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!

2. 33

The Truth of Magic #Chapter 33 - Read The Truth of Magic Chapter 33 Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 33: Actual Prestige Class

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

As chairman of the Wizard Association, Oz was privy to more secrets than anyone else in the room.

Even though he sat in the corner like none of this had anything to do with him, he was the oldest among the seven present. Even Cassius, who had apparently seen the goddess before she became a goddess, wasn't as powerful as him.

Oz remembered the instructions of His Highness and, after thinking about it for a long time, he finally spoke up.

"He didn't go to look for the goddess. It was the goddess who wanted to see him."

When the other bigwigs, who had all been through great storms and seen much, heard these words, they couldn't help but gasp.

Oz's words were possibly a sign that another major catastrophe was on its way, or the start of another war between the gods.

"That's impossible," declared Neisser, who had been studying and researching destiny and time-flow related Legendary Spells diligently for nearly a hundred years now.

He had holes for eyes and the only thing you could see inside them was the Fire of Souls, which never went out. Neisser was one of Arthur's few successful Liches, and he was an even rarer undead with good alignment.

All the bigwigs of the association were creatures with incredible levels of Intelligence, so Neisser only needed to say a few words, and everyone in the room understood exactly what he meant.

The goddess wanted to see someone, but the deities were unable to come personally to this plane in Arthur.

But they could send an incarnation of themselves to this plane. Saints were one side of the gods.

Just like the seven bigwigs seated in this room, when one reached their level, their actual bodies would be hidden in an extremely secret place.

They moved about by using projections that were summoned using Legendary Spells, and their consciousness was transferred into these projections. So these projections were just like real people and had the same powers as the actual body.

When a Wizard reached Level 5, they would all try to think of a method to escape in times of emergency. These Wizards had all gone beyond Level 21 and so they had even more numerous and powerful ways of doing the same thing.

Just in terms of teleporting themselves away, a high-level wizard would have at least ten methods of doing so, nevermind these seven bigwigs.

And even if the projections of the seven bigwigs were destroyed, or if the hiding place of their real bodies was under attack, the number of revival methods they could activate after dying was enough for them to die ten times or more without trouble.

While the goddess had used the opportunity when Zhao Xu sat on the throne of the arcane king to summon him all the way back down the river of history to a point in time before she became a goddess in order to meet him.

"The deities themselves established those plane boundaries, so nobody can go back in time to kill the deities when they were younger," Oz said bluntly. "And the goddess of magic has grasped part of the deity domain of fate, so she's the best suited in this aspect."

What Oz said was considered common knowledge, at least for Legendary Wizards.

But the other six people in the room understood Oz was really trying to say based on their Knowledge skill level and their Intelligence levels.

Deities within the deity domain of fate weren't very powerful when faced with other deities at the same level, and their supernatural powers were unable to affect the fate of other deities.

But they could do anything they wanted with ordinary humans.

Because deities in the deity domain of fate were able to see into the future and see if anybody would be a threat to their existence, and so they could enter any plane and kill that person before they became a threat.

The goddess had grasped part of the deity domain of fate, so, besides being more powerful than anyone else in terms of magic, she was also part of the nearly taboo domain of time.

This goddess could choose the plane that was most suitable for her among the countless number of planes in the universe.

Even if none of the planes were suitable to her, she could just follow along the line of time or cut time anywhere to start again from a particular section.

This ability was why the third goddess of magic wouldn't fall like the two before her.

She had reached a level where she was practically immortal and indestructible.

But what degree of danger would push a deity to allow an ordinary human being to meet with herself in the past?

If Zhao Xu was a threat to the goddess, then she could kill him right now.

Or, even if Zhao Xu grew up to become a Legendary Wizard, the goddess of magic would still be able to go back to the past to kill off Zhao Xu when he wasn't powerful so that she could weaken or destroy Zhao Xu before he became dangerous.

If she wanted to use some of Zhao Xu's power, she could wait to do this later in the future, when he actually had power enough to help her.

And, if she did use his power, it wouldn't be by letting Zhao Xu enter her private plane.

"Then there's only one explanation," said Oz. "That Mr. Zhongxia, an adventurer from Earth, is someone who will be able to stop the goddess from dying. Out of all the impossibilities, he's the only one who can. The goddess needs him to be an anchor and will use him to change the path on which she is headed."

"This information is to be archived as Level 9 classified information of the Association and is to be sealed off," said Oz.

"Noted. Yako has archived this," said a construct Golem that had been standing silently at the door all this time. An Awaken Construct spell had been cast upon it, so it was actually more intelligent than most people.

Since everyone in the room had accepted his explanation, Chairman Oz continued speaking, "Before we continue with our discussion from before the interruption, I would like to raise a request first, about the way Zhongxia will continue on his Prestige Class after Level 5.

"Before this, our original plan was to arrange for him to become a Dweomerkeeper, as a Prestige Class on the side of his Divine Magic.

"Our original plan was not to give him a Prestige Class for his Arcane Magic, but from the looks of it now, the situation has changed. So I would like to suggest..."

"An Incantatrix? If you do that, then nobody below Legendary level will be able to hold him back." Stormrage lifted his slightly greying eyebrows. He was a wizard from the east and didn't have any natural reverence for deities.

And so his opinions weren't aligned with everything The Final Scroll and Chairman Oz represented.

"I would agree to Spellguard, but it's up to you," said Stormrage. "It's just that those who become Incantatrixes have always been wizards that have contributed greatly to the Association. I won't object if you want to give this to Zhongxia, but at the very least we should wait until he's accumulated sufficient credit."

Wizards' spells all had a duration, some were counted in rounds (6 seconds per round) or in turns (1 minute per turn) and there were some that lasted for several hours even.

But the moment a spell could last for an entire day, its significance in battle was completely changed.

One day was exactly how long it took for a wizard to restore his spells.

A wizard with daily spells wouldn't need to hurriedly put on all sorts of protective gear when faced with an emergency before launching a counterattack.

Some of that gear that could increase the benefit to the wizard could even become a permanent part of himself. They could push the wizard's fighting ability to its peak and make him a monster in battle.

A Wizard armed with all sorts of spells was able to defeat physics even better than a Fighter, and those were true words.

The feat, Persistent Spell, was the key to making it last 24 hours.

But the price for that feat was huge. You had to stack several requirements together and the Incantatrix prestige class was able to reduce this price to almost nothing.

And that's why the Association was extremely cautious when it came to allowing wizards to become Incantatrixes.

The battle prowess of an Incantatrix was way more powerful compared to any pure wizard at the same level and was almost invincible.

If a Wizard between Level 11 to 20 chose to continue being just a wizard, he only had the class features of two metamagic feats.

But if a wizard between Level 11 to 20 chose to become a Incantatrix, he would have four metamagic feats as well as six or seven powerful skills.

He would become very difficult to defeat.

"No, I'm planning to give him a different Prestige Class." Oz looked everyone in the eye and emphasized every word, "It's the Prestige Class with a lower price to pay-Metaphysical Spellshaper."

Metaphysical Spellshaper, the top Prestige Class in arcane magic!

5 s

Chapter 34: Character Stats

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

"You are now a Level 1 Wizard," Antonya said to Zhao Xu.

Zhao Xu was initially shocked. He had thought that the ceremony earlier had failed. He didn't expect such an unexpected scene to appear.

So the ceremony had been successful?

Zhao Xu had been feeling tense all this time, and now he could finally relax a little.

His plan was progressing ahead normally.

Zhao Xu tried hard to suppress the excitement in his heart and he looked at Antonya for her next set of arrangements.

"Now when you focus your attention, your character stats will appear in your head."

Actually Antonya didn't have to tell Zhao Xu in such detail. He already knew about this.

Arthur could be described as a quantifiable universe.

The moment anyone was able to reach Level 1 in a character class, he would be able to view his own character stats.

You could understand it as a point system for each character class that wasn't able to speak and wasn't able to provide any cheats.

This was a universe where everyone was part of the system, and everyone had an equal chance to advance as long you worked hard.

And that was also why every player's stats became their actual stats after they transmigrated one year later.

In this universe, everyone was born as a Level 1 Commoner, and Commoners were unable to view their own character stats.

The special thing about being a player was that they could already see their own stats before they became a Level 1 character, and they could also choose how to allocate their Ability Scores.

After that, Antonya started to explain some fundamental things about how to read the character stats.

Even though Zhao Xu had seen his character stats for the past ten years of his previous life, he lept his head bowed and listened to his mentor's teaching.

"After you are able to level up successfully, then you should be able to view your health stats."

Zhao Xu scanned the character stats in his mind directly.

Health: Currently 6/6 HP

Hit Points: 6=4 (Character Class) 2 (Constitution)

Hit Dice Type: D4 Wizard

He now had 6 Hit Points in his Health bar, of which 2 points came from his Constitution modifier score and the other 4 points were from his Wizard hit dice score.

A Level 1 character could use all the points of his Hit Dice and you didn't have to rely on chance.

But after leveling up, you could only add the points on a D4, which is the points on a four-sided die. So you could land on any number between 1 to 4. If it was a D12, you could land on any number between 1 to 12.

But you could only add your Constitution modifier score once every time you leveled up, and that was why Zhao Xu spent 6 points on increasing his Constitution score to 14 points.

If players didn't make use of their additional points, then they would start with 8 points for each Ability Score, which gave a modifier score of -1, and their Hit Points total would go down by one for each level, instead.

Compared to other character classes that could use D12, D10 or D8, those with a D4, like Wizards and Sorcerers, had way fewer hit points compare to the rest of the classes at Level 1.

This was also why Wizards were so fragile, and they were easily shot to death by random arrows when they were at a low level.

Antonya kept explaining and her voice became rather solemn towards the end.

"Zhongxia, according to your understanding, what are Hit Points?"

"Like health points?" Zhao Xu's first reaction was just like all the other players on Earth, and they all carried this misconception. But, after he uttered this, he suddenly realized that he sounded a bit stupid.

Antonya didn't make things difficult for him, just shook her head gently. "Hit Points aren't just a symbol of how strong our health or energy is. If you die and become a skeleton, then your Hit Points will be calculated according to your skeleton self, even if you used to be a Legendary Fighter before dying."

"You must remember this. Hit Points represent how much damage each person is able to handle."

"A Fireball is enough to wipe out a group of Commoners, but a high-level Fighter would be able to take it with no problems. That means that he has enough Hit Points to offset the damage caused by the Fireball."

"Also, death isn't when Hit Points reach 0, but -10. Between 0 and -10, you'll be in a vegetative state and you can only wait for your companions to come and rescue you."

Zhao Xu just nodded as he listened to Antonya explain these things to him.

Since Zhao Xu looked like he got it, she started explaining Saving Throws.

Zhao Xu kept looking at his character stats. Saving Throws was another field that only appeared after he had successfully become a Wizard.

Fortitude: 2=0 (Character Class) 2 (Constitution)

Reflex: 1=0 (Character Class) 1 (Dexterity)

Will: 4=2 (Character Class) 2 (Wisdom)

A Fortitude saving throw was to help one stand up to any attacks from poisons or anything that affected your vitality and health, while a Reflex saving throw was to give you the ability to dodge certain special attacks. For example, if a Fireball came at you, you could rely on a Reflex saving throw to offset its damage.

A Will saving throw was to hold up against any test of your willpower or any part of your mental state, such as a spell like Charm Person or other magic like that.

Zhao Xu was only a Level 1 Wizard, so his Will only had 2 points from his character class.

Normally speaking, once these three totals had reached a certain point, you could offset almost all sorts of damage.

As long as it could get through the Difficulty Class. Arthur would normally set a level of difficulty, and these three saving throws could be added to a D20 roll to be compared to the Difficulty Class. As long as your saving throw was higher than the Difficulty Class, then you could avoid the attack. So, the moment your saving throw points exceeded the Difficulty Class, then you wouldn't have a problem.

"Now let's talk about feats," said Antonya at the end.

When Zhao Xu heard these words, he instantly perked up. Even though the information she had explained earlier was important, they were all things that he already knew.

"First of all, what is a feat?"

Zhao Xu's pupils narrowed a little. "An ability of a character."

"Strictly speaking, it's an ability that hinges on a person's spirituality.

"In reality, you could achieve a feat through a long period of training, but this would wear down your Spirituality. Everyone's Spirituality is fixed, though you can get some through leveling up. You can get this at Level 1 as well as every level after that that's a multiple of three.

"Also, because we're Humans, we'll get an additional boost of Spirituality naturally, so that's equivalent to 1 feat."

After hearing this, Zhao Xu was suddenly enlightened. In his previous life, they just used a Feat whenever they got one, but as to where and how this feat came about as well as why you could only use this feat after leveling up had always been something they never quite fully understood.

The forums had different ways of explaining the phenomenon.

"If you had learned Scribe Scroll as a feat in the beginning, then activated your Enlightened Spellcaster later and became a spellcasting class after that, the ability to use Scribe Scroll would have taken up the spirituality of your Level 1 character feat."

"Mentor, didn't you say one would forget it?" Zhao Xu suddenly remembered that Antonya had explained this differently to him the last time.

"Now I really believe that you don't have 16 points of Intelligence. The prerequisite for Scribe Scroll is that you have to be a Level 1 spellcasting character. And the prerequisite for forgetting it is that you didn't get to become a Wizard in the end."

After hearing Antonya say this in annoyance, Zhao Xu's face couldn't help but turn red.

"And how many feats do you have that haven't been allocated yet?" Antonya asked

Zhao Xu didn't have to look at his character stats to know this one. He proudly replied, "I have 4."

"Huh? You even have additional spirituality?" Antonya's divination spells could see what Zhao Xu was currently capable of, but she definitely couldn't see anything that he hadn't selected yet.

"I have two natural flaws, so I get to choose another two feats," replied Zhao Xu.

Before this, he had felt that using natural flaws to exchange for feats was a rather magical thing, but after he found out that spirituality was correlated to feats, he could understand all of this now.

"You're one lucky kid. There are plenty of people with natural flaws in Arthur, but not all of them get compensated with Spirituality.

"But that makes everything easier. Since you have 4 feats, then let me ask you a question. Do you want to be able to cast spells anytime without being limited by the idea of preparing spells every day?"

Zhao Xu's heart started to pound wildly when he heard this. You mean that was possible? If he could cast spells freely, then he didn't even need to prepare scrolls at all.

This was beyond the skills of an advanced wizard, right? This would be equivalent to being a wizard god, no?

2 s

Chapter 35: Uncanny Forethought

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

"That's...that's way too powerful, isn't it?" Zhao Xu found it a little hard to believe such a thing was possible.

"It's nothing that magical, really. It's just that it will cost you two feats instead," explained Antonya.

Zhao Xu nodded. There were some very powerful feats in Arthur that required you to have some other feat as a prerequisite or depended on how high your character class level was.

That had caused endless frustration to players as time went on. Since the game didn't explain any of these prereqs at the beginning, players didn't know to plan their feats for the future, and when they reached higher levels, they found that they couldn't get the feats they wanted because of a mistake they had made at Level 1.

In general, all those who managed to fulfill the requirements for each feat happened to have the prerequisite feat by chance and fulfilled the requirements that way.

But being able to freely choose spells was even more meaningful.

After wizards started to learn a lot of spells, then they had to make sure they had enough information about their mission to ensure that all the spells that they had arranged for the day were going to be able to deal with the probable scenarios they might run into.

But there were exceptions to every case. Being unable to cast a spell that could have solved the problem in front of them had always been a problem for the majority of wizards.

You could prepare scrolls, but then you had to pay for them.

But at least it wasn't like spell slots. If you didn't use up all your spell slots for the day that was too bad, and if you had any unused spells left, you couldn't exchange them for something else.

If Zhao Xu could cast spells any time he wanted, then he would be like a bird flying in the sky as he pleased.

Sorcerers were able to cast spells at any time and use any spell that they knew. The problem was that they could only learn a few spells of each spell level, and it was hard to learn a lot.

Every spell level had between ten and nearly a hundred spells, so learning just six or seven was barely scraping the surface. And that was why more people in Arthur complimented advanced wizards and seldom idolized the more charismatic advanced sorcerers.

"Mentor, I'll take it." Zhao Xu didn't even ask about the details, just displayed his great anticipation.

"Don't be in such a hurry. Let me explain it to you first.

"The feat that can help you cast spells freely is called Uncanny Forethought, but the prerequisite is that you must know the feat Spell Mastery."

Antonya started to explain the details of these two feats.

The information on those feats also appeared in Zhao Xu's character stats board so that he could read them at his convenience.

That was also one of the good things that came with becoming Level 1 of your character class.

Feat: Spell Mastery

Prerequisite: Level 1 Wizard

Effect: Each time you take this feat, choose a number of spells equal to your Intelligence modifier that you already know. From that point on, you can prepare these spells without referring to a spellbook.

When Zhao Xu looked at the details of this feat, he felt that it was completely unnecessary. He already had the class feature Enlightened Spellcaster, so he didn't need a spellbook to prepare spells anyway.

When he thought about it this way, Zhao Xu just shook his head. It was completely redundant.

Feat: Uncanny Forethought

Prerequisite: Intelligence 17, Spell Mastery

Effect: When preparing your daily allotment of spells, you can reserve a number of spell slots equal to your Intelligence modifier.

1) As a standard action, you can use one of these slots to cast a spell that you selected for the Spell Mastery feat. The level of the slot used must be equal to or greater than the level of the spell you intend to cast.

2) Alternatively, as a full-round action, you can use a reserved slot to cast any spell that you know. The spell is resolved as normal, but for the purpose of the spell, your caster level is reduced by two. The level of the slot used must be equal to or greater than the level of the spell you intend to cast.

When he looked at this feat, Zhao Xu was really shocked. There were limits, but they were all within an acceptable range.

His three Intelligence modifier points meant that he could reserve 3 spell slots, which meant that he had three chances to cast any spell.

That was enough to handle any emergency situation as a low-level wizard.

The only limit on this feat was the time taken to cast the spells.

If it was a spell selected for the Spell Mastery feat, then he could cast it faster (a standard action).

If it wasn't a spell selected for the Spell Mastery feat, then he would need 6 seconds to cast it (a full-round action).

After going through half a month of training, Zhao Xu was already very familiar with all sorts of basic wizard knowledge.

The time taken to cast a spell was fixed in a few ways: Swift Action (Instantaneous), Standard Action, Full Round Action (6 seconds), or even longer.

Arthur's time was always displayed in rounds, with 6 seconds per round.

There were a number of effects of this round system. One of them was that, during every round, a spellcaster class could only cast a 'standard' one 'swift' spell, otherwise they had to cast a 'full-round' spell.

The Mirage Arcane spell that Antonya had used earlier was probably done using this Uncanny Forethought ability.

It took one round, so she was casting the spell for an entire 6 seconds.

Otherwise, there was no reason for Antonya to specially prepare an illusion spell like that just because she was bored.

Even if you were a super genius, you had to follow some of these fixed rules of the universe.

In general, a wizard could only cast one or two spells in 6 seconds. Everyone knew this fact very well.

There was no way you could suddenly cast a few dozen swift action spells like some spellcasting machine gun.

Otherwise, you could forget about getting through a battle. Just kneel down and beg for mercy first.

If the casting time was 'Standard Action', then that varied a little depending on each person. The difference was great, just a few seconds apart. If you were familiar with the spell, then you could reduce the time a little depending on your level.

If the casting time was 'Swift Action', then it could be cast instantaneously. But, for most people, there was quite a hefty price to pay if you wanted to cast a swift action spell.

So low-level wizards normally just cast a standard action spell within each round and that was it.

But these are all topics for another day.

The real problem now was that Zhao Xu didn't have 17 points of Intelligence.

He saved 3 points and spent it on another Ability Score, so his Intelligence now stood at only 16 points.

Zhao Xu could only awkwardly look at Antonya awkwardly and put on his best pleading expression.

Antonya also knew that he didn't have 17 points of Intelligence. At the same time, the student insignia that Zhao Xu dreamt about the last time had already proved to mean nothing at all.

"Now you know how useful 17 points of Intelligence is, right? Even though it won't grant you any more spell slots or increase your difficulty class by even half a point more than your current score of 16 Intelligence points, this is the number that will become a roadblock to you."

After listening to Antonya chide him, Zhao Xu still shamelessly decided to beg her for help even though actually he was an uncle who had lived till 30 years of age in his previous life.

Even though that elderly wizard had called Antonya his mentor, Antonya had received the Level 9 spell of Kissed by the Ages, so both her looks and her thinking were the same as the moment she received the spell.

She hadn't gone back in time, but she had stopped her aging process at that time.

So, after all these years, her knowledge had increased, but her mind was still quite young and didn't show any signs of aging.

Otherwise, if she was really an old grandma, then there was no way he could behave so shamelessly like that.

"You now have two choices you can make."

Zhao Xu wanted to complain the minute he heard these words. He was always offered two options, but the truth was that he really only had one. But then, one was better than none.

"One option is to wait until you hit Level 4 so that you can increase your Intelligence score, then wait till Level 6, which is when you get a new feat, to learn this ability."

Zhao Xu shook his head when he heard that option. That was just too much time.

He wasn't the main character of some novel, where everything was arranged nicely by the author when he was in danger and where all the spells he prepared were all useful all the time.

After seeing Zhao Xu's reaction, Antonya decided to explain the other option.

"Your other choice, well, I'll be the one at the losing end. The last time I promised to cast an everlasting spell of Kissed by the Ages on you was as a reward for joining our organization.

"Now you can exchange that spell for a Wish spell, and I'll help you to increase your Intelligence score by 1 point."

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Chapter 36: Immortality?

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

If any other player found out that Zhao Xu could enjoy the benefits of the Wish spell, they would protest strongly.

They wouldn't care about why or how Zhao Xu was eligible to receive such a privilege.

In reality, TC didn't have any impact or influence on Arthur at all.

People only started realizing this later, and even upper management couldn't quite explain how these Testing Accounts came about.

Right now, the whole of Arthur was still quite balanced for most of the players, and very few players had received anything that could really break this balance.

That was mostly because the big shots of Arthur didn't care about the players very much.

Also, all the magic items in Arthur could be manufactured. the only thing that couldn't be manufactured was an Artifact and the big shots didn't have extras lying around either.

Even after spending ten years in Arthur in his previous life, he had never seen any player from earth get an Artifact.

Magic was very frightening, but magic was also reasonable. You could understand its scope and effect.

If it said that it could go through something, it really could. If it said that you could be spared from damage, you really would be.

The only magic that wasn't so clear was Artifacts.

When Zhao Xu heard Antonya's suggestion, the first thing that occurred to him was for her to give him those 25,000 gold pieces, then he could take that money and start a business within Arthur, and that would be that.

There were players from his previous life who did business like that. It was mostly because the lack of funding made life difficult for most people in the beginning and all the players were so broke.

25,000 gold pieces. If you just added another half of that, then that would be the price of a 6 Intelligence score Headband of Intellect – 36,000 gold pieces.

A 5 Headband of Intellect was only 16,000 gold pieces, so he would have some left. He could go and use the leftover money for two 2 items to increase his ability scores.

But now the suggestion that Antonya was offering him was to only add 1 point to his intelligence. That was way less than 4 or 6.

But it wasn't really so easy to count these things.

You couldn't stack ability score items. So once Zhao Xu put on a 6 Headband of Intellect, then even if he found a 6 Necklace of Intellect later, it would be useless.

Only equipment with a higher additional score would be effective.

But the 1 Intelligence points granted by the Wish spell could be stacked because it was an inherent bonus.

If you wanted to use an inherent bonus to your ability score, you had to read the relevant books for increasing that particular ability score, like the Tome of Clear Thinking, or use the spell, Wish.

But the price of choosing this was immortality?

A Level 9 spell in Arthur had an amazing reputation, and players might never come across one in their entire lives. If they did, they'd go around bragging about it sooner or later, so there was no way that it could be kept a secret.

But Zhao Xu had never heard of the Level 9 spell of Kissed by the Ages that could grant immortality.

That meant that it was a secret spell and there wasn't any spellbook you could copy it from.

If he missed it this time, then he could wait until he was 70 or 80 years old to die.

Antonya was probably not going to give him another chance to have this. If it was so easy to negotiate with her, then he would want her to increase all of his six ability scores to their maximum by casting a Level 9 Wish 36 times.

Immortality.

After everyone transmigrates, then this characteristic would truly become part of him.

Even the longest living race of Elves had to prepare to see their gods at around 800 years old or so.

After the transmigration, he could just hide in the floating city and do nothing but pretend to be researching magic. He could just continue like this all the way until the floating city got destroyed.

Zhao Xu lowered his head and started thinking about the pros and cons of each option.

Immortality.

1 point of Intelligence.

Most people wouldn't have much a problem deciding between the two, but this put Zhao Xu in a terrible dilemma.

After a long time, Antonya continued to look at him with a teasing look in her eyes, and Zhao Xu's eyes slowly started to light up.

If he was going to do nothing all his life, then his life was going to be pointless.

He would rather live his life to the fullest and its most glorious.

Zhao Xu was ready to say that he was going to choose the second option...

But, just when Zhao Xu was going to act as cool as possible about this, he suddenly stopped himself. There was a rather awkward look on his face as he asked an additional question, "Mentor, if I read Tome of Clear Thinking or if I receive the effects of Wish again, can the scores be stacked?"

It wasn't that Antonya didn't know about these things, but she wouldn't tell him if Zhao Xu didn't ask about it.

This was very important, so Zhao Xu had to clarify this matter.

"No, they can't," Antonya immediately said no.

Zhao Xu's body almost went cold when he heard this.

Unless he was satisfied with only 1 additional inherent bonus point, then if he wanted to increase it, he had to start all over again?

And the 1 point that he had given up immortality to get would have gone to waste?

This 1 point of Intelligence wasn't even made from platinum gold.

"If you want to increase your ability score's inherent bonus, you have to cast Wish continuously, and so the maximum is five consecutive Wish spells. Otherwise, everyone would be walking about with 36 inherent points by now," said Antonya very casually.

Zhao Xu had finally reached a decision, but not he wavered again.

But since things had come to this, there was nothing else he could do.

He looked Antonya in the eye and said, "I'll take the second option."

Antonya raised an eyebrow as she looked straight at Zhao Xu and said, "It's easy to learn Kissed by the Ages, but there's a limit to how many people are able to receive it. If we want to cast it on anyone, we have to go through a request and approval process."

"So, if you miss this chance this time, then you might never get the chance again. Otherwise, that old man you saw today, Mocar, wouldn't have aged to this extent either."

"He was greedy for the increase in Intelligence that came with growing old, and, after he enjoyed the increase, he should have gone to receive this spell, but he just didn't qualify for it."

"So, you really won't regret this?"

Zhao Xu shook his head.

What he needed was to quickly increase his capability and to level up as much as possible within this one year before the transmigration.

If he was a native character to Arthur, then he would have naturally chosen immortality and he could think about ability later.

But he wasn't a native character.

Also, Zhao Xu was confident that after he became more powerful in the future, he would be able to fight for the chance to gain immortality for himself.

After some time, Zhao Xu thought for a while longer and finally spoke up.

"I would rather die with a bang rather than live in silence."

Zhao Xu just said the phrase in Chinese.

He knew that these wizards had many spells that were permanently in use, and many of them would include the spell, Tongues.

That was a spell that could help them to understand the language of other living creatures and helped them to interact with one another.

If Antonya heard these words, the translation would be a little clumsier.

But as long as the meaning was clear, that was enough.

Either he lived with great fanfare, or he died in great glory.

But Zhao Xu really just wanted to make himself powerful so that he could protect his family. As for whether he could achieve anything big or make a name for himself, he would think about that at a later stage.

When his level was high enough, he wouldn't go out on adventures without ensuring that he had all sorts of spells that could be easily cast, good for defense, able to revive himself, teleport, and protect him from damage.

But he needed to tell Antonya that he wasn't good for nothing and he had a desire to improve himself further.

So if she had any insane or incredible skills and feats, he wanted them all.

"Then you'd better work hard," said Antonya with a nonchalant look on her face.

When he heard these words, Zhao Xu felt a little embarrassed.

Why wasn't her response, "Since you're so ambitious, why don't I grant you both?".

Zhao Xu almost slapped his thigh hard and he cursed himself for being stupid.

It wasn't that he had the wrong expression on his face. He had shown the wrong person this expression.

For a Legendary Wizard like Antonya, even if her skill of Sense Motive wasn't at a very high level, she could always use some other spell to increase her skill to a very high level anytime she wanted.

So high that she would be able to see through what he was really thinking about.

He decided that when he interacted with these high-level wizards from Arthur, he had better behave honestly in front of them and stop thinking that he could fool them.

Just when Zhao Xu had decided to stop putting on an act, he saw Antonya raise her hand and point it straight at him.

There were no incantations and there were no spellcasting gestures at all.

Just like the last time, a bright beam of light flashed by.

Everything else remained the same as before in this space.

But Zhao Xu saw the ability scores on his character stats.

Intelligence: 17 (3) =16 (Natural) 1 (Inherent Bonus)

He really got one more point of Intelligence.

"Oh, by the way, all that talk about having to apply for attaining immortality earlier was a lie. When you reach Level 17, I'll teach you the spell and you can go ahead and cast it on whoever you fancy."

1What the hell? Who said female wizards didn't lie to others?!

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Chapter 37: Test

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

This wasn't the first time Antonya had presented him with a dilemma, then revealed that it wasn't a problem as soon as he had reached an agonized decision.

Zhao Xu had learned his lesson and wouldn't fall into the same trap so easily next time.

But when Antonya talked about this matter, it made so much sense.

It was so reasonable that it hit exactly where it hurt him the most.

"Mentor, then why didn't that elderly wizard called Mocar receive this spell when he became a middle-aged man?" asked Zhao Xu.

He could still remember the way that elderly wizard had gazed at him back at the ceremony.

There was a strange emotion in those eyes.

If a rookie like Zhao Xu could still tell that there was an emotion in his eyes even after this elderly wizard had lived for so many years, then that emotion was probably just way too intense.

