The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

The difference in my status before and after I became a Master Liberomancer was evident the moment I walked out the guild doors.

No joke - between one in three to one in four people stopped what they were doing to greet me, with some of them bowing as well before going on their way.

And it wasn't just humans who did so - things were still far from fraternal between humans and lizardmen within Arconia as far as I knew, but the lizardmen bowed as well while saying, "Greetings, Master Liberomancer." There was no hint of malice in their words or expressions.

A lizardman mother even pointed me out to her child, who was probably five or six years old, who she was leading alongside her with her free hand. "See? That's a Master Liberomancer, the bestest kind of Liberomancer there is!" The kid, who was clutching onto his mother's finger while walking, couldn't help but keep staring with his jaw open as I walked by.

This was not respect for being a Rank Three Liberomancer - no, this was specifically for the rank of Master Liberomancer!

The last time I had felt a change this drastic was back when I had gotten a job after being homeless for quite a while. The world suddenly seemed like a far more warm and welcoming place.

There was a reason as to why Master Liberomancers were held in such high regard.

It was very easy to become rich as a Rank Three Liberomancer. First off, you were exempt from many taxes and the regulations greatly favored you in many aspects. Second, you could make things that were of equal value to a house within a few months at the very least - if this was back on Earth and I had a job that could help me put a down payment on a house with just two or three month's pay I would be extraordinarily delighted. Third, you could open up a bookstore and benefit from not only writing grimoires yourself, but also from the effort of your employees. It was far easier to sell grimoires once you were Rank Three.

With the money you earned you could then buy things like property to rent out, farmland, or even shares in various companies like the fisheries near the dock. Unless you were absolutely terrible at managing your money or had very expensive hobbies such as gambling, you were basically set for life.

What all of this meant was that time, for Rank Three Liberomancers, was incredibly valuable. They would all prefer to walk the carved out path rather than experiment on something that would possibly bring some benefits. That, and they would often find themselves busy with non-Liberomancy issues like managing their rental properties or overseeing their businesses.

I had thought earlier that Granny Qi was not in a good financial condition after her husband had passed away, but after recently talking with her I learned that she not only owned quite a bit of farmland back in her village, her own house outright, but also several shares in a fishing company. She actually had no need to rent out part of her house - and had even twice offered to just waive my rent completely in the past few weeks when I had been unemployed (which I refused, I absolutely did not want to become a leech on her and wanted to pay my way).

The sunken costs one would incur were one to fail in writing a Rank Three grimoire were much higher than that of a Rank Two or Rank One grimoire - not to mention the chances of failure were higher too. Why potentially waste months when you had a far easier path open before you?

That was why Master Liberomancers were respected so highly - because they went against the 'common sense' of the world and instead dedicated; potentially years of their lives in some cases; to fumbling in the dark until they eventually struck gold with no guarantee of success. A quote I had heard oftentimes about teachers popped into my mind and I felt that it fit this situation as well - 'like candles, they burn themselves so that they can light the path for others.'

In all fields, advances were made by the current generation and then future generations would expand upon it, that was true even for Liberomancy. Those who had succeeded in paving part of a new path would no doubt be venerated greatly.

A good way to tell how advanced a country was when it came to Liberomancy was whether or not the country could produce enough Rank Three grimoires without any external help to fill out thirty slots - Chipker barely passed that barrier, but it still did, which was why it was considered a middling country when it came to Liberomancy.

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Liberomancers ruled the world, and they held Master Liberomancers in high regard. Even the commoners knew this, and they held the Liberomancers in high regard, so to them, Master Liberomancers were even more mystifying.

You could even take this a step further by considering Rank Four grimoires. A previous governor of the city had invented a Rank Four grimoire, and he was still widely celebrated for that achievement even now, over a century after his passing.

I felt a bit bad actually, because technically I had not made anything 'new' - well, it was new for this world at least but I had just plagiarized something from back home.

