The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

Regarding [Fish Haul], I discovered a few interesting points.

One reason that spells that generated food were not very popular was because food created with magic tasted terrible and also didn't have great nutritional value. I learned about this after inquiring a bit further. Now that I was Rank Three, it was much easier to get information on various spells and what they did. The guild was a treasure trove of information, and while some of it was 'free' so long as you were a member, there was a fee you had to pay for most things. Fees that were waived almost entirely for Rank Three Liberomancers.

The explanation that someone at the guild gave me regarding [Fish Haul]'s low popularity was that: "Food generated by magic tastes so bad no one would eat it unless they were on the brink of starvation."

That was true for Rank Two spells that made food. More likely than not, Rank Three spells could make tastier and more nutritious food, but those spells were so rare that the guild had no information on them. I could see why - if no one wanted to make a Rank Two spell that made food because it was not viable, why would they want to make a Rank Three one?

However, when I learned the spell, I found that a connection had formed within my mind between two of my grimoire slots. My skill, [Poissonnier], interacted with it.

Spells and skills could compliment each other and form 'combos' with them providing synergistic effects. It was my first time discovering one for myself, however.

"Granny Qi, how do you think this taste?" I asked her one day, wanting to confirm my hypothesis.

Her face fell as she took a bite. "I'm sorry to say, this is far below what I usually expect from you. Whatever new recipe you tried here, it just isn't working."

"Did you realize that the food was made with magic? I mean, the fish was, at least," I explained to her. I had added some seasoning too it which I had bought separately.

"Is that so?" she said, quite a bit surprised. Hei Nan had sometimes tried to make food using magic at one point early on in his career thinking it was more convenient than cooking, but she had shot him down on this idea after tasting it just once. She said that it tasted like lightly fish-flavored paper and had about as much nutritional value. This however, tasted like low-quality fish, in other words, it was barely passable in regards to being considered 'food.'

[Poissonnier] increased the taste and the nutritional value of the fish made with [Fish Haul] so that instead of tasting like carboard and being nearly inedible it was just below average in taste and nutritional quality.

Additionally, the amount of fish that [Fish Haul] made was dependent on one's Luck stat, and I had invested quite a bit into mine.

It turned out that surprisingly, [Fish Haul] was actually quite a good fit for me and my current build.

I would still prefer to buy food when possible and I could see why nearly no one bothered to learn this spell, but armed with this, I no longer had to worry too much about starving to death should I find myself suddenly stranded in the desert or somewhere similar. Still, if you wanted to actually obtain food it was far easier and more resource-efficient to just grow or hunt it, which is why this grimoire and similar kinds had not been adopted on a widespread scale for use unlike [Create Water]. Nearly anyone could learn [Create Water] and it made perfectly fine drinking water, but the investment required to get someone to Rank 2 was too high for the same to be viable for something like [Fish Haul].

People who were on the street and were homeless might've benefitted from knowing that spell, but if they could learn a Rank 2 spell they wouldn't be in that situation in the first place. For those who lacked money [Fish Haul] had a very low rate of return when considering the mana spent to use it - selling a Rank 2 grimoire could buy food for a week while [Fish Haul] might feed you for two meals at most. For those who had money but wanted something tasty, they would also not find any use for the spell.

Regarding my other concerns regarding my build, I had also made some progress. I had gotten a Rank Two grimoire that gave the skill [Unicorn's Blessing] which could be used two times a day to heal disease and had the advantage that it could also be used on other people aside from the caster. That dealt with disease, to deal with poison I had gotten a different Rank Two grimoire that gave [Toxicologist's Instinct] which allowed one to detect poisons, both those mixed into one's food and drink and also poisonous plants as well. Additionally, it had the Rank One skill [Poison Resistance] built into it to help guard against weak poisons as well.

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I did have to use up two Rank Two slots for disease and healing rather than one like I'd initially wanted, but they were also more powerful than they otherwise would have been had either of them dealt with both. Everything had an upside as well as downside - if you had a skill or spell that was broad in its application it would be shallow in its effectiveness and vice-versa.

The new Rank Three grimoire I had been working on was an experiment not just in that it was new - but also of a new idea that could open up new avenues for me. I was running out of literary works from back on Earth to plagiarize draw inspiration from, and it hit me - why not try writing down the plots of some movies or television shows I had seen? Would that work out as well?

