Preparing Divine Arts

He sighed inwardly, thinking that existence was too biased.

He figured the kid wouldn't even know how expensive the positions inside were.

How many mage families and old noble houses were secluded within the entire Mistral.

These powerful individuals had countless relatives and family members, and their complicated intermarriages, not to mention the collateral relatives who came from elsewhere seeking refuge.

To maintain family power, they naturally worked hard to cultivate their descendants into spellcasters.

The path of a mage tested talent, but the path of a priest was more about a god's favor.

Even during normal times, they were powerless to change a god's opinion.

You couldn't exactly praise one of your relatives during prayer and hope the god would bestow upon them the rank of a level 1 priest.

Only the seats on this Divine Birthday were the most direct way to display each family's strength and arrange their people accordingly.

Although the Goddess of Magic could hear the thoughts of her followers.

But during festivals like this, the moment her consciousness descended into the temple.

These novice priests who appeared nearby would always catch her eye.

Or rather, they'd give some face to Arthur's church, arranging for some novice priests to be promoted.

Yet here was Zhao Xu, who directly received divine spells just by standing at the entrance.

If this had happened at any other time, no one would have objected to someone becoming a priest through piety.

But at this moment, it was clearly the moment the Goddess of Magic descended, and she took a liking to him standing at the entrance, bestowing divine spells upon him as well.

How were the three hundred novice priests inside who hadn't successfully advanced supposed to feel? Wasn't this highlighting that they weren't good enough?

Rayne hadn't expected that bringing this younger brother, who looked so calm, would lead to such a situation.

"Keep this quiet for now, don't get excited and use your divine spells. Go through the training first, and on the last day, reveal your divine spells to them. After registering, you can leave."

Zhao Xu hadn't expected this suggestion, and he simply nodded.

Zhao Xu had been working in Arthur for nine years; he hadn't lived his life in vain.

His foundation was in the Final Scroll, so naturally, they didn't want him to attract too much attention within the church.

At least, not to get too involved with these low-level priests.

Then Rayne stepped forward to communicate with the middle-aged priest, arranging Zhao Xu's next steps.

After a brief conversation, Zhao Xu, led by Rayne, was directed to the inner area by the priest.

Finally, under the church's arrangements, Zhao Xu was assigned a new dormitory and a schedule.

Although the schedule was packed, looking closely, it was actually quite clear.

Every morning there was a morning meeting and unified prayer, followed by studying religious texts until noon. After lunch, in the afternoon, they would receive corresponding priest training based on their own needs.

His dormitory was still a single room, but it was much narrower; he was afraid he wouldn't be able to turn around if he got a bit fatter.

The room's decoration was also very simple, with nothing but a bed and a wooden table.

After completing these handover procedures with Zhao Xu, Rayne pointed him to the Mage Association's liaison office in the Holy See.

In the following days, Rayne couldn't stay by Zhao Xu's side 24/7.

So he could only go to the liaison office when Zhao Xu had a request, and they would help Zhao Xu notify Rayne.

After giving these instructions, Rayne left with the middle-aged priest.

The Divine Birthday wasn't just a simple descent of divine consciousness; there were many subsequent celebratory ceremonies.

As a liaison officer, Rayne still had to coordinate the arrival procedures for the personnel from the Mage Association.

Eventually, Zhao Xu was left alone in the room.

For the next half-day until evening, the church didn't schedule any training for the Divine Birthday, so he had nothing to do.

Zhao Xu sat on the bed, casually pulling out a religious text from the wall cabinet.

After only half an hour of reading, Zhao Xu stuffed it back, quite thoroughly.

Not only were the wording in these religious texts cumbersome, but the metaphors were also very complex, giving him a headache.

Zhao Xu could only sigh and wonder how others managed to digest this material.

Turning his attention back, Zhao Xu began to study his own divine spells.

Just because he didn't want to show them off didn't mean he couldn't use them in private.

The only troublesome thing was that priests generally had fixed times for prayer.

Gods also distributed divine spells in a unified, batch process at these times.

If a priest wanted to change the time, they would have to see if the deity was willing to make special arrangements for them.

Having lived in Arthur for many years in his previous life, countless people from Earth had tried to verify their knowledge of Earth to determine what kind of planet Arthur was.

Eventually, they all surrendered and accepted that Arthur was not part of the original universal system.

It's a proprietary plane system.

Therefore, within Arthur's prime material plane system, all places share a unified time zone, watching the same sunrise and sunset across the endless sky.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu also endured for a while, only accepting this planar view after looking at models drawn by others.

Zhao Xu directly sat cross-legged, beginning his meditation and prayer, attempting to receive divine magic.

Having just flipped through religious texts, Zhao Xu had learned the basic prayer words.

Fortunately, Priest divine magic isn't finicky; it doesn't require 8 hours of ample rest.

Slowly, Zhao Xu began to notice specks of light appearing in his mind.

The divine magic spell slot characters in his Character Card's information also began to sway, as if preparing to glow from their gray state.

During Zhao Xu's meditation, the image of the Goddess of Magic gradually became clearer in his mind.

The details of her face were pieced together bit by bit.

In Arthur, the specific appearances of the gods were depicted in a rather vague manner.

Those stone carvings achieved a likeness in spirit but not in form.

When Zhao Xu sat on the Arcane Throne and was recalled into the river of history, he saw Sisylvina before she had become a god, which is why he didn't recognize her.

If he had seen her after she became a god, with an aura exactly matching her divine statue, he wouldn't have guessed she was a Succubus even if he were blind.

Zhao Xu also became one of the few in Arthur who truly knew the goddess's true appearance.

However, the moment her appearance was restored in his mind.

The face that was about to become vivid instantly scattered into countless star-like dots.

Zhao Xu immediately saw numerous floating orbs of light appear in his mind, formed from these star-like dots.

Focusing his attention on them, he saw that they were detailed descriptions of divine spells.

These orbs represented individual divine spells he could choose to prepare.

The bottom row naturally contained zero-level divine spells, while the larger orbs in the row above were first-level divine spells.

Seeing these orbs, Zhao Xu roughly counted 12 zero-level spells and 25 first-level spells.

Compared to the Mage's method of learning spells by copying each one individually.

Divine magic was much more generous, with the deity directly listing all the divine spells you could choose.

This gave him a total of 37 options at once.

Even though he could only prepare five or six divine spells at the moment.

Some of these divine spells were the same as Arcane spells, such as the zero-level spell Detect Magic, meaning this spell existed in both an Arcane and a divine version.

However, there were also some spells that only had a divine version. Mages were powerless against these and couldn't learn them.

At this point, Zhao Xu hadn't realized.

Not all Level 9 Priests could cast the fifth-level divine spell Resurrection.

12 zero-level and 25 first-level spells were the standard set.

There were more than just these 25 first-level divine spells; there were also some expanded divine spells.

It was the same as his first-level Arcane spell Dimension Door; it wasn't a standard Arcane spell and couldn't be learned without a special channel.

For most Level 1 Priests, their initial selection wouldn't exceed these 25 first-level divine spells.

Even having 10 divine spells to choose from at the start was considered a good performance. Only by gradually gaining divine favor could one obtain more divine spells to choose from.

Only a Level 1 Priest with the deepest divine favor would have all 25 standard first-level divine spells listed.

PS1: Thanks to Sangtian 152 for the 500 Qidian coins reward, extreme gratitude, thank you.

PS2: I've slightly nerfed the Priest's combat power here, not allowing all spells to be immediately available for preparation.