The Truth of Magic

Chapter 9: Double Elite

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The number of users logging into Arthur this first day wasn’t as high as the numbers the game eventually saw.

The game peaked around a half a year later, and the game became a trending topic. Whenever a player unlocked a new achievement in the game, the news would immediately go viral.

There were guides and posts for a player to read details on all parts of the game during this period.

But players had no mode of communication within the game itself, and any connection to the internet was cut off.

So if anybody ran into any special scenario, the player had to rely on themselves or the various knowledge and skills within the system to figure out what to do.

If you really had to log off in order to look it up, you not only had to wait for the right time to log off, there was also a waiting period of 20 minutes in between logging off and logging in again, so this was enough to stop most people from using external info sources.

But even so, before some of the leagues were able to afford Communication Spells, they still used the good old method of logging off to communicate before going back online again.

Many players were completely lost when they first started the game. Some of them didn’t take the initiative to ask for directions and still couldn’t find their training center even after going round in circles for days.

Zhao Xu was likely to be the first player in the entire game to actually understand the symbols on the parchment maps and know how to follow them.

Since it was his first choice, Zhao Xu decided to go to the headquarters of the Wizard Organization, The Arcane Gate, first.

There was more than one Wizard Organization in Arthur.

But the one seated in the city of magic, Mystra, was the largest and had the most members. They had branches in several cities across the continent.

The other Wizard Organizations were only equivalent to one-tenth of their power. For example, the Red Robe Wizards only covered one area.

The only Wizard Organization here was The Arcane Gate, so it didn’t need to be explained.

Any mention of a Wizard Organization would naturally refer to the one in Mystra.

After Zhao Xu handed over the relevant documents at the main lobby of The Arcane Gate, the apprentice in charge of showing him in used a simple spell to verify the secret key of his recommendation letter and confirmed that he was indeed supposed to be there.

Some had, or rather, would dare to use Forgery to try to scam the Wizard Association, but the quickest group of Rogue players were probably still unable to grasp the Skill at this point, much less use their low-level skills to attempt a scam.

To the characters that pre-existed Arthur, this group of players from Earth didn’t suddenly drop from the sky, and the NPCs weren’t all brainwashed to accept that they were originally part of Arthur.

In reality, players would later realize that this entire world was run logically.

The characters of Arthur were told by the temple a number of years ago that these players were projections from a different realm called Earth.

Other realms weren’t an unknown concept to the characters in Arthur nor to any of the Adventurers within Arthur. In fact, anywhere that the gods existed was considered another realm in itself.

Wizards could even call on creatures from other realms to be projected into Arthur in order to participate in battles.

The players from earth were different in that they could go online and offline and had a special collection of five revival stones that the characters in Arthur didn’t have, so the players from earth were just treated like another projection.

At the very least, they wouldn’t be blocked off by an Antimagic Field or be completely wiped out.

Zhao Xu had even heard that top-level Wizards didn’t even go on Adventure Trips personally. Most of them would just summon projections that were as capable as themselves and send those out on adventures in their place.

The transmigration after one year turned everyone on earth into actual characters within Arthur, so they went from being projections to becoming actual people in the game.

Zhao Xu waited for less than ten minutes when a wizard in a black robe came out to bring him further into The Arcane Gate.

He instructed Zhao Xu not to run off by himself, in case he ended up triggering some trap and ended up having to revive himself. Other than that, the wizard remained silent.

Everyone within The Arcane Gate was quiet and walked around in a great hurry.

In less than ten minutes, the wizard had brought Zhao Xu to an empty courtyard.

He pointed at the brightly lit gate in front and said, “That’s the gate for Wizard apprentices like you. Don’t think too much and just keep walking.”

“A Teleportation Gate?” Zhao Xu exclaimed in surprise when he saw the three-meter tall, brightly lit gate.

He expected the training ground for those like himself to be in Mystra itself, but they actually had to go through a Teleportation Gate.

Besides having a limit on the size it could take and the fact that it was usually only able to teleport to one destination, there were no other limitations on Teleportation Gates.

