The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

The next day was far slower in terms of activity given everyone woke up far later than they normally would, and I was sure quite a good number were hungover.

Also, no grand bonfires needed to be lit, only a small feast would be held that night, preparations for which began around noon.

"Hmm…" Tai Lin said. He and a few other of the children had gathered around the fish I was grilling with mouth-watering looks. It was very simple to do, but even with something like this the [Poissonnier] skill once again shone through.

I could see that not only the children, but several adults were also glancing my way with watering mouths when they caught whiff of what I was making. And after they had asked me for a piece, I couldn't really say 'no' to them. I had been planning on spending some time working on a grimoire, but I ended up being swept up into the festivities.

I ended up cooking that and various other fish-related dishes until nightfall when the actual feast began.

That night, more stories were swapped around regarding Serragnin and the spirits.

The Goddess Serragnin was said to have remained on the continent for a period of over one thousand years. During this time, she was said to have performed countless miracles, to the point it was often repeated in stories about her that there was not enough paper in the entire world to document all of them should one even try.

With her help, humanity had begun to stumble along when it came to Liberomancy.

That was not to say that the journey of enlightening humankind had been either simple or easy, even for a goddess.

There were still many threats to humanity lurking in the world which humans could not deal with. For example, back in those days dragons roamed the skies, their scales nearly impervious to both spells and swords.

It had been the Goddess Serragnin who had done battle with the dragons on humanity's behalf. No one was sure who had cast the first spell between the two factions - whether it had been the dragons or humanity, but it was clear who had cast the last: dragons had long since gone extinct from Libraria and existed only in stories and paintings.

She also worked to remove other dangers that other trained Liberomancers could not deal with, and thanks to her efforts, Libraria was a far safer place for humans now than it had been in the past.

But no good deed goes unpunished.

If one were to remove all the wolves from an area to save the deer, the deer would reproduce to the point where they would overgraze and destroy the plant population, and eventually they would increase to such numbers where massive numbers of deer would die out.

In much the same vein, without these large hurdles to contain them, humanity proliferated like nothing before in a never-before-seen golden age, spreading to all corners of Libraria.

The Ragini greatly helped them, as many regions of Libraria would be nothing more than a barren desert without her presence. As the Ragini brought fertility to new areas, humans were often the first to populate them.

Naturally, without a strong external enemy to unite them, the humans began to fight not only with each other, but with other creatures like demihumans who had learned to also use Liberomancy. (I had heard a few alternate versions of this where it was very specifically stated that demihumans 'stole' Liberomancy from humanity rather than discovering it for themselves).

Serragnin attempted to intervene, with periods of peace prevailing in her presence. However, she could not be everywhere, and eventually, humans became too prideful to heed her words.

A war eventually broke out that was so great, and the loss of life so heavy, that it was said that the Ragini ran red with the blood of the fallen for three days (or in an alternate version, Serragnin made the waters of the Ragini turn to blood as a tribute to those who were deceased).

It was not just the men, but the women and children as well who had all been indiscriminately sent to the grave long before their time. The two sides had only stopped because they had taken so many losses that they feared extinction should fighting continue. It was said that the human population of the world had shrunk to one-fifth of its former peak either directly or indirectly as a result of this conflict.

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The Goddess Serragnin wept uncontrollably upon seeing this massacre, and upon realizing she could do nothing to further prevent such a scene, that the hearts of men were easily tainted and that human quarrels would continue until the population was reduced to a single person, she felt she could no longer stay in the mortal realm any longer.

There was a place where the spirits were said to come from, the spirit realm, and she, along with the other spirits ascended to the spirit realm never to be seen among mortals again. The spirits came with her as she began regaling them with stories from many centuries past, as she had never forgotten the promise she had made to them even after all that time.

It was said that one day, in the future, when the end of the world came which was prophesied to come about after yet another calamitous war, she would descend from the spirit realm to take the few who were still devout and pure along with her back to the spirit realm before the world ended. Those who had committed sinful acts, or who were nonbelievers, would be left to endure the hellscape that would follow.