"It's very simple. He's just not eligible," replied Antonya.

Zhao Xu was stunned for several moments when he heard this response. "But that can't be right. Right? Mentor?"

"There's nothing that can't be right. It's true that there's more than one way to attain immortality. Besides being a wizard, there are other possibilities within the other character classes, and some prestige classes can help you to attain immortality as well."

"Everything comes with a price. Mocar used to believe that he could become a Legendary Wizard someday, so he didn't want to give up and didn't want to use any other methods. And so now, the methods he can still use are limited."

When she reached this point, Antonya looked at Zhao Xu and said, "Remember, the purer your path is, the more easily you will break through the wall to become Legendary."

In his previous life, Zhao Xu had never really come into contact with any wizards higher than Level 10, much less a Legendary one.

But after he had been sent to the floating city, Antonya had already 'reminded' him about several matters related to a Legendary Wizard.

It was wonderful for others to call you Legendary.

But the process of reaching that stage was strenuous.

"Then why didn't any of you go ahead and give immortality to that wizard, Mocar, since it doesn't cost you anything?" Zhao Xu couldn't help but ask.

"He can't see past his own heart, and he's a weakling who's been stuck at Level 14 all his life. He thinks that only he knows about those useless thoughts of his," said Antonya in a mocking voice.

"Basically, from the moment each of you steps into the floating city, the Wizard Association will create a form for you. It will be filled with analysis of your advancement as well as an archive of all the experiences you've been through. The stupid things that Mocar has done make all the bigwigs of the association look down on him."

Zhao Xu felt the urge to protest.

Mocar was a Level 14 Wizard, and to the players, he was a super high-level character.

"Mentor, didn't he respectfully greet you as his teacher?" Zhao Xu suddenly remembered this.

"Hoho, I was the one who brought his batch through the ceremony back then, so I ended up with the title. He's called me 'teacher' for so many decades now and it really drives me mad."

"He's always thought in his mind that if I had been his mentor, then he would definitely have become Legendary a long time ago," said Antonya.

Zhao Xu finally understood. So that emotion that he saw was actually jealousy.

Zhao Xu and Antonya didn't keep chatting for long. After a while, she received a notification from a Message spell, and she disappeared via teleportation again.

Before leaving, she passed Zhao Xu a blank book that was sealed with silver. After he wrote his name on the cover, he added a drop of blood onto it.

According to her, she had input spirituality into the two feats, Spell Mastery, and Uncanny Forethought, and they were inside this book now. Zhao Xu just needed to read the book and its contents would appear.

Antonya wanted Zhao Xu to take some time to study by himself, then log off and sleep.

Once he had enough sleep, he could come back online to prepare spells, then he could start on wizard battles.

The feat Spell Mastery wasn't difficult for Zhao Xu at all because he already had the class feature of Enlightened Spellcaster.

He completely digested this feat, which had apparently stumped other players for several days, in just a few minutes.

He spent nearly the rest of the day trying to read and understand Uncanny Forethought.

But Zhao Xu didn't have any spell slots, and he was unable to actually test it out by himself, so he could only try to imagine it for himself in order to learn it.

Finally, when it was nearing 11PM, he suddenly felt a strange and empty feeling inside his brain.

He suddenly realized that on his character stats, the two feats, Uncanny Forethought and Spell Mastery had now appeared in his two Natural Flaw Feat fields.

Zhao Xu smiled comfortingly to himself. That meant that he had already grasped the basics of these two feats, and now he was left with perfecting them.

After that, Zhao Xu left himself on the obelisk and logged off, then woke up directly in the real world.

At the time, two of his dormmates were both wearing their VR helmets and were still fighting inside Arthur.

The last one was preparing for his post-grad course, and still hadn't returned to the room yet.

At this point, Arthur hadn't reached the peak of its popularity and wasn't really considered a huge hit yet.

But a lot of his classmates were already playing the game.

A university was like that. Once a few people started playing a particular game, then, as long as it was interesting, it was very easy to attract their classmates to start playing as well.

Many of his classmates had wanted to prove themselves at first, but after they had gone through the grueling process of becoming spellcasting class, especially a wizard, they all quietly decided to switch character classes.

Zhao Xu picked up a pouch of lemon tea and walked to the balcony of the dormitory. He stuck the straw in and started drinking.

He was finally a Level 1 Wizard.

Tonight, he was going to sleep a full 8 hours. Then, when he logged into Arthur again the next morning, he would finally have spell slots.

In his previous life, he had fallen ill and had to find some sort of doctor who had a higher level of the skill, Medicine, to help. And there was no guarantee it would work either.

But a Level 3 Remove Disease spell would have been able to get rid of most illnesses.

Spells were really able to do too many things that humans were simply unable to.

Zhao Xu didn't put the pouch in his hand down until he started sucking air out of it.

His thoughts were already distracted by the battle that was going to happen the next day.

Antonya had talked to him about it before she left.

As long as he could pass the test, then she would give him a magic item as a gift for becoming a Level 1 Wizard.

Would any item from the almighty Miss Antonya be worth less than 10,000 gold pieces?

Zhao Xu didn't think so.

If he could get equipment that was worth 10,000 gold pieces at such a low stage, then this could be considered a sort of Artifact among the players on Earth already.

But he wasn't clear on how this wizard battle test was going to be conducted.

Zhao Xu couldn't help but start to wonder about it.

Zhao Xu remembered his spell slot list.

Cantrips spell slots: 3=3 (Wizard)

Level 1 spell slots: 2=1 (Wizard) 1 (Intelligence)

He had a total of 5 spell slots. 3 of them were for cantrips and 2 of them were for Level 1 spells.

He also had 3 Intelligence modifier points, so he could leave three slots without any prepared spells and choose which one to use only when he needed to cast them.

So of course he was going to leave those for his Level 1 spells.

He just needed to think about which two cantrips he wanted to prepare.

Suddenly, Zhao Xu thought of something else.

Antonya had left in a hurry and had taught him two feats.

But he still had the feat that came with being a Human, and his Level 1 character feat. These two feats were still unconfirmed.

Did the selection of those two remaining feats hinge on the result of tomorrow's battle?

Zhao Xu couldn't help but worry. He had been learning everything through a test so far. It was true that things didn't come easily in a large organization.

But his gaze also slowly became more determined.

He was very good at these two things-working hard and persevering.

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Chapter 38: The First Battle Skeleton

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

When Zhao Xu logged back into Arthur the next day, he was feeling energetic and refreshed.

This was the first time he had gotten a full 8 hours of sleep since he first started playing the game two weeks ago.

Wizards had to sleep for a full 8 hours before being able to prepare spells, and it didn't matter whether you were in light sleep or deep sleep. But many people complained about this in his previous life.

But none of this affected how powerful a character class like a Wizard was.

Zhao Xu had logged off while he was on the obelisk, so after he logged in again, he would appear on the obelisk once more.

But if he died, then he would be revived at the Palace of Character Creation and then teleported to the nearest temple within the last town he went past.

Once a player had gotten lost in the wilderness of Arthur and simply couldn't find his way back at all. So he had no choice but to kill himself and sacrifice a Revival Stone in order to be revived in the town.

After everyone found out how precious these Revival Stones were, maps and other survival skills slowly filled up the players' inventories.

By the time Zhao Xu logged in, Antonya was already standing there, waiting for him.

She looked at Zhao Xu and said, "Sit down and start preparing your spells."

Zhao Xu listened to Antonya instructions and quietly sat down cross-legged where he was, as if he was going to meditate.

As for how to prepare spells, Zhao Xu had already learned about it when he first learned cantrips some days back.

But Antonya would still watch him and guide him along when necessary.

The obelisk that Zhao Xu was on was supposed to be the highest point of the floating city.

But he didn't feel the slightest bit of a breeze, just like how his mind was right now.

For most wizards, they would be busy flipping through their spellbooks at this time in order to prepare spells.

But Zhao Xu only needed to quiet down and look inside himself to see all the various spell formations that were etched on his heart.

The process he was going through now was to cast these spells in advance.

Once this one hour of spell preparation was completed, then when he wanted to use a spell, he just needed to go according to the requirements of the spell and spend the corresponding Swift Action, Standard Action, Full Round, or however much time was needed to cast the spell.

Most of the usual spells in Arthur went according to standard action time.

Only an extremely rare few were naturally swift action spells.

For example, a spell like Feather Fall, which could be cast just by thinking about it, was able to fit into the swift action time.

And during actual battles, a spell that took up a full round took too long to complete, so the wizard would be easily targeted and he wouldn't use it if he didn't have to.

In one round's time, even if he cast a swift action spell followed by a standard action spell, the standard action spell could also take up nearly one full round to cast.

So the way low-level wizards fought was by taking turns to throw a spell at each other.

After slightly more than half an hour, Zhao Xu suddenly realized that he had finished preparing all his spell slots.

These spell slots were added to his character stats the minute he woke up.

What he had to do was to spend an hour to just fill up these blank spell slots with actual slots.

And for him, he had three spell slots that he could leave open using Uncanny Forethought, so he didn't have to prepare spells for those slots.

This also allowed Zhao Xu to save some time in the future when it came to preparing for back to back battles.

Zhao Xu then stood up on the spot and looked over at Antonya as he said to her, "Mentor, I'm ready."

Antonya glanced back at him and said, "Are you sure?"

Zhao Xu nodded.

This time, Antonya moved with a flash, as usual, to appear right in front of him. She grabbed hold of him and then cast a teleportation spell.

"You are about to be teleported. Are you agreeable?"

This time around, Zhao Xu finally saw the activity board at the bottom of his character stats light up with these words in his mind.

This was also a special privilege they got after becoming a Level 1 character.

This entire world would start to show messages to them.

But after he had completed the ceremony yesterday, it only asked him if he was agreeable to the actions the other party was going to do to him. It didn't specify that it was teleportation.

And that was because the source of the messages on this message board was himself.

He thought that this was teleportation, and that's why the word 'teleportation' had appeared.

He had no way of turning this message board into a form of evidence

Zhao Xu didn't make a choice either. The decision was made in line with the decision he had made the day before-he agreed by default.

Zhao Xu was instantly teleported away from the obelisk into a large and empty private space.

The entire place was empty except for the high walls in the distance. It was like a gargantuan cage of sorts.

There were several torches that would never go out placed all around the area, so there was no way for Zhao Xu and Antonya to hide at all.

"This is the Primitive Arena, and most wizards would go through their spell battles here," said Antonya.

"Your mission is to extinguish anything that is summoned in this space. You don't have to feel too stressed because they'll just be projections. But if you can't bring yourself to even do this, then I'd suggest that you go back and live a life of researching magic."

Zhao Xu didn't seem very bothered by what Antonya had said at all. He had dismembered more goblins in his previous life than Antonya had ever seen.

When it came to something like blood, people were only sensitive to it the first time around.

Antonya then randomly pointed a finger out. "Level 1 Summon Undead."

A middle-sized Human Warrior Skeleton immediately appeared before Zhao Xu.

Its entire body exuded an evil air, and a large metal shield was placed in front of itself to block any major attacks, while its other hand was swinging a curved knife around. Its empty eye sockets were just staring straight at Zhao Xu.

Zhao Xu looked at the Human Warrior Skeleton before him and immediately calmed himself.

In his previous life, he had also joined in some battles that involved dealing with a large army of undead creatures.

It was a bit difficult for a Commoner to deal with a skeleton, but it wasn't a problem for a Level 1 Fighter.

While Zhao Xu was making his judgment, the Human Warrior Skeleton that didn't have any Intelligence at all, listened to Antonya's instructions completely and treated Zhao Xu as an enemy and it dashed toward him.

Zhao Xu held his breath.

His brain kept thinking about his opponent's statistics.

A middle-sized skeleton's Hit Points were 1D12, which meant that it was between 1 to 12 Hit Points (Average 6 HP).

Its base attack was only 1 point, so if he just dodged it, the chances of him dodging an attack were 50% or higher.

But the skeleton had an Armor Class of 15, which was 5 full points over his own natural 10 point Base Armor Class, so it would be a bit difficult to fight this skeleton with just his fists.

Their advantage was that they had the feat of Improved Initiative and so they moved extremely quickly. Thus they were often able to attack their opponents first.

As he was thinking about all this, the skeleton drew closer to him.

The skeleton might even come close enough to launch an attack at him before he could finish casting a spell.

Zhao Xu had to decide which spell he was going to cast first.

This was a test set for him by Antonya, so the choice he made would decide his final grade.

Protection from Evil, Color Spray, Magic Missile, Mage Armor, Ray of Enfeeblement, or Benign Transposition?

All six Level 1 spells he had immediately came to mind.

But which one should he choose?

Magic Missile could launch 1 dart of magical force to cause 1D41 (so 2 to 5 points) of damage, but it might not prove fatal immediately.

Protection from Evil was good against the skeleton's evil alignment, but it wasn't helpful in getting rid of the problem itself.

Mage Armor would increase his Armor Class by 4 points and ensure that the damage he would take from the skeleton would drop by 40%?

In the end, Zhao Xu gritted his teeth and started chanting incantations.

A missile of magical energy flew out from his hands.

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.

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Chapter 39: Post Battle Evaluation

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

Magic Missile could use with the force within itself to ignore any concealment and armor, and it would hit any target with perfect accuracy.

It went around the metal shield in the skeleton's hand and smashed straight into the body of the Human Skeleton Warrior.

At that moment, the Human Skeleton Warrior's curved knife was right above Zhao Xu, about to swing down on him.

Zhao Xu had just finished casting the spell and was ready to dodge the knife.

But the energy gathered within the Magic Missile had a tremendous impact. The Human Skeleton Warrior immediately stopped moving and then it disappeared without a trace.

The arena went back to its initial calm. All the summoned creatures in Arthur were projections, so after they died, they would just disappear into thin air and leave no trace behind.

Zhao Xu wiped away his cold sweat and felt that he had gotten lucky.

At this time, he also looked at the contents reflected on his character stats' message board.

Player cast Level 1 Arcane Spell, Magic Missile.

Magic Missile hit Human Skeleton Warrior, resulting in 1D41 = 41 = 5 points of damage.

Human Skeleton Warrior current HP less than 0, instant death.

This summoned Human Warrior Skeleton's hit points were lower than the average HP, and his Magic Missile happened to cause the maximum damage of 5 points.

If those two things didn't occur, that skeleton's attack might have landed just then.

A set of footsteps came from behind Zhao Xu. Antonya was walking over.

She looked at Zhao Xu and asked him, "Are you happy with this result?"

Zhao Xu only shook his head.

"You didn't do too badly either, so let's evaluate this one first. Tell me what you thought of this?" said Antonya.

Zhao Xu started by telling her all the information he knew about Human Skeleton Warriors, from his estimate of its HP all the way to his estimate of its ability scores. He wasn't too far off from the actual statistics.

"You're not bad. The first step that Wizards must take before a battle is to prepare themselves with information," replied Antonya.

"In general, before we wizards go to battle, we must have accurate information about our opponents so that we can prepare ourselves accordingly. For novice wizards, you're too low level to be able to use any sort of divination spells to gather such information. But that doesn't mean that you should give up on intelligence altogether. There are way too many places in Arthur where you can gather information, and these places aren't hidden away by wizard spells even. It's very good that you have been able to make use of the advantage you players have."

Zhao Xu just smiled. The forums now didn't have any information on skeletons at all. This was all based on the memory he had from his previous life.

The good part was that Antonya couldn't log into the forums of the players, otherwise, she would have exposed his lies.

"Secondly, after you have clear intel about your opponent, you have to get yourself ready. If a prepared wizard suddenly attacked an unprepared wizard and their levels were the same, then the odds of winning are 7:3."

When she reached this part, Antonya looked straight into Zhao Xu's eyes.

"Tell me, what's Mage Armor good for?"

Zhao Xu could tell her even without opening his character stats to check.

"It can increase one's armor class by 4 points."

"And the duration of the spell?" asked Antonya.

Zhao Xu froze for a while, then answered, "1 hour per level of the spellcaster."

He immediately took a deep breath and added, "After I was teleported here, I should have cast this spell first."

The duration of that spell was much longer than the other spells.

An armor class of 4 could help to reduce his damage by 20%.

"That's right. So next time you must remember that as long as you're sure that the battle is about to begin, then you must seize the chance to cast any spells that will increase your protection."

"Continue telling me what else you thought about when you saw the Human Skeleton Warrior dashing towards you?" Antonya continued to lead the conversation.

Zhao Xu had now pretty much recovered from the battle. He slowly replied, "My first thought was naturally to use the spell, Mage Armor. That way, the chances of it landing an attack would go from 60% down to 40%."

Even though an actual battle's environment was complex, the rules of attack and defense continued to abide strictly by the hit points of both sides.

The attack roll was decided by a 1D20 (so anything between 1 to 20 points), and as long as it was equal or greater than the armor class of the opponent, then it would be able to go through the armor and cause damage to the hit points of the opponent.

A Human Skeleton Warrior's base attack score was only 1, so with the addition of a 1D20, the possibilities were within 2 to 21 only.

He would only have a 60% chance of piercing his armor.

"But by doing that, then there's still a chance that I might get attacked by the skeleton's knife, and its damage roll score might very well kill me on the spot. So I gave up on casting Mage Armor and decided to use something to kill him instead."

Zhao Xu's hit points stood at 6 HP, and it was really a pathetic number.

The damage from the Human Skeleton Warrior's knife alone was 1D62 (so damage of 2 to 7 points) and as long as the D6 rolled a 5 or a 6, then it was enough to cause enough damage to knock Zhao Xu unconscious.

"At that time, my second consideration was the spell, Protection from Evil. It could allow me to have a 2 deflection bonus to my armor class against attacks by evil creatures and it would also cause the summoned creature's natural weapon to fail. But the Human Skeleton Warrior was carrying a curved knife, which isn't a natural weapon, so that part wouldn't work. So, since the effects of that spell weren't even as good as Mage Armor, I gave it up."

"The third idea I had was Color Spray. But then a Human Skeleton Warrior is an undead creature, so it was immune to the effects of that spell and I had no choice but to give it up. As for Benign Transposition, I'm sure that you aren't going to agree to exchange place with me, so I threw that one out as well. Ray of Enfeeblement's effect was also not going to be as powerful as Mage Armor."

The spell Color Spray was actually a really vicious spell among the low-level spells.

As long as the opponent's Will saving throw failed, any living creature with a Hit Dice of 2 or less would instantly be unconscious, blinded, and stunned for 2D4 rounds, then blinded and stunned for 1D4 rounds, and then stunned for 1 round.

By the time the entire spell was done, any living creature would have been thrashed to pieces by then.

Human Skeleton Warriors had 1D12 Hit Points, and their 1 Hit Dice point was just under 2HD.

But it was an undead creature, so it was immune to unconsciousness and getting stunned.

That made Zhao Xu feel rather embarrassed too.

But after Antonya listened to Zhao Xu's explanation, she nodded and said, "Out of all the cantrips, there's also a Disrupt Undead spell that can cause 1D6 damage. Why didn't you use that?"

Zhao Xu shook his head. "That spell requires a touch attack to hit, and you have to get past the opponent's armor class, plus the success rate of hitting the target is only 35%. On top of that, the expected damage of a Magic Missile is 3.5, which is the same as the expected damage done by Disrupt Undead. If that's the case, then I'm definitely going with the 100% accurate Magic Missile."

"Not bad, your brain isn't muddled after all. At least you didn't think that just because your opponent is an undead creature, you could use a stupid spell like Disrupt Undead on it," said Antonya in a pleased tone.

"Since you were able to react and think about all this in such a short time, then you're still pretty ok. Today's lesson is to help you understand the difference between studying and a real battle."

"Next time, at your level, you will still need to protect against undead creatures, oozes, golems, elementals, and plants. So you will need to think about how you're going to deal with each of them. Out of these few creatures, elementals are still fairly ok to deal with. The rest of them can be a real pain and you might not find anything that can handle them."

Zhao Xu nodded. Even though undead creatures had low Hit Points because they had no Constitution points, the number of immunities they had was enough to give any wizard a terrible headache.

"So now, the second test will begin. As long as you can cast a spell that can hit me, you'll get a prize," said Antonya with a strange smile in her voice.

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.

7 s

Chapter 40: No Effect and Immunity

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

After hearing what Antonya said, Zhao Xu was shocked.

Hit her?

How was that even possible?

Zhao Xu was only a Level 1 Wizard, and he had to use a Level 1 spell to hit Antonya?

He didn't act rashly and increased his vigilance instead. He looked at Antonya with wary and defensive eyes.

If there were spectators around, they would have thought that he was the one being attacked.

Antonya looked at Zhao Xu and nodded her head slightly. She was quite pleased with how Zhao Xu was behaving so carefully.

"You don't have to worry; I'll set rules. Every time you attack me, I'll use a different method to defend."

The entire round arena was echoing with Antonya's voice now.

She wouldn't use the same method twice.

"What about saving throws?" Zhao Xu continued to ask.

For some negative spells to work, the target had to be unable to roll a saving throw, like Fortitude, Reflex, or Will.

Antonya was already at a very high level, so her saving throw score was very high. It wasn't something that a novice at Level 1 like himself was able to beat easily.

"It doesn't matter if your spell is effective or not. If you actually do something that requires me to use a saving throw, I'll consider that a hit."

After hearing that, Zhao Xu realized what Antonya was saying. She wasn't trying to make him display how much damage he could actually cause her; she just wanted him to experience how many different methods high-level wizards had to offset or reduce an attack from an opponent.

Once he realized this, Zhao Xu didn't feel as worked up or worried anymore.

Suddenly, Antonya thought of something and said, "Also, you used a Level 1 spell earlier, and now you're left with one other Level 1 spell slot. To make it fair, catch this. It's the scroll for the Magic Missile spell you used just now."

A scroll followed a beautiful arc to land neatly in Zhao Xu's palm.

After Zhao Xu gripped it firmly, he took a deep breath.

He now had three cantrip spell slots, one Level 1 spell slot, and one Magic Missile scroll.

After a while, his breathing became more even. Zhao Xu pushed aside any other emotions that could affect his thought process, and all those thoughts about the pros and cons had disappeared.

He just continued to stare straight at Antonya, who was now standing several meters away from himself.

In an instant, Zhao Xu felt a little like he was in a daze. It was as if Antonya had cast a spell on him.

He immediately blinked but didn't see anything happening.

The eight schools of magic were Abjuration, Evocation, Conjuration, Necromancy, Illusion, Transmutation, Enchantment, and Divination.

Besides Zhao Xu's cantrips that covered all the different schools of magic, his Level 1 spells only covered six of them.

He didn't have much to choose from if he wanted spells that could hit Antonya.

After taking a deep breath, Zhao Xu pulled out a bag of magic materials from inside his robe and grabbed some powder with his hand. It was red, yellow, and blue in color.

As he held the magic material in his hand, he started to chant the necessary incantations to cast the spell.

Color Spray!

A blinding flash of seven colors immediately formed a conical shape and covered the area in front of Zhao Xu.

This spell had a casting time of only a standard action, but Zhao Xu had completed it in the blink of an eye, and it didn't even take as long as it took for him to pull out the materials required.

The shape of a fan with a radius of nearly five meters covered the area and encapsulated Antonya.

Even though Antonya was already over Level 20, it also meant that her Hit Dice was now higher than 20HD.

But the reason why the spell, Color Spray, was able to remain so powerful was that even if one was a living creature with a Hit Dice higher than 5HD, as long as the spell was effective, it could stun the target for one round.

If one couldn't move for an entire round, then one would lose the majority of one's defensive power, and this spell made full use of this affected state to dominate the target.

But when the blinding lights faded, Antonya still didn't seem to show any reaction and just stood there like she didn't care at all.

"Spell Resistance. It negates your spell altogether. I will not use Spell Resistance anymore. Continue."

Antonya's words were very calm, as if nothing had happened at all earlier.

Zhao Xu shook his head and tried to wake himself up.

Spell Resistance and saving throws were like the twin nemeses of Arthur's magic. In general, most spells that were targeted at attacking or controlling the enemy would first need to get through the opponent's resistance to spells, then get past the saving throws in order to have an effect.

But resistance to spells was something that only some monsters or other races had. Humans didn't naturally come with the ability to resist spells.

So, from the looks of it, Antonya had cast a spell to give her the ability to resist spells.

Or, rather, from the moment she stood there, she had already cast the spell of Spell Resistance on herself.

Zhao Xu's actions didn't stop either. He grabbed the scroll that Antonya had given him just now and started chanting the incantations written on it directly.

A missile of magical energy appeared once again in his hands and started flying straight for Antonya.

He was already very familiar with how to cast this spell.

A Magic Missile had to get past any spell resistance, but it could ignore saving throws.

However, as Zhao Xu watched for himself, as the Magic Missile was just about to get close to Antonya, it suddenly seemed like a giant, invisible wall had appeared in front of her, and the Magic Missile dissipated on the spot. It didn't even manage to hit the corners of Antonya's robe.

"Level 4 spell. Globe of Invulnerability, Lesser. It can block any Level 1 to 3 spells, and I will not use this spell next time. Continue."

After hearing these words, Zhao Xu finally felt how much of an advantage a high-level wizard had over a low-level wizard.

That meant that the spell that was protecting Antonya right now would be effective against him until he reached Level 7 and was able to cast Level 4 spells.

But Zhao Xu wasn't going to be discouraged or give up.

He focused his attention again and started to analyze Antonya once more while he thought about what other methods he could use.

Because of the spells he had cast earlier, he had finished using both his Level 1 spell slot as well as the Level 1 spell scroll.

Now, he was only left with three cantrips.

But this also meant that he had three chances.

With that in mind, Zhao Xu immediately continued chanting incantations to cast a spell.

Acid Splash!

A small ball of acid gathered in Zhao Xu's palms out of nowhere, then flew straight towards Antonya.

This cantrip was able to hit any living creature within a short range. It could cause 1D3 of acid damage and both saving throws and resistance were useless against it.

But for spells that involved a flying object, they had to go through ranged touch attack checks. That was equivalent to Zhao Xu flinging an object over, and there was the possibility of opponents either being able to block it with their armor or simply being able to avoid the attack.

Yet Antonya continued to stand in place like a wooden statue. When the little ball of acid was just about to hit her, it suddenly deflected in a different direction.

It went straight and crashed onto the floor, releasing a soft sizzling sound.

The arena's floor had been treated specially, so the little hole caused by the acid eating into it immediately returned to normal.

Meanwhile, Antonya stood there as if she hadn't been the target of the spell in the first place.

"That's impossible," murmured Zhao Xu to himself.

If the little ball of acid had just disappeared, then he didn't have anything to say.

But now it had actually been deflected?

"Level 4 spell. Ray Deflection. It makes me immune to any ranged touch attacks, including spells that involve rays or attack moves that make use of rays to attack living creatures. I will no longer use this spell either. Continue."

After hearing what Antonya said, Zhao Xu had to admit defeat for that spell.

She didn't need to go through a check and was just immune to the effects.

The latter part of the sentence was to advise him against using any other spells that involved rays.

Zhao Xu noticed that there was some perspiration on his forehead, and the droplets were large enough to fall anytime. The way Antonya was just standing there and waiting for him to attack was too much pressure.

Zhao Xu suddenly had an idea.

He wiped away his sweat and held equal amounts of magic material in his hands to cast the Touch of Fatigue spell.

Even after he had finished casting the spell, the blue gleam of light was still gathered within his palms.

Zhao Xu immediately made a dash forward. If he didn't touch Antonya within one round, the spell would lose its effectiveness.

When he had come close enough to Antonya to touch her, he swung his arm towards her.

Antonya was immune to ranged touch attacks, so what would happen if he decided to launch a melee touch attack?

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Chapter 41: Real Magic

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

Antonya didn't even move a single inch. It was as if she hadn't seen Zhao Xu swing his arms at her at all.

Zhao Xu knew that something wasn't right. Something was off.

Antonya wasn't even bothering to dodge his attack.

Not moving at all didn't mean that her armor class was zero. There were other factors like armor proficiency and deflection bonuses.

But if she didn't move to avoid his attack, then her Dexterity would be 0 and her modifier score would be -5 to match.

Nobody could just shrug off a -5 to their armor class, not even Antonya.

But Zhao Xu couldn't stop now. He had gone too far and he couldn't take this attack back, no matter what happened.

But, just as Zhao Xu was about to touch Antonya, when he was about as close as his Magic Missle attack earlier, Zhao Xu's eyes widened in disbelief.

A pair of huge, translucent wings suddenly sprouted from Antonya's back, making her look like some kind of a half-dragon, half-human creature.

Zhao Xu was already in motion. He couldn't stop his attack. He had to land this punch even if Antonya morphed into a dragon completely and started breathing fire all over the arena.

A Fighter kept going forward, no matter what.

Zhao Xu's fist was swinging at her with all his might, but Antonya's translucent wings weren't just for decoration. They folded downward around her to cover her, and they became an invisible force field in the shape of dragon wings.

Zhao Xu immediately realized that his punch wasn't going to land. The momentum of his attack had disappeared without a trace.

The pale blue gleam in his hands that represented the Touch of Fatigue spell had faded completely.

His attack had been countered, and his spell was no longer effective.

"Level 2 spell. Wings of Cover. It provides immunity against one special attack. I will give up using this spell from now on, so continue."

Antonya said these words slowly to Zhao Xu as she watched how he barely managed to stand up properly.

This was too hard. Even though Zhao Xu had plenty of determination in his heart, he felt that the road ahead of him was just a dead end.

There were countless walls all around. Even if he broke through one, there was another one behind it. There was no way through.

Even though the spell Antonya used was just a Level 2 spell, it was able to completely protect against one attack, making it quite powerful for its level. Zhao Xu wanted it for himself.

But there was no anger or fury in Zhao Xu's heart right now.

His eyes were wide as he looked up at Antonya as if she was a whetstone.

Zhao Xu knew that only one spell per round was too slow.

He would need to cast two spells in a single round if he had a chance of winning.

