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.