The Truth of Magic - Chapter 47

Chapter 47: Setting Up in Advance

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.