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?