The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

A realization struck me in that moment. Granny Qi had never told me how her husband had died. He had been a Rank Three Liberomancer, so it was unlikely to be from disease as he'd certainly have the means to approach a first-class doctor. Healing magic could not fix old age, however from what I could tell he was not old to the point where he would've passed away from the same.

That meant he had likely died from unnatural causes. Was it related to why Granny Qi was saying this with such gravity? It didn't take a genius to put the puzzle pieces together, and the only thing that I would need to confirm it would be to ask her directly.

However, she hadn't volunteered the information as of yet for whatever reason - and I didn't want to upset her by prying too deep into something that would clearly be painful for her. Not to mention given that she didn't demand to delve too deeply into my own history either I felt it was fair that I respect her own privacy as well.

Up till now, she had not volunteered that information to me, and regardless, it would make no difference really to anything. So I saw no meaning to pursue that line of questioning.

Putting that aside, she was correct. I had heard a story of a relatively powerful Liberomancer who had walked into the woods one day; he was very confident in his powers and so had no fear venturing out into a dangerous area on his lonesome. He ran into a bear, and suddenly panicked and tripped over a root, striking his head against the ground. Stunned, he was not able to respond before the bear cracked his skull open and thereby made all of his years of learning meaningless. This was told and retold quite often; I didn't think this was a real story though given that I was sure that anyone who was considered to be that good would've had some sort of passive skill to buy them some time - but the lesson was still clear nonetheless.

Don't get complacent! Your magic will not protect you from everything!

Passive skills could save you once or twice, but once they were expended, you would be quite vulnerable. All it took was a lucky shot to kill you, and then whatever mana or active skills you were saving would be useless once you were dead.

"Understood," I reassured Granny Qi, but she wasn't done with her little lesson.

She pointed to the frog pushing our cart. "You were very lucky with that frog back there - but you won't be lucky all the time."

The Elephant Frog was actually quite a good example of what Granny Qi was saying. It was a Rank Two summon clearly indicating that Rank Two spells would be effective in defeating it. So in normal circumstances, the Elephant Frog wouldn't be any threat to me because [Crimson Lance] would take care of it, and even [Fireball] would do enough, its fire resistance notwithstanding, that it would realize that it wasn't worth coming in whatever direction I was in and run away - that was the kind of creature it was.

It was not violent by nature, but if it had turned over when I had decided to take a nap on it, I'd have been squished without the opportunity to do anything to protect myself. It wouldn't even have been malicious on its end - with it just trying to adjust its sleeping position.

I had been saved because I had invested a large amount of my skill points into Luck, but I had come close

I could see why the villagers feared it - while a city like Arconia would not really care too much about it because its walls were high and thick enough that the frog would not be able to nor see any particular need to go into the city, with the village, most houses there would collapse so easily under its weight that it would not even notice something going wrong if it decided to take a leisurely stroll there.

Granny Qi sighed. "I didn't mean to sour the mood. I just wanted to make sure you knew that you can't afford to be careless. How did you like your stay at my village?"

"It felt like it was over like this," I said while snapping my fingers. We had been there a short while, with the Elephant Frog taking most of the initial time and when the Spirit Festival really began, all of it felt like it had been over in the blink of an eye. I had only made one grimoire instead of the two I had been aiming for when I first planned to come to the village, because the Spirit Festival preparations were so intensive that I got really caught up in them.

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I had about half of another grimoire done, but that would have to wait until we were back home to see if it would end up in anything worthwhile.

Still, I wasn't disappointed. The fact that I now had a summon of my own was more than good enough to satisfy me for the moment, and summons were popular spells. I hadn't seen one that summoned an Elephant Frog up till now, which meant that it would probably sell well - and that I could very easily swap it out for other Rank Two grimoires too.

The Elephant Frog gave me a smile as it continued pushing onward. "But I did enjoy my time there." Getting to see something outside of Arconia felt worth it in and of itself.

