The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

"So, these are the ones I have," Zeke said in his office when I dropped by. He didn't have the actual grimoires with him, they were under lock and key, obviously, but it was a list on paper describing what they did. A list I couldn't read - which he only seemed to realize after he handed me the list. "I'm sorry, I forgot about that - let me just read out what the Rank Three ones do."

Some of them were stat-boosting ones, which I was not interested in at the moment. There was the Rank Three [Incinerate], but the thing was that I was already decked out pretty well when it came to offensive options. There were another two that were very good for fire elementalists, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go down that route as of now.

"Wait - what does that ability do?" I asked him. It was called [Ansoon's Blessing] which I had not heard of before.

"It makes one completely invulnerable to not only damage, but any kind of negative effect for a minute," Zeke explained. "It can be used once every twenty-four hours, but it can't be used on anyone other than the caster, and will not do anything to any damage that has already been taken."

That caught my attention - I had been looking for a defensive option and while not perfect, it was still very good at buying time. It not only protected from magic, but also physical attacks as well. "Alright, I think that's good - but why that name? What is Ansoon?"

"Who is Ansoon," Zeke corrected. "And you haven't heard the epic of Lady Ansoon before? Or seen one of her statues on the square opposite the Liberomancer's Guild?"

I shook my head. "Again, I'm not from around here," I reminded him.

"Right," Zeke said. "Well, I don't have time to recount the whole tale, but the short version is that there was a lady by the name of Ansoon who was ambushed by an enemy clan. Her brother was with her, and ended up sacrificing himself so that she could escape safely. He had been badly wounded, and Ansoon was unable to heal him. As she lay near a waterfall with her brother's corpse beside her, a river spirit approached her and took pity upon seeing her weeping over his corpse. She taught her the grimoire that would prevent further deaths like that of her brother's from happening, and in honor of her brother's bravery, altered the water so that the waterfall would flow backwards from that moment onward."

With a jolt I remembered the place I had visited with Granny Qi. She had not mentioned anything by that name - and it was unlikely there were two waterfalls in the area that did the same thing. Perhaps it was a legend only circulated amongst lizardmen - which is why she didn't know? I think I had heard the name 'Lady Ansoon' before now that I listened to the full story, but if it was a lizardman story given the fact I tended to go to human pubs to hear stories and whatnot, I might've only heard of it in passing while working in the shop or something like that.

And even if I had seen the statue, it would not have been marked in any language that I could read in, so I'd have no context for it.

"Um, is the transaction still alright?" Zeke asked me as I had spaced out a bit.

"Right, yes, yes," I said.

We still had to clear the transaction through the guild the next morning, though there was no rush. It would take time for both of us to read what we had swapped, because there was no way that I was putting so much effort into reading another Rank Three grimoire yet again after having done so recently.

It might even be possible that we wouldn't finish reading each other grimoires until after the siege, but we would have no way of knowing that until after it was over. Using translation devices to read doubled the amount of mana consumed, and so would also halve the speed at which we could progress through a grimoire.

I had had a long day by that point and so turned in to go to sleep. My dreams were fractured bits and pieces of the fighting that had occurred that day - in the middle of the night, I woke up thinking that there was a Tyrant Arachnea in my room, though thankfully that was only my eyes playing tricks on me.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I didn't know whether the dryads dreamt or not, but if they did, I hoped that my little tactic was causing those fiends to wake up in a cold state just remembering the terror they felt as the Tyrant Arachnea descended upon them.

Great Claw watched the city far off in the distance. Even with the darkness, its multitudes of lights contrasted against the dark countryside.

They had lost many of their forces today - those who returned said that they had been assaulted by fire-breathing dragons atop the walls.

Great Claw knew better though - these were the weapons of the humans and other two-legged creatures they had seen in this country. Even he was surprised by the ferocity of their fire, however. They had not encountered such great resistance until now.

They dryads spoke of another monster, one with eight large legs which spat fire. An entire tribe had collapsed in fear during the attack today due to its presence.

However, this day was not a complete waste, for they had collected many useful pieces of information.

Such as the fact that the great body of water that lay beyond, was not the kind that they could nourish themselves with. There was something in it which caused those among them who tried to drink it to become sick, and it was not the nourishing water of the great river.

Great Claw had not expected victory to come easily, so he was not disappointed by today's result. He might need some time to convince the other dryad lords, but he was sure that given enough time they could break through. Although the exterior of the city was hard, like that of a snail's shell, the inside was soft and would be delicious.

They just had to crack open that shell.

The next day, nothing of note happened. The dryads seemed to have wised up and realized that there was no point in sending small squads out to try to probe our defenses after yesterday's failure.

And so, they remained a large blight upon the land in the distance, but unmoving.

Were they going to try to starve us out? That was fine with me, because eventually, an army would come from the capital, and were that to happen, the plan was to sally out and catch them in a pincer attack.

Until then, we would stay here, behind or atop the safety of the city walls, and they would stay outside, both of us watching the other intently.

I had kept observing them, and while I could see several of what I assumed were dryad lords, I still could not see any sort of central figure in their forces who might be an overall commander - a dryad king, if anything like that even existed at all.

That raised two possibilities. One was that there was no overall leader at all - which seemed to most likely be the case. Hard as it was to believe - after all humans, and lizardmen for that matter, were creatures who formed hierarchies at nearly all levels of organization, whether a king or just a shop owner. That the answer to 'who is in charge of these hundred thousand or so individuals' would be 'no one' was an idea counterintuitive to the human mind. Surely, someone had to, at the very least, be nominally in charge? And if there wasn't someone in charge right now, someone would have to eventually emerge who was.

And yet, it seemed to be the truth that there was no such figure on the dryad side - merely a loose confederation of what we thought were tribes, though whether or not they even had that kind of basic level of organization was unclear.

The second explanation was that there was someone like that, but they were hiding themselves. If it was the latter, then I had to admit that they were much smarter than we gave them credit for. If we were able to eventually find a leader like that, it would well be worth it for Lance to fly out and then kill them with a single [Inferno].

That wouldn't necessarily end the fighting - this wasn't a game of chess after all where capturing the enemy king meant victory, but it would greatly demoralize the enemy and a good portion of them might disperse.

These thoughts and several others occupied my mind throughout the day - because there was little else to do.

In order to work on reading the grimoire I had gotten from Zeke this morning, I decided that I would spend no more than twenty percent of my mana at a time. Once I had done so, I would wait for my mana to recover, and then start reading again. The purpose was to not leave myself defenseless (or rather useless given I would still have people to defend me in that scenario, I just wouldn't be able to do much myself) if they attacked and I didn't have enough mana because I was reading.

This meant of course that I wasn't really making that much progress reading the grimoire, but it was the best I could do in these circumstances.

To speed things up I could've spent more time at night reading, but I had already been doing so for several nights in a row to get [Grand Fireball] and I didn't have it in me to keep doing it, otherwise I knew I'd eventually collapse from exhaustion.

The smallest silver lining to current events was that the lizardmen and humans really did seem to be getting along again making my job as mediator almost (but not quite entirely) redundant - it was just a shame that it had taken a bloodthirsty army at the gates for this to happen.