"I welcome all of you by the light of god.
As you may know, the ceremony is most important and you should conduct yourselves well lest you anger the gods.
Now, each of you will have five minutes for prayer during which you may receive a blessing.
If you do, may you devout yourself to your god.
If you don't, you still have 4 more chances. The second ceremony is not much different from your first…"
Xavier listened to the long speech of the priest with disinterest feeling bored.
He had heard it so many times that he could recite each letter in it backwards.
Thinking about his plan for Melissa, it seems like he ought to acquire a priest type profession.
It is actually quite easy to acquire a relevant profession which would upgrade into priest, but the problem comes in when he is to choose which god to serve.
Ophelia is the best option, but if he did that, he would form a divine link with her and he would never hear the end of it.
But choosing another god is simply putting them in danger.
Well, there are plenty of gods he did not like.
The god of trade and contracts, for example, still owes him millions of divine crystals.
That bastard is sure to deny it in this retry…
The up side is that gods cannot die.
Even if Ophelia did her worst, all it would amount to is some trauma.
Not to mention, nobody said that a priest could only serve one god.
It just that there has never been any priest worthy enough for several gods to fancy.
Society is complicated on its own.
Even gods have their own problems and it would not be worth it for conflict to arise over a mere priest.
That said, there are indeed some powerful priests that can move gods.
A powerful priest can perform some high-level spells that make people marvel and can only be called miracles.
Just this is enough to garner an astonishing number of believers which is only beneficial for gods.
Even then, gods usually poach them over and it is almost impossible to find one priest favored by more than two gods unless they are from the same faction and have a particularly close relationship.
But this is precisely why Xavier thought that he could try this.
The benefits were just too many.
First, priests have quiet the influence in this world regardless of nationality or factions.
The reverence for gods is one thing, but the main contributing factor is the spells that priests can perform.
Holy Magic is especially valuable when dealing all sorts of troublesome situations.
For instance, holy magic is especially lethal to the demons.
This is one of the main reasons why humans and other races have managed to keep them beyond the Black Forest.
The other is that holy magic can heal all sorts of ailments and negative effects.
This is impossible to do with healing spells with water and wood attribute.
Not to mention, spells like purification and sanctification are specific to holy magic.
But the most important point is that only priests can carry out the Divine Blessing Ceremony.
This makes them especially revered.
The Divine Blessing Ceremony is so important to everybody and it does not take a genius to figure out why.
This in itself adds to the prestige of any priest.
Not to mention, the more powerful the priest, the higher the probability of getting a blessing, and the higher the number of NPCs receiving the blessings.
This leads to powerful priests accumulating enough clout to rival the Emperor of the Altahaugr Empire or even surpassing it.
If Xavier wants to influence the world on a large scale, the most optimal way is to use this route.
That said, there is some troublesome factors that Xavier must face if he wants to use this approach.
The first being the Church.
The Church has been around for many years and true to all church tropes, it has some mysterious and shady dealings.
Not to mention, the bureaucracy in its running are enough for him to absolutely despise it.
Why should he, a qualified priest, still need to lick here and carry favor there to go up the ranks?
It is one thing if your superior is just shady, but Xavier cannot deal with those fanatics who are too absorbed in their 'faith'.
And being a priest does not automatically make you good as one might assume.
Do you expect a priest working for an evil god to be good?
Impossible!
And who said that just because your god is righteous, the priest ought to be the same?
Even the god of justice and balance has a special group of priests whose only job is to slaughter and destroy.
The same applies to holy magic.
It is called holy because the user can borrow and use a trace of divinity making spells especially powerful.
This means a curse spells with a trace of divinity is stills holy magic.
And such spells are especially troublesome and would require a priest of the same level to dispel it.
Of course, this did not mean there were no solutions around them.
There are items and spells that nullify holy magic entirely.
Most of them are forbidden items or dark and demonic spells but when push comes to shove, you gotta do what you gotta do.
In addition, level is very important.
Even with all the advantages, priests still have restrictions when it comes to levels.
Even the most powerful priest can only jump 10 levels to cast spells given that there is no resistance.
Hell, just your basic stats can severely limit what priests can do.
That said, there are too many differences between an NPC Priest and a Player Priest.
With Xavier's unfair advantages, he can get the best of both worlds.
Just the mere fact that a player priest can cast holy magic without affiliation to a god is a huge plus.
If his level was high enough, he could even create his own religion and dub himself god.
But Xavier would not do this.
He had tried and the results were not good.