The frog vanished about midway through our journey, but we had made such good progress that we ended up reaching our goal and arrived at the gates Arconia before sunset. We didn't run into any issues on the road during our journey back either. Some people were quite shocked when they saw the Elephant Frog, but upon seeing how docile and obedient it was they seemed to realize that at the very least it was a well-domesticated pet. Still, many people actually stepped off the road to let us pass and only resumed when we had left, all the while giving the frog wary gazes.

It had been a good idea to let the guards know about the demonic grimoire before we left, because even with us forewarning them, it still took us an extra ten minutes to get past security simply because of it.

I still had work the next day, so after unloading what Granny Qi had brought from her village, I went upstairs and went to sleep almost immediately. That grimoire I was working on would have to wait for another time.

My coworkers asked me upon arriving how my holiday was like, when I gave them a brief summary and got to the part about the Elephant Frog - well, I was sure that most of them did not believe me.

The months passed thereafter without much of note, and I was slightly more successful with creating Rank Two grimoires thanks to experience. I had achieved a success rate of around seventy percent when it came to making them. [Summon Elephant Frog] was my latest hit grimoire and sold quite well.

Things were going smoothly, I was rapidly filling out my slots either by making new grimoires or trading for them. It seemed that I would be at Rank Three soon enough. My job was going well, Granny Qi was in good health, and though I hadn't found any clues to lead me back to Earth during that time, I hadn't run into any major obstacles in my journey to Rank Three either.

In other words, all was well, until a certain incident happened - something I was not involved in whatsoever either directly or indirectly, and yet would end up affecting me quite a lot.

In a distant district of the city, a group of drunk lizardmen had run into a group of drunk humans late one night. If you asked the lizardmen, the humans had panicked upon seeing 'strange monsters' in the dark, which they hadn't realized in their drunken state were just other lizardmen and so the humans started a fight.

If you asked the humans, the lizardmen had bumped into a wall or something along those lines and drunkenly thought that the humans had attacked them.

Regardless of who you believed started things, what was evident was that a huge fight broke out as both sides ended up calling for 'reinforcements' and three humans and two lizardmen ended up dead in addition to several other casualties.

For the first time, I had seen relations between humans and lizardmen within Arconia really sour.

It had not broken out to the point of there being further fighting on the streets, but the somewhat cordial state of affairs between humans and lizardmen had definitely become frosty.

I saw shopkeepers rejecting customers of the other species - not all of them, mind you, but even a single incident was something far out of the norm from what I understood. I got some harsh glares from passing lizardmen while walking which I was unused to.

If that was all though, I wouldn't have really cared about all of this as I was still focused on keeping my head down and working as hard as I could to get to Rank Three as soon as possible.

I didn't see how the conflict involved me in any way whatsoever, but even though it hadn't directly involved me; I ended up being 'collateral damage' as a result of the conflict, so to speak.

One day, when I was coming in to work, Mark was standing at the entrance waiting for me as he beckoned me aside before I could walk in.

"I…" Mark began. His tail was beating against the floor rapidly uncontrollably - this was the lizardmen equivalent of tapping your foot when nervous. Whatever he wanted to talk about, it was not good news. "I don't know a polite way of saying this, but I'm sure you heard of the recent fight between those humans and lizardmen?"

"Yeah," I said. It was the talk of the town, such that even a recluse like me knew about it.

"Well," Mark continued, not meeting my gaze for some reason, instead peering off far into the distance. "Because of that… there have been complaints from some customers recently. They don't want to buy from a shop where… a human works. It was only a few customers at first, but now it has started to affect our bottom line. L'ar-smack-'tel - though she doesn't want to, has gotten pressure to let you go. And... we cannot endanger everyone's livelihood for your sake." That was Lauren's actual lizardman name, I remembered, as a chill assaulted my heart once I fully comprehended what Mark was saying.

"Wait... you're firing me?"