The Siege of Arconia: Chapters 45-47

The time had come which I had been eagerly anticipating - rewards were being handed out for people’s contributions during the war!

It turned out that Lance was very generous with the reward he had given me - one hundred thousand Denarii. The bulk of it was because I had saved his son, but I appreciated the amount nonetheless.

A good portion of it went towards helping rebuild Granny Qi’s village - when I gave her the money for the grimoire she had given me that taught [Grand Fireball] she looked very angry and seemed to want to reject the money.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?” Granny Qi demanded. “Did your mother also demand that you pay her back for breast feeding you? Don’t insult me by handing me this!”

I ended up convincing her only after saying that she could use it to better take care of the village.

I didn’t accept most of it in coins, the Liberomancer’s Guild was more than happy to credit an account under my name with the appropriate amount, functioning as bankers - and that too with no processing fee.

That would make keeping money around far easier, at least while I was in Chipker. I was planning on visiting the capital while I left and headed towards Hansini - the king had wanted to congratulate me personally, and I did not want to risk offending royalty by saying ‘no’ to that.

I decided that one of my specializations would be summoner - I didn’t know if I wanted to pick up a second specialization later or not, but summoning just felt right somehow.

I picked up [Second Summon- Rank Two] a Rank Two skill that let one make two summons which were Rank Two every twenty-four hours instead of the usual one - they had to be different creatures, and they couldn’t be active at the same time. There were also skills like [Second Summon- Rank Three] and [Triple Summon- Rank Two] but none of them were available in Arconia right now.

I got [Summon Red Fox] which was a Rank One summoning skill - the red fox was not very useful combat-wise but could be used for tracking, going into places I was too small to go into otherwise, or simply watching over me while I fell asleep. I needed a Rank One summoning skill for some of the grimoires I intended to add later, and also - the thing was just really adorable and could even be summoned inside a city without much issue.

I did need another Rank Two summoning skill to make [Second Summon- Rank Two] work, and I chose [Summon Bear] for that purpose. The bear was a far better offensive option than the Elephant Frog, though not as good when it came to mobility.

I also bought [Summoning Extender- Rank One] which increased the length of time that summons could be active by one hour each.

There were other grimoires I wanted, and not just ones which could grant you the ability to fly (I would likely only get that in Hitutsa or some other country rather than in Chipker).

There was the Rank Two [Twin Summons] ability that let you have two summons active at the same time, Rank Two [Shared Souls] which let summons share the stat boosts, buffs, and other beneficial properties of the summoner, and Rank Three [Recall Summon] which let you re-summon a creature if it had been killed without waiting for the cool down period to be over in twenty-four hours from when it had first been summoned.

However, using [Recall Summon] still counted as making another summon and would therefore need a [Second Summon] skill of that Rank.

While summons were very useful and could be effective even if you had a small mana pool, the issue was that they were generally lacking in both offensive power and range when compared to other skills and spells.

As an example, it would have taken several minutes for the Tyrant Arachnea to have killed those bandits if I had so wanted to, while a single [Grand Fireball] would do so instantly.

If there had been more of them, say, like fifty, it would have been a problem for the Tyrant Arachnea, but [Grand Fireball] would’ve once again, come in clutch. The combo I used on the dryads wasn’t as effective on other races. Additionally, most summons had to get up close to their target to actually do damage or had very limited range, while the range of corresponding spells of the same Rank were usually far greater.

That was why nearly all Liberomancers did use summons, but mainly as meat shields to protect themselves while they cast spells which did the actual damage.

‘There is no strongest spell, only the strongest spellcaster!’

There was no objectively best specialization after all, each and every thing had its own drawbacks and strengths. Even the choice of not specializing at all came with its own perks and downsides.

If there was a video game based off of this world out there somewhere - and there was a PvP option, without a doubt summoners would be considered trash in that kind of meta, while elementalists would no doubt dominate it. Of course, the world was not PvP. Things were usually quite cordial between Liberomancers, on the contrary, and the odds were minimal that I would end up in an actual fight with one.

Still, I still had a few useful offensive options which I thought were good enough, and I could always become an elementalist as my second specialization - I just wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do that, or just get a variety of generally useful spells.