And yet, even as Serragnin embarked upon her apotheosis, one of the spirits remained behind among the humans. One of them did not accompany her.

It was the spirit who was the closest to humans in a perverse, twisted sense. The spirit that was said to have been the one to twist the hearts of men from within in the first place, leading to Serragnin's departure from the mortal realm. The spirit that had refused to ally with Serragnin unless she surrendered her heart to it - the Spirit of Darkness.

And from that day forward, the Spirit of Darkness was free to rule over the mortal realm unopposed.

Granny Qi and I couldn't stay up for too long that night, even though the liquor flowed ever more freely than before, because we had to head out early the next morning if we were to have any hope of reaching Arconia in time before dusk.

It turned out 'early' was even earlier than we had woken up to get here, because we had to load up things into our cart.

"Man, you've gotten a lot of gifts," I said to Granny Qi as we loaded our cart up with bags of rice and other essentials like rope and oil. "The villagers really love you, don't they?"

Granny Qi snorted. "These aren't gifts, I own quite a bit of land around this place. This is just a portion of my share - usually a cart comes every year to deliver it but now that we happen to be in the area we may as well take it ourselves."

I could see her line of thinking, but the extra weight presented its own problem. It was harder to move the cart, especially during the initial part of our journey when the road wasn't as good near the village.

"Wait - let me see if this helps," I said. I summoned the Elephant Frog, which caused Granny Qi to flinch instinctively from the sheer imposing size of the creature. The horses panicked slightly, but I was able to rein them in. "Alright - if we tie the horses to the side and just let them accompany the cart, I think this should work."

The Elephant Frog had no dearth of physical strength - but it was very difficult to train which was one of the reasons there had been no attempts to domesticate it.

Even if someone had managed to somehow raise it as a pet, they still wouldn't have been able to use it to move goods or the like. It simply lacked the innate intelligence needed to move things and was too large to act as a beast of burden and wouldn't have been able to move a normal cart without tipping it over.

However, there was no need for me to give it verbal commands as it was a summoned creature. It was able to act and behave in ways it normally would not be able to because it shared a mental link with me. Its relatively low intelligence still prevented it from fully comprehending what it was doing, but it was still able to follow through regardless.

With that, we were actually making very good time as the Elephant Frog pushed us towards our destination. Putting it in front of the cart would've been the obvious choice but I did not have a harness that could attach to it, neither could it get a good grip on the cart with its webbed feet. It was only able to push with the help of its entire body, and while this was inefficient from an ergonomic standpoint, we didn't have anything else handy for the moment.

"Your summon… how long will it last for?" Granny Qi asked. We were now back on the well-paved road and the sun was peeking out from behind the trees.

"Six hours in total," I told her.

"Mmm…" she said. "You should have saved it for when we'd really need it then, it might've been useful if we had to run away or happened to run into some other kind of trouble."

We wouldn't be able to make it back to Arconia with the Elephant Frog still active, but we were already on the nice part of the road by now, and so I didn't think that we would really need it. However, there was no way to cancel a summon once it had been brought out and save the remaining time for later. Well, actually, there was a way to do so, but it required two different skills from two different grimoires which I did not have.

"Ah, I still have [Fireball] and [Crimson Lance] to deal with anything that comes up," I told her. "Not to mention I don't think we'll run into anything…"

In response, Granny Qi gripped onto my arm tightly; tighter than she usually did. There was a strange look in her eyes with her prior jovial tone now completely gone as she shook her head at my words.

"I need you to remember something - no matter how strong you are, no matter how powerful you get - do not ever let your guard down. The Ruler of the Astral Winds had no equal when it came to Liberomancy. Weapons could not touch him, the elements could not hurt him, even the river of time was said to be powerless before his might and he was thought to be invincible. But because he let himself become complacent, he was taken by surprise by the Blood-Emperor leading to his demise. No matter how many spells you know, there is likely a flaw with one of them even if you can't see it. There will always be a gap within your armor, or a moment when you can't cast the right spell in time."

Her eyes were distant - as if her mind was not here in the present but was somewhere, someplace; in a long-forgotten time.