"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 comments 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 commenters 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.
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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.