I was beginning to feel the constraints of only having thirty slots for every Rank - before, it had felt like thirty slots was an enormous number when I was scrambling around trying to fill them in as fast as possible to get to the next Rank.

Now though, it was apparent how limiting it was when it came to deciding what you wanted to learn. There were a number of spells or skills I wanted or thought could be occasionally useful, but I knew that I just wouldn’t have room for all of them.

Was there a way to expand the number of slots in a Rank? No one had ever found a way to do so as of yet so far as I knew, and not even in stories like those about the Ruler of the Astral Winds could you find a mention of a grimoire that did that, so it was highly likely it was just impossible.

There was a Rank One grimoire that gave [Extra Slot] which would create another Rank One slot after the slot it was assigned to, but given the fact that it itself did nothing this was of limited use as the effective number of slots was the same. And sadly, even if you used it on the thirtieth Rank One slot that you had, it would not give you an extra Rank Two slot - that might’ve been useful, but the skill just didn’t work that way. It would just end up doing nothing if assigned to your last slot.

Fact of the matter was, I had reached the peak of where I could hope to realistically get to, speaking in terms of Rank - unless something extremely fortunate happened like me finally being able to charge up my phone, or I spent decades in Libraria, which I had no intention of doing.

The only way to really get ‘stronger’ at this point was to fine-tune my build.

Fully specializing, however, had to wait given I couldn’t get a good number of the grimoires I wanted for even my main specialization of summoner.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a drought in the grimoire market, especially with Rank Three grimoires, given all Liberomancers had been busy defending the city, but that was part of why I thought it was okay to delay leaving for a while. I wanted to be as ready as possible when I finally left.

They did find a grimoire that gave [Ansoon’s Blessing] - but this was in the capital, though they agreed to buy it for me and keep it in the capital so I could pick it up whenever I dropped by there.

“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?” I intoned while giving the red fox in my lap a belly rub. It rolled around happily, until I heard Granny Qi’s voice from downstairs.

“Stefan, someone’s here to meet you!”

The red fox got out of my lap and leapt onto the floor.

“Wha-” I began to say, shocked.

The way that it had moved while jumping, landing on its feet, right paw forward, one of its ears slightly bent, and mouth slightly agape - it was like it had been possessed by Cheddar’s ghost!

I had seen Cheddar strike the exact same pose countless times. The imitation was so perfect that I momentarily forgot that there was someone waiting for me downstairs.

Of course, I soon realized what was going on.

Summons shared memories and knowledge with their summoners - and were also designed to serve their summoners in any way they could. They would, without a single breath’s hesitation, sacrifice their lives for their summoners.

And so, it must have detected how Cheddar acted from my memories and was doing its best to mimic the same - because it thought it would cheer me up.

It did initially - but I knew this was eventually going to be followed by an even stronger wave of sadness when the summoning time was over and it returned to whatever void summoned creatures did when they disappeared from the world.

The fox, no matter how hard it tried, could not actually be Cheddar. It was just a section of my own mind which was inhabiting the body of a fox, after all, when you got down to it.

This was no different than replacing Cheddar with a virtual dog with a similar personality - it could not live up to the real thing.

“Stefan - it’s rude to leave your guests waiting!” Granny Qi shouted.

“Ah - sorry, I was just finishing something,” I answered as I flew down the stairs to see who it was. As I saw the form of a lizardman out of the corner of my eye, I thought it might be Drake or Zeke who had dropped by for a visit, but when I turned my head it was someone who I had not been expecting to see me.

“Lauren?”

“Good evening, Master Stefan,” Lauren answered. She was seated on the sofa, though much like with Zeke, she seemed rather uncomfortable given its size and proportions which were not meant for a lizardman’s derriere.

“What brings you here?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her in a long time - not since that meeting all the way back before the siege, come to think of it. We had been assigned to different sections of the wall and afterwards there really was little that would bring us together. “Uh, first, can I get you something to eat? Or drink?”

“N-No,” she said. “I came just to see how you were doing…”

“Right…” I said.

I didn’t buy that as the actual reason as to why she was here for a minute, but what could I do? Yell ‘Liar!’ at her face?