That way, at least, Antonya might actually break a sweat while defending against him.

But he couldn't do anything about that, because the large majority of spells took up a standard action worth of time.

The type of spell that could be released with a swift action was very rare, and he hadn't learned any of them at the moment.

So, Zhao Xu could only release one spell per round, and Antonya was acting like she was playing chess by countering each of his moves with a single spell of her own.

But right now, Zhao Xu was left with his final cantrip.

Even if he wanted to cast two spells at the same time, it was impossible. He only had one left.

"If you just stand there, then I'm going to say that you've lost," Antonya said with a laugh.

Zhao Xu wasn't the type to let anyone just step all over him, but when it came to the mocking he received during a battle, he was very patient.

In the battles of his previous life, he had seen too many people just dash forward because they had been agitated by harsh words from a monster.

In the end, before they could even reach the monster, they were immediately slapped away and killed.

In a casino, the ones who lost so badly that they eventually went bankrupt were those people who lost all their rationality after losing too much and ended up adding to their bets without thinking.

If Zhao Xu weren't rational, he would have just cast the final spell he had on hand.

Then it would prove to be completely useless, and that would be the time Antonya would mock him to death.

Zhao Xu continued to walk around Antonya.

He didn't like to gamble.

But since things had come to this, he had no other choice.

Antonya said that she wouldn't use any of the spells that she had used earlier.

When wizards studied spells, they probably wouldn't study spells that overlapped, right?

If that was true, then it was possible that Antonya didn't have any more spells that could protect her against ray attacks anymore.

Zhao Xu had determination in his eyes as he started to chant incantations while he stared at Antonya.

This time, his spellcasting time was longer than before.

Zhao Xu's wizard robe started to flap wildly even without a breeze.

Ray of Frost!

Cold air and a ray made from crushed ice bits shot out from Zhao Xu's hands and headed straight for Antonya.

It was very similar to Acid Splash, but it would only cause icy damage to the target.

But the moment Zhao Xu released this spell, Antonya snorted and started laughing.

Zhao Xu knew by this laughter that he had failed again.

But he had used up his last spell slot.

His brain froze. He stared at the dirt.

He went numb, as if nothing could touch him.

The little bit of consciousness Zhao Xu had left told him that he needed to hurry.

He had to cast another spell right now, because if he didn't have two spells that could reach Antonya at the same time, it would be impossible to break through the force field that Antonya had already placed in front of her.

But he couldn't do this!

He didn't have any swift action spells.

And he didn't have any more spell slots left.

Unless he could make a standard action spell go as quickly as a swift action spell.

And unless he could restore the spell slots he had just used.

Zhao Xu's eye color shifted, became a bit ashen, like a high and mighty deity looking down on the rest of the world.

The cold air of his Ray of Frost had reached the front of Antonya.

Tragedies were often alike.

It was as if Antonya had some immense repulsive force around her. Before the cold air could even reach the corners of her robe, it was instantly repelled away.

There was an invisible force that covered all of Antonya's body.

"Level 4 spell. Friendly Fire. It can..."

Before Antonya could finish her sentence.

A Ray of Frost appeared again!

A second beam of cold air and ice crystals formed Ray of Frost, without her realizing it, drew close to Antonya's body.

Zhao Xu had cast Ray of Frost twice in a row!

Zhao Xu had felt like something was spilling out from his brain but he hadn't noticed it himself.

A row of words appeared on his character stats:

Action Points: 5

The Ray of Frost could never go fast enough to become a swift action spell no matter what Zhao Xu did, but he had just cast it in an instant without adhering to any logic at all.

So, just like that, the second Ray of Frost smashed against Antonya's body.

It melted on the spot and water droplets covered the floor.

Antonya's armor class had successfully blocked the ray.

But she had also been hit by Zhao Xu's spell attack.

Zhao Xu had succeeded, by defying all known rules and logic!

Hadn't Zhao Xu already run out of spell slots?

He didn't know the metamagic feat Quicken Spell, either.

The second Ray of Frost was able to hit Antonya at the same time as the first one because it had been cast in an instant.

By using the metamagic spell Quicken Spell, any standard action spell could become a swift action spell.

It would reduce the few seconds of incantation to a single instant.

That was the battling value of having Quicken Spell.

So even though Quicken Spell required a Level 4 spell slot, many people really wanted it.

But Zhao Xu's Ray of Frost was a cantrip, so if he wanted to cast it instantly, he would need to give up a Level 4 spell slot.

And even if he had spell slots left, they were Level 1 spell slots at best, so how could it suddenly go up by three levels to enable this to happen?

And of course, he didn't have the metamagic feat Quicken Spell at all.

"How did he do that?"

A wizard in a black robe stepped out from a dark corner of the arena and stared right at Zhao Xu, but he had directed his question at Antonya.

Why was Zhao Xu able to defy logic like this?

How?

Chapter 42: Farewell, My Lady

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

Zhao Xu didn't think that there would be another wizard hiding in the arena.

The male wizard wasn't all wrapped up, like Antonya, and his face was entirely exposed to reveal an Asian face that was probably around 30 years old or so.

But what caught Zhao Xu's attention was that the other party seemed to be in absolute shock.

Zhao Xu himself had just recovered from the feeling of having all the energy drained from his body.

He hadn't expected to actually be able to cast two spells in one round.

"Reyan, I haven't passed him to you yet, so what has this got to do with you?" Antonya glanced at the young wizard with an annoyed expression on her face.

"Oh come on. Zhongxia will be passed to me in a while, so why don't you just explain it to me first?"

"How was he able to jump levels and cast Quicken Spell on Ray of Frost?"

"But it's not possible to learn feats that have not been allocated to him. So, technically speaking, he doesn't even know Quicken Spell, right? On top of that, I was counting and he should have already used up all his spell slots."

Reyan looked very impatient and anxious, and he asked a whole slew of questions in one shot.

"You're just ignorant." Antonya sneered at him. "A rookie like you, not even a Legendary, couldn't understand the way we use Action Points."

Reyan didn't look awkward or embarrassed to hear these words at all.

He turned to look back at Zhao Xu and asked, "I'm supposed to take him as a student, so surely I should know about his situation, right? So your Action Points aren't just able to restore spell slots?"

"I could tell you, Reyan, but the information I'm going to tell you is classified. If you leak any of this, you'll have to bear the consequences yourself," said Antonya in a huff of irritation as she glanced at him.

Reyan had now become even more curious than Zhao Xu. He was acting more like a beginner than Zhao Xu's next teacher.

He quickly nodded. "I understand, I understand. Don't worry, once I've satisfied my curiosity, I'll delete my memories of it."

After that, he walked toward Antonya and stopped when he was three meters away.

At the same time, he waved Zhao Xu over as well.

Zhao Xu looked confused as he walked over. But, when he had just reached the same distance from Antonya as Reyan was...

Reyan's expression suddenly changed and he immediately started chanting incantations in a stern voice.

The incantations were very quick and Zhao Xu was barely able to take a few breaths before the chanting was complete.

Within the circle that the three of them formed, with Reyan as the center, a glowing opaque ball appeared.

The outside of the ball was covered with colorful sparkles that shimmered as if someone had blown a very large bubble.

Suddenly, Zhao Xu breathed very deeply and the memories from his previous life immediately came pouring out.

He stared in amazement at Reyan and asked, "Prismatic Sphere?"

"Young man, you're learning too much in advance for nothing. You're only at Level 1 and you know these Level 9 spells?"

Zhao Xu could only laugh awkwardly.

This was the strongest defense spell among Level 9 spells. Prismatic Sphere was a really famous one among the players.

You couldn't get a spell in, and weapons couldn't break it either. Once a wizard donned this sphere, it was more invincible than a tortoise shell.

But what would make them need something of this level?

Reyan immediately understood that Zhao Xu had no idea why he had cast the spell in the first place.

He laughed and said, "I just knew it, you only understand this spell halfway. Nothing that happens within a Prismatic Sphere can be tracked down by detection or divination."

Zhao Xu raised an eyebrow. So this was done in order to maintain secrecy. But this was too high a price to pay.

In his previous life, he hadn't seen many high-level spells being cast, but in this life, he kept seeing one after another while he was still a beginner.

When it came to the difference in spellcasting, those who were too low level were seriously pathetic, while those who were high-level were just drowning in spells.

After Antonya was sure that Reyan had completed his spell, she finally spelled it out, "Action Points can emulate metamagic feats.

"He used one point to restore one spell slot, then used another to emulate the feat of Quicken spell, and the last three action points to make the spell slot go from Level 4 down to Level 1."

Reyan's eyes almost fell out of his head when he heard this. "All of you with Action Points are really too powerful, aren't you? It's one thing to have unlimited spell slots, but now you're telling me you can even emulate metamagic feats? You guys get all the good stuff?"

"Are you very upset about that?" replied Antonya coldly.

Zhao Xu had started to sense that, regardless of whether Antonya was facing that elderly wizard, Mocar, or this young wizard, Reyan, her attitude was the same.

She always kept on that icy and aloof attitude with them.

There was none of the friendliness she displayed toward him.

"I wouldn't dare to. The Chairman is terrible as well. Since he's given me this mission, then he should at least give me a rundown of everything. I ended up having to expend a Level 9 spell slot because of this," Reyan grumbled unhappily.

"So you're passing this fellow to me, right?"

The cover of the Prismatic Sphere around them had slowly begun to fade and disappear.

"Yes, I am. Zhongxia, your initial wizard course ends here. You can follow Reyan from here on."

"He is our contact with the temple, so he'll bring you over to begin your Cleric training. Also, your Action Points should have all been used up, but it doesn't matter because you'd get more later."

Zhao Xu immediately froze for a moment and couldn't be bothered with the fact that his character stats read Action Points: 0/5 anymore.

He quickly asked Antonya, "Mentor, you're not going to teach me anymore?"

"Your mentor bashed up some of the old men in the temple next door, so they're not on such good terms," Reyan cut in. "That's why I'm the one bringing you over to become a cleric, and I'll bring you right back after that."

Antonya didn't bother to explain herself. She glared at Reyan, then used a teleportation spell to disappear.

Zhao Xu knew that he would still see Antonya in the future, but he still felt as emotional as if they were parting forever.

After he watched Antonya disappear, Reyan turned around and looked properly at Zhao Xu as he said, "Let me introduce myself first. My name is Reyan, a Level 20 Wizard. My first role is as the Contact Officer of the Temple of the Goddess of Magic for Arthur's Wizard Association. My second role is as a member of The Final Scroll, and I'm also a Contact Officer there."

As Reyan spoke, Zhao Xu just nodded along. Antonya had passed him along to Reyan without any sort of explanation or goodbye.

But, of course, that also implied something else that she didn't say- Reyan could be trusted.

"Zhongxia, Level 1 Wizard, Double Elite, an affiliate of Arthur's Wizard Association and a member of The Final Scroll."

"Hello there, Zhongxia. So first off, let's confirm your next few steps," said Reyan as he looked at Zhao Xu.

"The next thing that's going to happen is that the organization will send you to become a cleric. Your wizard course is complete now, short of familiarizing yourself with weapons and getting skills. These things are included in your cleric training, so we'll just do them at the same time over there. There are more things to grasp when it comes to weapons and armor for clerics, so we've also arranged for your skills to be placed right at the end.

"Do you have any questions about the path ahead?"

Zhao Xu shook his head. "No, I don't. But Mr. Reyan, I would like to ask a question."

"What is it?"

"The battle earlier. What was the reason for designing it this way?" asked Zhao Xu.

Reyan raised an eyebrow. The casual look he had kept up all this time started to look a little serious now.

"It was just for you to train up."

"I don't think it's that simple," insisted Zhao Xu.

"Alright now, but you must promise to keep this a secret." Reyan looked over his shoulder and peered around.

He was using his own eyes to check if there was anyone else around and seemed to have forgotten that he was a wizard.

"This is a secret, and I only learned it after I became a senior in the association...oh forget it, you might see right through me. This is actually something that only the middle ranks know about. The Final Scroll will always go through this ceremony for everyone going down the battling path.

"It's mostly to let you see for yourselves that high-level wizards have more than enough methods to kill you. So if you ever run into a high-level wizard, run or hide as far away as you can, and call on a wizard who's at an even higher level to thrash him."

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Chapter 43: Temple

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

After this short exchange, Zhao Xu started to get a good idea of Reyan's flippant style of speech.

"Also, I hope you don't think you really managed to attack Antonya," said Reyan.

Zhao Xu shook his head. He knew what he was really capable of.

And from the tone of voice Reyan used, even an idiot could sense something wrong.

Theoretically, Antonya could able to cast a spell like Prismatic Sphere, so she could have defended herself against his attack.

"Not so bad, you aren't like me. Back then, I really thought that I had seriously hit my mentor and I was happy for nothing for so long." Reyan smiled nostalgically.

Zhao Xu suddenly felt a little awkward. Why did this story sound so much like a recurring theme from a particular anime about having to snatch a bell?

"Actually, with Antonya, there's no way any of your spells could have worked on her. That's because we wizards can use Counterspell, and it's enough to hold off novice wizards like you easily. But that's another topic altogether. When you start training in Arcana we'll talk about this again."

After that, Reyan teleported them both to Mystra, below the floating city.

This was the first time Zhao Xu had set foot back on the ground of Arthur after half a month in the floating city.

The air around him felt different when he breathed in.

The Temple of the Goddess of Magic and its religious headquarters, the Sacred Heart Cathedral, were next to one another.

The temple was where the goddess had lived before becoming a deity and had expanded from there.

The Sacred Heart Cathedral was built right next to it. The daily affairs of the clergy were all taken care of in the inner hall, while the outer hall was for believers to pray to the deity they believed in.

The Wizard Association headquarters had arranged for most of their research groups to remain in the floating city.

As such, the temple and church took up a huge space within the town.

In fact, the town of Mystra was built with the temple and church at its center, and the rest of the town looked like beams extending out from the middle.

Since this was the central place of worship for believers, Sacred Heart Cathedral's outer hall was often crowded and bustling with activity.

Zhao Xu had experienced this for himself on his first day there.

After coming back, he noticed that the crowd was so densely packed that it was impossible to squeeze through.

Normally, the area nearer to the inside of a church would be busier, but now, even the outermost section of the church was equally busy.

"Today is the day we commemorate the Goddess' birth, that's why it's so busy," explained Reyan.

When Zhao Xu heard this, he nodded along.

In his previous life, his family had lived in a harsh place in the north. Most of the residents believed in deities like the God of Justice and the God of War.

On the birthdays of those deities, the local churches would send blessings to the believers.

One of the most popular gifts that everyone wanted was Holy Water, which normally retailed for 25 gold pieces.

Since there was free Holy Water given away on the birthday of a deity, then of course everyone was going to try to grab some.

But he was now in a luxurious town in the south. Living in Mystra was like living in the capital city of a country on earth.

The residents might not have a higher status than others, but their standard of living was considered among the best of the towns of Arthur.

And, if you looked carefully at this crowd, many of them were dressed pretty well and nobody looked like they were poor at all.

On the roadway further out, horse carriages were being barred from coming in too.

"On the Goddess' birthday, she might actually decide to come down to Arthur's main plane," explained Reyan. "And there's also a possibility that the Goddess will send her blessing and make someone a cleric."

Zhao Xu couldn't help but feel excited when he heard these words.

Even though he was 99 percent sure that he was going to become a Level 1 Cleric, but if he could make that chance 100%, then why not?

The clerics of Arthur generally had two paths.

The first path was to be groomed from a young age as a cleric apprentice. You would study the theology of the deity according to the local church's practice and you would go through some basic character class training.

After that, you just had to wait.

When the deity could feel your piety, then you would be able to move up a rank from apprentice to become a Level 1 Cleric proper.

If the path to becoming a wizard was hard at first, and easy later, then a cleric apprentice's road was easy at first, and hard at the back.

When Zhao Xu attended the awakening ceremony of the wizard apprentices, a large majority of the people present would successfully become a wizard at the end of the ceremony.

But for a cleric apprentice, there was a huge number of people with more years of experience in line ahead of you, and they were all waiting for the deity to notice their piety.

The number of clerics per deity was limited, otherwise, everyone could become a cleric and they would have become a huge power in Arthur.

The other path that a cleric had was to be favored by the deity and be chosen to become a cleric.

When this sort of person came to the church, he was just going through the motion to receive some training.

So, Zhao Xu was confident that he would be able to complete the cleric training within a week.

When he thought about these things, Zhao Xu couldn't help but sigh.

In his previous life, his wife was also from earth.

After the transmigration, she had been recognized by the local Goddess of Luck, Bella, and taken in as a cleric apprentice.

But even after his wife had worked hard for two whole years, she was still unable to become an actual cleric.

At that time among the people from Earth that had transmigrated to Arthur, many of the players who had suddenly become someone of the most powerful people in Arthur had slowly started to look toward finding partners.

During those two years, Zhao Xu had been a guard of the town and had done pretty well, had a good reputation, and knew his way around quite well.

Since there was no hope of advancing further, his wife's parents had helped her to get together with Zhao Xu to become a married couple and start a family.

If all this had happened on Earth and they hadn't transmigrated...

His wife was a beautiful lady from an aristocratic family, and someone like him would never have had the chance to get anywhere near her.

He didn't even have any channel by which he could communicate with her right now.

But one fine day, he was going to make the poets of Arthur continue to sing of his fame.

"Mr. Reyan, if it's so crowded, why aren't we just teleporting ourselves in?" Zhao Xu asked after he snapped out of his daze and looked at how Reyan was still happily waiting in line.

"Even the Chairman has to enter from the front door," Reyan said unhappily. "When you become a cleric, you could fly in directly, if you like, but I can't."

"Mr. Reyan, you're not a cleric?"

"Do I have to spell it out for you? Anybody in the association can become a cleric too but as a Contact Officer, I can't. Otherwise, whose Contact Officer would I be? The association's? Or the Temple's?"

Zhao Xu immediately realized that he had overlooked this part.

In his previous life, he was considered a rather high ranking person in his town, but he wasn't so high ranking that the king had heard of him. Any leader of the land could smite him easily.

"But even a Contact Officer shouldn't have to just wait in line like this either, right?" huffed Zhao Xu.

To put it in simple terms, if Reyan was on earth, then he'd be considered an ambassador of sorts.

He might not have special privileges, but surely he deserved better treatment than this.

"I've already informed them that I'm coming, but I don't know what's going on today inside and it's taking them a long time. On a normal day, I would have just shamelessly cut the line or used some spell to disperse the people. But I probably couldn't get away with such a thing on the Goddess' birthday."

Suddenly, a middle-aged cleric in a white robe walked out.

When the believers saw this cleric walk out, they all immediately cleared a path for him to walk through.

The outer hall of the church, which had been as crowded as the filling of a dumpling, suddenly had a clear path as wide as three people.

"Mr. Reyan, I'm sorry for making you wait so long," the cleric bowed his head a little to express his apology.

"No worries, let's hurry up and go in. It's this fellow who's becoming a cleric," said Reyan nonchalantly as he tugged at Zhao Xu's wizard robe and marched right in.

Zhao Xu had his hood on in the same style as Antonya, so his entire face was covered in the shadow of his hood, cutting off the curious glances of the people around him.

The cleric took a second glance at Zhao Xu, then nodded and said, "Please, follow me."

Once the middle-aged cleric said this, Zhao Xu and Reyan quickly followed him. If they were too slow, then they might get stuck in this human jam again.

The outer wall of the Sacred Heart Cathedral was covered in carvings of the Goddess performing miracles.

The main entrance step wasn't made of angular stone steps. Instead, it was just the side of a circular stone pillar, with only half sticking out, as if the other half was buried in the ground.

After the two in front of him walked over this step, Zhao Xu followed behind them.

Suddenly, he felt like his head went numb.

The temple behind the church resonated with the melodious sound of bells.

They came, one wave after another.

"All praise to the Goddess." The middle-aged cleric hurriedly bowed his head and started to pray quietly.

The countless people around them also bent their heads and started praying. Some even knelt where they were to worship.

"The Goddess is here," whispered Reyan.

Zhao Xu didn't quite understand him, too caught up with the changes in his mind.

He seemed to have a few additional divine magic spell slots.

2 s

Chapter 44: A Prospective Cleric

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

The number of shocks that Zhao Xu had gone through recently made him get used to calming his excited heart down.

He quickly glanced at the spell data in his character stats.

Cleric

Divine Magic Cantrip spell slots: 3=3 (Character Class)

Divine Magic Level 1 spell slots: 2=1 (Character Class) 1 (Wisdom)

The information was similar to the ones for his Wizard class.

The only difference was that the text here was all grayed out and wasn't active yet.

It was just like how his wizard slots were when he logged into the game that morning. They were in a frozen state because he hadn't meditated on them yet.

Zhao Xu's wife in his previous life had gone through cleric training, so he knew a thing or two about it.

Clerics obtained Divine Magic by meditation and prayer.

They didn't need to study or research any spells, they just went into deep thought at a fixed time so that they could receive that day's spells as a blessing from the deity they worshiped.

Even if you didn't get 8 full hours of rest, it wouldn't affect Divine Magic.

Zhao Xu was currently at a point where he just needed to meditate for one hour, and he would be able to attain that day's Divine Magic.

Originally, he wanted to cross the entrance of the church and make up for that last 1% chance as the Goddess descended.

Zhao Xu was now a prospective cleric. He just needed to get through the rest of the training, which wasn't too hard.

He found it a little hard to believe this.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu had seen a lot of cleric apprentices who had spent all their time studying books and trying to understand the teachings of their gods.

There were even those who continued to work hard until they were already old, and they still hadn't been able to become a Level 1 Cleric.

Even though during this one year before the transmigration, the gods and deities were very generous towards the players, the proportion of players who managed to become a Level 1 Cleric was still not very high.

Besides the player's natural self-awareness, the main problem was that, for a cleric, going up in level wasn't something that everyone could work toward and attain.

That was also why his wife in his previous life had eventually given up trying to become a cleric.

Even though this rather magical situation had happened to Zhao Xu, he knew that remaining silent was the best thing to do for now.

This opportunity was way too profound.

He wanted to take the character class of Archivist, so he just needed to become a Level 1 Cleric.

According to what he knew, the abilities that came with being a Cleric were enough to make everything worth it.

Right now, everyone in the church was standing respectfully.

The bells chimed on and on without ceasing, and all of them were quietly praying to the Goddess from the bottom of their hearts.

Zhao Xu didn't know why he had been pulled through the long river of time and had gone to meet the Goddess at a time before she became a Goddess.

Right now, the reverence he felt toward the Goddess was way less intense than the reverence he had for her before going back in time.

The closer she was, the less she made people feel reverent toward her.

This was also why wizards respected the Goddess but didn't necessarily believe in her.

Zhao Xu didn't dare to think that the Goddess had something to ask of him. He didn't think he was such a big shot.

But what was becoming very clear was that the Goddess wanted his support.

Whatever she wanted seemed to be so urgent that she couldn't wait until he had some sort of achievements before getting him on her side.

The only guess he had was that his identity as someone who had gone back in time could become a possible variable of fate.

It was like a chessboard where the game was played out. There were no more options, until, suddenly, a new pawn appeared. Even though the pawn itself possessed very little power, it was enough to stir up a storm.

Zhao Xu didn't look very conspicuously around the place and followed the other believers by humbly bowing his head as well.

This was the normal way of life in Arthur.

His wife in his previous life didn't get to become a cleric, but she was still a very devout believer.

In Arthur, after a living creature dies, its soul will normally float toward the Outer Planes of the most suitable Alignment.

That was the outermost circle drawn on that huge round disk that Zhao Xu had seen during the ceremony with all the planes of Arthur indicated on it.

Those who had a religion would be protected by their gods and deities and would be taken into the plane in which they lived.

So besides the super-powerful wizards who might never die, most people would obediently look for a god or deity that aligned with their inclinations and believe in them.

Everyone was afraid that after they died, their unconscious souls would just float into the nether world with nowhere to go to and might even fall into the Abyss and Hells to become bait for demons.

So, Zhao Xu didn't doubt the piety in the voices of those praying fervently by his side.

Finally, the sound of the bells slowly faded and silence brought with it a sad emptiness.

"The Goddess has left." Reyan's voice suddenly rang out within Zhao Xu's mind.

Zhao Xu wasn't a stranger to this sort of thing now. He knew that Reyan had cast a spell to make this happen.

He glanced at his character stats message board.

His activity displayed a string of words: You are now connected to Reyan via Telepathic Bond.

All these activity updates were a reflection of Zhao Xu's own thoughts.

If Zhao Xu ever misunderstood anything or got the spell names wrong, the message board would also reflect the incorrect message.

That was because this message board could not be used to confirm what was really happening.

He couldn't rely on this message board to judge whether he was really under this particular spell, or whether the person communicating with him was really Reyan or not.

But after Zhao Xu focused his attention on the few words 'Telepathic Bond', he was immediately successfully connected with Reyan.

And if he wanted to reject this connection, he could also use this to refuse it.

"So fast?" Zhao Xu contemplated what words he should use and finally decided to stick to more neutral terms.

The gods and deities wouldn't read the minds of living creatures like him, but if they mentioned the name of the gods and deities, then the gods and deities would know.

As long as you said it out loud, they would know.

And they would also hear all the rest of the words that you said.

"Bro, we're here today to see someone and not the other way around. Otherwise, I wouldn't have appeared in such a hurry just to make sure you got here as quickly as possible. We were in a hurry, so Antonya felt bad taking the time to give you your reward."

Reyan called him 'Bro' so casually and Zhao Xu felt so awkward.

Goodness knows how old this wizard really was, even though he looked like he was only around 30.

But when Reyan mentioned the reward, Zhao Xu suddenly remembered it.

Earlier, Zhao Xu was still feeling sad about Antonya leaving and he had completely forgotten that Antonya had promised to reward him.

"Do you know what reward it is? Mr. Reyan?" Even though Zhao Xu was using his thoughts to talk to Reyan, his curiosity was bursting through his thoughts.

Antonya was a big shot who could casually and randomly pull out a legendary 12 Intelligence headband.

If she was giving him something, then even if it wasn't a 6 Intelligence item, surely it was at least a 2.

"I wouldn't know. Antonya usually gives away something she makes herself, and they carry her unique style, so she would never let me see it. I suppose once you finish your cleric training and meet her again, she'll give it to you."

"But we were still too slow in coming and we didn't get to the innermost part of the shrine. It's easier to get the attention of the Goddess there, and you might even become a cleric straightaway and attain Divine Magic."

"The shrine?" Zhao Xu continued to ask anxiously.

"That's right. The shrine had 300 available slots and I used my connections to get you the centermost spot, but I didn't expect her to descend so quickly and we didn't get to use it. Hurry up and go to the shrine. The aura of the goddess is still very thick there, so you can increase your chances of attaining Divine Magic."

Reyan added telepathically, "All those people who couldn't get into the 300 vacancies are waiting for this chance. Otherwise, why did you think so many people squeezed in to watch?"

Zhao Xu was surprised. "Wasn't it because they could get Holy Water?"

"Get Holy Water? That useless thing only causes a 2D4 damage to dead souls and other evil creatures from the netherworld. Any random Fireball of mine would cause a 10D6 and I can use metamagic to increase the damage by half. Or you have some special hobbies that need this stuff? Like you want to use it to educate those legendary succubi?

"Alright, alright, enough of this talk. Hurry up and get a space." Reyan suddenly thought of something and his face reddened, so he quickly tried to draw Zhao Xu's attention away.

"There's no need to squeeze with them."

"What?"

"I already got Divine Magic earlier, when the Goddess was here."

"..."

"I said, I've already attained Divine Magic earlier."

His voice continued to echo between the two of them.

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Chapter 45: Preparing Divine Magic

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

Reyan sighed inwardly at how biased the Goddess was being.

This young fellow probably didn't even know how expensive a space inside the shrine was.

All of Mystra's wizard families and other ancient aristocratic families were trying to get a space.

All these powerful people had a ridiculous number of family members and relatives, and marrying each other made their network even more complex, never those more distant relatives that came from other towns to try and make use of their connections.

Since they wanted to keep the power that their families had, they would also work hard to groom their family members into spellcaster classes.

The path to becoming a wizard relied on one's gifts, but becoming a cleric depended more on how much the gods liked you.

So, in general, there was nothing that anyone could do, and they couldn't change the gods' opinions of themselves.

You couldn't possibly start singing the praises of some relative of yours while you prayed and asked the deity to make that relative a Level 1 Cleric.

Using these vacancies on the birthday of the gods was the most direct way of allowing each person to display what they were capable of, and it was easy to make arrangements for your own family to stand in the shrine.

Even though it was said that the Goddess of Magic was able to listen to the thoughts of every believer...

on such occasions like today, during that moment when she deliberately descends upon the shrine...

those cleric apprentices present in the shrine would definitely be noticed more than others.

Or rather, she would do her clergy in Arthur a favor and arrange for some of these cleric apprentices to become actual clerics.

And then there were those who could receive Divine Magic by just standing at the gate, like Zhao Xu.

If you were someone who was normally devout and finally became a cleric, nobody would say anything about that.

But now, it was obvious that at the moment when the Goddess of Magic descended, she liked the fellow standing at the entrance and just decided to grant him Divine Magic as well.

What would any of the 300 cleric apprentices who didn't get to become an actual cleric think? Wouldn't that prove that they weren't good enough?

Reyan didn't expect to run into something like that by bringing this young man, who looked so ordinary, here.

"Don't talk about this now, and don't use any of your divine magic. Go through the training course, then on the last day, tell them that you've received divine magic, then you can leave after you're done registering yourself."

Zhao Xu didn't expect that to be Reyan's suggestion, but he just nodded anyway.

Zhao Xu hadn't spent the last nine years fighting in Arthur and learned nothing.

Now his base was The Final Scroll, and so the organization naturally didn't want him to attract too much attention among the clergy.

At least he should be involved with these low-level clerics as little as possible.

After that, Reyan went up to talk to the middle-aged cleric again to make arrangements for Zhao Xu's next step.

