonya nearly rubbed her forehead when she heard what he said.

She just moved her arms in a particular gesture as she started chanting incantations.

Zhao Xu's eyes widened as he stared straight at her.

This was the first time Antonya was casting a spell so clearly in front of him.

The last time, she had cast a Level 9 spell like Wish without any sound or movement, so he couldn't tell at all.

So now that she was casting something with such seriousness, could it be a legendary spell?

Zhao Xu silently counted six seconds in his heart, and finally, a mysterious ball of light appeared on Antonya's fingertips.

The ball of light on her fingertips gently fell to the ground and turned into floating dust.

The surface of the obelisk floor split apart like a pile of Lego blocks that had been kicked. Zhao Xu's heart skipped a beat. He didn't bother to learn the Level 1 spell, Feather Fall, because he didn't think that he would be unlucky enough to fall from a great height.

Fly was a Level 3 arcane spell, so it wasn't something that he could come into contact with right now.

The worst part was that Antonya was still insistent on casting her spell and didn't care about what he was thinking about at all.

But, just a millisecond later:

Zhao Xu realized that he was still standing where he was, as if an invisible piece of glass was holding him up.

The floor continued to transform as it broke open, then reformed. Even his surroundings broke apart and then regrouped again differently.

After going through half a month of being taught by Antonya, Zhao Xu had already figured out that Antonya was casting an illusionary spell of sorts.

She wasn't just blasting this place to pieces.

The effect of the illusionary spell slowly began to take shape.

Zhao Xu's mouth immediately fell open. The scene before him was exactly what he saw earlier on the throne. There were countless books stacked into the sky on layers and layers of shelves that reached the ceiling as well as many staircases leading up to each shelf.

As for the huge disk on top, Zhao Xu looked carefully this time and realized that this was a map of Arthur's 27 planes.

The Heroic Domains of Ysgard, the Gray Waste of Hadis, and even the Windswept Depths of Pandemonium were all on this large disk.

It symbolized how this universe worked.

Then suddenly, it was as if the dreamscape had shattered. The illusionary scene around him couldn't hold together anymore and fell apart into many pieces.

It was like a terrible haze being washed away by the heavy rains at the end of summer.

The spell was over, and Antonya stood where the female wizard was as she looked at him.

Zhao Xu had figured out by now that whatever happened to him earlier wasn't some sort of test.

That female wizard he saw wasn't some demon trying to disguise itself either.

The expression on Zhao Xu's face was now rather serious and grim.

"That was a Level 5 spell, Mirage Arcane. Looks like it's done a good job of recreating the scene you saw just now, and it's exactly what you went through earlier."

Zhao Xu nodded to confirm what she said.

"So...the lady who appeared was...?" Zhao Xu's tone of voice was much more polite now.

He started getting worried about whether he might suddenly be struck by lightning for being blasphemous.

"The Legendary Wizard, Miss Sisylvana."

Zhao Xu was stunned. He had guessed as much.

Sisylvana was the goddess of magic and knowledge.

But why was her title at this moment still only Legendary Wizard?

Wasn't she supposed to be a deity?

"That throne you sat on was created by the king of arcane magic, and he used a huge amount of resources from various ancient arcane empires. The seat you saw earlier was only one section of its entire body. More than 80% of its body is actually buried beneath the stage, and that's where the main part of the mythal spells are hidden."

"So the mithral you saw on stage earlier was only the cheapest part of its outer material. Those who are suitable to become a wizard will be able to activate the arcane magic within it by sitting on it, and gather spell slots from this process."

"On top of that, those who have a special gift often display a unique sort of supernatural ability after sitting on it. We use these things to make arrangements for each person's research and direction for leveling up in the future."

When she reached this point, Antonya paused for a moment. She looked deeply at Zhao Xu and tried to see if she could see anything different from his expression.

"You have Action Points, so you will be different from the rest of the ordinary folk who were seated below the stage."

"I have Action Points too, so when I sat on that throne, all the wizards present automatically recovered one spell slot, including all the apprentices."

"So today, I made you go up on stage because I wanted you to go through the same experience as I did and to make this batch of wizard apprentices bow to you and become your disciples and followers in the future."