We tried to make some small talk, but that was a bit difficult given that about two minutes in I realized just how little I knew about her.

She had been my employer for almost a year, but during that time we had had almost no contact. I always talked about things through Mark, a middleman, and after I had ‘resigned’ I supposed that we could talk about our shared experience while fighting during the siege… but that wasn’t exactly pleasant to relive or reminisce about.

“Ah, coming to the main topic at hand,” she finally said after what felt like way too long. “I… I realize upon reflecting right now that it wasn’t the correct decision for me to have pressured you into leaving. I’m quite happy to see that you’ve…” she paused for a moment while the red fox approached me and I tossed it a snack. It caught it in one swift motion - just like Cheddar had done in his younger days. Recently though, Cheddar didn’t seem to have the same energy or reflexes he used to, and just ate things once they hit the floor. It was just a sign he was getting on in years…

…I shook my head. I had to believe that I could get back home before Cheddar passed away!

“...succeeded, but it is rather obvious you succeeded in spite of what I did not because of it,” Lauren said. “And I wanted to make sure there were no hard feeling between us.”

Oh - I then realized what Lauren was here for now. I had kind of led her on the fact that I might be mad at her before - but then the siege and all had happened, and now that things had settled down, she seemed to think that it was better to speak to me rather than it coming to bite her in the future.

“Lauren, I understand why you had to do it,” I told her. “And I think you made the right choice in your position, for what it’s worth.”

Sure, back on Earth, a boss who behaved the way Lauren did would be sued into oblivion - but we were not back on Earth. And hey, things on Earth hadn’t always been this way, had they?

If anything, my reasoning back then during the meeting seemed rather immature given the severity of the siege that had followed and I was rather ashamed of how I had behaved.

There was no way for Lauren to have known in advance that I’d become a Master Liberomancer so soon - or that I would’ve gained such a fearsome reputation in the future. “What did bother me was that you had sent Mark to explain it all, instead of telling me yourself. Or even giving me a simple farewell yourself.”

It was this fact that personally stung me the most. That she hadn’t even bothered to look me in the eye before she kicked me out.

“Ah, yes, that…” she was at a loss for words - and I knew the truth of the matter was that she wanted to say ‘it was not worth my time.’

And when it happened, it was true, it was not worth her time; as most other Rank Three Liberomancers would also feel, to explain themselves to a low-level employee.

My status as a foreigner, and not being a lizardman at the time when there was quite a bit of friction between the two species, meant there was little I could do to protest such a thing. Of course, she couldn’t very well say that now, could she?

Again, I did not appreciate the action, but I got why it was done. “Regardless, let’s forget about all of that. I’m not going to spend time here in Arconia for much longer as it is - I’m leaving the city, and I’d rather we not end this time on bitter terms. I had been planning to sort of throw a party with my other coworkers - even at the same restaurant we had been to once - I think you know the one. I had told Rose about it, but she had never gotten back to me. Why don’t you and the rest of the shop’s employees join me for a party before I leave?”

It was my way of saying that there were no hard feelings. And it was true, I was leaving, and I didn’t see the point in prolonging this spat between the two of us for no reason.

“That would… I think that would be a fine idea,” she said with a weak smile. “Ah, how about next week?”

I wasn’t really doing anything nowadays other than hoping a good grimoire might show up, making preparations to leave, and working on my own Rank Three grimoires, so any time was basically fine with me.

“Fine with me,” I said.

“And… just as a mark of appreciation for what you’ve done…” she said, as she reached into a bag she had brought along and handed me a grimoire - Rank Two no less. “…I had heard through the grapevine you were collecting grimoires related to summoning. This is a Rank Two grimoire that gives [Summoning Extender - Rank Two]. It increases the duration that summons can be active by two hours, in addition to the one hour provided by [Summoning Extender- Rank One], though you have to have the Rank One version before you can use this.”

I opened up a page - it was written in a language I hadn’t seen before. “Where did you get this?”

“From the Book Fair six years ago - I had wanted to sell it or use it at a later time, but I’m not a dedicated summoner, and I ended up forgetting about it until now. You won’t find a copy of that in all of Chipker though, I wager, and it should be helpful to you,” she said.