In just one round (6 seconds), players could use it to get to a particular destination. There was no need for anybody to assist the player and it didn’t require any spells to be activated.

It just took one step to get to your destination. Teleportation Gates cost 100,000 gold pieces each and they were something that countless Adventurers wish they had.

The wilds in Arthur were incredibly dangerous.

If a player could just get away from a battle for 5 minutes, then he could go offline without any risks and wouldn’t have to spend the night in the wild.

Most players who used revival stones early on used them because of accidents that happened in the wild.

Even the characters within Arthur wouldn’t leave a town to go into the wild if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

“You’ve seen one before?” The wizard in a black robe lifted his head slightly to look at Zhao Xu. He wasn’t sure if the expression on the wizard’s face was a good one or a bad one.

He suddenly realized that this wizard was probably not one of those super low-level wizards who guarded the main gate outside.

The majority of the wizards here knew very well that players like him were ‘Adventurers’ from Earth.

Logically speaking, these players had just come into contact with Arthur and should know very little.

But Zhao Xu knew that the best way to deal with the situation wasn’t to explain but to keep asking.

“This door leads to the place above?”

Zhao Xu used a finger to point upward as he spoke. Even though the huge courtyard had a ceiling, it was obvious what Zhao Xu was referring to.

“You’re pretty quick-witted,” the wizard in a black robe looked at Zhao Xu carefully.

But Zhao Xu could feel that the wizard’s eyes had fallen on the two insignias on his chest.

“Very interesting indeed. No wonder I was told to bring you here,” the wizard in a black robe said.

“What does that mean?” Zhao Xu’s sensitive mind realized that he might have just stumbled upon something very important.

Every character that existed within Arthur was an actual human being. They weren’t mindless NPCs that only spoke to you because you had activated some mission.

But, in general, high-level wizards were usually more aloof and wouldn’t bother wasting too much time on some lowly Level 1 apprentice.

Even though Zhao Xu was now at the highest-ranking academy in the world of wizardry, he would be treated the same way.

The wizard’s cloudy eyes met Zhao Xu’s.

Zhao Xu went into a daze for a while. He felt like he was looking at a wise old man.

But the wizard’s face and hands were unwrinkled. He didn’t look more than middle-aged.

But that didn’t stop Zhao Xu from lowering his own head a little.

He wasn’t like other players who came into the game fearing nothing at all. Other players couldn’t be bothered and the worst that could happen was to either try again or just quit altogether.

But, eventually, everyone on earth would have to find a way to survive in Arthur, so if he was arrogant now, he might do himself more harm in the long run.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t wear the Cleric insignia for the time being. You’ll get less unnecessary attention that way,” the wizard suggested.

“Why do you say that? Isn’t it possible for the players to go through two Character Class trainings at the same time?” Zhao Xu asked the wizard even though the other players probably didn’t know that this was possible yet. But he knew about this and he was absolutely sure of it.

There were players just like him. If you were left with more than one statue at the end of the Class Prescription Test, you would be given more insignias so that you could participate in more than one training course.

Others had to eventually weigh their pros and cons and choose which insignia to keep and go for training.

But because his was a Double Elite account, he could keep them both.

The wizard in the black robe was just like him and didn’t answer his question directly. Instead, he replied in a low voice, “Just ten minutes ago, there was a female player just like you. She also had two insignias, but she was sent to the Teleportation Gate in the next room.”

The world of Arthur would only become real one year later, so that meant that Zhao Xu’s 16 point Intelligence on his character stats wasn’t real yet.

He still had to rely on the intelligence he was born with to try to figure out what the wizard was trying to tell him.

Zhao Xu had calmed down now, and he started wondering if it was some hidden mission or some other trap.

So the wizard was saying that he should have gone to the other Teleportation Gate just like the female player?

Why would anyone build two Teleportation Gates to get to the same Magic Academy?

Even if the Wizard Association had money, this wasn’t a good way to spend it. There was no point in building two gates next to one another that would lead to the same place.