The skill it gave was 'new' though, as far as I knew. It gave a Rank Three summon - [Summon Tyrant Arachnea]. I would be able to get to know a bit more about what a Tyrant Arachnea even was once I had mastered the skill, but I understood that it was a very big spider. So big that I couldn't risk testing it out while in the streets of Arconia.

Still, these looks of awe and respect were certainly much better than the looks of disgust I had gotten back when I had been homeless about a year back.

"It all worked out," I told Granny Qi when I returned home. Something that was going to be another new problem now that I was at Rank Three was that I would start running out of mana while reading, not just writing, grimoires as well given their length. So it would take a few days to memorize this grimoire.

Rank One had been easy enough to get through, and Rank Two, though harder and more time-consuming, still didn't feel that much more difficult. If I had to make an analogy, Rank One is like jogging on a flat surface while Rank Two is going up a slight incline.

The difficulty curve had spiked sharply at Rank Three though, as if I was now trying to climb up a cliff. Reading, writing, and creating Rank Three grimoires was a much longer and cumbersome process.

And if I had to translate one, it would double the already lengthy amount of time needed to read it! That meant that it could take ten days where I did nothing else but read to finish reading a Rank Three grimoire if it wasn't in English. On the other hand I could easily write one Rank Two grimoire every day.

I felt like I had suddenly been whisked from middle school straight into college with how much more work would be needed to progress further.

Granny Qi was quite happy to hear of my success.

Something had occurred to me that I wanted to bring up with her. "I wanted to ask, back when you first met me - you could've paid someone else to clear the weeds from your garden, right?"

She nodded. "But it looked like you needed a meal, and it's always better to work rather than beg, no?"

It was the first act of kindness she had done for me, and without it I wouldn't be here today.

I gave her a hug, which seemed to shock her a bit, but she didn't draw away from me. "Thank you."

She gave me a light smile afterwards. "It was nothing."

By the following day, news of me becoming a Master Liberomancer had made its way around the city, and I woke up to see a huge pile of gifts and letters on the dining room table.

"All for you," Granny Qi said, sipping a cup of tea. I no longer woke up as early as I used to now that I didn't have to work as a scribe, so she usually had breakfast prepared by the time I got up. "Oi! Eat first and then look through them. My gosh, you're so much like a child sometimes."

Most of the presents were flowers and letters of congratulations. "It's been ten years since we last had someone become a Master Liberomancer, so no wonder people are making such a big deal out of it," Granny Qi explained.

The Liberomancer's Guild had delivered a large stack of paper. They also had attached a letter saying that I could ask for more whenever I needed it - all free of cost. They hadn't been able to find more fountain pens but did give me a large jar of the special kind of ink I had requested.

Additionally, they said that if I wanted, they would provide a small ration of rice and the like to meet my needs on a day-to-day basis so I could focus more on writing Rank Three grimoires without having to sweat 'such mundane concerns.'

The Liberomancer's Guild was funded mainly through Liberomancy but also through the general taxes collected by the state. Even though Rank One and Rank Two Liberomancers were on average far richer than the general populace, by sheer magnitude of size the revenue from the general populace made up a larger amount than the former.

When I was homeless, there were no state-sponsored programs I could've signed up for to get housing or food.

However, now that I was a Rank Three Liberomancer and could make more money in a year than many people could earn in their lifetimes, I could be housed and fed on the taxpayer dime without any issues!

Truly, the system was clearly not fair.

Only thing was that now, it was unfair in my favor.

The reason for such preferential treatment was that they wanted me to continue experimenting to see if I could make another new Rank Three grimoire, and even if I couldn't, they would like for me to spend my time not worrying about rent or food, but making copies of the Rank Three grimoire I had just made. "What are these?" I asked Granny Qi. I found two letters that didn't look like they were simple 'congratulations' and were written on thick, slightly pinkish paper.

She squinted while going over them. "These are two marriage proposals you've gotten."