It was indeed quite helpful - with this a Rank One summon could exist for six hours, a Rank Two for nine hours, and a Rank Three for twelve hours.

Much of the headache regarding using my summons was the fact that I had to be careful when their time ran out - and this gave them a lot more time to exist in this world.

“How much for this?”

“Oh, don’t worry about the price.”

“I… can’t really accept something like this for free,” I said to her. I hadn’t asked for anything and just offered to throw a party to bury the hatchet because I also sort of felt guilty letting a personal issue fester instead of just coming clean during a time the entire city was in danger. “You’re already doing me a favor by selling it to me and not someone else…” There was also the matter that I didn’t want to feel like I owed Lauren a favor that she might try and cash in on somewhere later down the line - I was leaving Arconia, but that wouldn’t be for a few weeks at least, and I didn’t want to gain the reputation of someone who had bilked a favor.

By offering to pay at least a nominal price for the grimoire, it was easier to justify later if I didn’t want to go along with something she was suggesting.

Reputation was everything after all - that was why she was doing all of this in the first place, but it also cut both ways. I had gained quite a bit of a noble reputation from my actions - but conversely that made it all the easier to ruin it as well. The bigger they are, the harder they fall - as they say. And I didn’t want to have people think I was using my newfound reputation to extort favors from other people.

I found myself in the strange position of having to haggle the price upwards rather than downward, though we did finally come to an agreement.

I took the grimoire and wished her a good day as she left, after which I sighed and sank into the sofa.

The red fox, noticing my mood, jumped into my lap and let out a happy yelp.

“Sure, sure,” I said while rubbing it behind the ears.

The party took place next week, at the same restaurant as before - we even sat down at the same table, though two new guests joined this time around.

One was a red-scaled lizardman who had recently joined the shop, and the other was Lauren.

This didn't make up for the fact that there were four people missing who had originally been here - they were not dead, thankfully, but had either moved on from her shop or were simply unable to attend.

Looking back on how it went, I kind of thought it was a bit of a let down.

I had wanted the celebration to sort of be a way for us to have one last good time together before I left, but… things just weren’t the way they were before.

There was always an air of awkwardness hanging above us throughout the whole time.

For one, Lauren was with us this time - and as with most company parties, people couldn’t really act the way they wanted to with their boss around.

I could tell they were all intimidated by me to some extent - either because of the fame I’d gotten from the recent siege, or because I was a Master Liberomancer. I wouldn’t have minded if they had just treated me like any other coworker like they had before, but they didn’t seem to be able to do so. Even Rose seemed distant and quiet, only giving the bare minimum of formal small talk and nothing else unless I directly asked her a question.

Not even Lauren treated me like just another guy - so I guess it was too much to expect that of everyone else.

The only one who behaved even remotely like they had before was Mark, surprisingly enough.

I even tried ordering some wine to see if the alcohol might loosen some lips, but everyone barely drank any.

I couldn’t say that the whole thing had been a total failure - but it felt so stiff and formal, and lifeless. Like an actual office party - which this technically was, but that hadn’t been the vibe last time.

The vision I’d had of us laughing and cheering together, putting all our troubles behind us, was nothing but a fading dream it turns out.

Still, I hoped it had done what I had wanted it to - and that was to go some way to smoothing things over between all of us.

And although I had initially been disappointed with what had happened; I got a pleasant surprise regarding the party two days after it was over that brightened my spirits.

“What happened?” I asked the red fox I’d summoned. It had suddenly woken up from taking a nap on my bed (thankfully it did not wet itself like Cheddar occasionally had recently) and started glaring out the window. “What’s out the - oh?”

There was an odd bird that was sort of like a pelican - there was another name for it but that was in the lizardmen language and so I had trouble remembering that; and just thought of it as a pelican. Its feathers were more brightly colored, and its wingspan slightly smaller, but the resemblance to a pelican was still quite apparent.

Where had I seen this one before? It looked familiar, but why had it come near my window? It was then that I saw the small packet attached to its leg.

Right!

This was Rose’s summon!

When I realized that the strange bird was sent by Rose, my red fox stopped glaring out the window and backed off as I opened it to let it in. The bird very obediently offered its leg and for me to untie the packet attached to its leg, after which it flew off.

