After eating in the Dining hall, with a few weird looks from people like Samurai and Alnico, the latter being suspicious about everything while the former was simply jealous that Stahl was eating with Evalia, Stahl and Evalia split up again for the rest of the day, and the young man simply met back up with Xenia, so that the two of them could go see the Priest to the God of Skills.
All of the church personnel, such as the priests and nuns, was sitting together, so it wasn't really that hard to find him either. And so, the two of them stepped up to the elderly man.
"Hello, could we maybe bother you for a second?" Stahl asked respectfully, before the man turned around with a smile. "Ah, Miss Xenia, young Stahl, of course. You can come and 'bother' me whenever you wish to." He responded, especially respectfully toward Xenia, and swiftly stood up, as he was apparently planning to do so anyway because he had finished eating.
"How can I be of help to you two?" The Priest asked with a smile, and Stahl swiftly spoke up. "I'm currently looking to learn the Prayer skill to pray to the God of Skills. May you help me with that?" He asked calmly, and the Priest nodded his head with a smile.
"Of course I may, son. Come with me somewhere more quiet, alright?"
"Lead the way." Stahl responded with a nod, before both Stahl and Xenia followed the Priest out of the Dining Hall, while Xenia was actually rather surprised how calm and respectful he was toward the Priest, as he usually was quite loud and energetic.
The Priest lead Xenia and Stahl into the area where the the church personnel slept and lived their daily lives on the ship, where a small room acting as a church had been constructed. "Now, my son, please kneel down in front of me, place your palms onto your heart, and close your eyes." The priest explained as he brought Stahl up in front of the actual shrine of the church, so Stahl did just that.
"May Grohl be with you, guide you through the world, and give you the gift of skills." With these words, the priest began to say a quite long 'chant', or rather 'prayer', after which Stahl felt a burning heat in the center of his body in response to that prayer, before Stahl was told to open his eyes again.
"You are now a son of Grohl, young Stahl. May the gods be with you." The priest said with a single slow nod, following which Stahl looked in front of himself and saw a notification pop up.
[You have learned the Prayer Skill]
[You are now a believer in the God of Skills Grohl. This information will be displayed in your Status]
"Thank you, father. May the gods be with you." Stahl said with a smile as he slowly stood up. He wasn't actually religious, like at all, but he didn't technically have an issue with religion itself, just with how some people, like Michael, acted and justified it through their religion. So of course he would respect someone so devout to something he truly loved, while doing nothing but show the same love to others around him.
After a little bit of small-talk, Xenia and Stahl left the small temporary church again, and the High-Elf and the young Human made their way back to the meeting hall to finish things up there. They ended up being alone there, because Koro didn't have to study 24/7 for the test at the end of the venture.
"Alright, I'll just ignore how you turned into another person back there, and we'll move onto business." Xenia exclaimed with a light sigh, before Stahl nodded his head with a smirk. "Hey, I can't help it that I'm just the perfect guy that's able to do the right thing in any situation." He said and winked at Xenia jokingly, before the High-Elf just shook her head a few times while rolling her eyes.
"Well, anyway, let's get started now. The good thing about the God of Skills is that once a day, he makes it possible to speed up the growth of one of your skills. Not by much while your skill is such low-level, but you know. Other than that, the raw Divine Energy can be used to do different things, which are mostly going to be a small benefit to any one of your skills, as long as you use the energy correctly. That means you won't get an increase just by having the divine energy somewhere in your body, but you'll need to cover the right area of your body or tool with it. Meaning, for example your hands when molding clay, or your hammer whne smithing." She explained, before Stahl looked at her in surprise.
"Isn't that kind of OP? I mean, just effect wise, that makes this the best possible prayer skill, right?" Stahl asked, but Xenia shook her head immediately. "It's what you most likely wanted to achieve in the first place, but it's a perfect Jack-of-All-Trades skill. It's pretty good at supporting all abilities, but it's never going to be better at one single thing than the Prayer skill of someone with a different god. The benefit you gain for Magic isn't even nearly what my benefit for magic is." Xenia explained, so Stahl slowly nodded his head with a sigh.
"Gotcha. But well, it's pretty neat that I can help the growth of a single skill for a day. Especially at later ranks, that's going to be pretty neat, right?" Stahl asked with a smile, and Xenia shrugged, before sitting down on her chair.
"Depends on if you can actually properly use Divine Energy. It's pretty easy, to be honest. What you need to do is gather the mana you want to 'offer' to your god in the center of your chest, where you press your palms, and then simply say the prayer. For more mana that you're sending off, you'll need a longer prayer." She explained, before giving Stahl a piece of paper where the different prayers for the different 'levels' of mana-offering were written down.
"Got it… and that's it? After that, I just get the Divine Energy?" Stahl asked a bit surprised, and Xenia basically just replied with a smile.
"Basically. The mana that you gathered will slowly turned into Divine Energy from the center outward while you're praying. And then, you just need to use it like regular mana." Xenia explained, so Stahl nodded his head and looked at the paper, before holding his palm to his chest, gathering his mana there, before saying the prayer.
