The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

Even though things weren't as crazy as they were before when it came to work, I knew that it was wrong of me to impose on Granny Qi for much longer.

As it was, a few days later, her entire village had turned up at the city gates. Since they were closer to the city than other villages, they were able to take a bit of what they had with them while fleeing. But that was just relative to some of the other people coming in - it was not nearly enough to sustain them for the coming weeks or months if it came to that.

"They took a portion of the grain," Suki Tang complained to her sister. The refugees, if they had family in the city, went to go live with them. Granny Qi's house was so packed now with her family and with people coming to visit me there was no room to even move your elbow without smacking someone in the face. "They said they had to 'requisition' part of it to feed the city."

"Did they at least pay you for it?" Granny Qi asked.

"Of course not - they said it was an emergency, and that if we did not agree with that policy, we were free to roam outside the walls," Suki Tang said. "Free to do what? Get mauled?" She sighed. "Anyway, we should have more than enough for now… but still… I don't know what will happen if this siege lasts for too long. Or how we will rebuild once it is all over- I wonder if anything will be left of our house when we go back."

Back on Earth, the government usually couldn't grab what you owned without compensating you, though I had to admit that was during normal times. If something like this had happened back on Earth, I had a feeling that not all laws would hold up then either. As it was, this was not framed as 'confiscation' but rather as another form of 'taxation.'

Still, these people had decided to tax someone like Suki Tang - but had also waived my fee for being gifted a grimoire?

Well, they likely thought I was more valuable and that it was more imperative that I have that grimoire than Suki Tang have a few more handfuls of rice.

When I had started settling down in Libraria, I had found it a bit strange but delightfully so that the Liberomancers did not seem to suppress the commoners, or other Liberomancers who were less powerful than they were. After all, that was one of the concerns of living in a society where certain people had strange powers and others didn't. I didn't see anything remotely like that though.

Now, I realized that it wasn't that the Liberomancers didn't suppress others - they just didn't do so overtly. You wouldn't find one beating up commoners on the street for fun or harassing women, for example. Instead they did so in more subtle ways, such as economics and taxation. Laws also favored Liberomancers, and Rank Three Liberomancers especially. If a Liberomancer was accused of a serious crime in Chipker, they wouldn't be tried by the normal court - but by a special one set up by the Liberomancer's Guild. And I had a feeling that the alternative court was far more lenient and understanding than the regular court.

"Granny Qi, I will be moving out today," I said to Granny Qi before packing up to leave. She was a bit surprised, but understood. If she wanted to house as many of her relatives as possible, it was for the better that I leave. "If you need anything at all though, feel free to send someone and I'll come running."

"But child," Suki Tang said, "where will you live now?"

"They have some apartments reserved for Rank Three Liberomancers, I didn't take one initially because I really didn't need one, but it looks like it's time to take them up on the offer," I said. I grabbed my things, gave Granny Qi a quick hug, and then was about to set out when an idea struck me.

Some time later, a clerk from the Liberomancer's Guild was showing me a house. It was very bare-bones, which was to be expected, but more than functional enough. I had no complaints given it was being handed to me.

"Ah, but Master Liberomancer," the clerk said. "This is only for you and your family… you cannot house guests here."

The guild maintained about twenty of these small, spartan, but functional houses; not enough to house every Rank Three Liberomancer, mind you but they never needed to. Any Rank Three Liberomancer would prefer to find their own accommodations given enough time as it was childishly easy for them to amass the kind of wealth that usually only first-rate merchants could. These houses were mainly set up for traveling Liberomancers or in case there was some kind of grave misfortune that befell one so that they would've be left out on the street.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The houses were all empty, but the guild had vehemently refused to let them be loaned out to any of the refugees even now. I didn't agree with that decision - but I couldn't change their minds either.

I also couldn't really take random people with me from the street to help them out, the guild would not allow that. Such were the rules. And these were the guild's houses, they did not belong to me - they were just letting me live there because of my rank.

But wherever there are rules, there are loopholes to those rules as well.

"Oh, these people are my servants," I said, waving to the group of ten people behind me. "I've read the guild rules, and we can keep servants, can't we?"

By astonishing coincidence, all of these 'servants' of mine (I still cringed while saying that word, we didn't have servants, at least most people didn't, back on Earth where I came from) happened to be members of Granny Qi's village!

After all, that was how the refugees set about finding accommodations and the like. If they had family in the city, they would go to them first. If their family was unable or unwilling to do so, or if they did not have close family, they would go to someone from their village. If there was no one from the same village as them, then someone from a neighboring village, and so on.

If all of the above failed, if they had money, perhaps they could rent out a room, but many of them had been forced to flee under duress carrying nothing but the clothes on their backs, and as it was most of them were poor to begin with.

There were still many who could not find accommodation whatsoever, and there were only so many temporary shelters that could be built by the city in such a short a span of time.

Granny Qi had asked me to help out some of the less fortunate members of her village if I could - after all, she only had so much space in her house, and her immediate family already took up most of it even after I was gone.

Hence this ruse.

"…" the clerk seemed slightly thrown off-balance by my declaration. "Master Liberomancer, does one person such as yourself really need ten servants tending to you in your own house?"

"Ah, yes," I said. "I am rather fastidious - you see, for example, if I want to drink a bottle of wine, I need five people in order to do so. One of them has to fetch the wine bottle, another one has to uncork it, a third person needs to pour it out into a glass while a fourth person holds it, and then a fifth person has to hand it to me. If any one of them isn't there, the whole chain breaks down and I won't be able to enjoy my wine, you know what I'm saying?"

The clerk's eyebrows twitched. It was clear that he had not, as a matter of fact, bought my ridiculous story, thought about what he was going to do next for a good minute - and then decided that it wasn't worth his time to object considering that he likely had bigger problems than this to handle. "Alright then, Master Liberomancer, but do please note that any damage or cleaning that will need to be done after you leave will come out of your own pocket."

Breaking the rules was greatly frowned upon, though this was more of bending rather than breaking them. As it was - I wasn't too concerned about what might happen if anyone decided to bring the ax down upon me. I had not technically done anything wrong, and if I was called out on it and they wanted to ruin my reputation or social standing instead - I could just play the sympathy card. After all, I had bent the rules not for my own personal gain- but to help out those less fortunate. That was somewhat understandable and less likely to invite censure.

"Thank you, Master Liberomancer," said several voices behind me as the clerk trotted off.

"It was the least I could do," I replied. I actually meant that - there were still many people who needed help around the city, but what else could I do? Using [Fish Haul] to create fish would divert mana I needed in order to read that grimoire that gave [Grand Fireball]. And though it pained me to say so - it was more important that I learn that then give out handfuls of food to some people.

I had brought up the idea of mass-producing grimoires that gave [Poissonnier] and [Fish Haul] given the combo you could pull of with both of them to Zeke and Drake, but the idea was shot down. There were a number of hurdles with trying to enact such a plan. The biggest was the language barrier that existed, one was in English meaning I was the only one who could make copies of it (my mana was needed elsewhere), while the other was in the lizardmen language so I couldn't make copies of that.

[Fish Haul] was a Rank Two spell, and most Rank Two Liberomancers were busy doing other things. The supply of food still hadn't reached such a low point that creating food with magic on a massive scale would be deemed necessary. "There are better ways to get food, and our reserves should hold well enough for now," most of the top brass assured me when I brought this up.

There was likely enough food for everyone to just get along - though it would mean that many people would have to get by on a single meal a day for the foreseeable future. They could survive, yes, but to me it still felt like they were suffering needlessly and more could be done for them.