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.
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"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!"
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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!!!"