After some discussion, Zhao Xu followed Reyan as the cleric turned to bring them toward the inner hall.

Finally, the clergy had arranged a new dormitory room and a daily timetable for Zhao Xu.

There were many things written on this schedule, but, after looking at it carefully, the scheduled activities were very clear.

Every morning, there would be a mass prayer, followed by a study of theology books until noon. After lunch, he would go and receive the necessary training according to his needs.

As for his dormitory, it was still a single person room. But the area was much smaller than his rooms in the floating city, and if you were just that much fatter, you might have trouble even turning around.

The room was furnished very simply as well. There was nothing in the room besides a bed and a wooden desk.

After bringing Zhao Xu through all of this and completing the handover process, Reyan showed him where the contact office of the Wizard Association within the church was.

For the next few days, Reyan would be unable to stay by Zhao Xu's side 24 hours a day, so, if Zhao Xu needed anything, he could go to the contact office and they would help Zhao Xu call Reyan.

After Reyan had told Zhao Xu everything he needed to, Reyan left with that middle-aged cleric.

It was the Goddess' birthday, and there was more than just the part where the Goddess descended in the shrine. There were many celebrations and ceremonies planned for the rest of the day.

Reyan was a Contact Officer, so he had to keep helping everyone from the Wizard Association coming over.

In the end, Zhao Xu was left alone in the room.

For the rest of the day until night, the church wouldn't make arrangements for any training since it was the Goddess' birthday, so he had nothing to do too.

Zhao Xu sat on the bed and just randomly pulled out a theology book from the bookshelves along the wall.

But, after looking at it for barely 5 minutes, Zhao Xu just stuffed it right back into the shelf. And he stuffed it back hard.

Never mind how hard it was to pronounce all this jargon-these theology books were written in a complicated manner with many implied meanings, and it made his head hurt just reading them.

Zhao Xu could only feel amazed at how other people were able to read and absorb all these things.

He turned around and started to study the divine magic he had.

He couldn't display it in front of others, but it didn't mean he couldn't use it in private.

The only irritating part was that the clerics usually had a fixed time to pray as a group.

The gods and deities would impart divine magic in bulk during this time to everyone.

If a cleric wanted to choose a different time to pray, then he would have to bet on whether the god was willing to be kind enough to impart him divine magic.

In his many years living in Arthur in his previous life, countless earthlings had tried to use the knowledge they knew from Earth to prove and to even try to analyze what sort of planet Arthur really was.

In the end, they all gave up and accepted the idea that Arthur wasn't part of the original universe that Earth was from.

Arthur was in a system all its own.

As a result, everyone on the main plane of Arthur followed the same time zone no matter where they were and watched the terribly faraway sun rise and set every day together.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu had also tried hard to figure this out. He looked at all the models that others had drawn and finally decided to accept the concept of planes.

Zhao Xu sat cross-legged and started to meditate and pray in an attempt to get his divine magic going.

After flipping through the religious texts earlier, Zhao Xu had managed to learn the basic words for praying.

The good part was that Clerics' divine magic wasn't fussy and didn't require 8 full hours of rest.

Slowly, Zhao Xu started to notice that there were some sparkles glowing within his mind.

The Divine Magic Spell Slots text in his character stats started to sway and it looked like they were going to light up instead of remaining grayed out.

During the process of Zhao Xu's meditation, the image of the Goddess of Magic slowly became more and more detailed inside his mind.

The details on that face slowly became sharper.

In Arthur, the external features of all the gods were drawn in a more general and vague manner.

Those stone sculptures had managed to carve the gods such that they looked like gods but didn't look like the gods themselves.

When Zhao Xu sat on that Arcane Throne and was summoned to the long river of history, he had seen Sisylvana before she became a goddess, so he hadn't recognized her.

If he met her after she became a goddess, then she would have had the same presence as those statues. Even if he were blind, he wouldn't have thought that she was some demoness or succubus.

Zhao Xu had also become one of the very few in Arthur who knew what the Goddess really looked like.

But, just as the Goddess' outer appearance had formed within his mind...

the face that was about to come alive instantly turned into countless sparkles and fell away from each other.

Zhao Xu immediately saw that there were many balls of light within his mind, formed by all the little sparkles.

He focused his attention on these balls of light to find that these were actually proper descriptions of Divine Magic.

The balls of light each represented the divine magic that he could choose to prepare.

The bottom-most row were all the divine magic cantrips, then the row on top of that was a little larger in size and those were divine magic Level 1 spells.

As he looked at all these balls of light, Zhao Xu did a rough count. There were 12 cantrips and 25 Level 1 spells.

Compared to the method that the wizards had of learning one spell only after he had finished copying it out, Divine magic was much more generous and the gods just listed out all the spells you could choose from directly.

And he could choose from as many as 37 different spells.

Even though he was currently only able to prepare five or six divine magic spells.

Some of these divine magic spells were the same as arcane magic spells. For example, the cantrip Detect Magic. You could say that this spell had an arcane magic version as well as a divine magic version.

But at the same time, there were some spells that only had a divine magic version. Wizards couldn't do anything about these spells and couldn't learn them at all.

Zhao Xu hadn't realized something yet.

Not every Level 9 Cleric was able to cast the divine magic Level 5 spell of Raise Dead.

These 12 cantrips and 25 Level 1 spells were the most basic package.

There were more than 25 Level 1 spells in divine magic, and there were some extended types of divine magic.

It was just like how his Level 1 Benign Transposition spell wasn't part of the standard list and was a spell that you couldn't learn if you didn't have any access to special channels.

For the majority of Level 1 Clerics, they wouldn't go past these 25 Level 1 Divine Magic spells while they were still at such a low level.

In fact, allowing them to choose from 10 divine magic spells was already a sign that they had passed the initial stage of becoming a Cleric. After slowly gaining the blessing of the gods, then they would be able to choose from even more divine magic spells.

Only those Level 1 Clerics who were closest to their god would get the full list of 25 Level 1 divine magic spells.

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Chapter 46: Cure Spells

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

Compared to wizards' arcane magic which was complicated from its contents to its formation, the divine magic that clerics used was basically just an explanation of the spells.

Zhao Xu took a peek at his own spell slots.

Cleric:

Divine magic cantrips slots: 3=3 (Character Class)

Divine magic Level 1 spell slots: 2=1 (Character Class) 1 (Wisdom)

He had 3 cantrip slots and 2 Level 1 spell slots. He could simply choose from any of those 1225 divine magic spells.

Earlier this morning, when Zhao Xu went up against Antonya, he realized that 5 spells could be used up in a very short time.

Someone had registered an ID on the forums recently as 'When do clerics actually become more powerful' and posted an article to protest on how he had too few spell slots.

Many players who had finally managed to make it to Level 1 Wizard now started to realize that the difficulty of becoming a wizard and the character class' power didn't match up at all.

In other, similar online games, if you didn't throw out more than a dozen spells during a battle, you would be ashamed to call yourself a wizard. On top of that, you would normally be able to drink some blue-colored potion of sorts to restore your magic powers.

But in Arthur, after you cast you four or five spells, you were done.

And, after you finished up all your spells for the day, you couldn't cast any more until the next day. This problem really infuriated many spellcaster classes who had finished their training, and even those who were still in training griped about it.

Zhao Xu knew that all these people still hadn't gotten their heads around this whole situation, and they were still stuck believing that Arthur was just a standard game that involved leveling up and killing monsters.

They still hadn't figured out that studying, carrying out missions, or improving themselves were also things that could help them level up.

In his previous life, it would only take another month or so for everyone to be fully aware that spell slots had to be used carefully and wisely.

But Zhao Xu wasn't concerned about that anymore. He had additional cleric spell slots, so at least at Level 1, he had twice the number of options compared to other players.

In Arthur, extra spell slots were better than gold.

With the experience he had as a wizard, Zhao Xu looked through all the divine magic spells available and chose accordingly.

In any case, he didn't need to go to battle now. After preparing these spells, he was just going to finish using them.

Among the cantrips, he had prepared Create Water, Detect Magic, and Mending.

For the Level 1 spell slots, he prepared Divine Favor and Comprehend Languages.

Just after he finished picking those, it felt like a strange sacred energy was pumped straight into Zhao Xu's body.

It made his entire body feel numb and tingly, and his spirit became brighter and more energetic.

After that, he soon recovered from that dazed feeling.

He looked over at the hourglass in the corner and realized that an hour had already passed.

The spells that he prepared for his Wizard class earlier that day had already been grayed out, which meant that they had been used.

Zhao Xu had just gotten his hands on divine magic, but he wasn't overly excited about it.

The divine magic that clerics used was similar to the arcane magic that wizards used in that they were also made up of incantations and gestures.

It was just that, compared to wizards, clerics didn't need to understand why. They just needed to follow the necessary steps and they would be able to cast spells successfully.

Zhao Xu had experience as a wizard, so he definitely didn't need any training in this part at all.

He immediately looked at his character stats and started emulating the incantations and gestures of the spells that he had already chosen and prepared.

He was like a beginner trying to imitate a dance teacher. Zhao Xu barely managed to read out the incantations and make the correct poses when he went through it for the first time.

Finally, he shouted out in his heart: Create Water!

Zhao Xu's palms were completely empty when, suddenly, clean, sweet water just gushed forth from them.

He didn't have any containers to store the water, so the water just continued to flow onto the floor without stopping.

It just kept going until seven or eight liters of water had flowed out, enough to fill several buckets of water, and the entire floor of Zhao Xu's dorm room was wet.

Thankfully he was staying on the ground floor, and the flooring was made from bricks, otherwise, he would have a lot of trouble cleaning this mess up.

And after he watched how his spell could create so much drinkable water, Zhao Xu fell into deep thought instead.

Compared to the arcane magic of wizards, the divine magic of clerics was weak at controlling a battle but was very strong in assisting.

At the very least, pretty much all the important healing spells were exclusively divine magic.

Zhao Xu was slowly beginning to understand why those spellcasters always seemed so high and mighty.

It was because they had reached a stage of self-sufficiency.

Wizards just had to learn more spells, while Clerics just had to ask their gods for spells.

If they were missing anything at all, they could just create it.

Once he reached a sufficiently high level, Zhao Xu would also eventually be able to create food and even houses.

So, when the real apocalypse hit, these spellcasters were the ones who could just find some corner and then happily make anything they needed for daily living, just like that.

After thinking about how foolish he had been in his previous life, Zhao Xu continued with his original plans.

His main focus was on healing spells.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu had received many healing spells from clerics when he fought in battles. That feeling of his life energy being instantly rejuvenated was simply unforgettable.

That was also the significance of Hit Points to each of these character classes.

The healing spells of the clerics were able to help them restore their Hit Points.

In theory, as long as you didn't get killed on the spot, if there were enough clerics around to support the situation, and you had fighting character classes that were as good at defending as army tanks, one could fight some really powerful monsters in Arthur by attrition alone, and you might win even if your side was weaker to begin with.

As the people who represented the aspect of healing, good clerics could naturally turn any spell they prepared automatically into a Cure Spell.

Evil clerics, on the contrary, could turn any spell they had prepared into an Inflict Spell.

Even though Zhao Xu's alignment was neutral, he still decided to obediently choose to convert his spells to Cure Spells.

Within the list of spells meant for wizards, there were already plenty of spells that could do loads of harm.

The ability to convert these spells was something that Zhao Xu had naturally, since he was a cleric, and he didn't need to train in this aspect.

But now he had spells, and he also had the ability to convert them.

He was just missing a target that was already injured.

After thinking it through, the target had to be himself.

Zhao Xu looked around the entire dormitory room but couldn't find anything sharp.

Zhao Xu raised his own fists and could only laugh awkwardly.

None of those players risking their lives out there would ever have imagined this scenario. They waited for so long but still couldn't get any Cure Spells and they could only wail and complain about it online every day.

And now, this precious Cure Spell was going to be used up so easily by this boy who just wanted to test it out.

Zhao Xu slowly breathed out. It was a little embarrassing that he actually had to injure himself, but, since he couldn't find anyone else to try it on, he had no choice but to do something like this.

He looked back at his own fists. If he punched himself barehanded, the damage to his Hit Points would be 1D3.

He had 6 Hit Points, so he wasn't afraid of knocking himself out with one punch. That would be such a joke.

So, with a mighty swing, Zhao Xu used all his strength to punch himself in the chest.

The act of getting attacked without putting up a defense made him feel a dull ache in his chest immediately, and he almost couldn't catch his breath.

Zhongxia has activated 'Bare fisted attack', a -4 attack penalty would cause fatal injury, 1D3=2.

His Hit Points immediately fell to 4 points.

After calming down for a bit, Zhao Xu didn't stop there. In his previous life, he had gone through injuries that broke through his chest and his stomach even.

He continued to follow the incantations and gestures to heal light injuries in order to cast a spell.

Immediately, the Level 1 spell of Divine Favor was pulled out of its slot by his consciousness.

The energy of a spell could be broken apart to become the materials used for Cure Light Wounds.

The moment he finished chanting the incantations, a pure, bright beam of white light appeared in Zhao Xu's palms. It wasn't burning hot, but it felt warm and comforting.

The large majority of clerics' Cure Spells were touch spells, and a simple touch was all it took to be effective.

Zhao Xu placed this beam of light against his own chest.

His message board instantly flashed a new message: Do you want to reject the effects of this spell? No harm (if you reject it, you need a Will saving throw).

Zhao Xu ignored the message completely and let it accept the effects of the spell by default.

A refreshing warmth flowed into his chest, and the dull feeling in his chest that he felt earlier disappeared in an instant.

It was the same sort of feeling he used to get when he last received a healing spell.

In an instant, he could see that his hit point total was back to its maximum.

Zhongxia received divine magic Level 1 spell Cure Light Wounds, restoration of Hit Points is 1D81 = 31 = 4 HP.

When he saw this message, Zhao Xu exclaimed to himself about how these Cure Spells were indeed powerful. It was enough to restore 1D8X number of Hit Points, where X was equivalent to his spellcasting class. He was now at Level 1, so he only had 1 point, and the maximum was 5.

So that meant that, at Level 1, he was only able to restore 2 to 9 hit points. It wasn't a lot, but for most people, it was more than enough.

Since the beginning of the last week, many players who had chosen character classes that were good at melee battles had graduated from their training courses.

And there were already countless players whining and complaining on the forums that after they had been wounded, they were shocked that they couldn't restore their health automatically.

If they lay in bed for an entire night, they would only get 1 HP back, and if they lay in bed for an entire day, they would only get 2.

So, if a Fighter started off with around 12 HP and was injured to the point where he was left with only 1 HP, then he would need to lie in bed for at least four to five days before he could fully restore his health.

This really decreased their efficiency at leveling up enough to defeat monsters.

Of course, Zhao Xu knew very well that if you were a Level X character, then after one night of rest, you could restore X number of HP, and if you rested the entire day, then you would restore 2X of HP. But this sort of natural healing process was never enough when it came to the players' hit points.

This was also the reason why the cleric character class had become the most popular topic recently for the first time.

But, at the same time, the number of clerics who could graduate from their apprenticeship and become an actual cleric were few and far in between. They weren't that much better than wizards.

If Zhao Xu was willing to form a team with others out there, declaring himself a wizard would earn him disdain, but if he declared himself a cleric, then many out there would welcome him with open arms and he would be very well received.

He had heard from Zhang Qi the day before that many classmates had already decided to delete their original character and switch to becoming a cleric, even though everyone said that they had no idea how to level up as a cleric at all.

After Zhao Xu had tested and proven his ability to spontaneously cast a Cure Spell on himself, he wasn't too concerned with the remaining spells in his spell slots anymore.

He now turned back to look through and study the descriptions of those 12 cantrips and 25 Level 1 spells all over again.

After he had read through all these spells, they would appear in the list of known spells in the cleric section of his own character stats.

Compared to just knowing how to cast the spells, knowing which ones to actually use was a very important thing.

As Zhao Xu was slowly looking through the spells, his eyes suddenly stopped.

The focus of his eyes fell upon the cantrip Inflict Minor Wounds.

A kind-facing cleric like himself wouldn't be able to naturally transform anything into a harmful spell like this, but that didn't stop him from being able to prepare it as one of his original spells.

Spell slots for cantrips weren't very valuable to him. He could have totally prepared an Inflict Minor Wounds spell and caused 1 point of damage to himself first.

Then he could use a Cure Spell to heal himself just to prove it works.

He didn't actually have to go through the risk of causing himself too much damage by punching himself.

All of a sudden, Zhao Xu felt that he had been able to become a Wizard really only because he had gone back in time.

2 s

Chapter 47: Setting Up in Advance

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

After testing his remaining spells very briefly, Zhao Xu logged off.

There was nobody he knew nearby, and because the clergy were busy arranging for the huge ceremonies for the rest of the day, they didn't have time to bother with him.

He was afraid that if he had appeared at the ceremonies, some strange or magical thing might happen, and he would end up attracting the attention of others unnecessarily.

He didn't want to become the star of the online discussion forums.

The most important thing to Zhao Xu right now was to keep quiet and lie low when necessary. After all, the path he was on right now was a pretty safe and stable one.

"Xu, you've logged off so early today?" Zhang Qi had just returned from his morning classes and quickly greeted Zhao Xu when he saw that he was offline.

Zhao Xu nodded his head. "Qi, is everything alright with you?"

He now noticed that the other two boys who shared his room had come back together and he greeted them both too.

Liu Hanqiang was from Lu Province and he was the top student of their dorm, and he was the only one who didn't play Arthur in Zhao Xu's previous life.

Liu Hanqiang was from a pretty good family. All his family and relatives were civil servants in government-funded corporations.

Compared to Zhao Xu's family, who ran a tiny business that barely made ends meet, Liu Hanqiang's family was probably living a much more stable life.

Ever since Liu Hanqiang entered university, besides eagerly taking up the role of joining the student union, he had planned to finish his postgrad in his current major, then go on to become a civil servant.

And, according to what he often told them, he had family members in certain departments and positions who had already prepared everything in advance for him to join them.

In his previous life, Zhang Qi had managed to drag even Zhao Xu into playing Arthur, but only Liu Hanqiang managed to hold onto his original plans of focusing on studying.

Among the other three who shared the same room, Liu Hanqiang was someone with a bit of background and was willing to work hard, so he was definitely going to be the one among them with the most stable path after graduation.

But nobody would have expected that a game that looked like a waste of time would eventually become the thing that changed countless people's fates.

In his previous life, after Liu Hanqiang transmigrated and saw the target he had worked at so hard for more than ten years disappear, he fell into depression for a long time.

In the end, he still took up a non-fighting role of being an Expert and went into teaching. But, unfortunately, seven years later, his town was attacked in the Battle of Magic Sealing and he died.

As for his other dormmate, Chen Sinan, he was one of Zhao Xu's closest friends from the dorm after they had all transmigrated.

In his previous life, the last time Zhao Xu met up with Chen Sinan, Chen Sinan had already successfully leveled up and had become a core strength within the Temple of the God of Justice.

"Xu, so when are you going to teleport yourself over?" grumbled Zhang Qi.

Zhang Qi and the rest already knew about how Zhao Xu had been allocated to a town in the south of Arthur, and it was terribly far away from all of them living in Winter Town.

For now, all the players could only get around on foot and the wilderness was too dangerous for any of them. Zhao Xu could forget about reuniting with them in the north until he was at least at Level 3 or even Level 5.

"Wait until I have enough money," Zhao Xu repeated as he sat on the bed. But his hands continued to scroll through any news on Arthur's online forums.

"Xu, did you know? Sinan's been incredible recently." Zhang Qi had already taken a seat in the suspended chair that he had modified himself and was drinking a can of soda while talking to Zhao Xu.

"Isn't Lay on Hands a class feature of a Level 2 Paladin?" Zhao Xu had just used a healing spell and he was very sensitive in this area.

"Oh my god, Expert Xu! How do you learn all this stuff so quickly!" Zhang Qi said in disbelief.

Chen Sinan pushed Zhang Qi to the side in annoyance and told him not to spout nonsense.

"Xu, Sinan is now in the top team of our class, so everyone is counting on him to get to Level 2 and carry us along," Zhang Qi explained.

Zhao Xu nodded his head. After half a month of Arthur, the number of people who had graduated as Clerics wasn't much better than the number who graduated as Wizards.

It was hard enough to get players to truly believe in the gods and deities of the game, and it was even harder to gain recognition from those gods and deities.

And those clerics who had chosen to believe in their own Alignment had to be acknowledged by the entire Alignment, so there were few such clerics in Arthur.

When it came to their school, the number of cleric players were few and far in between.

Druids had healing abilities and could take up the position of healing, but the large majority of them were still squatting around in forests as they continued to defend nature against those destroying it and were also going through an equally painful training process.

Since everyone was suffering from a lack of healers, Paladins who also had some ability to heal had become the next best option for anyone who needed to be healed.

When Paladins hit Level 2, they would gain the class feature Lay on Hands, which could restore Hit Points equivalent to their Charisma modifier score multiplied by the Paladin's current level.

It wasn't really a lot, but for the players now, instead of waiting for a cleric to complete his training, it was more practical to hope that a Paladin could hit Level 2 instead.

Paladins in Arthur were a magical sort of character class because the requirements on their Alignment were extremely strict.

While believing in a god or deity, they had to be even stricter with themselves in terms of their convictions.

The Paladins Zhao Xu had seen in his previous life were like vindicators who were extremely upright and refused to lie. If they were faced with any evil actions, they would attack fiercely and not hold anything back.

All the commoners in Arthur would give a Paladin a thumbs up and shower him with praise if they saw one.

This was the only character class in Arthur where you really couldn't go against your conscience to act like one.

But, as long as your personal convictions and personality were suitable, you would be able to level up as a Paladin very quickly.

"Don't worry, once all of us become richer in the future and we can afford to buy a Wand of Lesser Vigor, this sort of situation would become better," said Zhao Xu.

"Lesser Vigor? Magic Wand?" asked Zhang Qi in surprise.

"Read through the forums more often," retorted Zhao Xu.

"My God, bro, it's already tiring enough for me to keep logging in every day and fighting for my life."

The spell of Vigor, Lesser, had already been mentioned by someone on the forums. It was a Level 1 divine magic spell, but it wasn't part of the standard list of Level 1 spells for Clerics, and you had to get it through a special channel of sorts.

The only thing it did was allow the player to get the ability of Fast Healing 1, which meant that you could restore 1 HP per round, and you could do this for more than ten rounds.

Even though it couldn't instantly restore one's hit points to its maximum, the amount it could restore was already more than the Cure Light Wounds spell that Zhao Xu had used on himself earlier that day. That's why this also eventually became the main way of restoring HP after a battle.

A Wand of Lesser Magic that could be used 50 times retailed at 750 gold pieces, and it was one of the must-have items among the battle leagues in the future.

Ordinary players would band together to level up, and some clerics would try to pool their resources together to buy one of these.

But now everyone was still very poor and barely had any gold pieces. Even if they wanted to buy a wand, there was no way.

"Zhang Qi, how's the class league going?" asked Zhao Xu. Chen Sinan was a quiet chap and normally didn't interact too much with them, so Zhao Xu would normally direct his questions at Zhang Qi.

"It's a bit sad. A number of those who chose fighting classes have used up all their revival stones and they've all started to register new characters. There are very few spellcasters that managed to graduate. It's so hard to become a wizard and nobody knows how useful they really are, so almost nobody is choosing that anymore," grumbled Zhang Qi.

"What about the Major League?" Zhao Xu asked.

Zhang Qi was shocked by the question and asked dazedly, "Bro, how did you know about this? I'm one of the few in the know and I just found out about this thing, but you know it better than me."

Zhao Xu didn't elaborate further, just kept scrolling on his phone.

But, of course. In his previous life, their school's Major League was finally formed toward the end and Zhao Xu had heard Zhang Qi grumble all day long about all the crappy things that happened within it.

Most university students were considered fairly highly educated people with plenty of free time, so within Arthur, they were mostly classified as upper-middle class.

After everyone transmigrated, even though they didn't form the largest group of people, the power they had built up eventually made them one of the main powers from Earth.

Since Zhao Xu had become a wizard, he would be able to make good arrangements for his parents and other family.

But humans were all social beings, and it was meaningless to arrange for all of them to live in the floating city.

So Zhao Xu needed a projection spokesperson to help him control some of the powers of the league, then that would make it much easier for him to pave the way to getting into some of the powerful parties from Earth.

2 s

Chapter 48: Powers

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

In his previous life, when the Blue Star Powers first transmigrated into Arthur, it took them quite a bit of time and conflict before they finally managed to get themselves together.

In reality, Blue Stars Powers had begun to form right after the transmigration, but it took a year or two for them to organize enough to have a voice of their own.

Those who used to have power on Earth had suddenly come to a new world and were naturally unwilling to let go of the power they once had and wanted to continue living in the glory and prestige they used to have.

But there was nothing they could do since they were facing the magnificent world of Arthur, a land of monsters and supernatural powers.

When a lot of players of Arthur saw that those people refused to let go of the power they once had on earth, the players mostly just ignored them and left right away, because they were affiliated with their own groups of power within Arthur itself.

Blue Star Powers itself continued tumbling along all the way until some high-level players made it to the leadership rung and only stopped their infighting after various factions had been shocked and frightened.

Most people weren't really surprised to watch this happening.

The high-level players might not have been much while they were on Earth, but after the transmigration, they took on the powerful ability scores they had within the game. Their Intelligence scores gave them the ability to scheme, their Wisdom scores gave them the ability to observe others, while their Charisma scores gave them the ability to lead. All of these were way above the normal levels of human beings.

Just their Ability Scores alone made them superhumans within the Blue Star Powers.

Zhao Xu had insisted on remaining as a Human mostly because he wanted to have a say in the Blue Star Powers.

As long as his level was among the highest of the players from Earth, then he would definitely get a seat in the highest rungs.

Each of the other races, elves, dwarves, orcs, half-orcs, all had a god among their race

Only humans didn't naturally come with a god of humans.

"Bro, about the Major League, I don't think they'll get anything done even after a few months. Everyone is still too low in level now and we don't have any say among the powers in Arthur," replied Zhang Qi.

Zhao Xu nodded. In reality, within this one year, none of the players would get a say.

The first real town that was led by Blue Star Powers was created after everyone had finally transmigrated and the various powers came together.

Arthur wasn't a universe that worked to serve the players in the first place, so it didn't do them any favors.

After Zhao Xu chatted with his dorm mates for a while more, he decided to go out for a run.

He was spending pretty much every single day either lying on the bed or sitting on a stool to play Arthur, so he was afraid that his muscles might start shrinking from this lack of movement.

He wasn't really afraid of becoming disabled now, though. After everyone transmigrated, he would take on the body he had in the game.

But he still tried his best to keep himself fit and healthy. It would be really dumb if he died now.

The dorms at Zhao Xu's university were all built in the northern section of the school, and there were patches of forest around the dorm buildings.

Zhao Xu was too lazy to head for the sports hall and decided to just take a run along the forests outside.

As he ran past a small convenience store, he happened to pass a few female classmates who had just emerged from the store.

One of them was the prettiest girl in his class, Cui Lu, and she was pretty much the school belle.

Ever since Zhao Xu had traveled back in time, the only time he saw these classmates was his first moment in class just before the next class started, and he had brushed past them just as they were headed for class.

After that, for the next half a month, he was trying his best every day in the world of Arthur and spending as much time inside as possible.

Today was the first time in so many years that he actually spotted the girl he used to have a crush on in university.

But he just ran on after taking a quick glance.

In his previous life, he hadn't gone after her after the transmigration, so forget this life.

Zhao Xu's university was a co-ed school, so there were many girls who were quite good looking and many were considered goddesses to the male students.

But all the girls who were goddesses now never knew that the gamers they used to look down on would one day become the leaders of the world.

In Zhao Xu's memory, Cui Lu was a straight-talking girl who loved to play games, so many of the guys in his class liked her. She was also rather popular among their cohort.

If life on earth went on normally, she would have become someone that many classmates would continue to ask about or think about or pay attention to whenever they had a class gathering even many years after graduation.

But after the transmigration, Cui Lu also lived a pretty exciting life.

In his previous life, she was a Ranger and she was famous for being a sharpshooter. Eventually, the Major League was finally formed properly thanks to her as well.

After the smartest guy in class, Li Tiange, transmigrated, he felt that she was at the same standard as himself, so he tried hard to woo her and even teamed up with other strong players, but he was unsuccessful in the end.

After Cui Lu transmigrated, she was extremely helpful and caring towards her own classmates, and Zhao Xu himself had also gotten quite a bit of help from her.

Eventually, Cui Lu had climbed up to a high position in Blue Star Powers, but she continued to remain unmarried.

You could say that, both before and after the transmigration, Cui Lu belonged to a group that he was never worthy of.

And now, after going back in time, Zhao Xu was interested in the powerful group, the Major League, that spanned across several high schools in this city, which she would eventually belong to as well. But he wasn't really interested in her so to speak.

He wasn't physically attracted to her anyway.

"Lulu, did you see that? That guy who just ran past us is Zhao Xu," said one of the girls next to Cui Lu in spectacles as she shook Cui Lu's arm.

"I saw him, why?" Cui Lu didn't know why her friend was mentioning this.

"Everyone is thinking that this guy must be some genius gamer of sorts. His dorm mates say that he's been playing Arthur every single day. Didn't you say recently that you wanted to not rely on the class league and try to create a Major League that spans the people in the same major as us? This sort of guy who can keep playing day and night is definitely some high-level gamer," said the girl in spectacles.

"Tsk, Lulu, don't bother with him. He hasn't been going to class recently and that's really awful. I've already helped to cover for him so many times," the monitress of the class, Fang Xiyue cut in. She was also one of the prettiest girls in Zhao Xu's class.

Cui Lu agreed with what the monitress said with her words, but she couldn't help but look at Zhao Xu from the corner of her eye even though he had run quite a distance away. There was a strange expression on her beautiful face.

