The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

I nearly choked on the tea I was sipping. "Wha - huh? Why?"

"Why? Because you're a Rank Three Liberomancer now, and a Master Liberomancer to boot," Granny Qi said as if it should have been obvious. "Not to mention you're very young. The only strike against you is that you're a foreigner, but for many people, influence and affluence trump both. There are many families who would gladly marry off their daughters to you." She looked over the two marriage proposal letters again. "What kind of reply would you like to send? Do you want to see the girls before making a decision?"

She explained the way that arranged marriages typically worked in Chipker, at least, among the humans. Usually the potential bride and groom would not meet each other, at least not initially. Someone from each of their families would usually meet up first to discuss things, usually their parents. In the absence of parents, people would send their aunts, uncles, grandparents, or in certain cases, older siblings.

"You don't have anyone like that," Granny Qi noted. "I have no problem going on your behalf."

She was essentially offering to act as my actual grandmother in such a scenario, which was very touching, but I had to turn her down.

I shook my head. "No, no, I have no desire to get married anytime soon."

"Is that so?" Granny Qi asked. She seemed a bit disappointed. "You are approaching that age - and I could understand it if you wanted to work on moving up in the world first, but you're already a Rank Three Liberomancer now. Men don't need to get married as soon as women, though your time is quickly approaching. Surely your parents want to see their grandchildren's faces sooner rather than later? Or are you engaged already? Or do you prefer a girl from your own country?"

"No, nothing like that," I said. I had no desire to romance, let alone marry, for the same reason I hadn't gotten a pet - I had another world to get back to! Not to mention people back on Earth didn't get married as early as they did here.

At first glance her questioning might seem to be a bit too intrusive, but considering the social and cultural mores of this world; it was perfectly reasonable. This world was not really set in 'modern times' in many aspects no matter how much magic could somewhat substitute for certain forms of technology.

I gulped as I realized that now was the best time to tell her something that I had been putting off for some time.

Then again, there was a reason I had been putting it off for so long - I knew it was going to be uncomfortable.

"There's actually something I wanted to let you know," I said. "Granny Qi… I've uh... been meaning to tell you this for a while but, I'm planning on leaving Arconia soon."

I normally considered Granny Qi's house to be the warmest and happiest place within Arconia, but at the moment, I really wanted to be anywhere but there. You could hear a pin drop after I said those words.

Granny Qi gave me a strange look that I couldn't decipher. Her gentle smile was now gone, and there had been a 'twinkle' in her eyes while discussing the marriage proposals that was now lost.

After the awkward silence stretched on for quite a while, I decided to explain myself further. "Granny Qi… I've been… waiting for someone or something in this city." It was the easiest way to describe my circumstances. I had gone back to the place I had first come from so many times, but nothing even approaching a gateway ever opened - and by now, I could only assume that it never would. No one from my world had come to rescue me either. I had not heard even a whisper of something resembling another world in all the stories I'd sought out. If I wanted more answers, it was clear that I would have to look elsewhere. "But… it's clear that they're not coming. Not to mention… with all this bad blood between lizardmen and humans, and the fact I don't fit into either camp, I really want to go somewhere where things are less chaotic."

I couldn't tell what her expression was - was she disappointed? Sad? Angry? A combination of all three? She didn't bother asking what or who it was that I had been waiting for at all, she just seemed to accept that explanation on its face value.

If there was one thing that I would miss when I left Arconia, it would be her company. She was the closest thing to family I had in this world and her advice had saved me countless times. And I was sure that it was same the other way around. But, I couldn't remain tied down here forever.

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We would've have had to say 'goodbye' sooner or later.

"You plan on leaving, but how will you survive in the wilderness?" she asked after a pregnant pause, concern in her voice. "You nearly got crushed by a frog unknowingly last time you wandered off on your own. There are many dangers lurking in the world when you go outside the confines of a city."

"I don't intend on going now or on my own," I told her. "I'm going to join the Book Fair and travel along with them." That way, it was far safer, and now that I was a Rank Three Liberomancer it would be easy enough to join. I might even meet Stella again if she was still there and hadn't gotten off the merchant caravan train at Hansini, in which case I'd already have a friend who I knew somewhat.