Zhao Xu didn't expect that to be the reason behind everything she did.

He didn't even have time to gasp when Antonya mentioned that she also had Action Points.

"But do you know what happened after you sat down on the throne?"

"What?"

"You disappeared."

Zhao Xu went into a daze for a moment. He quickly pinched himself hard on the thigh and forced himself to calm down again.

"You mean I went missing? But I didn't feel myself go through any form of teleportation."

"It wasn't teleportation. You went through the river of time and returned to the time before the third generation of Sisylvana became a goddess. You saw her in The Final Scroll's Palace of Truth.

"She walked over to you because she was naturally curious about someone who could go against the stream of the river of time and go back to the past. She wasn't some demon who wanted to kiss you, alright? You'd better forget that you even thought about this, otherwise, you can forget about ever becoming a Cleric.

"So now, I'm curious. So having Action Points isn't actually the most special thing about you. So, what is?"

Antonya's words were filled with smiles as she looked at him.

Zhao Xu looked straight back at her.

The reason was very simple. It was that he had been reborn.

4 s

Chapter 32: Aftershock

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Back in the Hall of Awakening, the large group of wizard apprentices that were seated below the stage was stunned by the scene they had just witnessed, and they had no idea what on Earth had just happened.

Some of them had special gifts of their own and were especially sensitive to one of the Eight Schools of Magic. So when they sat on the throne, they would stand out from the rest.

For example, if they were sensitive to Transmutation, then perhaps some item on their person would start to change shape.

If they had an Abjuration gift, then perhaps some Abjuration spell, like Mage Armor, might appear on them spontaneously.

And even if there was no special effect in particular, they could follow the directions of their thought process while they sat on the throne to find a path suitable for their future.

This was also the reason Mystra arranged for their wizard apprentices to study Feats only after they had had their awakening ceremony.

But none of these wizard apprentices had ever heard of someone just disappearing into thin air, like Zhao Xu had done.

The even creepier part was that after that young man had been gone for a while, he reappeared in the same place.

Even after that female wizard, wearing her big cloak that concealed her face, had gone to teleport the young man away, many of the apprentices took a while to recover from their shock.

"This special privilege is really too obvious, isn't it? Even the NPC wizard apprentices on the other side are in an uproar. Someone actually managed to cut the line like this, and then disappear easily without a trace after showing off," remarked a tall, skinny man sitting among the players from Earth.

"Oh please," the plump man sitting next to him scoffed. "That guy who was just up there was an NPC too, wasn't he? So this is an internal fight among those characters. It's so sad, they get all the good stuff while the game puts all of us who chose to be Wizards through this kind of abuse."

"But didn't you notice that he also had an Asian face? He might be a player for all you know."

"If he's a player, then I'll jump down from the floating city right now and see if I can cast feather fall a dozen times before I hit the ground."

"Bold words."

"My elder brother was part of the marketing team for this game. Can you believe it? Before the promotional clips came out, he didn't even know what game this was. Throughout the entire process, the higher-ups decided everything and they wanted to market it without caring about the budget. The only choice consumers could make was whether they wanted the account or not. As for game content, nobody knew who decided on the design and all, and there are even people who speculate that the bulk of it was developed entirely by an AI."

The plump man got excited and rambled on.

"AI generating programs isn't anything new, but have you seen any game like this before? It's so highly detailed that I was nearly convinced myself. The method of casting those 19 cantrips is so deep in my mind that I could write the strokes even while I was bathing, and I felt as though I could seriously cast those spells. When I have time later, I'll start writing these spells from memory when I'm in the real world and get someone to check them. Do you think there's a backdoor to this incredible game? If there is, I'm totally taking it."

"And so, about that man's status and treatment, I'm quite sure he's the child of some big shot in the Wizard Association. Otherwise, that old man, Mocar, would never have behaved so reverently. Didn't you see how snobbish he was, even toward that princess from the Eastern Empire?"

"In real life, I'm usually the one with special privileges. I can't believe I have to suffer like this under a bunch of NPCs in a game." The tall, skinny man in frustration.