———————————-

After Zhao Xu was done with his run, he just grabbed a bite at a fast-food restaurant and went back to scroll through the forums until midnight before taking a bath and going to sleep.

By the time he logged back into the game the next day, he was reenergized.

In the morning, he first did some meditation inside his in-game dorm room. He didn't even take half an hour to finish preparing all the Wizard spell slots he wanted for the day.

If he didn't use up those spell slots over the next few days, they would just stick with him and he wouldn't need to prepare them all over again from scratch.

But if he had a change of heart the next day, he could also decide to change the spells that he had already prepared.

After doing all this, he went to flip through the religious texts that had given him a terrible headache the day before.

He only walked out of the cleric dormitory room that he had been assigned to after he heard the bells for the morning prayer session go off.

There were already a lot of his fellow cleric apprentices standing outside, and everyone was now making their way toward the morning prayer hall.

Zhao Xu had already familiarized himself with the map of his surroundings, and he had memorized the way to the hall.

He had already changed into a vestment and brought a book along with him, so he really looked the part of an apprentice cleric.

Some of the cleric apprentices around him were looking curiously at him because he was a stranger, but after they noticed his apprentice insignia on his chest and the way he looked, they didn't suspect anything.

This large group of cleric apprentices had people coming and going every single day, so nobody really knew each other.

Only the deacon, who was in charge of looking after all the cleric apprentices would have the full list of everyone's names.

Zhao Xu walked into the morning prayer hall, found a spot, and sat down to start praying.

The deacon in charge was standing to one side and glanced at him. After the deacon confirmed Zhao Xu's identity, he didn't bother Zhao Xu anymore. Once almost everyone had arrived, the deacon himself returned to the morning prayer hall suitable for his rank.

The morning prayer hall was huge and all three hundred seats were filled up. Right in front stood a statue of the Goddess that was as tall as four or five people.

The Sacred Heart Cathedral had morning prayer halls for their clerics in various locations throughout the church, and Zhao Xu was in the one that was designated for cleric apprentices.

During this time, there were no special arrangements in general. The clerics would all start praying and then gain divine magic from the Goddess.

The cleric apprentices here were all within their first year of apprenticeship, like Zhao Xu.

They had to wait until they received divine magic and became a full cleric before they would be transferred to pray alongside all the actual clerics.

As a result, this entire morning prayer hall was filled with people fervently praying and doing nothing else.

Only Zhao Xu was actually preparing his divine magic spells.

2 s

Chapter 49: Domain

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

Day after day, the clerics would repeat the same thing. They would continue to pray to their god and reflect upon their hearts and minds in hope of proving their piety clearly.

Compared to the many cleric apprentices here right now, Zhao Xu had skipped several steps and now he was more like a transfer student.

Most cleric apprentices would first start off by reflecting and telling the gods what they had learned or lost each day, then toward the end, they would spend a bit of time to choose the divine magic spells that the god or deity gave to them, and none of them dared to be too frivolous about it.

There was even some divine magic that you could see and receive only if you asked and told the god about your needs.

Meanwhile, Zhao Xu just muttered a few sentences of niceties, part of a template he had read, to the Goddess, then immediately went into receiving his divine magic.

If other players had the same attitude as him, they would definitely get stuck at the part where they had to receive divine magic.

The people had to put their faith in the gods so that they could gather their divine power together and bestow blessings upon their believers. This was the basic rule in Arthur that never changed no matter what.

By the time Zhao Xu was done studying the divine magic spells, the standard one hour of prayer time was almost coming to an end.

After the morning classes for clerics were done, everyone could go ahead and do whatever they wanted. Most of them would choose to read more religious texts.

But Zhao Xu found a corner and managed to spot some players, so he tried to see if he could exchange any information with them.

The number of players who could get to Mystra was small, and those who managed to get here were generally already chosen from the start.

"That Luofeng managed to become a cleric already?" remarked a tall and large cleric.

"That's right. Yesterday he was one of the few players who managed to get a slot in those 300 vacancies and after that, he leveled up successfully. Now he's a prospective cleric, and that's why he doesn't go for prayers with us anymore," replied another cleric.

"Fengshao didn't get through though. I think he's too depressed today to log in," cut in another cleric apprentice standing in one corner.

"This place is really terrible. I've been checking the forums for activity in other churches, and they tend to give the players a higher chance. None of them are like the Sacred Heart Cathedral where the players have to pass a test in order to get into one of those 300 vacancies. Those older apprentices have been here for more than a decade and they can't get through the test. We've only been playing for half a month, so how are we supposed to get through at all?"

"That's really not so bad. Those NPC clerics are even more pitiful. Even if they get through the test, they have to be ranked according to their experience and their family background before they can get a space on that list. At least we could just switch to a different character class."

"Change character class? Xiaoke, other players might not know this, but all of us at Mystra know very well how powerful Wizards and Clerics really are. If I told you to switch to a non-spellcasting class, would you be willing to do it?"

After the large tall man said this, the female cleric apprentice standing next to him, called Xiaoke, fell silent.

"Then are we playing the game or is this game playing us? I'm already on the verge of believing in the Goddess with all my heart," said a slightly plump player.

"Be careful what you say," another cleric who had been quiet all this while quickly interjected.

Once someone had said this, all the cleric apprentices were immediately a little fearful.

After repeating the prayers and studying religious texts again and again each day, they didn't become as devout as the natives of Arthur, but they were certainly not so daring as to blaspheme the gods like some other players in the other towns did. They didn't even dare to try for fun.

As time passed, there became more and more players who got really caught up in role-playing their characters. They were like those actors who were really into method acting and felt that they had to become the role in order to play it well.

"Are you new?" One of the players noticed Zhao Xu and asked him this question.

The clerics who were indigenous to Arthur had mostly gone back to their own dormitories to continue with morning classes.

The only ones who could just sit around and chit chat idly were this group of players who were just waiting for the afternoon training to start.

Zhao Xu nodded his head. "I just arrived yesterday."

"You've just come? Then aren't you going to quickly delete this account and go elsewhere?" said the first big sized guy.

Zhao Xu was surprised by this. "Why would I do that?"

"Don't listen to his nonsense. It's just that we're in Mystra, where the main church of the Goddess is and where they set the standards, so the requirements for leveling up are much stricter here than any other church elsewhere," explained Xiaoke.

"There are churches elsewhere where the players managed to become a proper Level 1 Cleric a week ago already. But all of us are still hanging on here, and finally, some players managed to make a breakthrough yesterday. I think they should finish the training within the next couple of days and become a Level 1 Cleric officially."

After hearing these words, Zhao Xu more or less understood what was going on. This whole thing was both convoluted and elitist.

Otherwise, logically speaking, all the players allocated to Mystra should have been those who were naturally gifted in their character classes, and so, by right, they should have graduated earlier than everyone else.

They wouldn't have had to wait till now, when none of them could make it into the first hundred to reach Level 1, and they hadn't even made a single splash in the forums.

Initially, Zhao Xu thought that the number of players in Mystra was very small. But from the looks of it, they were just all stuck here for a very long time.

For all the players like Zhao Xu, they hadn't leveled up to become a cleric yet, but they didn't want to study religious texts.

The initial part of the game was supposed to be a very important and precious time, but they could only gather around and chit chat.

The players standing around also talked to Zhao Xu about some common facts about the Sacred Heart Cathedral.

They continued to chat like this all the way until the afternoon. Zhao Xu had waited for the training time that the church had officially arranged for him.

The training courses for clerics were run simultaneously, in batches. In general, they split the various abilities of a cleric into different modules and taught them accordingly.

Zhao Xu wasn't in a hurry to learn about equipment and armor. He couldn't wear heavy armor anyway.

As for the class feature Spontaneous Casting, he had already figured it all out the day before and didn't really need to go through training for that, either.

He just looked at the contents of the schedule and found a class on Domains that happened to be going through its first lesson.

Clerics were a rare character class that could rely wholly on the power bestowed upon them by the gods and didn't have to grasp their skills and abilities by themselves.

Zhao Xu got lost and found the wrong place at first. By the time he got to the correct venue, the cleric in charge of giving this lecture had already started.

"The Goddess is a powerful source of divine power, so her domains are both broad and powerful. As Clerics, we can choose two of her domains to become our own.

"Every time you get one domain, you will be able to grasp that domain's granted power and that domain's list of spells.

"You'll know if you've grasped the domain if you can manifest the spells from that domain

"At the same time, you will be given access to a domain spell at each spell level you can cast and one corresponding domain spell slot."

All the cleric apprentices had found their own little corner to sit in. The cleric apprentices here had all heard these things before.

But they were all still listening patiently and attentively and didn't seem to dare to interrupt the thoughts of this elderly cleric.

After Zhao Xu listened to these things at the door, he quietly walked in and found a place to sit down.

When he heard those words earlier, his heart couldn't help but skip a beat.

Domains were a powerful feature that Clerics had. He knew that very well.

But he didn't know how powerful the Goddess' domains were.

Shortly after that, the cleric giving the lecture let them come up one by one to take some materials.

In reality, this cleric had no idea how many people would come for the lecture, so the stack of materials formed a small mountain of paper.

After each person read his own name out, that cleric would pick out a sheet of parchment paper from the top and pass it to the apprentice.

Everyone probably got the exact same material.

Zhao Xu followed the person in front of him and walked over to the cleric. He briefly reported his name and the time he had been in training to the cleric.

Just like before, the cleric pulled a sheet of parchment from the huge stack and gave it to him.

Zhao Xu's eyelid twitched, but he didn't say anything.

He had noticed that this cleric had pulled out the bottommost sheet for him.

Everyone else was looking down at the contents of their own sheet of paper, so nobody noticed this.

Zhao Xu received the paper with both hands and nodded slightly to show his gratitude. Then he slowly walked back to where he was sitting earlier.

The moment he sat back down, he quickly started looking very carefully at this piece of parchment.

The entire piece of parchment wasn't like what the others had. They had a list of four or five domains and their explanations.

His only had three: Magic Domain, Planning Domain, Knowledge Domain.

And under each domain, there was a small line of text deliberately added on.

Did that mean that he would have one more domain than other clerics?

Report chapter Comments

Chapter 50: Instant

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

From the moment Zhao Xu had chosen to become stronger, his character class' path and choices themselves were all affected by The Final Scroll.

Zhao Xu originally thought that nobody had given him any instructions on how to choose a domain and thought that this wasn't a very important matter at this point.

It was only when he saw the cleric on stage specifically pull out this particular piece of paper did he realize that nothing was ever that simple around here.

From the Wizard Association all the way to The Final Scroll, and the influence they had on the church of the Goddess was way beyond what he had expected.

It was already powerful enough to affect the cleric who was lecturing right now even though Zhao Xu had decided to go to this lecture at the last possible minute, and they put down exactly which domains Zhao Xu should pick.

The only thing that confused Zhao Xu was the fact that he had been given three domains.

According to the cleric lecturer earlier, every cleric was supposed to be able to choose only two domains for themselves.

But Zhao Xu didn't hesitate because of that. He continued to carefully read the little additional notes that were scribbled below those three domains on his paper.

Magic: Required for Prestige Class Dweomerkeeper

Planning: Prerequisite for attaining Persistent Spell feat

Knowledge: Exchange domain

Someone had especially added these three notes to this piece of paper.

And the most important part of all was that that someone had signed it -Antonya.

When Zhao Xu saw that signature, he gasped. He was quite sure that nobody at this point would dare to forge the signature of a Legendary Wizard.

After thinking about it this way, Zhao Xu felt a bit emotional. His mentor was still looking out for him after all.

Those three additional remarks clearly wrote the reason why these should be chosen, and were totally Antonya's style.

Zhao Xu continued to study the information on this piece of paper. He wanted to see what sort of powers these three domains granted.

For Magic Domain, the granted power was that when he used scrolls, wands, and other devices he could add to its power or level according to his cleric level.

This didn't mean much to him, but since it was a prerequisite for a prestige class, he had to choose it even if he thought of it as a burden.

As for Planning Domain, it was able to get him the feat of Extend Spell.

Knowledge Domain allowed him to add all Knowledge skills to his list of cleric class skills, and he could cast divination spells at 1 of his spellcaster class level.

After comparing them, Planning Domain seemed the most valuable to Zhao Xu.

It was equivalent to getting a bonus feat. While this feat required an additional Level 1 spell slot, it could make a spell last twice as long.

In that case, a cleric having two domains was similar to them getting two feats, and this wasn't something to be overlooked.

Zhao Xu nodded while he read the various spells belonging to each domain.

For all three domains, each list of domain spells had one spell for each level, from Level 1 to Level 9.

He was now a Level 1 Cleric, so he would get one Level 1 domain spell slot. He could choose to prepare one spell out of the three Level 1 spells among the three domain spell lists he had here.

For a Level 1 player with very limited spell slots, this was a great boost that shouldn't be ignored.

According to what people were saying on the forums, learning of these domains also came with the problem of opportunity.

The fastest players generally took two afternoons to finish learning them. Zhao Xu had three domains, so it would probably take him longer.

Zhao Xu looked up at all the cleric apprentices in the hall. All of them were generally looking at the parchment paper in their hands with very serious and stern expressions on their faces.

They might have had some understanding of these things before this, but when they actually looked at the powers of these domains, they were probably extremely confused.

"Decide on which domains you wish to choose, then start praying to the Goddess. After that, you have to find your own way to increase your understanding of the powers of these domains."

"For example, if you choose Magic Domain and you've gone through wizard apprentice training before, the time you take to understand it will be much faster."

"And if let's say you choose Knowledge Domain and you've studied some of these religious texts before, then you would also gain the granted powers of this domain much sooner."

"Alright now, all of you can proceed with praying. You can leave in the meantime if you want to and just go with your feeling to understand this. I will be here to help and guide each one of you."

The cleric giving the lecture explained all this when he felt it was a good time to.

Zhao Xu's thoughts were pretty clear. His Level 1 Wizard status made him feel quite confident that he would have an advantage in this aspect, and he might really get this whole thing over and done with in three afternoons.

"Have you chosen which domains you want?" a female voice suddenly rang out from behind him.

Zhao Xu turned his head to look. It was Xiaoke, the female cleric apprentice who had chatted with him in the morning.

"The rest of them managed to understand one or two domains over the past two weeks. I'm the only one who still doesn't get it, and that's why I ended up joining this round of lectures again. I'm so glad you're here too."

Zhao Xu nodded his head. "I'm still thinking about it."

The other players he saw this morning were all surrounding this particular girl, so it seemed they were pretty familiar with one another.

But Zhao Xu wasn't really the type who became depressed because he was in a strange place, and he wasn't the sort who would be desperate to find fellow countrymen in a foreign environment.

He had so many more things to do now. Forget wooing a girl-he couldn't even think about going after his goddess.

Becoming more powerful was the main thing driving him right now.

"Then you've got to share your experiences with me later, I feel like you're really smart. Unlike me, I'm too stupid, and I can't seem to get it even though the other guys keep trying to teach me."

"Sure, I'll share if I get anything," replied Zhao Xu.

After that, he closed his eyes and started to prepare to pray to the Goddess.

Magic, Planning, Knowledge.

Zhao Xu quietly thought about the names of these three domains as he started to recall the prayer template that he used in the morning.

Just when he was about to start praying, and that instant when he was about to start reciting his prayer...

That familiar feeling that he felt the last time he gained divine magic came once more.

A beam of light flashed through his entire brain.

Cleric Apprentice Zhongxia attains Magic Domain.

Cleric Apprentice Zhongxia attains Planning Domain.

Cleric Apprentice Zhongxia attains Knowledge Domain.

Three messages appeared in the message board of his character stats in a row.

Zhao Xu was still confused as to what was going on.

He bent down to look at the information on his feats, and there really was an additional Extend Spell feat, and it also had the words 'Planning Domain' in brackets behind it.

His message board might have errors, but the character stats menu would never lie to him.

In other words, he had really attained the granted powers of these domains.

Everything had gone so smoothly, he almost couldn't believe it.

This was the first time he felt that his good luck was getting a little crazy now. The fastest record among the players was two afternoons.

Zhao Xu now opened his eyes again to look around the small hall.

Most of the cleric apprentices hadn't reached the stage where they started praying yet. Many of them had even gotten up to walk about as they were still thinking about what they should do.

And he was done just like that?

Zhao Xu also stood up like them.

"Where are you going?" Xiaoke asked in surprise.

Zhao Xu shook his head. "I'm going out to get some inspiration."

That was right, it was time for him to search for inspiration by attending other lectures.

He had fully gained the granted powers of each domain.

Zhao Xu rushed to be in time for the next training class and walked straight out the door.

Some cleric apprentices had also left the hall to seek inspiration elsewhere, so he didn't catch anyone's attention by leaving the room.

But, just when Zhao Xu reached the top of the stairs next to the door, he was surprised to see that the Wizard Association's contact officer within the church, Reyan, was walking towards him.

"Young man, I see you've got that parchment paper. I got someone to stuff it in for you. I've brought a few things here for you, they'll help you to obtain those domains more easily, and for all you know, you might get it by tomorrow."

Reyan noticed that there were a lot of people along the corridor, so he started using a telepathic spell to talk to Zhao Xu and waved the little bag he had in his hands.

"No need," Zhao Xu said to him very simply.

"What?"

"I just obtained the granted powers of all three domains."

"..."

Chapter 51: Blessed by the Gods

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

When Reyan heard what Zhao Xu had told him, he nearly went into a daze. His first assumption was that something must have gone wrong with his spell and accidentally connected his mind to someone else.

Even though he was a high-level wizard and a master of magic, he still stuck his head out and peered around to make sure that the two of them were alone in that particular corner.

Reyan quickly replied through his Telepathic Bond, "That's a bit ridiculous, don't you think?"

Even though Zhao Xu was trying to keep a low profile, he realized that, this time, he might have had a bit too much luck. He explained, "I got lucky."

"What do you mean you 'got lucky?' This is beyong winning the lottery. You're totally blessed by the gods. I think I might have to write a report and tell them to just make you a straight cleric after all. Why bother becoming an Archivist? Whatever you do that pleases the Goddess so much, she's clearly just going to give you whatever you want.

"You know, all these things I brought to help you gain your domains quickly weren't that easy to get ahold of. For example, I got this book which are the notes on magic written by the Goddess herself back when she was a mortal. Things like this get passed around the bigwigs of the association. If the Goddess wasn't the third generation and hadn't come down to this plane before like the two generations before her, I might have thought that you were the Goddess'..."

Reyan got to this point and suddenly felt his hair stand on end.

His attitude immediately changed, face turning remorseful and pitiful as he said to himself, "Dear great and almighty Goddess, I speak too much, I'll put in some atonement money later, sorry, so sorry."

He couldn't help but feel afraid. With the speed that Zhao Xu was advancing in the church, the Goddess clearly had a soft spot for him. Who knew if the Goddess was still watching over Zhao Xu?

He was using Telepathic Bond to speak to Zhao Xu, so no one else could hear what he said, but with the power the Goddess had at her disposal, he might as well be screaming it from the mountaintops with a bullhorn.

During the age of the second Goddess of Magic, wizards had to rely on the Weave in order to cast spells.

The Goddess of the time could simply break any of the wizards' weaves whenever she liked so that wizards would be unable to get spell slots.

It took the third generation Goddess ascending to godhood to dispel the Weave altogether and allow it to become a natural attribute of every plane.

Now, wizards everywhere didn't face the risk of breaking the weave anymore.

And that was also why a large number of wizards respected the third generation Goddess of Magic in particular.

Most other deities wouldn't have given up something that could control all wizards everywhere like that.

Zhao Xu just stared at Reyan with some annoyance. He was the type of person who had no filter whatsoever, even here, in the main church of the Goddess, and the only reason he was still alive was that being a wizard made him more powerful than he was annoying.

"Then, Mr. Reyan, where are we going next?" asked Zhao Xu.

"Hmm. Have you prepared your divine magic spells?" Reyan stroked his chin as he spoke as if he was in deep thought.

Zhao Xu nodded his head. "I succeeded in preparing them yesterday."

"You're pretty alert, and you found out the timing of the night prayers. Alright, let's go, I'll bring you to see an archbishop."

Zhao Xu didn't bother explaining that he had succeeded in preparing his divine magic spells in the afternoon, not this 'night session.' He quickly caught up with Reyan and asked, "Archbishop?"

He hadn't expected to have anything to do with an Archbishop.

"I'm getting him to teach you how to do Spontaneous Casting. This archbishop took less than three hours to learn how to do it. The ability will help you to turn any prepared divine spell into a Cure Spell.

"That ability is what makes clerics effective healers. Otherwise, they'd just be like us wizards, having to prepare scrolls all the time and it'd be so irritating."

Reyan rambled on and on and suddenly realized that Zhao Xu had stopped in his tracks.

He spun around to look at Zhao Xu and his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

"Are you about to tell me that you also figured out Spontaneous Casting with no training or effort?"

Zhao Xu just nodded.

"Well, I...do you dare to say that you're really not..." Reyan didn't dare to complete his sentence.

He was part of The Final Scroll, an organization that looked up to the Goddess. He didn't intend to betray them.

"Sigh, what a pity, you're chosen as an Archivist and our Secret Messenger, and we have to count on you to develop in both the divine and the arcane. Otherwise, if you stuck with being a cleric, you might become one of the bigwigs of the church."

Zhao Xu thought about something, but he didn't have permission from Antonya.

He decided that he should keep the whole thing about seeing the Goddess when he was on the Arcane Throne a secret.

"So, where are we going next?" Zhao Xu moved the topic back to his first question.

"Where else could we possibly go? Let's look for Archbishop Soz then. He just became an archbishop yesterday and he's one of the highest-ranking clergymen here. In two days, he's going to the Bathed in Light Church in the northern region to be in charge of the entire church there. I'll get him to teach you some other skill and give you a private lesson, otherwise, you'd be out there in those normal classes and scare everyone half to death."

Zhao Xu footsteps faltered for a while upon hearing Soz's name, then he continued walking.

He knew someone with that name.

The town where Archbishop Soz was headed was Winter Town, the place where he lived during his previous life.

In his previous life, this archbishop had fought spectacularly in the Battle of Sealed Magic, and he was promoted to become the youngest cardinal ever. He was in charge of everything to do with the Church of the Goddess in the entire Northern Alliance region.

In his previous life, Soz had been miles above him, and Zhao Xu had to bow to him to greet him because he was just a town guard. But now, Reyan was going to get this same man to teach him as a cleric apprentice.

This sudden change in status made this whole thing seem rather absurd.

Indeed, there were some things that people wanted all their lives, and there were others who just got these things naturally.

In his previous life, he was too lowly and there was no way he could come into contact with these high-ranking bigwigs of the churches.

But now, he could see such people just because someone else arranged a meeting for him.

Back then, even the best of Zhao Xu's classmates were only able to cast Raise Dead, a Level 5 spell that required the dead body to be in one piece for it to work.

If he had been able to get in contact with a high ranking person of the church, then there was a possibility that he could beg someone to cast the Level 9 divine spell True Resurrection, a spell that didn't even need the actual corpse in order to revive someone.

That way, he probably wouldn't have gone down the road of revenge.

And, perhaps, he wouldn't have gone back in time either.

Zhao Xu followed Reyan down the stone steps of the church, story after story, seemingly without end.

Along the way, they walked past several clerics, who all turned to greet Reyan politely.

This made Zhao Xu's opinion of Reyan's actual status in this place go up a few notches.

After observing these official clerics walk past them, Zhao Xu slowly began to realize that the number of females was quite high.

Based on his first impression of churches like these, as well as the ratio of men to women in the morning prayer hall, he had assumed that the church headquarters would have mostly male clerics.

Zhao Xu and Reyan finally reached their destination.

At the end of the corridor, a pair of large wooden doors with a gold frame was shut loosely, and a faint smell of incense wafted out from inside.

Reyan didn't say anything. He knocked on the door twice and then pushed it open.

Zhao Xu walked in behind Reyan, only to find that this place wasn't an office of sorts as he had initially imagined it to be, but a rather large reception room.

The reception room was fairly luxurious. Just the carpet he was stepping on looked like it cost more than a house.

When Zhao Xu sat down on a soft and cushy royal palace style sofa, he nearly lost his balance and sank right into the depths of the ultra-soft couch.

"Soz, this young man is our new recruit, Zhongxia. He's already grasped three domains, so you can just go ahead and teach him something else." Reyan flamboyantly plonked himself down on the couch and was just shy of putting his legs up on a footstool.

When Zhao Xu saw that it was really Archbishop Soz who was sipping a cup of black tea before him, he sat up straight.

Soz's eyes lit up as he lifted his head to look at Zhao Xu and spoke in a thick and deep voice.

"You're the Cloistered Cleric chosen by the Goddess?"

"Cloistered Cleric?" asked Zhao Xu in surprise.

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Chapter 52: Turn Undead

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

When Archbishop Soz noticed the look of confusion on Zhao Xu's face, he gently put down the painted porcelain cup in his hands and said, "I hope you didn't think you'd just gotten lucky?"

Zhao Xu shook his head. Only an idiot would think he was that special.

"Don't worry," consoled Archbishop Soz when he could sense that Zhao Xu was wary around him.

"You don't have to worry about him. This fellow is from my batch, but because he wasn't gifted enough, he had to come here and become a cleric, while I happily went on to become a Level 9 spellcasting wizard," Reyan added.

A Level 9 spellcasting Wizard meant that you could cast Level 9 spells, and you had to be at least a Level 17 Wizard. This was reflected in the number of rounds one had on their insignia.

Zhao Xu turned to look at the middle-aged Archbishop Soz, who was on the verge of becoming an elderly man. He even had gray hairs at his temple.

And then he turned to look at Reyan, who looked like he was in his early thirties, and couldn't help but feel a little shocked. These high ranking clerics really couldn't simply extend their lifespans like wizards could.

But then again, to these truly devout clerics, if they could reach the plane where their deity lived earlier and be with that deity for eternity, or even get promoted to become an angel, that was probably a better fate.

"Actually, your sort of situation is considered a variant of the cleric character class," said Archbishop Soz.

When he heard the word 'variant', Reyan couldn't help but glance over at Zhao Xu.

"That's the Cloistered Cleric thing you mentioned earlier?" asked Zhao Xu in a low voice.

"That's right. Everything in Arthur has its own set of rules that it follows. Your direction in leveling up has gone toward the path of a Cloistered Cleric. You didn't just get a third domain out of nowhere."

"Is there a price to pay?" Zhao Xu asked.

He had gained the feat of Enlightened Spellcaster, so he knew all about adding additional skills and abilities.

The number of skills that a character class could gain in advance was limited. If one area was made stronger, then something else would get weaker.

Otherwise, everyone would have chosen to go down that particular path.

"Compared to ordinary clerics, Cloistered Clerics will not have to go through martial training and you will spend more time than other clerics in study and prayer," Archbishop Soz explained it very briefly. At the same time, he stood up and walked toward the bookshelf at the corner of the reception room.

After Zhao Xu heard this explanation, he more or less got it.

A character class like Cleric in Arthur wasn't a class that just stuck around at the back of a crowd like a bunch of helpless women.

The divine spells they possessed were enough to boost their own power, and they could also become extremely powerful weapons in war.

During the Battle of Sealed Magic, Zhao Xu had seen how the battle had reached a point where the frontline Fighters had all collapsed, so the clerics just took up their maces and rushed forward to fight against those evil creatures from another world.

When wizards wore heavy armor, it increased the chance of their spells failing.

But, because Clerics were given Divine Magic by the deities, it wasn't a problem even if they wore heavy armor.

In that case, this variant of cleric that gave up martial training to go down a more study-based direction seemed to be more in line with the non-wizard path of his double elite status.

Archbishop Soz had already taken an ancient text off the shelf and walked over to pass it to Zhao Xu.

"This is the biography of Shylaman, the previous pope. She was a Cloistered Cleric, just like you. You can take some time to read this book and understand the special features of this particular variant of cleric."

Zhao Xu took the book from Soz politely, flipped through a few pages, and closed it again to keep listening to Soz's explanation.

"In general, Cloistered Clerics are naturally very disciplined people, so they are seldom of chaotic alignment. At the same time, because their knowledge is a special feature, they also receive the Knowledge Domain as a bonus domain, as well as a special class feature called Lore. It's quite similar to the skill that Bards have, Bardic Knowledge. You'll naturally come to understand this later."

"What about flaws?" Zhao Xu was a rational person and was more interested in weighing the pros and cons.

If the price to pay was too high, then, even if he couldn't change anything, he would still complain about it.

"The hit dice of a cleric is D8, but the hit dice of a Cloistered Cleric is only D6. At the same time, Cloistered Clerics can only be proficient in using simple weapons and light armor."

When he heard this, Zhao Xu hummed to himself for a while. This was acceptable.

He was only going to become a Level 1 Cleric anyway, so he didn't need to care too much about the 2 point difference in hit dice.

Looking at that way, the price to pay was actually quite low. He didn't really care much for the weapons training that was coming up next anyway.

"Then I think I've more or less got it," said Zhao Xu with a nod of his head.

"Then let's get to the real topic for today." Soz looked at Zhao Xu. "Do you know what skill I'm going to help you grasp next?"

The smell of the incense burning around them was really getting to Zhao Xu's nose. He was about to shake his head to say that he had no idea.

But a scene from his past suddenly appeared in his head.

In his previous life, in the town where he used to live, every time someone ran into a soul, most of them would immediately look for a cleric. He had seen how clerics were able to control souls directly.

If he remembered correctly, it was called...

"Turn Undead, or Destroy Undead," Archbishop Soz said. "Or, evil clerics also call it Rebuke Undead."

Zhao Xu took a very deep breath.

Before this, Zhao Xu had struggled when faced with that weak Human Skeleton Warrior that Antonya had summoned during their fight. He only killed the skeleton with one shot because the skeleton's hit points were lower than average.

If he had had this skill from the beginning, then he would've had the skeleton completely under control.