Granny Qi nodded. "So you'll still be here a few weeks?"

"Yeah," I told her. Little over a year had passed since I had first popped up in this world, and assuming that the Book Fair was coming at the same time as last year, they would be at Arconia in around three months.

"I was wondering if there was a favor you could do for me before you lef-"

"-absolutely!" I said. There was no way that I could answer Granny Qi's generosity up till this point with ingratitude. I agreed to it without even knowing what it was like last time she had asked me to accompany her to her village during the Spirit Festival; and unlike that time she didn't even seem to be surprised by how readily I agreed to it.

She didn't elaborate on what the favor was, instead asking, "What does that have to do with marriage though?"

"I mean, I don't think anyone would want to come traipsing with me all over the world," I explained to her.

"Some girls wouldn't mind exploring the world," Granny Qi said. She then added: "Those probably aren't the kind who would send such invitations. But alright - I'll let them know."

Those were not the only marriage proposals I would get over the coming days, and I relied on Granny Qi to tactfully turn them down.

I did get something far more welcome than those - the governor himself had sent me a letter of congratulations and also decided to reward me with eight thousand Denarii. I was a human and he was a lizardman, but the prestige of a Master Liberomancer was such that it trumped many other considerations.

Just a few days back I was basically unemployed and taking a few side gigs here and there, worrying about how I would budget the remaining money I had. Now, overnight, I had basically come across a small fortune.

I was finally able to buy a grimoire that gave [Fish Haul] with ease now. I had ordered it through the Liberomancer's Guild, who were more than happy to oblige most requests I had now without asking for even a token fee. Before, if I wanted a specific grimoire I would basically have to wander through various shops on my own asking if they had it in stock, or if they would have it in stock later. Now though, with my higher rank, I could have the Liberomancer's Guild do the searching on my behalf. I would even get preference to purchase a grimoire if I was competing against someone Rank Two or lower.

It turned out that the reason that [Fish Haul] was so hard to find was not because of the fact that it was made by lizardmen and they didn't want to sell it to a human - on the contrary, the actual reason was that the grimoire was in such low demand that no one bothered to make it.

There were grimoires like that which were expensive for the opposite reason that you'd think. Some grimoires were of so little use that they had even been completely lost to time.

There was actually a famous story regarding this. In a distant city far away from Chipker, there was a Rank One spell that could turn sweet grapes sour - that was all that it did, and as you can imagine, no one really wanted to buy it. Most Rank One spells that were widely circulated did have some use here and there, but this was one was even more limited in its application than [Fragrance]. However, a Liberomancer got to know of this spell and then went to the city to purchase it. One of her companions she was traveling with really liked the taste of sour grapes and she wanted to get him that grimoire as a gift. To her dismay, she found that the demand had been so low that by the time she reached the city, the spell was already extinct. No grimoires of it existed anymore and no one in living memory remembered how to make that grimoire.

She resolved to try to make it herself - and despite being a Rank Three Liberomancer it took her over two years to write a grimoire that would recreate that Rank One spell. It was often not easy to figure out what a grimoire would do until you had written it, hence the difficulty. Later on in her life, she accepted a high position within the Liberomancer's Guild of her country and made one of the guild's priorities the preservation of certain rare and exotic grimoires. Since then, that was a function that many other Liberomancer's Guilds also performed, and I was sure that the one in our city was no exception. Within the vaults of the guild they had massive stacks of both grimoires and manuals of grimoires that they were keeping simply to preserve them. That was not really possible for Rank Three and higher grimoires, but there were enough varieties of Rank One and Rank Two grimoires to easily fill any building in the city.

As a matter of fact, I had a sneaking suspicion that this copy of a grimoire that gave [Fish Haul] had been made specifically because I requested it, hence the higher price tag that it commanded. The paper felt crisp and fresh, and the ink looked had a fresh sheen to it that I recognized after having worked in Lauren's shop as belonging to a grimoire that had just recently been made. The guild had likely commissioned one of their own workers to transcribe it from a stored manual; and while that did make it slightly pricey to me it was more than worth it. In the future, this grimoire could potentially be worth more than its weight in gold.