Within the packet was a letter - I had to take it to someone to read what it said, but it was basically a written ‘thank you’ for everything, and a wish for good luck on my journey ahead.

That message on top was written by Rose - I recognized her handwriting, but there were signatures from everyone in the shop with small messages like ‘Good luck!’ and ‘Nice to work with you!’ beneath that.

The red fox’s tail was wagging with excitement. “You’re pretty happy to see this too, aren’t you?” I asked, before folding up the letter and keeping it somewhere safe.

After the party with my coworkers was done though, I made it a point to decline most invitations as I had to work hard to get things to head out; and to plan out what the actual route of my journey was going to be in the first place.

Regarding money - the Liberomancer’s Guild did offer banking facilities as well as a way to sell my grimoires even if I wasn’t here physically - I don’t know if they offered such services to non-Liberomancers or not, but they were willing to keep the Rank Three grimoires I had made, sell them on my behalf, and then credit me with the cash which could be used in other cities where they had ties.

It was a lot safer than carrying actual money with me on the way to other places, though I was more concerned that something might happen to the grimoires I had made after what had already happened during the fighting of the siege. I did not want another grimoire to be ruined because of my carelessness.

As for where I was planning to go after going to the capital, I got a few ideas from Zeke.

I had dropped by his office one time when he was free, mainly because we were going over his earlier offer to help arrange a grimoire for me that would help me fly.

“Here,” he said, handing me a letter. “If you give this to a Professor Hebei at the University of Hitutsa, he should be able to help. If you can’t find the professor, just hand it to the librarian who runs the special library for Rank Three Liberomancers there - he will also be able to help you out.” He then paused. “I know many people must’ve asked you this, but are you really set on going? Is there nothing I could offer you to stay? I am sure that if you asked for it, the king would be happy to grant you a title and lands for your work - and if not, I would petition my father on your behalf. You could work your way up the ranks even if you never made a Rank Four grimoire.”

I gave him a tired smile. Drake had also tried to convince me to stay - but when I told him why I had to leave, he understood and dropped the matter entirely. Zeke was a bit more persistent, but my answer was the same. “The only thing that you can offer me which is truly valuable - well, if I got that… I’m looking for a way back home above all, and if I were to get that, I would go back home - not stay here.”

“Can you tell me more about how you came here?”

I narrated things for his benefit once again.

“So, that was it? You had no message or indication of where you were going?” Zeke asked.

“No,” I said.

“And does something like this happen often in your world?”

“People getting pulled into different realities? No, I’ve heard of people going missing without explanation though. I’ve heard stories of things like this - but there usually is a purpose to why people are pulled. As for me? I can’t think of a purpose to have been brought to this world for.”

Zeke chuckled. “You helped save our city - and I owe my brother’s life to your bravery. Surely that would be good enough of a reason?”

“If that were true, you’d think I’d be able to go home now then,” I answered.

Zeke tried a different tactic. “What do you think you’ll find in the rest of the world? You did come to this… place through a passageway, correct? Wouldn’t the gateway back, if it exists, naturally open somewhere here rather than in some other corner of the world?”

“It hasn’t till now,” I said.

“Another place would be quite dangerous - you at the very least have a support base here,” he countered.

“Yes, but there are things I need to check out in other places,” I told him.

“Like what?”

“I want to try to see if I can go to Hansini after I go to Hitutsa,” I told him. That had been my original plan.

“Hansini? Why?”

“Maybe this might sound crazy… but I think that the Ruler of the Astral Winds was also someone from my world,” I said. It had been something I had been pondering for a while, and it made more sense the more I thought about it.

“...why would you think so?” Zeke asked, rather baffled. He hadn’t expected that kind of answer.

“...he rose to power rather suddenly,” I said, finding it hard to put it in a way that Zeke would understand. “Which would be extremely hard - and all the stories say that he did all these things that no one before him had done - I find it hard to believe that he accomplished that on his own. It might be more likely that … he was from my world. And he had somehow managed to arrive here with more resources.”

I had been in a library before I was brought here - and if I had the library’s full collection with me right now, Rank Five would not be a pipe dream.