"As good clerics, we can use the power of our Holy Symbols to turn or destroy the undead. Evil clerics, on the other hand, rebuke and control the undead." As he said these words, Archbishop Soz passed him a Holy Symbol. "This used to be mine, I'll give it to you now."

Zhao Xu gently received it with his hands. The six-pointed star symbol of the Goddess was carved into the Holy Symbol, and Archbishop Soz's name was carved into the back of the insignia.

On it was also a wise saying, "Knowledge and Wisdom are always present".

Reyan watched all this from the side, and the corner of his lips curled up slightly.

Zhao Xu knew that this represented the friendship that Archbishop Soz was offering him.

This was a Holy Symbol that the cleric had carried on himself for several decades, so it was no simple trinket.

With this Holy Symbol, even if he wasn't a cleric, he could probably use this insignia itself to walk through any of the areas under Archbishop Soz's control without any problems.

He could possibly even request the Raise Dead or even more powerful revival divine spells that he wanted to have so badly in his previous life.

And it was just because this Holy Symbol represented the kindness that Archbishop Soz was extending to him.

Zhao Xu thought that the powers and benefits of the Blue Star Powers were already complicated enough as it was.

He didn't expect that, within this reception room, one of the top-ranking clergymen of the Church of the Goddess, an archbishop, would express his friendship with Zhao Xu in such an obvious manner.

Archbishop Soz was going to make his journey up north in a few days and might never see Zhao Xu ever again, but he was still willing to invest in Zhao Xu, a person who wasn't even a Level 1 Cleric yet.

The clerics of the Goddess would never go back on their word. If they had made an investment like that, they would accept any of the consequences, even if that hurt them.

He felt that there were still more unknowns involved in the situation. In his previous life, he had thought that clerics were all truly kind-hearted. Now he knew that they were all really smart people.

Archbishop Soz had a pleased look on his face when he saw the hesitant look on Zhao Xu's face, but he didn't say anything like 'this Holy Symbol is too valuable' and reject him.

When it came to planting a tree, the best chance to do it was either ten years ago, or right now.

He continued, "As a cleric, the number of times you can cast this spell is 3 your Charisma modifier score." He then passed another two books to Zhao Xu.

"This is a textbook put together by the clergy, and these are all the notes I've gathered regarding this skill over the years. You can take a look."

Zhao Xu took the books from him. The textbook was labeled 'Turn and Destroy Undead: The Path of a Cleric,' while the other book was a notebook belonging to Archbishop Soz.

He laughed bitterly at himself secretly. Even after becoming a cleric, he was still destined for a life of reading.

But, early in the game, he had allocated 13 points to his Charisma, resulting in 1 Charisma modifier point. It had turned out to be useful now.

That meant that he could Turn or Destroy Undead up to four times every day.

"Have you gotten it yet?" asked Reyan as he turned toward Zhao Xu.

"Gotten what?" Zhao Xu was completely confused by this question.

"The ability to Turn the undead."

Zhao Xu was immediately speechless. Did Reyan think they were at the market buying cabbages? Would they be available just because he said so?

He hadn't even opened the book to read yet.

Zhao Xu scanned his character stats and was about to record the information from the books when his gaze suddenly froze.

He seriously got the skill already?

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Chapter 53: Good Aura

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

Reyan nodded in satisfaction when he saw how Zhao Xu had gone into a daze.

"If you dare to say that you've gotten it already, then I'm going to..."

"Reyan, watch your words carefully," Archbishop Soz immediately cut Reyan off.

Zhao Xu glanced at Reyan. Reyan was the association's contact officer in the church, so no matter how loose his mouth was, at the very least, he wouldn't say anything offensive in front of a clergyman, right?

If that was the sort of intelligence a Level 17 wizard had, then all those apprentices stuck on their road to becoming a wizard would probably feel like killing themselves.

The only explanation was that Reyan and this Archbishop Soz here were just way too familiar with one another, to the point where Reyan had let his guard down.

But Zhao Xu didn't intend to pretend or anything like that. No matter how blessed he was by the Goddess, he was still a Level 1 player after all.

He didn't even need to go through a battle to be in danger. The aftershocks of some random spell could easily send him right back to the Palace of Character Creation.

If he displayed the value that he had and caused Archbishop Soz to be willing to invest even more in him in the future, then this would be extremely meaningful to the camp that Zhao Xu would join next time.

If the person standing behind him was just any archbishop, the people right at the top might not be very bothered.

But if the one behind him was someone who was going to become a cardinal over a certain region, then nobody would take that lightly.

Besides, Archbishop Soz was going to head for Winter Town, which was where most of the players from his school had been allocated to.

"I..." Zhao Xu was about to speak.

"Zhongxia, you have no idea about this, do you? Back when Soz failed on his path to becoming a wizard, he was sent to the Sacred Heart Cathedral to just do some studying. In the end, his gift at being e a cleric wasn't too bad, and in just a matter of months, he was bestowed with the blessing of the Goddess and attained Divine Magic.

"But, when it comes to the ability to Turn Undead, he hadn't grasped it yet even after I was done learning all the cantrips. When I was learning Level 1 spells, he still hadn't gotten it. In the end, he still didn't make it even when I was already on my way to becoming a Level 3 Wizard and learning Level 2 arcane spells. The Goddess finally couldn't take it anymore and decided to bless him with her favor one more time so that he could gain the ability to Turn."

Reyan said all of this in a very matter of fact manner to Zhao Xu.

A cleric's divine spells, domains, and the ability to turn the undead were all requirements for one to become a Level 1 Cleric.

If you didn't have all of the above, you couldn't level up to become a Level 1 Cleric.

Zhao Xu suddenly felt bad saying what he had to say after hearing all this.

"That's why, even though you said you've already gotten the blessing from the Goddess to attain all your domains, I still brought you here. Soz is someone with great experience. With him to guide you, I'm sure you'll avoid all sorts of pitfalls."

Zhao Xu was afraid that Reyan wouldn't stop talking, so he quickly cut in at this point, "I just attained the ability to Turn."

"What?"

Reyan was prepared to ramble on, and he was a little shocked when he heard this.

Archbishop Soz remained calm even though Reyan was clearly poking fun at him, but now he, too, looked very seriously at Zhao Xu, and he was holding the porcelain cup in his hands so tightly, he might leave dents in it.

"The teachings of the Goddess don't hate lies as much as someone like the God of Justice, but still..."

A warm and intense glow of white light suddenly shot out and covered the area around the couch.

This was a force that would be fatal poison to the Undead, but it calmed the hearts of humans.

Both Soz and Reyan knew the familiar feeling immediately. This was the glow that came from positive energy.

This was the energy that Clerics gave off when they were using their ability to Turn Undead.

The glow faded and Zhao Xu was just sitting on the couch quietly while holding the Holy Symbol that Archbishop Soz had given to him earlier as if the large burst of positive energy had nothing to do with him.

Adventurer Zhongxia has used Turn Undead, Turning Check 1D20 Charisma modifier score = 121 = 13, able to Turn 2HD Undead at best.

Adventurer Zhongxia's Turning Damage is 2D6 Cleric Level Charisma modifier score = 411 = 6, able to Turn Undead of no more than 6HD in total.

The two messages popped up on Zhao Xu's character stats message board at the same time.

According to the messages, if he ran into that Human Skeleton Warrior again, he only needed to use this attack and he would be able to control up to six of those skeletons together.

That was the power of the Cleric's Turn Undead.

Evil Clerics could also make use of this power and combine it with spells to make a sea of skeletons with no problems.

"How is this even possible?"

Reyan stared in puzzlement at Soz and looked like he had many questions.

But Archbishop Soz just sighed and gently shook his head.

The silence between the two was so long that Zhao Xu started to feel a little uncomfortable.

Suddenly, Archbishop Soz picked up the spellcasting focus next to the table. He lifted a hand and started chanting incantations at Zhao Xu.

Before Zhao Xu could figure out what was happening, he could feel a conical shaped glow slowly filling up the reception room, and Reyan was also caught within the radius of the cone.

In just the blink of an eye, Archbishop Soz put down the spellcasting focus in his hand and didn't look at Zhao Xu anymore. He turned toward Reyan with a stern look on his face.

"Reyan, I'm afraid that, unlike what you've been saying, he's not just someone your organization deems a little more gifted than others."

"What joke is this? Don't tell me you think he's my illegitimate son?" responded Reyan in a loud, flippant voice, unbothered that he had used Zhao Xu to his own benefit in these words.

"He has an Aura," said Soz. The look in his eyes became even grimmer than before.

Reyan hadn't been a Contact Officer for very long, and he wasn't as familiar with all these things as the previous contact officer, who had been based in the church for a few decades. He was stunned for a while before he finally figured it out.

"I didn't notice that at all. So your special Aura doesn't come only when one becomes a Level 1 Cleric? Who's going to know that?"

Reyan hit his head a few times in frustration.

"Wait, no, that's not right. I'm such a smart guy. Even if I didn't think of it, I would have hidden his Aura away as a precautionary measure. The problem now is that I didn't expect him to actually already be able to Turn Undead."

Reyan shook his head as he tried to console himself.

But Zhao Xu had been confused since Archbishop Soz had cast the spell on him.

"Er, could I ask...?"

Curiosity in a dangerous situation was often the road that led to death.

But, in other times, it was a way to help him avoid making mistakes over and over again.

Zhao Xu had already guessed that Archbishop Soz knew by now that he had probably attained Divine Magic.

In theory, Zhao Xu only needed to complete his training in weapons and armor, and he would become a qualified cleric.

If Zhao Xu had already received this standard training before entering this room, then he would probably have seen that he was a Level 1 Cleric in his character stats.

He needed to know what flaws Reyan had revealed.

"In general, the alignment of a cleric would be positively correlated with the alignment of the god or deity they believe in," Reyan slowly began to explain.

Zhao Xu understood this. If a god was Lawful Good, then his clerics would generally also be Lawful Good clerics.

Only a small proportion of clerics might be Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good, but they wouldn't go more than two alignments away from the god's own alignment.

"As such, all clerics who believe in chaotic, evil, good or lawful gods would have the same Aura as the alignment of the deity they believe in," Reyan went on to explain. "So you would give off the same Good Aura as the Goddess."

"Initially I thought that only those who had officially become a Level 1 Cleric would have this sort of Aura. I didn't know that, as long as you have obtained a majority of the skills a Cleric should have, you would get this Aura too."

"Soz used the Detect Good spell to reveal the Good Aura on yourself, and of course, he already knows that you're actually a prospective Cleric."

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Chapter 54: Official Cleric

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

Zhao Xu didn't expect the fact that he had attained Divine Magic to be exposed like that. Thankfully, the one who exposed him was Archbishop Soz, a man who had a longstanding good relationship with the Wizard Association, so there wasn't any problem there.

Zhao Xu was used to how people like Antonya and Reyan cast spells by just lifting their hands. This time, Archbishop Soz had actually gone through the proper process to cast a divine spell and even used a spellcasting focus. This method had confused Zhao Xu instead.

From the looks of it, he really had to make sure he started training his Arcana ability as soon as possible.

He hadn't even recognized Detect Good and Evil, which was a spell he himself had grasped already. It would be embarrassing if someone found out that.

In Arthur, it was really difficult to be an evil character and remain concealed very well.

Unless you were some high ranking powerful person, in that case, people probably wouldn't dare to simply use a spell to detect your alignment randomly.

Evil Detection was a basic spell that Paladins had, which also caused them to often end up in battles against evil characters.

Even though many players now wanted a Paladin on their teams, after a bit more interaction with these Paladins, they would soon come to understand what the phrase 'A sleeping Paladin is the best kind of Paladin' actually meant.

Most of the player teams had been frustrated with how Paladins insisted on fighting evil.

And that was also why many people liked being best friends with a Paladin but didn't like them on their team.

Zhao Xu had a Good Aura, so spells that could detect his alignment had an even more obvious effect than others.

A Good living creature with 11HD and above would give off a Moderate level of Aura Power when the Detect Good spell was cast.

Zhao Xu was a cleric of a good deity, so as a Level 1 Cleric, his Aura was at Faint level, but a Level 2 Cleric would give off a Moderate level of Aura.

After Zhao Xu thought through this, he suddenly realized that something wasn't quite right.

"But that's not right. I chose Neutral as my alignment at the beginning," said Zhao Xu.

Being Neutral was one step away from the Goddess' alignment, something he had calculated before choosing his Alignment.

Clerics with a good aura were unable to use any spells that had a component of evil. He would have to pay the price for doing that.

"Young punk, don't be too smart about it now. Did you think it was easy to remain in an absolute Neutral alignment for long? When you were able to do Spontaneous Casting, you had decided to go in the direction of a Cure Spell, and when it came to dealing with the Undead, you had chosen to use Turn Undead."

"These choices you made are a reflection of your own alignment in and of themselves. On top of that, all the things you've said and done over the past two weeks have pushed you toward Neutral Good already," said Reyan with a teasing tone in his voice.

"While it's true that any Neutral Cleric under a Good deity will only be able to select Turn Undead, but, Mr. Zhongxia, earlier on, you naturally wanted to select Turn Undead without any hesitation. Your Alignment will naturally follow your heart," Archbishop Soz also cut in at this point.

"Young man, since you're naturally a good person, you should stop thinking about trying to hide within the neutral camp and hope to get the best of both worlds," Reyan continued to prod Zhao Xu where it hurt the most.

He was so pleased with himself when he saw that Zhao Xu's line of thinking had been exposed and ruined.

Zhao Xu didn't know what to say. He couldn't possibly say that he knew that Clerics of the Goddess could only choose to Turn.

He only noticed now that, on his character stats, his alignment had already changed to Neutral Good.

It had happened at the moment he unleashed his ability to Turn Undead.

Zhao Xu couldn't do anything but sigh.

"What, are you upset that there are some divine spells that you can't cast in the future?" Reyan seemed to be able to read Zhao Xu's mind with just a glance.

Zhao Xu was instantly quite embarrassed. The righteous Archbishop Soz was standing right next to him, so how could he possibly admit that he was hoping to be able to cast some divine spells with an element of evil in them?

"Don't worry, all divine spells that the clerics receive are from their deities, and they would never grant you any divine spells that go against their own alignment either. But whatever spells you copy are yours, so it's completely up to you how you wish to cast them," Reyan tried to console him.

After hearing these words, Zhao Xu's thoughts started to churn again.

Reyan didn't put it too obviously, but what he was saying on the surface was that he could still cast any arcane spells as a wizard.

But, in reality, he was referring to how Zhao Xu would eventually become an Archivist as a result of his double elite status and get divine spells by copying them, and he wouldn't be limited in that aspect.

After thinking about it that way, it wasn't too bad to become a Level 1 Cleric after all.

"Run along now, go to the training area in the back courtyard. Go and find someone to quickly teach you all the basics of fighting and everything about weapons that you need to know. Goodness knows what else I'd see if you stick around here."

Reyan stood up to hurry Zhao Xu along, and he even helped Zhao Xu gather the books that Soz had passed to him. Reyan clearly didn't intend to be polite around Archbishop Soz any longer.

"I won't see you two out then." Archbishop Soz quietly stood to his feet, as if their visit to his room was just like a gust of wind, which came and went without a trace.

But his gaze remained on Zhao Xu.

It was only when Zhao Xu and Reyan had walked nearly 30 meters out on the corridor outside the room, that he finally whispered, "Why did you have such a strange look when you were staring at the archbishop just now?"

"Oho, so when you're not showing off, you're actually quite observant, huh," said Reyan as he chewed on the sweet that he took from the room earlier. "He's an archbishop now, you know."

"Strictly speaking, he's considered a high ranking clergyman, and he's only a few steps away from the cardinals and the pope of the church. If a young punk like you were so blessed by the Goddess, did you think a high-level cleric like him would have been unable to sense it?"

"If the Goddess were to grant you this ability before him, then that's as good as scooping a spoonful of rice and feeding you with it. It's good enough that he didn't end up kneeling down and praying to give praise to the Goddess."

Zhao Xu didn't quite get what Reyan was saying. They were still a distance from the sparring arena, so he continued to ask Reyan questions.

"So why didn't he do that?" Zhao Xu didn't dare to say it too obviously, and didn't add in that he was asking about why Archbishop Soz didn't fall to his knees earlier.

"Because it wasn't done right in front of him," retorted Reyan in annoyance.

He turned to look at Zhao Xu. "I finally understood earlier that, on the day of her birthday, the Goddess gave you everything you needed in one shot, but you just had no idea. So, since the Goddess hadn't come personally to the room, then of course he's not kneeling."

Zhao Xu finally got it now.

He hadn't been able to do Spontaneous Casting the day before just out of nowhere. In fact, he just needed to find any random cleric and ask him about domains as well as the ability to Turn the Undead.

And he would have automatically activated all these abilities as well.

Other clerics were like ordinary students trying to become official clerics, while he was like the student with a guaranteed slot in the school.

This special treatment was a little over the top.

It was little wonder that Archbishop Soz kept staring at him while he left the room.

Nobody was jealous of a genius who worked hard.

But imagine if you had worked hard for several years to finally attain a particular thing, then you turned and watched that same thing just drop from the sky onto someone who happened to walk out of his door at the right time and even got all the peripherals that came with that particular thing.

Even if you'd meditated and cultivated yourself for decades, even the calmest and most mature of clerics would probably still feel that life had been unfair to them.

In no time, Zhao Xu and Reyan reached the sparring arena.

Many cleric apprentices were sparring each other. Everyone had a weapon in hand, anything from wooden clubs to maces.

There were several cleric apprentices in heavy armor too, trying to practice how to avoid attacks while wearing such armor.

Reyan scanned the place and muttered, "That old fellow in charge of the training has run off to take a break. Wait a while, he should be back in no time."

Zhao Xu wasn't really bothered when he heard what Reyan said. He walked over to an empty space in the arena and picked up a club from the weapons rack.

"Hey, you're neither trained nor professional, so don't hurt yourself," Reyan called out after him.

Zhao Xu just smiled faintly. He held the wooden club in his hand and a familiar feeling overwhelmed his heart.

At the same time, he touched the leather armor hanging on the rack.

These had been his good companions in his previous life.

Adventurer Zhongxia attains Simple Weapon Proficiency character class feature (equivalent feat of the same name)

Adventurer Zhongxia attains Light Armor Proficiency character class feature (equivalent feat of the same name)

Adventurer Zhongxia has officially leveled up to become a Level 1 Cleric

"Hey hey, don't tell me you've grasped all this as well?" Reyan came over to pat Zhao Xu's shoulders. "Blessings from the gods don't include becoming proficient in weapons and armor, you know. You have to train in those things."

"I'm a Level 1 Cleric already, let's go back to the floating city," said Zhao Xu with a little annoyance.

"..."

In his previous life, he had been a Level 5 Fighter. So, with the context of becoming a Cleric in mind, such martial related skills naturally returned to him just by touching the items.

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Chapter 55: Registering

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

Weapons in Arthur were split into three main categories: Simple, Martial, and Exotic. If you wanted to be able to use these weapons to their fullest extent, then you had to be proficient in using them.

Ordinary people could take a long time to train to reach that level, and the only price to pay was to consume a feat.

That was also where feats were valuable.

If your character class came with proficiency in one weapon or another, then you would be able to use your character level to make up for these abilities and you didn't need to use a feat.

In Zhao Xu's previous life, his Fighter character class's most basic features were Simple Weapon Proficiency and Martial Weapon Proficiency.

So when it came to gaining Simple Weapon Proficiency and Light Armor Proficiency as a cleric, it was a snap for him.

If you were just a Level 1 Commoner without any base character class that could be leveled up, then you wouldn't get any of these class features to make up for shortcomings in your character.

Reyan was standing to one side and couldn't help but walk over to look at Zhao Xu very carefully.

"Are you telling me that you've already gained proficiency in simple weapons?" he asked.

"But you've never gone through any relevant training in either, so you shouldn't even know what weapons are simple ones in the first place. On top of that, I've never heard of the gods blessing clerics with proficiency in weapons before."

Zhao Xu just looked back at Reyan, face neutral.

He didn't want to explain himself and there was no need to. The Goddess was his biggest shield at this moment.

Reyan would just assume that the Goddess was the one who allowed all this to happen.

Zhao Xu just wanted to increase his level and power as quickly as possible. Since Reyan was supposed to be an ally, he couldn't be bothered to pretend much in front of him.

"Fine, according to some legends, there are some people who are really blessed by the gods and grasp all sorts of special powers, and some come with foreknowledge..." Reyan thought through it for a while but still ended up telling himself to just accept the logic and started to lead Zhao Xu to a different place.

The less time Zhao Xu spent in this place, the less attention he would gather. That was in line with both his own desires and those of the wizard association.

Otherwise, a contact officer like Reyan wouldn't be following him so closely all the time.

"Mr. Reyan, we're not going back to the floating city?" Zhao Xu couldn't help but ask when he saw that Reyan had brought him back into the church and they were walking round and round inside.

"You little punk, you want to become a wandering cleric?" Reyan glared at Zhao Xu and spoke with some irritation in his voice.

"A wandering cleric?" Zhao Xu didn't know what Reyan meant by that.

"Even though you players from earth don't have to be so formal about things and you don't have to wait for an entire batch to be ready before leveling up together, at the very least, you've got to be registered. How else do you think you can get into other churches of the Goddess? You think your character level alone is enough for that?"

After Reyan said this, Zhao Xu realized what he was meant.

Clerics had to be officially registered and authorized.

With this authorization, he would become part of the clergy and slowly climb his way upwards.

If he lived a life of adventure, then all the clerics and believers of the Goddess would lend him a hand if he was in trouble.

This was the additional power and impact that clerics had compared to wizards.

In a short while, Zhao Xu and Reyan had reached a small, hidden little hut outside of the main church. It was a ways away from the buildings around it.

"This is where all members of the Church of the Goddess register themselves," explained Reyan.

"So small?" Zhao Xu said in surprise. This tiny little space couldn't hold that much.

"This is the Church of the Goddess of Magic, they don't need you to worry about small matters like this." Reyan was too lazy to explain it to him too.

"Don't clerics normally have to deal with paperwork and registration in the Office of Affairs?" Zhao Xu asked anyway. If they had to work in a place like this, then there wouldn't even be enough space to stand.

"Another new batch of clerics hit Level 1 recently and the other site has too many people. If anyone recognizes you as someone who just arrived here yesterday, then you're definitely going to invite unnecessary trouble. It's been so many years since we've had someone become a Cleric in one day, the Pope himself has to check through this matter first."

But Reyan didn't tell him that the Pope had known of Zhao Xu's existence even before he arrived at the church.

"The registrations at the actual Office of Affairs are all sent here to be archived. My status around here is high enough to allow you to register yourself here directly, so that word doesn't leak out."

As the Contact Officer, Reyan's had enough influence to do this. If the Chairman of the Wizard Association didn't give any other instructions, then Reyan was the person wholly in charge of representing the interests of the association within the church of the Goddess.

Zhao Xu could only grumble silently to himself. If Reyan were at the Church of the God of Justice, then even if Reyan were capable of controlling the weather, he would have had no choice but to bring Zhao Xu to the proper Office of Affairs and line up to get registered.

The entire church knew Reyan's face, so after he chatted with the guards at the door for a while, the two of them were allowed to go in.

After they walked down a corridor and stepped through another door, Zhao Xu was immediately in disbelief.

The entire tiny hut was actually as large as a football stadium on Earth. Countless shelves holding documents were stacked all the way up to the ceiling.

There were people seated on flying carpets, constantly carrying stacks of documents up to be placed in those shelves. The clergy on the ground floor were all in a terrible hurry, constantly sending off new documents to be brought upstairs.

"Don't just stand there staring. They have other routes in this place, and this is a special area that's been modified before," Reyan told Zhao Xu.

Being overly curious would attract unnecessary attention.

Reyan brought Zhao Xu over to a work desk, where a few clergymen in vestments were busy with the work on their hands.

Reyan went to talk directly to their leader for a while, then he waved Zhao Xu over.

After receiving orders from the leader of the clergymen, a rather young looking clergywoman came over to help Zhao Xu register himself.

Reyan kept talking throughout the entire process and got the clergywoman to just fill out the form according to his instructions.

Zhao Xu was the one getting registered, but he didn't end up saying anything at all.

Since her leader didn't say anything, the clergywoman had no choice but to just take down everything that Reyan said.

The entire process was very simple, and they even skipped over some verification and document checking processes.

When she was nearly done, the clergywoman suddenly realized that she didn't have much information on the man standing in front of her.

"Alright now. As for the remaining things like vestments and spellcasting focus, I'll collect them later on and pass them to you together. You don't need a Holy Symbol, you can just use the one you had earlier." Reyan nodded in satisfaction.

As she watched Reyan and Zhao Xu prepare to leave, the clergywoman sorted out the papers in her hands to put them through the next part of the process.

"How strange, this is the first time I've come across someone who's come from nowhere," she muttered quietly to herself.

Upon hearing a voice speaking completely in Mandarin, Zhao Xu looked in surprise at the clergywoman. He was so used to listening to everything around him being translated into Common, and he didn't expect to find a player in such a well-guarded place.

So the church was so tough on players that they forced them to end up working part-time even in a game?

The clergywoman felt Zhao Xu staring at her, so she looked up as well and suddenly realized what was going on. She exclaimed in surprise, "Oh! You're a player too? Why have I never seen you in the church before?"

"Let's go." Reyan quickly hustled Zhao Xu away and they both left.

————————————

"Xiaoke, guess what? Today I actually saw a player that made it to Level 1 Cleric in the Registry Office."

The other girl looked up in surprise. "Peipei, that can't be right. Didn't the people from the 300 that day take a few days at least?"

"No no, I know all the players in the Church of the Goddess, and that's why I thought it was so odd. Throughout the whole process, he was with another wizard. And the player himself didn't say a single word," The clergywoman called Peipei was insistent.

Xiaoke immediately looked down. She suddenly thought of someone who had gone about in a great hurry earlier that day and then vanished without a trace.

She thought of what that guy had said and asked in a disbelieving voice, "He's become a Level 1 Cleric already?"

"Of course. The department head was the one who told me to fill out the form, so he must not have been lying about that, right?"

Xiaoke still had a shocked look on her face as she started to describe what the guy looked like to her friend.

Peipei kept on nodding her head as Xiaoke described him, so she quickly asked, "Do you know where he is now?"

"Come on, let's go. This guy is obviously going down an adventurer's route."

"I'm so annoyed! Earlier today I asked him to teach me how to grasp domains, and he didn't tell me any of this stuff about himself!"

——————————————–

Zhao Xu logged off very early that night. Since he had already officially become a Level 1 Cleric, you could say that he was no longer trailing behind. He was right up there with the best of the players, at the moment.

He was fairly confident that, as time passed, he would definitely level up faster than other players thanks to his knowledge of the future.

"Xu! Come over and take a look. Look at the number one article on today's forums!" Zhang Qi started yelling at Zhao Xu the minute he saw that Zhao Xu had logged out of the game.

Zhao Xu rolled out of bed and walked over to Zhang Qi and took a look. His expression froze immediately.

"Amazing discovery! There's a player who finished Cleric training in just 1 day! He's completely broken all records for every character class online!!!"

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Chapter 56: Shock

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

"Don't you think that title is ridiculous?" Zhang Qi laughed as he clicked the post open. "I can't believe such a clickbait title can actually rank number one in the forums. I have no idea what the moderators are thinking."

But Zhao Xu had figured out immediately what had happened once he saw that post title.

Players didn't have many connections to the world of Arthur yet, so they would be hard to bribe.

So, in the beginning, the churches placed their players in some very low-ranking roles. Even though they might be privy to certain secret pieces of information, there was no worry that they would let anything slip, or intentionally cause any rift between the churches and Mystra's families,

Sometimes, the players were the most innocent victims of all.

But, if any secret landed in the hands of a player, then the churches had to be prepared for the secret to become public information among all the players.

The power of the internet was able to make sure that everyone could get information quickly.

Zhao Xu was quite sure that the clergywoman working for the Registry Office must have gone through the training on classified information by the temple.

In fact, she should have gone through a test before she could even get a position in such an internal-facing office.

So he didn't think that the clergywoman was the one who put this post up at all.

But she probably couldn't resist sharing the information with her friends, since it was only human nature to share and socialize with other fellow human beings.

A screenshot sent to a group of five could be easily reposted and forwarded to the rest of the internet in no time.

Zhao Xu figured it out quickly. The few clerics he had come into contact with yesterday afternoon had all been witnesses that he was a new cleric apprentice at Sacred Heart Cathedral.

And that's how this viral post happened.

"Xu, take a look at the s to this post. I'm just dying here."

Zhao Xu didn't want to attract any attention or unnecessary trouble. He really didn't need to become this sort of famous.

But he was very curious about what the ers would say about this matter...

"Oh my god, another player lost his mind during the training process. Take him away! Next please!"

"What was the fastest record for a cleric? Oh, 9 days. And it was set by a low-level pro gamer too."

"These days, people don't know how to do a little homework before they post fake articles like these."

"Hello, OP. I'm XX, editor of the clickbait team, welcome to the team!"

"If there's really such a player, could you stand up and prove yourself? If you're real, then I'll do a handstand while eating chicken wings."

"Oh please, don't be so eager to believe everything you hear. For all you know, someone has finished using all five of their revival stones and started a new account."

"Oh my goodness. The average intelligence of the forums has gotten so bad lately. This might be possible for other character classes, but the clerics have to wait for deities to bestow divine magic on them, so they have to stand in line and wait, get it?"

"It took me half a month to finally get all the skills required and I'm still waiting to hit Level 1. And you're telling me someone did it in 1 day? If this is true, I'm going to delete my account right now. I'm not going to take this lying down."

After reading through the complaints from the netizens, Zhao Xu couldn't help laughing either. As he had expected, nobody believed the viral post at all.

He was relieved to see that.

After everyone had gone through Arthur's tough standards of character class training that made everyone spend huge amounts of time to grasp the basics, it had become a test of everyone's physical and mental strength.

In general, after half a month, everyone had already acknowledged that those players who could complete their character class training very quickly must be geniuses.