Much as with the books I'd copied so far, I needed to have remembered them in reasonable enough detail to be able to write down an accurate as possible grimoire. That limited what I could write, but there had been movies I'd watched countless times - with a guilty pleasure of mine being Sharknado.

And as my pen moved and wrote the last letter, I saw the blue aura turn into a gracious green.

Success! This meant that I could do the same with other television shows and movies - with this I had a new way forward with making more Rank Three grimoires.

I checked what the grimoire did and smirked.

Now this was quite a unique spell, but also very flavorful to its source.

I went back to the guild to show them my new creation - they didn't even take time to verify it with the guilds in other countries given they hadn't seen the script anywhere else before; they just acknowledged it as a new invention right then and there. I had been promised a reward if I created another new Rank Three grimoire - and I got it, three thousand Denarii, which was far less than what I'd get if I had sold the grimoire, but it was better than nothing and I still got to keep the grimoire.

This was part of the guild's incentives to make new Rank Three grimoires; but the fact still remained that even with this, the payout was far less compared to what you could be getting otherwise doing almost anything else.

You couldn't expect to succeed every time you tried to make a Rank Three grimoire, after all, and you would have nothing to show for a failed attempt.

"Ah, Master Liberomancer," the receptionist said after handing me my prize. "I wanted to congratulate you again…"

"Thank you," I said.

"I just wanted to let you know," she added. "You've been making new Rank Three grimoires - and you might know this already, but the king has offered an earldom for anyone who can make a new Rank Four grimoire."

"I… did not know that as a matter of fact," I said. "Thank you, but I've just started making Rank Three grimoires and I don't think I'll come anywhere close to Rank Four for at least five years - possibly even longer."

"Oh, I understand," she said. "But, we all know your story and we think that if there's anyone who can do it - it would be you! There hasn't been an original Rank Four grimoire made in this country in over a century, you know! I just thought that I'd mention it in case you needed some extra motivation!" She said all of that extremely fast and then paused. "Ah, I'm sorry if I said too much - I just wanted to make sure you knew."

I hadn't seen this particular receptionist before, but it looked like my antics were the talk of the Guild.

"No, no, I didn't know that, thanks for telling me. I'll just be on my way then. Have a nice day!"

"Have a nice day Master Stefan Dawson!" she replied. She hadn't pronounced my name one hundred percent correctly, but then again no one in Arconia had done so up till this point, and I had gotten tired of correcting people. Still, it was nice to know that I wasn't just some random person anymore, rather I was now Master Stefan Dawson, the youngest Master Liberomancer in the Guild's history.

"An earldom huh…" I mused to myself as I walked back home, intending to spend the next few days reading the grimoire I had just made. A noble title like that would just tie me down to this country and be a hindrance if I wanted to explore the world; searching for a way back home. There were upsides, of course, but I didn't care for most of them.

The most obvious one was money. There was a reason that so many Rank Three Liberomancers, once they had accumulated a certain amount of funds changed their focus from writing grimoires to business instead. Although you could get a very good price for Rank Three grimoires, you would still be limited in how much money you could make as it was dependent on your own labor and output which was naturally limited. Much like back on Earth, it was better to do something where you could take a small piece of the pie from multitudes of people working for you - much like how a CEO is paid compared to workers.

This led to its own problems, however. Financially it made sense to go down the route of making your own business or renting out property, but those all took time to manage. Time that people no longer had to use to make grimoires. As such, there were people with a large amount of money wanting to buy grimoires, but fewer people who actually wrote grimoires at the Rank Three level.

There were periods, occasionally extending for a few weeks at a time if you were unlucky, where there would not be any Rank Three grimoires available to buy in the entire city even if you had the cash to buy one. After all, writing grimoires was still very tedious work that most people wanted to avoid if they could. Who would want to spend their lives copying texts over and over like a schoolchild when there were so many more interesting things to do or explore to make a living?

That was why the prices for some highly sought after Rank Three grimoires could reach ridiculous amounts - after which more people would try to write grimoires because the price had gone up, but then the price would be driven down due to the higher supply which then discouraged people. This odd cycle of fluctuating availability continued perpetually throughout the years or even decades.