There was another reason, though I didn’t mention this as it was even harder to convey to someone like Zeke. The Ruler of the Astral Winds, had, to put it mildly, behaved like a complete psychopath at many instances throughout his life. His behavior deviated extremely from what was considered to be acceptable for a Liberomancer. He stole, lied, and did anything needed to crawl his way to the top. Once he was invincible, he did whatever he pleased - his motto in life seemed to be ‘might makes right’ rather than ‘treat others the way you wish to be treated.’

But what if there was a reasonable explanation for this behavior? If you had come from Earth, and thought that this world wasn’t real, or was some kind of video game - you might not hesitate to do whatever was needed in order to ‘level up.’ You might even see the people of this world as nothing more than NPCs or conclude that they weren’t ‘real.’

From that point of view, his actions could make sense, even if I did not see things that way.

“The people of this world are not idiots, Stefan,” Zeke responded, sounding slightly offended.

“No, I don’t mean it like that- it’s just that,” I began. “It would be so much easier for someone to do it if they had the resources of my world with them. Didn’t you suspect me because you thought it was odd that I could make two new Rank Three grimoires? How much less believable is it that he not only made several of his Rank Four grimoires himself, but a good number of Rank Five ones as well?”

Zeke had little to offer as a retort. “Are the libraries of your world that valuable?”

I took out my smartphone. “I had actually wanted to see if you could help me with something else.” I explained what my phone did and that I wanted to find a way to charge it.

I hadn’t been able to make a grimoire that could do that. As for trying to do it some other way - I could try to make something like a battery with some chemicals and if I had some metal to use as a wire, the only issue was how to connect it to my phone in a way that would charge it instead of blowing it to bits and pieces.

I didn’t even have a charger, so I’d have to try to make a port myself.

How could I possibly do that? Even something as simple as a charger was made with the efforts of people all over the globe back on Earth - what hope did I have to accomplish it on my own in this kind of world?

“You’re telling me there is an entire library in this thing?” he asked, picking it up.

I nodded. “I’ve been looking for a way to charge its battery, but I can’t.” I realized he probably didn’t understand what I meant, so I elaborated. “It’s like trying to make a fire, you wouldn’t cast [Grand Fireball] to do that, right, you’d use [Create Flame]? This device also works on energy, a form of electricity, but it has to be the right amount or else it will break.”

Zeke stared at it for a while before saying, “I haven’t the slightest clue how you would do such a thing; I’m sorry. Maybe if you found a lightning elementalist they could - but… I don’t think even one of them could do what you’re describing.”

I didn’t have much hope on that front either - but maybe I’d find someone in the University of Hitutsa who could help me out?

“The Ruler of the Astral Winds huh…” Zeke said, a sudden shift in energy in his voice. “I don’t know if this would help you but…” He took out a key from a different cabinet to open up a drawer on his desk. “I might as well hand this over to you then.”

“...sorry, what is this?” I asked. It was a piece of old paper with letters I could not recognize, and some other pieces of paper that had the writing of the lizardmen on it.

“Back when I was a student in Hitutsa,” Zeke began. “I was with a group of friends and we would often spend our time looking for historical artifacts that might have been forgotten or lost - you know, sometimes you’d find a peasant using a priceless historical vase as a flower pot, for example. We found an antique box like that gathering dust somewhere, and it had this map within it - at least, that is what we figured it showed. It shows directions to someplace near Hansini. The box was dated back to the times when the Ruler of the Astral Winds governed that region…” There was an excitement in his voice I’d never heard from him before. Unlike Drake, he was rather good at maintaining a poker face, but that had cracked considerably right now. He was clearly quite passionate about this piece of paper. “What could it lead to? The box was valuable, clearly, and I hoped beyond hope that it might’ve lead to a library that he owned.”

“A library - like a stash of grimoires?”

“Exactly!” Zeke said. “Think about it - he had died quite suddenly, and had not even set up a designated inheritor for his empire if he passed away, because he probably thought that he would live forever. He must’ve kept a stash of some of his grimoires- definitely the Rank Four ones, and possibly some Rank Five ones! But no one found anything like that. What if… this leads to a location that might have some treasure of his!?”