The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

The next day was one of my night shifts, my first one actually up to this point, but this meant that I had the day off.

Ideally I would've used the daylight hours to sleep so I could stay awake at night, but the issue was that my new job still had issues I had to comb over and things I had to iron out, and to solve them, I unfortunately had to be awake.

Were there skills that could decrease your need for sleep without any side effects? I hadn't seen anyone using one, so maybe not…

I did manage to squeeze in a few hours of shuteye anyway sometime during lunch, but I did not feel like that was enough. Especially given that I felt like I had already racked up quite the sleep deficit from all the past few weeks of working.

"How are you, Master Stefan?" Drake asked as he joined me as the sun began to sink below the horizon.

"You can still call me Stefan," I said yet again.

"Sure thing Stefan," he replied, though I was sure he would revert to his old ways soon enough. "How is that little renting situation of yours going on?"

"Oh, it's solved," I said. I sent someone to verify with the guild, and indeed, they had followed through with what I had asked them to and there were no further incidents.

What had happened to those extra people - I didn't know, and it did me no good thinking about them.

Didn't make it any easier to stomach though.

I looked at the dryad horde. Were plants less active during the nighttime? Even if they were, was the same for the dryads? I noticed a lot less movement at night, but that could just be because they were resting. From what we had seen up until now, the risk of a nighttime raid seemed to be low.

That wasn't to say that it couldn't happen.

I shivered - it was getting warmer but was still chilly at night. I called out to one of the lower ranked Liberomancers asking if they knew where to get a blanket. It had slipped my mind to bring my own.

I knew there had been some issues with that because I was recently involved in a scuffle involving blankets - there were not enough, and some blankets were not adequate as they were torn or otherwise damaged. It had been a big issue though thankfully it had died down somewhat as the weather improved.

The city had called upon its citizenry to donate blankets if they had some extra, and this endeavor had some middling success.

With all that said, I was not only handed a well-knit and thick blanket, but also told, "If you need another one, just give us the word."

Rank Three Liberomancers were really well taken care of, weren't they…

Drake came back again a while later after inspecting other areas under his command. "Up for something?" he asked me, pulling out a bottle of wine.

"You sure we should be drinking while on duty?"

"A glass here and there won't hurt," he said with a light chuckle. I was sure that it would, but he likely wasn't going to care even if I pointed that out. "Not to mention the dryads haven't done anything at night yet - I don't think they can actually, given how much they need sunlight. They usually remain as motionless as actual trees during this time."

'Wasn't the whole reason that we had nearly fought in the first place last year because you were drunk?' - I wanted to say that, but refrained from doing so, and instead accepted a small amount. Despite myself, it looked like he was becoming quite the bad influence on me.

"I heard there was a grimoire that you could make that would let you drink without later getting a hangover," I said. "Or would let you drink without getting intoxicated too much - I forgot which one of those two…"

"Oh really?" Drake asked.

"Yeah," I said, straining my memory. "But you had to write it with wine as ink…"

Drake took out a piece of paper. "Want to try?"

I really shouldn't have given the fact that preserving my mana was a priority in case something happened, but at this time, I was still stressed out I felt that it might've been a good exercise to help me decompress. As it was, a small amount of mana shouldn't have made that big of a difference if something happened.

I began thinking of what to write - since it was a Rank One grimoire, it didn't need to be very long. A short amount of factual knowledge was good enough.

I had tried to do this before… but had never actually finished it. Why was that again?

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Oh right, it was because of the person standing next to me eagerly awaiting for me to do so right now - who had interrupted me at the time.

I settled on writing the chemical makeup of alcohol and how yeast made it through anaerobic metabolism - and how there were limits to how strong it could be when done by yeast. If you wanted more concentrated alcohol, you had to distill it which is how one obtained things like vodka.

It was more of chemistry than anything, and I had to pause occasionally, straining my memory to remember my basic chemistry lessons, but I was able to finish it anyway.

The ink glowed, turning green- to give me a grimoire that gave… +1 to Speed?

I was dumbfounded.

Yes, the effects of grimoires sometimes didn't add up to what they were written about, though there usually was at least a tenuous connection. This one, however, seemed completely divorced from anything involved in making it. Maybe there was some relationship and I just couldn't see it? I had been expecting something related to alcohol or wine in some way though.

"Guess I ended up wasting some mana and wine then," I said. "Sorry."

"No problem," he said. "If anyone could do it - I felt that you could."

Before leaving for another check of what was going on, Drake tried to teach me some letters in the lizardman language. It was one way that we had tried to pass the time before, and at least somewhat relevant to me.