It's just that when you've finally seen who's right at the top and how crazy it could be, suddenly someone else pops up.

And this someone else tells you that the ceiling you saw earlier was just the ceiling of the first floor.

And tells you that someone has already reached the 5th floor. Anybody would immediately throw such a story out like a pair of broken shoes.

"You know, if someone could really become a Level 1 Cleric in one day, then I'm seriously going to switch my account over. Forget one day. I'd take one week too," grumbled Zhang Qi.

"Is it that hard?" asked Zhao Xu in surprise.

In his previous life, he only joined the game 8 months in. By that time, his teammates were all clerics already. Any Cure Spell they cast could help him restore his health points back to their maximum.

At that time, he had no idea how difficult it was to level up at all.

"You haven't been out to the real world and gone through serious battles yet, so you don't know how hard it is out there," huffed Zhang Qi as he looked at Zhao Xu with some annoyance.

He knew that Zhao Xu was a wizard, and thought that he hadn't finished his training yet. In Zhang Qi's mind, Zhao Xu was just a lowly wizard apprentice who didn't even know when he would graduate from his training course.

"I'm telling you, if anyone can guarantee two weeks, or, nah, scrap that. One month! If someone could guarantee you can become a cleric in one month, then I can guarantee you that the number of people who want to become clerics would line up all the way to the city gate."

"We really don't have enough healers. In other MMORPGs, clerics just drink blue potions and then go around to help other players regain their health stats with healing spells, or the players themselves could drink some red potions to regain health."

"Arthur is such a damned lousy game and makes it so difficult. The few divine spell slots that clerics have are used up within the day and they can't restore a single one. In the end, many people have started disguising themselves as believers just so they can walk into the church and try to get healed."

"You can't buy anything to heal yourselves?" asked Zhao Xu in surprise.

"Xu, a bottle of Cure Light Wounds potion costs 50 gold pieces. Who can afford to spend that kind of money just to regain a few HP?"

Zhao Xu snapped back to reality. Curing potions were used during battles to save lives, so it wasn't meant for something as simple as restoring health after a battle was over.

In his previous life, he was a guard of the city, so he had channels to temples in order to buy Wands of Lesser Vigor. That was the sort of thing that could get you more bang for your buck.

But, for the players now, they didn't even have enough money to buy any items that could help to restore their hit points, never mind the channels to buy these things from.

Just weapons and armor alone would use up the little gold that the players started with.

Besides, Arthur was a real world. The players didn't need to spend money on eating and drinking now only because they were still projections.

But all these resources for going on adventures, from simple things like backpacks to flint and steel, all the way to caltrops-the sheer number of things you had to spend on was like a black hole in and of itself.

The most popular posts on the forums these days had gone from strategies to fight monsters to strategies on finding work in the game.

Even players who hadn't completed their character class training were trying to hone their craft skills so that they could make some things and sell them for money when they had time.

"It's impossible to buy anything," said Zhang Qi. "If there's anybody in the class league who could produce some resources for healing, I think that person would be the chairman of the league for sure. In fact, I think that perhaps only a cleric can become a chairman."

After hearing this Zhao Xu just nodded and just ignored the last sentence.

He was backed up by both the wizard association and the church, so it wasn't difficult for him to get such resources.

It was just that the rest of his friends were too far away and he had no means of sending anything to them. He could only share his resources at a later time.

It had been a month since Arthur's servers opened and the number of players who had successfully completed their training was still in the minority, and most of them had only barely finished. He wasn't in a hurry to enact his plans yet. It was more important to level up right now.

—————————————

The next day, Zhao Xu logged into the game extra early. He reappeared within his room at the floating city.

Since Antonya hadn't arrived yet, he started to spend one hour each on preparing his arcane and divine spells.

Two hours later, Antonya appeared in his room, as she always did, with something in her hands.

"Mentor, what are we going to learn next?"

He had just met up with Antonya again the night before after returning from the church. Zhao Xu didn't have anything to be afraid of, so he just got straight to the point.

"No hurry. I promised you a prize the last time I saw you, so I brought it here today," Antonya replied to him very simply.

Zhao Xu immediately perked up when he heard this. He was still thinking about how he was going to hint to her about that, but Antonya took the initiative to mention it first.

"Catch." Antonya tossed him the item that she was carrying in her hands.

"A backpack?" Zhao Xu looked at the item in his hands and was completely confused.

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Chapter 57: Heward's Handy Haversack

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

Zhao Xu took the backpack from Antonya and touched it. It was made from treated leather, and it was either new or well-made. It even had some brass fittings.

Was this a bag of holding?

Zhao Xu's heart couldn't stop pounding. He had 8 points of strength and that decided how much weight his body could handle.

Or, at least, he could feel that his strength right now was a little weaker than himself in the real world.

This was also the reason why Zhao Xu had chosen to take the feature Enlightened Spellcaster in the first place. If he had to carry a pile of spellbooks every single day without a bag of holding, he wouldn't be able to take it for long.

Zhao Xu quickly lifted his head and looked up at Antonya. "Mentor, is this...?"

"Hmm?" Antonya said questioningly. "I'm not the only spellcaster around here, you know."

Zhao Xu immediately realized what she was getting at.

The Identify spell!

An Identify spell was able to tell him the properties of anything that carried magic.

Zhao Xu stared at Antonya in shock. He had indeed prepared Identify among his spells today.

But how did Antonya know that?

Antonya could sense Zhao Xu's confusion, so she replied in a soft and slightly mocking voice, "Sometimes you seem like you were born with the wisdom of an old man, and then sometimes I feel that you were just born yesterday. Since you're already a wizard, then you should have the mind of a wizard.

"Don't tell me you thought that wizards always relied on guesswork before going into a battle? Many thought processes should come to you naturally, especially things like what spells the other party might have prepared and how many more spell slots the opponent has. You have to make sure that you know all these beforehand."

Zhao Xu knew that Antonya was giving him excellent advice, so he quickly nodded.

Once you knew what level a wizard was at, then it was indeed possible to calculate the opponent's Intelligence score and also how many additional spell slots the person would have as a result.

After adding the basic number of spell slots that came with each character class level, you could make a pretty accurate guess on how many spell slots a wizard had at that moment.

"But Mentor, even though..."

"Even though Identify is a Level 1 spell, it isn't a Cleric's divine spell but a Level 1 Magic Domain spell. How did I guess that you'd prepare this particular spell?"

Antonya said exactly what Zhao Xu was thinking about, so he quickly nodded.

But then Antonya didn't keep explaining as he expected. Instead, she just walked over to the soft armchair and sat down. "You can think about the rest yourself. If you can't think of it, then I'm taking back your prize."

When he heard this, Zhao Xu quickly forced himself to calm down.

Antonya was genuinely kind to him, even though she had purposely lied to him about certain things.

But when it came to something like taking back a prize, she didn't mince words at all.

After being in contact with the divine spells of a cleric, Zhao Xu started to have a clearer understanding of things.

There were some spells which were strictly arcane spells and not divine spells, like this Level 1 spell, Identify.

So Zhao Xu wouldn't be able to use any of the divine magic spell slots that came with his cleric class to prepare them.

But because this was a spell that belonged to one of the nine spells listed within the Magic Domain he had, Zhao Xu was able to use the domain spell slot that came with every cleric character level he had to prepare it.

But he had three domains. They were Magic, Planning, and Knowledge.

The corresponding Level 1 spells he could prepare were Identify, Deathwatch, and Detect Secret Doors.

Out of those three, how did Antonya immediately guess that he would choose to prepare Identify and not the rest?

After a while, Zhao Xu's face slowly began to turn red.

Even though he couldn't see Antonya's actual expression, since it was hidden by her hood, he could more or less tell that she was smiling.

It really wasn't easy to fool a wizard.

Since he wasn't going to battle, he didn't need Deathwatch, a spell that could be used to determine if a living creature was dead or alive. And since he didn't have to go on an adventure underground, he definitely didn't need an exploration related spell like Detect Secret Doors.

So the highest probability was that he would prepare Identify.

On top of that, Antonya was going to give him a prize, so the chances of him preparing that spell for just this occasion had gone up to 100%.

Zhao Xu hung his head. "Mentor, then I'm going to cast this spell."

It was one thing for someone to give you something, but it was embarrassing for someone to guess that you were really excited and couldn't wait for the gift to land in your hands.

Even though Zhao Xu was really thirty years old inside, he couldn't help but feel his face turn red.

"You can try to see how to cast a spell with a long casting time," Antonya said calmly.

Zhao Xu nodded and found a comfortable place to sit. He looked at the backpack in his hands, then prepared himself to cast a spell.

But, just as he raised his hand, he was suddenly stunned for a moment.

Materials!

Just like how Color Spray needed a handful of colored powder to be cast, Identify also needed materials to be cast.

"Why don't you check the backpack's right pocket?" Antonya hinted at just the right time.

Zhao Xu stuck his hand into the pocket when he heard these words.

After a second, he pulled out a pearl.

At the same time, the other ingredients he needed for the spell-a cup of wine with an owl's feather hanging from it-also floated out and landed gently on the tabletop.

This was very different from how he just had to hold the necessary powder in hand to cast Color Spray.

Identify needed these materials for casting. He needed to crush this pearl worth 100 gold pieces, mix it into the wine, stir in the owl feather, then drink the whole concoction down.

If he missed any step, it would cause the spell to fail.

Most players would be both upset and happy to receive a magic item.

The happy part was that as long as this item was a magic item, it would be worth a lot of money.

But if you really wanted to use the magic item, you had to find someone to Identify it, and that would cost you the service fee plus 100 gold pieces to pay for the materials needed.

As a result, most players just went by guessing and feeling their way along.

Since they were poor, they had to face reality.

Zhao Xu patiently followed the steps of the spell and drank down the well-mixed concoction. Then he took a deep breath and immediately started to chant the necessary incantations in a low voice.

Identify wasn't a spell that would be completed instantly with a loud DING like in most other games.

This spell had a casting time of one hour.

"Concentration is a key skill of a wizard. We have to constantly increase our Concentration skill level to make sure that when we cast spells that require a long casting time, the spell won't get broken because of any external accident of sorts," Antonya said to him from her place on the other side of the room.

But Zhao Xu didn't break his focus to answer her. His attention was all centered on casting the spell, Identify.

As the casting process continued, Zhao Xu slowly realized that 'Casting Time: 1 hour' wasn't a simple phrase at all.

If he had to cast a Standard Action spell, then he would only need to concentrate for two or three seconds and it would be done.

But now he had to go through a spell that took a full hour to cast, and this really consumed a large amount of his energy.

He also slowly began to understand why Antonya was willing to spend 100 gold pieces to get him to cast this spell even though she could have just told him how this backpack was useful.

There were many things where you would only understand how difficult it was after you tried it for yourself.

Every minute and every second dragged by slowly. Zhao Xu felt like a student who knew that if he got a question wrong, he wouldn't pass the exam. His forehead was starting to sweat profusely.

Finally, a bright yellow gleam shot out from his hands and fell directly upon the backpack.

At the same time, some information flowed right into Zhao Xu's brain, and his message board kept refreshing.

Heward's Handy Haversack

Two side pockets: Extradimensional space bag, it can take a total of 55 liters and no more than 9 kilograms of items.

Central pocket: Extradimensional space bag, it can take a total of 225 liters and no more than 36 kilograms of items.

Effect: No matter how many items it contains, this haversack will only weigh a maximum of 5 pounds. You can take out any item from the bag immediately because the item you want will always be right on top and there is no need to rummage through the bag. The backpack itself and the items inside it will have a 2 bonus on all saving throws.

"Isn't this a little too powerful?" Zhao Xu couldn't help murmuring to himself.

2 s

Chapter 58: Knowledge Skill

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

Many magic items had a price but no place to buy them from. Even if you knew how much it cost, you couldn't find any channel to buy it from, and you might not even get it even after increasing your offer price.

Most adventurers preferred to accept missions from the Wizard Associations and the various churches of deities. Besides being able to get massive rewards, the most important part was that you could accumulate contribution points and be able to become eligible to buy certain magic items.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu had been unable to get any sort of bag of holding at all. There were even other classmates more powerful and richer than himself who couldn't get their hands on such an item. They couldn't get it even after offering twice the price.

So, when he touched a magic item that used an extradimensional space like this haversack before him, Zhao Xu felt a moment of pure glee.

For the year to come, the number of players with a bag of holding was going to be very few and far between. But he had actually gotten his hands on one just within half a month of the servers' opening.

"Mentor, this gift is really too expensive, I'm not sure about it," Zhao Xu responded very politely.

"It's just worth 2,000 gold pieces, so it's not that valuable. Besides, since I made it, the cost to me isn't even 1,000 gold pieces," said Antonya.

"You made it?" Zhao Xu asked.

"You want to make one too?" Antonya asked as she felt the eagerness in Zhao Xu's voice.

"I'm just curious, just curious," Zhao Xu scratched his head absentmindedly.

Of course, he wanted to make one.

Even if he could fill every part of his body with magic items, he still had many friends and family members he cared about.

If he was able to make some of these magic items himself, then, even if he couldn't become the most powerful player, he would definitely become famous as the wealthiest player.

"If you can grasp both the feat Magic Item Creation and the spell of Leomund's Secret Chest, then you'd be able to create this simple bag of holding, but there's no need to. It takes a long time to create items, and it would consume your XP," explained Antonya slowly.

"My XP?" Zhao Xu was hearing this for the first time.

In his previous life, there was talk about creating magic items in the forums. The high-level wizard players who knew about this were very secretive about it and kept mum about this topic. They didn't want anyone to know about it at all.

"It'll slow down your leveling-up progress. In fact, if you create too much stuff, you might even go down in level," said Antonya.

Zhao Xu nearly puked a mouthful of blood when he heard this.

You actually lost XP from doing this. Wasn't that like playing with fire and burning yourself in the process?

But when he thought about it that way, didn't that mean the bag of holding in his hands right now was an accumulation of Antonya's XP?

"Don't you look at me like that, otherwise I'll guarantee that you'd regret it," said Antonya slowly. "There are some feats that can help to lower the consumption, and you can also split the damage if you create an item with someone else."

"The more important part is that creating items is just my interest. I wouldn't go down in level even if I created a Wondrous Item that costs a million gold pieces. You think something worth 2,000 gold pieces is going to affect me in any way?"

When Zhao Xu heard her say these things, he knew that he had overthought the whole thing.

Antonya was a Legendary Wizard, and he would never be able to guess at her limits no matter how much he tried.

"Also, if you want to create items in the future, you don't have to go through such a troublesome process. You can always take the shortcut of a Wish spell."

Zhao Xu's eyes bulged.

He recalled how Antonya had just randomly cast the Wish spell in front of him to create gold pieces from nowhere. Could it also be used to create magic items?

In that case, if Antonya still took the time and used a feat to create an item, then it was really just for therapeutic reasons.

"There are some items that you'll need in the future inside the bag, you can look through them later. Enough of this nonsense, let's get to the topic for today. I'll be teaching you Skills, first," said Antonya.

When he heard this, Zhao Xu was so touched he was about to cry. He had finally reached the last step.

After half a month of training, he had finally managed to endure everything to get to the last stage of learning Skills.

"How many Skill points do you have?" asked Antonya.

Zhao Xu glanced at his message board.

Skill points: 40 [6 (Cloistered Cleric) 3 (Intelligence modifier) 1 (Human race) * 4]

"40 points.

"Then that's enough to go around," Antonya nodded with a pleased look.

Arthur's Skill Points came from your character class, Intelligence modifier score, and your race, and were awarded every time you rose in level.

Level 1 players would have a multiplier of four, and you would get Skill Points from those three areas with each time you leveled up.

Zhao Xu's Wizard class was worth only 2 points.

But since he was part of the almighty group of double elites, he could use either his Wizard class or his Cleric class, whichever was higher.

The last 1 point was added on because he had chosen his race as Human.

"What do you think Skill Points are?" Antonya asked as she turned back to look at him. "There's a prize for the right answer."

Zhao Xu was about to reply to her and stopped when he heard her second statement.

If an ordinary player heard this question, then they would immediately reply that with Skill Points, you could make a particular Skill more powerful than before.

But Zhao Xu had ten years of experience behind him, and he knew that this cause and effect had been understood in the opposite way.

Zhao Xu took a while to breathe in and out slowly to calm his emotions down.

Many players weren't clear on how to use Skill Points or even what they meant. There were even many others who put these Skill Points to the side and never bothered about them at all.

And then there were some who were puzzled about why they could sometimes use them, and why sometimes they couldn't.

It was only when the players got stuck and failed to reach Level 2, then they turned back and started to deal with these Skill Points.

Zhao Xu knew the answer, but he couldn't just say it ] like that.

The forums didn't have any official statement on how to use these points, otherwise, Antonya wouldn't have asked him about it.

He could feel that the 35 different Skills of Arthur were now accumulating in his brain and spinning round and round.

He regrouped his thoughts together and replied Antonya, "Skill Points can be used to exchange for the potential abilities you were born with."

"Oh? Explain?" Antonya's interest was piqued.

"So the gifts and talents that everyone is born with are supposed to be fixed and there's no way of deciding on what they are. Some people are good at jumping far, and then some people are good with their hands. But as characters with character classes and a system with character stats, we can use these Skill Points that are allocated to us...to help us to gain the talent in a particular area, and also to reach a particular level in displaying it."

"That's right. As far as I know, you players shouldn't know anything about this yet. You do have a strange sort of intuition. That's pretty frightening," Antonya complimented him.

When he heard this, Zhao Xu breathed a small sigh of relief. He got that prize after all.

In his previous life, by the time he had joined the game, basically everyone around him was warning him to allocate his Skill Points carefully.

That was something that would decide many aspects of his life, so he remembered it very clearly.

"Strictly speaking, Skill Points are something that you can use hard work to exchange for talent in a specific area.

"The level of your Skills will decide on the standard of that particular ability. It works for everything from handicrafts, performing arts, and training animals.

"By working hard and training hard, you can successfully use these Skill Points and, in this way, you can expand your talents to help you reach greater heights."

Zhao Xu nodded. There was no way you could use the points yourself. For example, if he wanted to allocate Skill Points to Forgery, he could only confirm the direction and then keep forging documents and accumulate sufficient familiarity with the process before this Skill Point would be consumed and become one of his actual Skills.

"So once we finish off all your 40 Skill Points, you'll basically be a master in your own right."

When he heard this, Zhao Xu took a deep breath of air.

"Mentor, so which Skills do I need to practice?"

"We'll go with Decipher Script, Concentration and Knowledge first. We'll talk about the rest after you hit Level 1 in these areas first."

"Mentor, which type of Knowledge?" Zhao Xu had a bad feeling about this.

"Arcana, Religion, Geography, History (Local), Nature, the Planes, Dungeoneering, Architecture and Engineering, Nobility and Royalty. We'll go with the main ones first, forget about the lesser-known ones for the time being."

Zhao Xu tried hard to stop himself from groaning. This wasn't three Skills. It was more like 30 Skills.

"Then Mentor, how do I train in these Knowledge Skills?"

"What sort of dumb question is this? By studying, of course."

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Chapter 59: Read Magic

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

The next day, Zhao Xu finished preparing his spells in the morning and came early to the floating city's Library of Knowledge to read some books.

The library was frequented by wizards who wanted to increase their Knowledge Skill. It was divided into more than ten different sections and held books corresponding to the different categories of Knowledge.

The library collection, never mind the building it was held in, was huge, but most wizards just found a quiet corner to sit in and looked like they didn't want anybody to disturb them at all.

The day before, Zhao Xu had set his Skills direction on his character stats page according to Antonya's instructions, then proceeded to sit down quietly and read.

"When you can make these ten categories of your Knowledge Skills hit Level 1, then we can move onto something else."

When Zhao Xu heard Antonya say these words, he couldn't help but feel a shock.

Even though Knowledge was an amazing skill to have when going on an adventure, he wasn't sure he could take this much reading either.

Once his Knowledge Skill had risen in level, then he would be able to use his thoughts to search his message board.

Once he had passed a check, then he would be able to receive a portion of information. How much he could see depended on his skill level.

It worked pretty much like the Arthur version of Google.

But even so, most characters who were preparing for a battling route wouldn't put points on Knowledge Skill.

Every profession had its specializations, and every character class in Arthur had skills unique to their classes. Knowledge was a Wizard's Class Skill.

He could use 1 Skill Point to exchange for 1 rank in his Skill.

But for a Fighter, Knowledge was a skill that belonged to another character class, so he needed 2 Skill Points to increase that skill by 1 rank, so that wasn't worth it.

Zhao Xu cast the cantrip Read Magic on himself, then hurriedly went to open all the books on Arcana that he had borrowed and started reading them, cherishing every second that the spell was effective.

Zhao Xu had already complained about this many times the day before.

The authors who wrote about Arcana just refused to write their books in the simpler language of Common.

Even Draconic would be fine. But no, they had to use text that with a secured layer of magic over it, as if that was the only way they could show off to everyone that they were wizards.

Zhao Xu's current Knowledge (Arcana) Skill and Arcana Skill were both at Level 0, so there were risks involved if he simply read any books on Arcana.

Zhao Xu had no choice but to use the only way he could decode magical text, Read Magic, to read through everything.

But he wasn't able to read ten lines in one shot, and the fastest he could go was to read one page per minute or so.

Read Magic could last as long as 10 minutes multiplied by the spellcaster's level.

Since he was a pitiful Level 1 Wizard, then he was only a Level 1 spellcaster.

That made Zhao Xu de all 11 arcane spell slots and divine spell slots to Read Magic.

Once he was done using up those two hours of spells to read the books, then he would have to use a slower way of decoding these books to continue reading.

The power and effect of many spells were dependent on the level of the spellcaster.

If Zhao Xu could wait until he was a Level 2 Wizard before casting this spell, then he would be able to cast Read Magic for 20 minutes, and that would give him a lot more time than what he had now.

But too bad, his current level was just too low now.

The top of the library was a transparent glass roof, and there were many magic torches that would never go out around him.

But, unfortunately, Zhao Xu's 17 Intelligence points hadn't become a reality for him yet, so as he read these books on Arcana, he kept feeling an urge to just fall asleep.

Compared to learning spells, the motivation to increase his level in Knowledge Skill was much less.

And that was why, even though the library was gigantic, you hardly found any players around here. Most of them were gathered at the Library of Spells instead.

All of a sudden, Zhao Xu spotted Antonya carrying a book filled with a bunch of strange symbols and she plonked herself down diagonally behind him to start reading it.

Zhao Xu couldn't help but ask in surprise, "Mentor, you need to read these books too?"

Zhao Xu had never been able to see Antonya's actual face and had to recognize her from the general face shape that he could see in the shadow of the robe she wore.

But after interacting with her for so long, even if Antonya switched to another robe, he could still recognize her immediately.

"I haven't finished using the Skill Points that I got when I hit my current level, so of course I have to consume them by reading books," replied Antonya nonchalantly as she flipped the book in her hands open to start reading.

The cover of the book that Antonya was holding had three warning stickers on it.

When he came in the day before, the librarian had already warned him that he must not cross his level and read those books with warning stickers.

The number of warning stickers on the book that Antonya was holding meant that this book was probably one that only Legendary Wizards could read.

"Mentor, you can already search for most of the information you need, but you still need to increase your level of Knowledge?" asked Zhao Xu in puzzlement.

Antonya glanced up at Zhao Xu. "You mean you don't know?"

"Know what?" Zhao Xu glanced around and confirmed that there weren't any other people around them.

In a public place like the floating city, many people had put up barriers against any divination or detect spells, so it wasn't that easy if you wanted to eavesdrop on someone else.

"This isn't really a secret either anyway. If you want to become a Legendary Wizard, then there are requirements for your Knowledge (Arcana) Skills. And this will also decide on how many Legendary Spells you can have," replied Antonya.

"What are the requirements?" Zhao Xu's ears were nearly standing on their own now.

"Can you already cast Level 9 arcane spells?"

Zhao Xu shook his head. "Not yet."

"Then why are you asking so many questions?"

"Didn't you say these aren't really secret?" Zhao Xu persisted.

"It's not a secret to a Level 20 Wizard, but it is for a Level 1 Wizard, like you."

When he heard this, Zhao Xu quietly and obediently went back to reading his books on Arcana in his own corner.

But after he learned that reading all this had something to do with becoming a Legendary Wizard, suddenly the magic text in those books became a lot more interesting.

Every time he read a line, he could imagine an indicator inside him that read 'Legendary Wizard Progress' keep flashing 'Experience 1′.

After ten minutes, the Read Magic spell on Zhao Xu had ended and was no longer effective.

The friendly and readable magic text instantly turned back into weird and complicated symbols and that he couldn't even focus on properly.

Zhao Xu quickly shut the book and was about to pick up the clear crystal on the table to cast Read Magic on himself again.

Then he suddenly recalled that Antonya seemed to have just started reading without casting any spell earlier.

As a Legendary Wizard, she was definitely higher than Level 20.

Didn't that mean that her Read Magic cantrip could last 200 minutes, or nearly four hours, with just one spell?

When he thought about this, Zhao Xu quickly huddled over to Antonya and said, "Mentor, can I discuss something with you?"

"What is it?" Antonya seemed to be in a good mood while reading.

"Mentor, could you cast a Read Magic spell on me? Your current level could make the spell last for four hours, while I can only make mine last for ten minutes and that's way too little time. Couldn't you do me a favor? It's just one cantrip spell slot," asked Zhao Xu with a pleading look.

Antonya turned her head to look at Zhao Xu.

"Don't you have the Extend Spell feat that came with the Planning Domain? You could use that to make your spell last for 20 minutes instead."

Zhao Xu just looked at her helplessly.

"Oh right. I didn't tell you about this yesterday, so I suppose you wouldn't dare to just pair this feat with this spell."

"No worries, I have to teach you about the remaining feats that you have anyway, so I'll teach you at the same time."

"But I have to tell you a few things first," Antonya continued on.

"I didn't prepare Read Magic in my cantrip spell slots today at all."

"Mentor, so you don't need to use Read Magic?" Zhao Xu was even more puzzled now.

"Nope. The spell is permanently effective in me."

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Chapter 60: Mystery Reward

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

When he heard Antonya's reply, for a single moment, Zhao Xu felt a strong urge to pull off her hood, because he wanted to see if the face beneath that hood was now covered in a smile that was amused from trolling him.

But when he thought about how Antonya was a Legendary Wizard, he figured that it was impossible to go anywhere near her with ill intentions, never mind remove her hood.

He didn't even dare to guess how many buffs were on Antonya herself.

This was something that Zhao Xu knew very well after he had seen how some high-level wizards had fought in battles in his previous life.

Just one Level 5 Wizard was sufficient to steer a battle in a completely different direction.

But Zhao Xu still humbled himself to be a good student and to ask Antonya for guidance.

When the transmigration happened a year later, the number of people who would want a Legendary Wizard like Antonya to teach and guide them would line up from the church all the way to Mystra's city gates and beyond.

If you didn't have generations of contacts with important families, or if you didn't have some amazing or mind-blowing talent, then, in general, there were very few rookie Level 1 wizard apprentices who would be able to receive such guidance from a Legendary Wizard.

"Mentor, I've heard of the spell Permanency before. But isn't there a price to pay for it too?" asked Zhao Xu in a soft voice, and his attitude was much humbler than before.

The Level 5 spell Permanency was able to make more than ten types of commonly used spells permanently effective on the spellcaster. Zhao Xu knew about this.

But he had also heard that the price of using this Permanency spell was something that even Wizards couldn't afford.

"The price to pay is to use up one class feature and two spell slots," replied Antonya.

When Zhao Xu heard this, his teeth started to feel sore. That sounded simply too infuriating.

If he had to use the class features and spell slots he could regain use of every day, then that was no simple price to pay.

He was consuming his lifespan by just waking up every single day.

For someone like him, he needed to prepare the necessary material, clear crystals, to cast Read Magic.

Before casting this spell, he had to take this material out from the side pocket of his haversack, and after he was done with them, he had to stuff it back in.

And this was only because he had a Heward's Handy Haversack from Antonya, and so he could easily retrieve the item he wanted from an extradimensional space.

Wizards who didn't have equipment like that would have to wear an outer robe with countless pockets just to store all their materials and retrieve them easily. Those who didn't know better might even wonder where this beggar magician appeared from.

But to have a Permanency spell, a spell that would only require hard work once and the results would last forever, was something that made Zhao Xu so envious that he almost drooled.

But he was just a disciple of Antonya's and not her biological son, so there was no way he could ask for so much.

"As for the second point. Your estimation of my spell duration of Read Magic is way off from the actual time. This is something that all wizards must avoid at all costs in battle."

When he heard this, Zhao Xu nodded. The level of a spellcaster decided the strength of their spells, their duration, and various other effects. So. if you guessed your opponent's level wrong, it would cause a huge difference in your judgment and approach.

But even if Antonya were a Level 35 Wizard, then she would be able to make it last for 350 minutes, or less than 6 hours.

During his first few days in Mystra, the books on the history of magic told him that the only wizards that had gone above Level 40 in Arthur were those who became Goddesses of Magic.

"8 hours?" Zhao Xu immediately thought of something and made a guess.

If you paired Extend Spell and used up a Level 1 spell slot as a result, you could increase the spell duration by twice the original duration.

"You seriously don't know anything about the powers of a wizard," muttered Antonya.

Zhao Xu was stunned for a few moments. He didn't understand this unnecessarily flamboyant declaration from Antonya.

"If you pair it with Persistent Spell, then you can cast it on any spells whose effects have not been discharged, and it will extend the spell duration to a total of 24 hours," replied Antonya calmly.

When he heard this, Zhao Xu nodded his head.

Then he suddenly widened his eyes with a start as he looked back up in disbelief at Antonya and quietly murmured, "That's not quite right, is it?"

"What? Do I need to lie to you?"

So that was what made Wizards so powerful!