"Oh Grohl, God of Skills, may you be with me and me be with you." He exclaimed, and he soon felt his mana turn into a burning hot energy.
"Alright, what now? How do I cast the Miracles?" Stahl asked with a smile, before Xenia began to explain. "To enhance on of your skills, bring sufficient divine energy to the spot where your mana emerges from, and then feed it to that spot while thinking about the skill you want to enhance. But other than those Deity-specific things, there's common miracles that anyone's able to use, although the Divine energy coming from some gods is better for certain tasks. Anyway, one of the common miracles is a simple divine heal, or regular buffs like speed, strength, or defense. Just pour the divine energy into whoever you want to cast it on and think about the effect you want." Xenia explained, so Stahl nodded his head with a grin.
"Interesting! At this point, I can really fill in at any spot, can't I?" Stahl exclaimed, before first pouring the Divine energy into the spot where his mana emerged from, like Xenia had explained, and used it to enhance the growth of the 'Prayer' skill. This was the last thing he was practicing today, so it would make sense to do that, and then save the next one for either Trading or Acting tomorrow.
And after that, Stahl once more prayed with the same prayer, and then looked at Xenia with a smile. "I guess I'll use the boost effects on you now!" He said, before moving the Divine Energy out of his body and toward the surprised Xenia. Once the Divine Energy, which quite easily moved through the Mana in Xenia's body, was inside of her, he then spread it all around her body and then thought about turning the Divine Energy into something boosting her speed.
With a confused expression, Xenia then looked at Stahl and smiled wrily. "Why did you give me a speed boost of all things?" She asked, and Stahl just shrugged. "I dunno, you're not really doing anything for the rest of the day anyway, right? So I just gave you a boost for the first thing that came to mind. Oh, and… Does regular mana travel through other people's bodies so easily as well?" Stahl asked, and with out a second of hesitation, Xenia shook her head.
"Not at all, no. First of all, I expected the divine energy and directly let it enter into my body consciously. But most importantly, Divine Energy can't be used by people to do bad things to others, only good, so our bodies are made to automatically accept it. It's possible to 'defend' yourself against it, though, like trying to flex your muscles to make energy like that harder to pass through, just by condensing your mana." Xenia explained swiftly, while Stahl just continued to listen.
"Huh, neat…" Stahl muttered out quietly, before just shrugging and once more praying for more divine energy to continue practicing until his Prayer Skill reached Rank 1.
---
The next morning inside of the game, Stahl woke up and swiftly stretched, before heading off for breakfast with his small 'group' in tow, that group being his undead, his Golem, and Thul. And at breakfast, he swiftly met Komer, who Stahl wanted to talk to anyway.
"Yo dude!" Stahl exclaimed with a grin as he sat down next to the Merchant, who swiftly looked up in a bit of surprise while stuffing his face with bread. "Oh, what's up. By the way, did your entourage increase yesterday?" He asked as he pointed his butter-knife at the wooden Golem Clunkily following behind Stahl, before the young man simply grinned.
"Yup! That's a golem I made yesterday. Well, I made the parts the day before yesterday, but I turned it into a golem only yesterday. But I'm leaving it and the Undead on the ship later, only taking along this lil' dudester." Stahl explained as he rubbed his finger over the octopus' head.
"Right. Anyway, let's talk about our deals later. We're going to buy more supplies and materials. We're especially bringing more wood with us, because we don't exactly know the environment on the main island, and we don't know if there's enough things to gather to build a provisionary base while we take over the town at the center of the island. There's obviously a source of food there, because the monsters there need to survive somehow, so there's surely also a place where we can plant food. But even then, we don't know if the monsters there are really edible, so we're buying meat as well. Then we're buying fabrics, because the middle of the summer is coming close, and it's only getting colder from now on. On top of that, we're sailing north." Komer swiftly explained what exactly they needed to buy, and for what reason it needed to be bought, to a quite immense extent. He continued rambling on like that for a few more minutes, before Stahl scratched the back of his neck nervously at all the stops they'd need to make.
He really wanted to help out, while also getting his Trading skill, but he also wanted to spend as much time with Evalia as possible.
"You got all that?" Komer asked, and Stahl nodded his head slowly as he looked through the pages of Komer's notebook, where he had written down all that needed to be bought and done soon. "Holy crap, you're really prepared, aren't you..?" Stahl muttered surprised. He heard that Komer was trying to scam people before, and when, Eisen first met him. And to see such a huge change now was really insane.
"Of course I am. It's fun to do this stuff in my opinion. I'm sure your grandfather told you about what I was like before, but that was just because I was really not motivated to work my ass off. Then Eisen came along and changed that." Komer explained with a smile, and Stahl couldn't help but grin either.
"He's really changed your life, huh?" Stahl asked, and Komer nodded his head immediately, without hesitating even for a moment.