I learned something slightly curious as he began writing some letters. "Is that the letter representing 'lizardmen?'" I asked him.

"Indeed it is."

"Wasn't that the same one… wait… I've seen it before… doesn't that mean 'dragon?'" I could tell as it somewhat looked like a dragon, being a long curvy letter opening into something that could be approximated as a 'mouth.' Some letters in the lizardmen language looked like the words they were trying to convey which made them easier to recognize than others.

"Well, of course it does, that's why we are called what we are called," Drake said.

"Called what?"

"Dragonmen," Drake said as if it should've been obvious.

I took a moment to think about what he was saying. "Wait… Drake… tell me one thing, do your people… I mean, do you call yourselves the 'dragonmen' in your language?"

"Indeed, you've been saying the word several times, why is this new for you?" Drake asked, puzzled.

"Okay wait… when I say the word, lizardman, do you hear 'lizardman' or 'dragonman?'"

"You just said the same word twice."

"I didn't- okay, so lizards and dragons are different, correct?"

"Obviously."

"And so lizardmen and dragonmen should be different?"

Drake sighed. "Are you making fun of me or something? You're saying the same word again."

"Okay… I'm not, but I think it's being translated that way…" I said as he shook his head in confusion and walked off. Had the lizardmen been calling themselves 'dragonmen' all the time, and it was just translated like that? Why did the humans refer to them as lizardmen then? Because 'dragonmen' sounded too threatening? Or was it just some kind of misunderstanding that had arisen at some point because of the way the translation magic of this world worked which no one had corrected? Even I had thought of them all as being lizardmen when I first came to this place, though if I had to choose an alternate name to call them, 'dragonmen' would've also worked.

It was probably partly the alcohol's effect and partly boredom, but I couldn't help but begin thinking of all the other words that the magic system of the world might be mistranslating. How much context was I missing because of this?

The night watch was quieter than daytime, which meant there was even more time to kill. I had already read as much of my new grimoire as I could without depleting my mana to a point where I thought it would be irresponsible to use more. Eventually, Drake passed by again after he was done after another round of routine inspections.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"Good enough," I said.

Some of the guards were nodding off - no, they were just staring off into the night, I supposed, it was a bit hard to tell.

Even with [Unobstructed Sight] I could not detect any movement from the enemy side. The 'night vision' feature of it was not that good at differentiating things like shades of color in the dark, but it was pretty good at detecting shapes and movement - particularly from living things which appeared brighter than their surroundings.

Drake sat down next to me. "Don't you feel cold in your armor?" I asked him.

"Ah, no, I have an ability that keeps me warm almost all the time no matter how cold it is," Drake answered. Right - he was a fire elementalist, it wouldn't shock me if there was something like that. "What's that?"

"This is the grimoire I swapped from your brother," I said. It was night and rather quiet as well - maybe I could use up thirty percent of mana instead of the usual twenty right now? It would greatly speed up my progress.

"Ah, is that the one that gives [Ansoon's Blessing]? That's a good choice you made by taking it," Drake said.

I nodded. "Hey - related to this grimoire, are there a few waterfalls in this area that flow backward?"

"Just the one," Drake said. "I've never been to it myself though."

The grimoire had gone into much more detail regarding Ansoon's story, as it was Zeke had only given me a brief synopsis. I was only partway through it by now because of the limited amount of both mana and time I had on hand, but it had started with Ansoon's earlier life and the background regarding the conflict that had led to the tragedy in which her brother had been killed.

Chipker had not always been a unified country, and had gone through periods where it was divided into a western and eastern half, though the Ruler of the Astral Winds had the region firmly under his boot during his reign. After his assassination, however, it was once again split into a western and eastern half torn along the Arconia.

I hadn't gotten much further than that yet, but this grimoire was more concerned with her personal story rather than the actual broader context of how Chipker had become a single nation and its political situation at the time. I didn't even know if it would go into that topic later on, or if it would end with her brother's death.

"Sorry if this is a random question to ask," I said to Drake. "But have you ever seen a spirit? Like the ones in stories?" A river spirit supposedly was the one who had given Lady Ansoon the power to make the blessing named after her, and also who had caused the waterfall to flow in reverse in the first place. However, I had asked some humans about the waterfall and they knew of no such story behind it. There was clearly a gap between what the lizardmen and the humans thought was the most likely explanation behind the mystery of the waterfall.

As for me, I was less interested in who was right and more curious about spirits in general, which is why I was bringing up the topic in the first place.