Extending a spell like Read Magic that lasted just ten minutes multiplied by the spellcaster's level wasn't very meaningful for use in a battle, because it was a spell that lasted ten minutes.

But there were some spells that were only effective for one round multiplied by the spellcaster's level.

There were those that only lasted for just one round, and these were all spells that were incredibly and incomparably powerful, so they naturally came with a shorter spell duration.

But if such spells could last for an entire day...

Then whatever Wizard who cast it would be able to make fiercer attacks and take on harder damage than a Fighter.

Also, this sort of wizard would have magic around him for a long time, so he wouldn't need to buff himself in a hurry during battles.

So when the opponent met this wizard, the opponent would have to be at his peak fighting ability.

Antonya just calmly observed the shocked look on Zhao Xu's face and knew that he had figured everything out.

But Antonya didn't intend to tell Zhao Xu that this was only one area in which wizards were powerful either.

There were many other aspects where wizards were insanely powerful.

"Mentor, then, what's the price to pay for that?"

Zhao Xu had snapped back to reality and calmed his nerves down. He knew very well that this was the sort of thing that he had to work hard towards attaining.

In his previous life, there was no mention of this particular feat, and it was clear that very few players had managed to grasp it.

High-level wizards were already almost godlike to other players, but if they also had this feat alongside their spells, then Zhao Xu didn't dare to imagine exactly how powerful a wizard could really be.

"The prerequisite is to have the feat Extend Spell, and that was also why you had to choose the Planning Domain.

"As for the price to pay, you just need to use up a spell slot that's six levels higher than the spell you intend to use it on," said Antonya casually, as if that was a small price to pay.

When he heard this, Zhao Xu instantly felt like he had been rudely awakened from a wonderful dream.

He just felt like Antonya had been trolling him all this time.

Six levels higher?

What kind of crazy concept was this?

That meant that he had to use a Level 6 spell slot in order to prepare a cantrip like Read Magic.

You needed to be a Level 11 Wizard to have a Level 6 spell slot.

And even if you hit Level 17 and you obtained a Level 9 spell slot, you could only use it to prepare a Level 3 spell if you wanted to use this feat.

Even though it was still a meaningful feat to have, it had lost the original value for battling that Zhao Xu thought it had.

"Don't worry so much. The prestige classes of wizards can help you to reduce the price necessary for all these things. Otherwise, how would I be able to permanently keep a Level 9 spell like Undermaster on myself? Study hard and study well. As long as you work hard, we'll allow you to get to that sort of prestige class."

Antonya's words stunned Zhao Xu time and again.

He took a deep breath and knew that his heart was already in a mess.

He felt like he had gone back to the games he used to play as a child, and how it felt when he discovered that there were cheat codes.

Zhao Xu could only continuously chant spell incantations and use this sort of focusing method to suppress the confusion and agitation in his heart.

"So now you can keep guessing. How long is the spell duration of my Read Magic spell? Yesterday you made a right guess on the Skill Points, and I promised you a reward. I've brought it here with me, and it's in this blue pouch right here. If you can get this question right as well, then your reward will go up by another level to the things in this green pouch here.

"But since you've reached this point, then there will be a price to pay for guessing. If you still guess wrong, then I'll take back the prize that's in this blue pouch."

Zhao Xu looked at the blue pouch and green pouch that Antonya placed on the table. The pouches weren't very large, and he could hold each one within his fist.

But if he understood it right, she wasn't giving him both, but just giving him the things in the green pouch.

The items inside the green pouch were probably not far from the haversack that he carried on himself 24 hours a day.

"How do you decide if my guess is accurate or not?" asked Zhao Xu.

"If I think it's possible, then that's a correct guess. If I don't think it is, then even if you fall short by 1 round, it will still be a wrong guess."

When he heard these words, Zhao Xu started to calm down instead.

Antonya was making him bet on whether it was 24 hours or not.

But when he thought about it carefully, actually it wasn't hard to guess.

If you used Persistent Spell, then that would definitely make a spell last for 24 hours.

If you used Extend Spell to double the spell duration, then Antonya would have to be higher than a Level 72 spellcaster in order for the spell to last longer than 24 hours.

How could Antonya have reached that level of spellcasting?

Not even the Goddess of Magic could do that!

After a long time of silence, Zhao Xu went ahead and answered Antonya.

"More than 24 hours."

2

?61 chapter 61 ain stone

The entire library was very spacious, and Zhao Xu had picked a rather remote corner. Even though the flow of people was slowly increasing, no one would pay attention to them.

after zhao xu said his choice, he could still feel his heart beating nervously.

"eh? tell me the reason." antonya's words were very calm.

Zhao Xu didn't know if he was seeing things, but he felt like Antonya's face under her cloak was a little clearer for the first time.

"Because I know nothing about the power of a mage." Zhao Xu thought about it for a while and decided to return this sentence.

"it seems that you are very confident in me." Antonya gently nodded.

"Combined with the 'delayed spell' specialty, you'll need to be at least a level 72 spellcaster to cast 'read magic' for more than 24 hours. After the age of disasters, there are only a few spellcasters above level 30, let alone level 40."

antonya's tone became a little lazy, as if she had just recalled something from the past.

"You're right." Antonya said, and at the same time, the bag of green cloth on the table was pushed in front of him by an invisible force.

Zhao Xu was in disbelief.

"M-mentor? is this a joke? Level 72?"

in arthur, every person, every player, every native, and every monster-all had a specific character card.

there wouldn't be such an abstract and simple concept!

in the past, when the players were still young, their most arrogant slogan was: As long as you know the contents of the character card, even a God would dare to kill you.

For Antonya to be able to reach level 72 as a spellcaster, she had to know the origin of every level clearly, and it was also something that others could copy.

Zhao Xu was so shocked that he didn't even bother opening the package on the table.

let me correct you. A wizard's level is a wizard's level, and a spellcaster's level is a caster's level.

it's the wizard level that determines how many levels of arcane spells you can cast, but the spellcaster level that determines the effect of spells can be increased. Antonya said calmly.

Zhao Xu finally understood why they had two different terms.

if he wanted to increase his mage level, he would have to level up honestly and make himself a high-level figure.

However, a spellcaster's level could probably be increased through equipment and various abilities.

so even a level 1 wizard could cast read magic for 20 to 30 minutes as long as their casting level was increased.

"didn't you know about the abilities of the 'magic guard'? its fifth-level ability is to increase the spellcaster's level by one."

zhao xu laughed awkwardly when he heard this.

In his previous life, he had also followed the crowd's advice and had heard others brag about this post. He was very clear about a few very unique abilities, but he was not so comprehensive.

"Open it and choose the right reward."

zhao xu nodded and reached out to open the package in front of him.

a spindle-shaped transparent stone?

A vague guess appeared in Zhao Xu's mind, and his hands started to tremble.

"Ain stone. Hold it and release it. Different colors and shapes of ain stones have different effects. This one is to allow you to live without water or food."

When he heard the words " aen stone, " Zhao Xu almost jumped up in shock.

In his previous life, he had been envious of such a famous magic item like the aen stone.

It wasn't the strongest, but the effect of equipping it was definitely eye-catching.

in this life, zhao xu only wanted to be strong, so he didn't really care about things that were only about appearance. he was more concerned about how strong the wondrous items themselves were.

after hearing the effect of "maintaining life without water and food," he couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

It was useful, but it would only be useful after a year.

right now, this group of players was just a projection, and they were directly eating and drinking in the real world.

The body in Arthur was just a projection, and he didn't even need to go to the toilet.

when other players received this item, their first reaction would be that they had no use for it.

But no matter what, this thing was destined to show its value in a year.

It was a pity that after Antonya had given him the Howard's haversack, she had warned him not to sell the things she had given him.

otherwise, zhao xu could have found a way to trade it for 4000 gold pieces in the future.

"You're not satisfied?" Antonya asked softly when she saw Zhao Xu pause for a moment.

Zhao Xu quickly shook his head. no, I'm very satisfied.

"Do you want to know what's in the blue bag?" Antonya asked.

"Hmm, I'm quite interested."

Zhao Xu nodded. He wouldn't regret anything in there anyway.

the transparent spindle-shaped one was already the cheapest one in the series of aen stones, so the thing wrapped in the blue cloth was definitely not an aen stone.

Antonya gently lifted the blue cloth, and a Pearl fell out.

Zhao Xu took a closer look and saw that it was a Pearl that was similar to the one he had taken when he used his appraisal skill on it yesterday. Its value wouldn't exceed 100 or 200 gold coins.

He thought to himself,"the difference between 100 gold pieces and 4000 gold pieces shouldn't be that big."

"this is a level 1 mana regeneration pearl. it can recover one used level 1 spell slot. So don't blindly think that a wizard has used up all his spell slots in the future. You never know how many spell slots he has left."

Zhao Xu grinned. He didn't dare to be arrogant in front of a wizard.

even a dead mage was not necessarily without threat, much less a living one.

not to mention the magic pearls, who knew how many of the copied scrolls, wands, and magic staves were still in there?

"Do you want this Pearl of magical power regeneration?"

when he heard antonya's sudden question, zhao xu was overjoyed.

He was in disbelief. Could he really be the legendary son of destiny?

No, he should be called the child of the plane in Arthur.

he had picked up the golden axe, but it seemed like he could still pick up the silver axe.

The level 1 mana regeneration Pearl was equivalent to adding one level 1 spell slot to the current player.

Many players only had two or three level 1 spell slots at the moment, which directly increased their spell slots by 33% to 50%.

"Well, that's good." Antonya nodded, but then she put the mana regeneration Pearl back into her dimensional bag.

the entire process was so smooth that zhao xu didn't even have time to blink.

"Mentor?" zhao xu asked after a while.

"What?"

"Then why are you asking me?" zhao xu asked awkwardly.

he really couldn't bring himself to say the second half of the sentence,"aren't you going to send me off?"

"oh, i think this level 1 mana regeneration pearl is too useless. However, since you still want it, it means that it has some value. I'll reluctantly keep it. If it takes up space, then so be it. "

zhao xu looked at the dimensional bag that antonya was carrying around with her. he didn't even need to think to know that it was definitely the most expensive level 4 dimensional bag.

In Zhao Xu's memory, other people boasted that this bag could hold seven cubic meters and could hold more than half a ton.

His Howard's duffel bag only had 300 liters of space, which was less than 0.3 cubic meters.

On the market, a barrel could hold 18.9 liters of water. 300 liters was enough for him to hold more than ten barrels, so 0.3 cubic meters was not small at all.

It was 7 cubic meters, which was equivalent to the space from the bottom of the bed to the ceiling of a single room in a hotel.

Was there a need for a Pearl to take up space?

he was clearly teasing a poor novice mage like him.

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62 The real ain stone

zhao xu didn't put on the ain stone after he got it. he just put it in the middle pocket of his convenience bag.

in the early stages of the game, walking around with an aen stone on top of one's head was really a breeze.

but zhao xu couldn't wait for others to look at him like he was a noob.

He didn't want to attract anyone's attention, and his main focus was to develop quietly.

in the early stages of the game, as long as he was not detected by the detection spell, the players would not know that he had a magic item.

zhao xu didn't think too much about it when he saw how antonya was clearly telling him to be independent.

He cast Reading Magic on himself and continued studying the mysticism classics. There was a thick stack of books beside him.

Everyone could initially get 4 times the points because the upper limit of the skill level was character level 3.

zhao xu was now a level 1 character, so he could level up his skills to level 4.

It was a good thing Antonya didn't ask for too much. Otherwise, he really wouldn't be able to go out on an adventure for the next one or two months with a level 4 workload.

in his previous life, the players were forced to not level up their knowledge and skills much because of the time required to read.

as zhao xu read through the books on mysticism, he couldn't help but guess what he was thinking about legendary wizards.

If a legendary-mage required a knowledge (mysterious) skill, he would probably have to Max out this skill.

in other words, at level 21, he would have to have a level 24 knowledge (mysterious) skill level.

When he thought about this, Zhao Xu couldn't help but feel sorry for Antonya.

the players on earth only had to endure three years of college entrance exams, but the wizards in arthur had to endure for their entire lives.

what I have today is what you will have tomorrow. You don't have to look at me like that. Antonya said as she flipped through the book in her hands.

zhao xu was shocked. he had been looking at antonya the entire time, but he didn't see her raise her head at all.

didn't they say that the players 'true thoughts would not be detected for a year?

Zhao Xu quickly raised his head and looked around the entire classroom to see if there were any floating objects around.

he had heard that mages had a method similar to drone detection, but he really did not know the details of the spell.

Could it be that Antonya had set up something around them?

don't embarrass the mages. Take a good look at that 'introduction to common spells' in your backpack.

" there's a level two arcane spell called 'crab turtle vision', which can give people the global vision. " Antonya said in a bad mood.

so it was like this.

Zhao Xu finally understood that Antonya had basically obtained a vision that had no blind spots, similar to the eye roll.

therefore, she didn't need to look up to know what she was doing.

zhao xu thought to himself that he wasn't afraid that someone would walk up to him from behind and scare him off with this kind of magic equipment, but it definitely wouldn't be easy to get used to in the beginning.

but antonya was only here to read a book, and she already had this kind of buff on her. she really was being cautious.

"mentor, i just need to level up 10 knowledge skills by 1, right? there's no rush for the rest of the levels, right?"

After casting read magic four times in a row, Zhao Xu finally felt that his mystical knowledge skill was starting to show some signs of being useful.

he was like an athlete who had only run a few steps. with the speed and the length of the track, it was easy to estimate the time.

" there's no rush, but the advancement requires knowledge and skills. " antonya said calmly, but she didn't stop flipping the pages.

"the one i'm about to advance to?"

"what do you think?"

"Then, what level do you need to be, mentor?" zhao xu suddenly had a bad feeling.

" knowledge (mysterious) is definitely a level 8 skill. otherwise, you would have been able to advance before you reached level 5. "

zhao xu couldn't help but gasp.

He was completely sure that Antonya was doing this on purpose.

a skill level could only be three levels higher than the character level, which meant that when he was a level 5 wizard, his knowledge (mystery) skill had to be raised to level 8.

Now, the 4x skill points provided by Level 1 were 40 points. He could not level up to Level 2 until he used them all.

He already had a lot of skill points left when he was Level 5, so he could forget about maxing out all the knowledge (mysterious) skills in one go.

this would delay his advancement to an advanced class by a few levels.

therefore, he had to max out his knowledge (mystical) skill to level 4 when he reached level 1.

However, every time a skill leveled up, the reading requirement would also increase.

Thinking about this, Zhao Xu couldn't help but feel a headache coming on, mainly because he didn't have that many read magic spells to cast.

He had the heart to study, but he had limited time to use the dictionary every day.

Not to mention that he was already a cultivator of both the divine and the arcane, which meant that he had double the spell slots of others.

"mentor, look at my current situation. i want to study hard, but i can't do anything without the blessing of reading magic." Zhao Xu asked Antonya for advice.

"why don't i also set up a 'reading magic'?" zhao xu asked with anticipation.

"That's a good suggestion." antonya agreed.

Zhao Xu was overjoyed when he heard this, but out of caution, he still asked, " mentor, do we need to change the environment for the permanency spell? There are too many people here."

"Environment? We'll talk about it when the time comes, how would we know now?"

"When the time comes?"

"How are you going to master the level 5 spell 'magic everlasting' if you're not at level 9?" antonya continued to flip through the page in her hand.

Zhao Xu was stunned for a moment and he thought back to what he had just said.

He immediately realized that Antonya was asking him to put it on himself.

Zhao Xu was left speechless.

If he could cast magic everlasting on his own, he wouldn't have needed to ask Antonya for help.

at this moment, antonya was reading her book in peace, as if she was immune to fire and water, so she probably wouldn't let him cheat.

Otherwise, Zhao Xu would just take advantage of the situation and continue begging for other permanency spells.

"however, if you really have such an ambition, i can satisfy you." antonya suddenly said.

"Joining a large organization will give you the treatment of a large organization. after all, you players don't need to eat or drink, so that ain stone is a little useless to you."

Zhao Xu's expression changed and he raised his eyebrows slightly.

" mentor, can i get a reward that can help me solve the problem of not having enough reading magic? "

"This works too. If not, there was a condition. If you can't meet the conditions, I'll take it back."

Using the ownership of an enen stone worth 4000 gold pieces in exchange for an unknown reward of unlimited lease period, with a request.

however, it wasn't a big problem. he didn't dare to sell the original ain stones anyway.

The only requirement was to satisfy the other party's premise.

"what are the conditions?" zhao xu asked.

knowledge (mystical), knowledge (religion), Arcana, and concentration, I want you to maim all four of them.

"sure."

Zhao Xu replied decisively.

no matter how difficult the request was, he would agree to it first and then reply to it when there was a problem.

an orange, prismatic rock flew straight towards zhao xu.

zhao xu took it with his bare hands and carefully examined the ain stone in his hand. he had never heard of this version of the stone before. could it solve the problem of him not having enough time to read magic?

As Zhao Xu thought about this, he took out the original transparent ain stone from his bento bag and returned it to Antonya.

"You can take it. Just hold it for a while, then release it. "

Zhao Xu nodded his head as he followed Antonya's instructions.

The orange prism that had been lying in Zhao Xu's palm suddenly flew up into the air.

it was as if it was being pulled by gravity as it flew towards the top of his head.

Just as the Ain stone was about to fly away from his head like a meteor, the mysterious force continued to pull it back.

after going back and forth a few times, the ain stone finally stabilized its trajectory and continued to circle above his head.

"The effect of this ain stone is to increase the level of a level 1 spellcaster."

" in the future, you'll need 20 minutes to read magic, and 40 minutes to reach supreme magic. that's enough. "

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63 chapter 63 spell identification

"teacher, how much is this ain stone worth?" Zhao Xu couldn't believe it.

He had already seen the words " aen stone (orange prism) " appear on his character card, which did not have a number limit.

it meant that this precious item was now his and under his control.

"36000 gold pieces," antonya said.

zhao xu felt like he had taken in too much air today and was having trouble breathing.

He had actually touched a precious item worth 700 pounds of gold one day?

But on the other hand, this was also the first time that Zhao Xu had experienced the price of increasing his spellcaster level by one.

" this is a nameless bonus. it's the kind of natural bonus that can be stacked. don't mind it too much. you'll have to return it to me in the future anyway. "

It didn't matter to Zhao Xu whether or not she returned it.

The main thing was that for a level 1 wizard like him, the effect would be doubled.

At a higher level, for example, when a level 10 spellcaster was upgraded to a level 11 spellcaster, the effect would only increase by 10%, which was nothing.

however, for him, as long as the time was determined by the level of the spellcaster, it was equivalent to a 100% increase.

even though 1 to his spellcaster level didn't allow him to cast level 2 spells in advance, he still needed to be a level 3 wizard to cast them. zhao xu was still very satisfied with this.

It was at this moment that Zhao Xu finally noticed that his character stats had also changed.

[ character level: level 1 (double elite)

[class 1: level 1 wizard]

[arcane profession level: Level 1]

[arcane spellcaster Level: Level 2 = 1 (wizard) 1 (ain stone)]

[Class 2: Level 1 cleric]

[Divine Art profession level: Level 1]

[divine spell caster level: level 2 = 1 (priest) 1 (ain stone)]

Sure enough, even his divine spells as a priest were affected. In the future, his healing could be increased by one point.

"right, i have to correct you one more thing." Read Magic's target is yourself, so you can only cast it on yourself. I can't cast it on you." antonya said.

"teacher, didn't you say that the 'magic guard' has the ability to cast a spell that targets itself to others?" Zhao Xu replied awkwardly.

He remembered clearly that his classmate had emphasized this ability when he was bragging about it.

some powerful arcane spells could only be released on themselves and could not be used on teammates.

the advanced "magic guard" was able to achieve this, and it was worthy of its name.

"I have a rough idea now. You can't be considered someone who was born with knowledge, it's more like hearsay." antonya chuckled.

remember, that ability can only transfer defensive spells. What kind of defensive spell is your read magic? "

When he heard this, Zhao Xu finally realized that he hadn't misheard, and no one else had misspoken.

It was just that the original poster didn't tell the whole truth.

sure enough, people always chose to talk about their strong parts and skipped over the weak parts.

At this moment, Antonya also stood up and was about to leave with the book in her hand.

"instructor, you're not going to watch anymore?" Zhao Xu quickly asked.

Reading alone was not as convenient as asking a top student.

"i'll be disturbed if i stay with you. i'll go back to the tower to read." Antonya said in a light voice.

"teacher, but aren't the books here not for external borrowing?"

"You should read that sentence again." after she finished speaking, antonya flashed across the air and moved almost a hundred meters to the entrance of the library of knowledge before slowly leaving.

That's not right. Zhao Xu almost lost his senses.

When he used the apprentice badge to complete the certification and came in, the old librarian even gave him a stern warning not to damage the books.

the other party even made him read out loud, "all books, be they mages or apprentices, are not to be lent out" before letting him in.

Along the way, he saw many mages in the library, all of them were using their automatic Quill to copy books, they would rather wait than take the books and leave.

then why did antonya just take the book and leave? even though the old man couldn't see it clearly, zhao xu was sure that he had bent down to send her off.

all books, be they mages or apprentices, are not to be lent out. he was sure that he had not remembered these words wrongly, or else the old man would not have let him in.

Suddenly, Zhao Xu slapped his own thigh.

He didn't read it wrong, but mages and apprentice mages didn't include legendary mages.

indeed, it was infuriating to compare people in the floating city.

after understanding this, zhao xu flipped open the book on mysticism and started reading again.

those awkward-sounding magic words had already changed from pleasant to somewhat charming.

differential treatment was often the driving force for human progress.

——————————————————————————–

over the next two days, zhao xu finally managed to level up his knowledge (mystical) to level 1.

as for the other knowledge skills, although he didn't use 'reading magic' to read, he had to rely on his own understanding to overcome them, which was a lot less efficient.

however, according to his estimation, in the next two or three days, other knowledge skills would definitely successfully reach level 1 one after another.

At night, when Antonya saw that he had finally reached Level 1 in his knowledge (mystical), she took him to the underground Plaza to train his new skill-Spellcraft.

spell identification, concentration, and knowledge were the three main skills of the wizard class.

some of the skills didn't need to be trained. It could be used even without a skill level, such as rolling and climbing.

However, Arcana knowledge was the same as knowledge skills. It required training before it could be used.

at this moment, zhao xu was sitting in the huge underground square and watching many new wizards casting their rare spell slots. he was completely dumbfounded.

"Teacher, you called me here just to see them?" zhao xu didn't have the heart to say the words 'monkey show'.

after all, he only had the ability to play the monkey.

" this is how you train your ability to identify spells. after you've memorized it, you'll have to come here to practice. "

Antonya concluded.

so you can improve by watching them cast level 0 and level 1 spells? "

"That's right, there are actually several ways to use the spell identification skill. however, after a lot of research, we found that directly recognizing the spells cast by others is the easiest way to train and improve."

Zhao Xu finally looked at the hundreds of Level 1 Wizards in the field. They wouldn't be able to cast any useful spells in the floating city anyway.

the only users could only come here at night to learn and show each other.

"Instructor, I'm just going to watch?" Zhao Xu asked.

"set your skill point distribution to identify spell." Antonya said angrily.

"Oh, I'm sorry." zhao xu realized what was going on and was dumbfounded.

Character cards could be used to set the tendency of skills, which would allow him to accurately upgrade his skills.

he didn't want to accidentally roll down the stairs one day, so he used 1 skill point to upgrade roll by 1 level.

the power of skill points was directed at the sublimation of the ability as their experience increased, and from there, they would be able to touch the threshold of the next step.

After he was done with the setup, Zhao Xu's daggers fell onto the newbie mages in the field.

Slowly, he began to capture the spells and postures of the mages.

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64 the origin

Most of these mages had prepared a few fixed spells so that they could shoot at the fixed targets in the underground square.

the rays of ice and magic bullets that they cast were basically all spells that zhao xu was familiar with.

this made him a little confused. he could barely recognize it without using the spell recognition skill.

"Teacher, I feel that something is wrong." Zhao Xu couldn't help but ask.

"what?"

"for example, i heard a spell that i know. Then I would also know what spell the other party was going to use. To put it bluntly, if the other party were to loudly chant an incantation in front of me, such as the appraisal technique, which requires an hour to cast, there's no way I wouldn't recognize it. "

He had learned magic before, so he had more or less been trained in the ability of " spell identification. however, didn't this mean that he could identify spells without even throwing a shot?

"naive." Antonya said mockingly, " don't use your 16 points of intelligence to challenge the countless people who have tried to test you over the past thousands of years.

"That's called knowing, not identifying. only after you've condensed your spell identification to level 1 will you know that spell identification is an instinctive, passive action."

turning from active to passive?

When Zhao Xu heard this, he suddenly felt something stir in his heart.

"it's easy for one mage to cast a spell, but what about seven or eight mages casting at the same time? I can control it with my intelligence, but can you handle it with your current intelligence?"

they asked you to come here to train in spell identification because you've basically mastered all the spells they cast. You're equivalent to the ability of spell identification. The progress bar for Level 1 is already at 90%.

"let's see when you can break through the last 10%. Otherwise, you can't compare to someone else's real Level 1 spell identification ability with your 90% progress at level 0."

When he heard this, Zhao Xu felt as if the string in his heart had snapped.

All of a sudden, everyone on the field was abstract into a coordinate system in his eyes, and the spells were the curves of each coordinate system.

zhao xu's entire body fell into a daze.

"what?" Antonya could feel that there was something off about Zhao Xu.

she gently waved her hand and set up the 'rainbow magic ball', which isolated all interference from the outside world.

compared to the rainbow ball that reyan had cast earlier, antonya's spell left no trace at all. it was as if she had become invisible.

No one present noticed that there was a completely invisible Rainbow Ball spell in the corner of the square that enveloped the two of them.

Even the security personnel who were in charge of keeping an eye on the novice mages did not notice the commotion here.

it was a good thing that antonya and zhao xu had picked the right spot on the stage from the start. otherwise, if the new wizard had accidentally touched the rainbow ball's barrier, he would have definitely been killed by the seven different powers of the barrier.

zhao xu, who was in the middle of the fight, felt as if the three main areas of a cleric were slowly lighting up in his mind.

The power of the magical domain slowly emerged and poured into his body. Even the power of the other two domains seeped out and poured into his body.

looking at the scene in front of her, antonya immediately activated her mystical and religious knowledge skills and started to make an association check.

her knowledge level, which was far beyond that of ordinary people and had been enhanced by magic equipment, was directly connected to the deepest part of the "source of knowledge."

no matter how difficult the test was, with antonya's huge amount of luck points and insight, it was like a drop of rain under the hot sun. it would be dispelled as soon as it was exposed.

In the end, Zhao Xu slowly came back to his senses.

on his information panel, as long as he heard or saw a spell cast, it would automatically turn into an identification check.

[casting a spell on a wizard 10 meters in front of you. check result: 7 d20 = 7 10 = 17. if it exceeds dc16, identify spell slot "magic missile ".]

[casting a spell on a Wizard 7 meters in front and left, check result 7 d20 = 7 2 = 9. Check failed if the difficulty is lower than the exemption difficulty.]

Zhao Xu didn't have the time to look at the rest of them.

This was because he noticed that in his character card, in the skill list, the level of Spellcraft was Level 4, which was the upper limit of the skill level of a level 1 character.

he looked at antonya with a blank expression. "teacher, my spell identification has reached level 4."

Even though Antonya already knew most of what had happened, she was still a little touched when she heard Zhao Xu's confirmation.

She nodded. then did you see the check on your information panel? "

"Yes, my skill bonus for Spellcraft is 7, of which 4 points come from Level 4 skills and 3 points come from intelligence. Why is it like this?" zhao xu asked in disbelief.

why did his spell identification level directly rise to level 4?

normally, shouldn't he be at level 1 and slowly train up?

Why did his information panel automatically recognize other people's spells?

knowledge and spell identification are the few abilities that are connected to the origin. Antonya said in a soft voice, "after you have reached the level of being able to identify spells, your Character Card system will be connected to the source of magic in this world.

"You can see other people's spells based on your experience, that's what you know. however, your understanding of each spell is different, so it's very abstract."

"However, after you obtain the 'spell identification' level, you can rely on the power of the origin to automatically identify the spells around you. Even if you haven't learned or heard of the spell."

when he heard antonya's words, zhao xu finally understood. the spell recognition that she had been talking about so mysteriously turned out to be an ability like this.

It was just that most of the time, he had to make do with the system and didn't know the details like Antonya did.

"then what are the criteria for identification failure?" Zhao Xu asked.

"the spell level plus 15 points is the difficulty of identification. if the test result exceeds the difficulty, it can be identified."

Zhao Xu turned his gaze to the mages who were casting their spells in the arena.

he had a 7 point bonus to his spellcraft, while the difficulty of these mages casting level 1 spells was dc 16.

as long as his identification check's d20 was greater than 16, he would automatically see through the true nature of those level 1 spells.

to him, the origin of magic had a 55% chance of automatically recognizing level 1 spells.

the higher his skill level and intelligence, the higher the probability of him automatically recognizing these spells.

it was no wonder that professionals had an overwhelming advantage over commoners, from attribute points to the character card system, and then to the existence of the source.

thinking about this, zhao xu looked at antonya and said, " mentor, so my knowledge skills and the fact that i can get additional background knowledge after a successful check are also because of this connection? "

"That's for sure. The result of the test is the feedback from the 'knowledge source'. Every test you make is a connection attempt. I only found out about your situation through the knowledge check."

It was only then that Zhao Xu realized that he still had a question he hadn't asked Antonya. How did his identification skill level up to Level 4?

But Antonya grabbed him by the collar and brought him into the field in a flash.

The two of them appeared next to the administrator. At the same time, there were a few new Wizards training in spell recognition around them.

"You, cast 'magic bullet' at him." antonya instructed a new female wizard.

"To me?" Zhao Xu looked at Antonya and the female wizard that she had ordered around in surprise and didn't know how to react.

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