Which meant, the two gates must lead to two different places.

If he were in some other city, he could explain it away by saying that one of the doors was for sending the best apprentices to Mystra.

But The Arcane Gate was already the best Magic Academy and legend had it that the mentors were all Legendary Wizards.

If you wanted to top that, then was this gate going to send one straight to the goddess?

The Cleric training school was in the temple next door, and he didn’t have to go through a Teleportation Gate to get there.

Zhao Xu suddenly understood what was going on. He had tried to show off and wanted the people at The Arcane Gate to notice that he was different, and so he had purposely worn both insignias to prove his worth.

And something different really did happen after all.

Or, perhaps he didn’t have to wear these insignias and this would still have happened after he stepped into the main gate of the Wizard Association.

But what did this have to do with two different Teleportation Gates?

Zhao Xu suddenly remembered something else.

Hidden Base Character Class!

Someone with two insignias could take on a Hidden Character Class besides being a Wizard and a Cleric!

But, between the gate in front of him and the gate next door, which one was truly the one headed for the Hidden Base Character Class?

Zhao Xu was about to ask the wizard to confirm this when he looked at the wizard and stopped himself.

The answer was already there without him saying anything.

If it was really a Hidden Character Class, he would have said so by the time he reached the Teleportation Gate.

So the gate next door was the one that was headed for the Hidden Character Class.

So now he had another question. Why was someone else sent to the Hidden Character Class while he was headed for becoming a Wizard when both of them had two insignias each?

“Looks like you’ve thought of it?”

A Wizard was more respected since it was one of the Base Character Classes of this universe.

“Think about it first. What’s so special about you?”

Zhao Xu lowered his head and started thinking. What was so special about himself?

16 Intelligence points was considered high, but there were others with 17 or even 18 points.

Oh! Double Elite!

Zhao Xu suddenly thought of it. But, logically speaking, the wizard shouldn’t be able to tell at all.

Weren’t the players immune to the Detect Thoughts spell for the first year?

The wizard suddenly raised his head and looked into the distance, as if he could see past the Teleportation Gate.

“Don’t worry, you Adventurers from Earth are immune to many things here. I’ll let you know one more thing. Besides knowing how to cast spells, Wizards are also skilled in Intelligence and Knowledge.”

Zhao Xu knew what the wizard was saying. If NPCs were able to read the minds of the players or do anything worse to the players than that, it would be utter chaos.

So this sort of immunity was actually a form of protection the gods had given to the players in general, and it was effective for one year.

It was also a form of protection for Zhao Xu.

Otherwise, he might as well have written the fact that he had been reborn on his face when he went in front of the Legendary Wizards.

So the wizard knew what he was thinking about based purely on his Intelligence and Knowledge?

Zhao Xu nearly slapped himself on the forehead. He had forgotten the existence of the skill of Sense Motive. f𝑟e𝒆𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗oѵ𝐞𝗹.c૦𝑚

His expressions were too obvious and he had to counter this by increasing his skill points in Disguise in the future.

After Zhao Xu got it all figured out, he nodded and walked toward the brightly lit gate.

Just when he was about to step in, he suddenly stopped to ask.

“After I complete the training to become a Level 1 Wizard, then I’ll have to come back here to go to the Teleportation Gate next door?”

He didn’t say that he was a Double Elite, but he was sure the wizard knew what he was talking about.

The wizard wouldn’t think that after becoming a Level 1 Wizard, he would decide to give up Level 2 and take on the Hidden Character Class instead.

“No. You will continue on the road to becoming a Wizard,” the wizard said. “As for the other road available to you, you will first become a Level 1 Cleric before moving on to becoming an Archivist.”

Character Class path 1: Level 2 Wizard

Character Class path 2: Level 1 Cleric/Level 1 Archivist.

Zhao Xu imagined the paths that the wizard was talking about and now he also knew what the Hidden Base Character Class was.

He suddenly spun around and asked, “But why?”

“This is the will of the goddess.”