The two men in front were engaged in pointless conversation and Wang Ningwei wasn't concerned with them at all. Her eyes continued to watch the nine mysterious people standing on the stage.

Of the nine people, seven of them were higher status and stood nearer the middle. The remaining two others were bodyguards of sorts and they each took one side as they patrolled the area.

"Oh my, what brings you all the way here?" asked the elderly wizard conducting the ceremony as he bowed his head and looked as polite and respectful as possible. He had to be reverent towards this man.

A hundred years ago, when he had just started school at Mystra, the man in front of him was already the Chairman of the Wizard Association's headquarters.

"Nothing much. That Antonya took him away already?" murmured the Chairman of the Wizard Association's headquarters, Oz, as he walked around the throne.

"That's right. After he reappeared," replied the elderly wizard.

The chairman, Oz, didn't seem to care at all. He waved a hand to cast a spell so that all the wizard apprentices seated below the stage wouldn't be able to see anything happening on the stage. Then he squatted down to inspect the state of the throne.

Three out of the six men walked up to the throne to inspect it.

The two bodyguards continued to stand to the side and didn't move.

After conducting his inspection in silence for five minutes, Oz finally stood up again.

"I knew we'd have to clean up some of this mess. Let's go. The show's over, so there's nothing to see." Chairman Oz waved his hands about.

After that, one of the middle-aged men among the seven, one who had been very alert of his surroundings from the beginning, immediately cast a spell.

"Mocar, stop the ceremony for today. Tell those apprentices to come back in five days."

"Yes, I'll do that, Chairman." Mocar knew that he had underestimated the impact that the young man had created.

The large majority of the apprentices seated below the stage didn't know that their awakening ceremony had been pushed back five days just because of this person.

Only a small handful who had come under the tutelage of high ranking wizards in Mystra because of their recommendation letters knew who these seven mysterious men were. Those apprentices didn't say anything, and they found it hard to believe that a simple awakening ceremony would attract the attention of all the bigwigs.

Because the thing that most of the apprentices in the room didn't know was: these seven on the stage were all the bigwigs of Mystra.

With those seven gathered together, even a minor deity would struggle to escape with his life if those seven tried to kill him.

The wizard apprentices only realized that the group of mysterious people had already left after the illusion spell faded. Most of them were still excited as they watched the elderly wizard, Mocar, go up the stage and they waited for him to announce that the awakening ceremony was going to start.

The seven bigwigs that had just been standing in the Hall of Awakening came out from an Otherworldly Gate and entered the Supreme Council Chamber.

This small meeting room didn't have any décor, only an ordinary wooden round table with twelve chairs around it.

But this was where all the orders from the Wizard Association headquarters would be dispatched after being decided within this very meeting room.

Countless people within the Association fought hard to fulfill their dream of getting their very own seat inside this meeting room.

"We were in the middle of a good meeting and then this had to happen. What a coincidence," said the last among the seven bigwigs to become a Legendary Wizard, Stormrage, after he had taken a seat.

"When was the last time such a big commotion happened at the throne?" The only female among the seven was also the only Elf. Valance started thinking through her memories.

She didn't sit down, instead stood at the window. One of the seven bigwigs, Renault, said, cigarette hanging from his mouth, "It was more than a hundred years ago, and it was that fellow, Krol. He only took 35 years to become a Legendary Wizard and that's the fastest speed in the Association's records. At that time, all he could do was summon a baby Time Dragon from nowhere."

"If I hadn't seen it and sent it away in time, then you would have seen two Time Dragons and a Tome Dragon arrive on the floating city," scoffed Stormrage in annoyance.

"That Zhongxia adventurer from Earth is more than he appears. The impact that the throne of the arcane king suffered isn't something we can repair in just three or four days. The impact that Krol caused back then was fixed within two hours and it didn't delay that batch of apprentices at all," added Renault.

"Hoho, it's not him who isn't simple. It's the one he went to see who's not simple," Stormrage corrected Renault with some annoyance.

Everyone present had already heard what had happened earlier from Antonya.

Zhao Xu had gone against the flow of time to meet the third generation goddess of magic, Sisylvana, at the point where she had reached the peak of her wizardry but had not become a goddess yet.

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