The Siege of Arconia: Chapters 12-14

With that settled, the conversation now shifted to other things like the assignment of roles and allocation of other resources during the siege.

In the middle of this I had a question and raised my hand. It was how the others had been asking questions up till now, though this was a first from me.

“Yes, Master Stefan?”

“I wanted to ask about how well we are stocked, if this siege is prolonged and the dryads decided to simply starve us out, how will we fare?” I asked. “Can the sea’s haul potentially last… I don’t know, forever?” Some branches of the Arconia flowed through the city itself, so fresh water shouldn’t have been an issue, though food might be.

“Hmm,” Lance said. “I doubt the siege would last longer than two months, up till which we have enough food even if we don’t add to our supplies - but on the topic of fishing, Gorvis? Do you have any input?”

A lizardman answered. “We can fish for quite a while, yes, but that might be difficult with our new fortifications on that side. Not to mention, while we can catch fish, if we try to catch enough to feed the city for a long time, we will indeed end up exhausting the sea’s bounty by over fishing. There is a limit to how far we can go from shore, after all, without encountering something like a sea dragon or giant squid.”

Lance nodded. “It should not have to come to that. The dryads need fresh blood, and if they do not get it for a month they become noticeably weaker as per our intelligence. I do not know how long it would take for them to die without fresh blood, but by a month I would imagine most of them would wander off elsewhere or they would be weakened so that we could sally forth and finish them off. Supplies should last around three months even with the new wave of refugees.”

Many of the others agreed with his figures, so it was likely correct.

I still had the spell [Fish Haul] in case things got bad, but the issue was that it required mana, which I would need for other purposes- namely actually fighting.

I was not too worried about myself - I was a Rank Three Liberomancer and if they started rationing food, I would likely be first in line simply because of how useful I was. If a Liberomancer got too hungry, their rate of mana recovery would be affected, and eventually, they would not be able to recover mana at all. This was documented to start to occur only after about one week of starvation, though this could vary depending on how well-nourished that person was. Other physical stresses like lack of sleep or illness were also known to affect mana recovery. But because of this, I knew that they would continue to at the very least feed us.

I was concerned about Granny Qi though. She was old enough to be exempt from the fighting, despite being a Rank Two Liberomancer. But that also meant that her food supply might be cut off if she was deemed ‘less necessary.’

She had sold off all the rice and other produce she had brought from her village during the Spirit Festival. I really wished she had kept some of it though. She was not a big lady so she should’ve potentially been fine, but who knew how bad things would get as the siege dragged on?

The worst off though would be the new refugees from the surrounding villages. Laws were passed against price gouging, and a rationing system had finally been started by the city. However, I had seen how much food most of them got - it was a fish and some rice, barely enough for a single meal for someone my size. Many of them had therefore signed up to be spearmen simply so that they and their families could be somewhat fed better. Even with the laws against price gouging (which were largely ineffectual as far as I could tell, though they seemed to lower the ceiling of how high prices could go at least), most of the villagers’ wealth was entirely in the form of their farmlands which they had abandoned in order to come to the city.

My heart went out to them. When I had first come to Arconia, I had spent more nights than not with an empty stomach. And things would not be easy for them after this was all over either, as it could take up to a decade for them to fully rebuild their farms.

The topic then shifted as to how to provide blankets and firewood to everyone - it was getting warmer but was still pretty chilly, especially for the lizardmen.

With this the discussion went to topics on other logistics and the like, before it finally ended. Many matters hadn’t been decided as of yet, but the groundwork was laid down for further discussions.

Everyone was getting ready to leave, but there was one person I knew that I needed to introduce myself to now that I was here.

That was the other person who also was wearing a purple sash. I could not remember his name for the life of me, but I walked up to him nonetheless. “Good evening!” I introduced myself.

We exchanged pleasantries, though before our conversation could go any further, someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“I apologize for interrupting,” Zeke said. “However, this is something I needed to discuss with Master Stefan right now.”

“Ah, no worries - understandable that we are all busy. Perhaps we can meet once all of this has settled down?” he offered.

“Certainly,” I said.

Zeke and I walked off in another direction. “So, what came up?”

“I found out where and when the humans are having their own meeting,” Zeke said.

“And you want me to go over there and discuss things with them, right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“When and where is it?”

Zeke sighed. “It’s happening soon, but you’ll have to head out right now via carriage if you wish to make it.” He described a place which was deep in the human section of the city.

I sighed. This was bothersome, but also what I had signed up for. Unknowingly mind you, but signed up for it I did all the same.

“Alright, this carriage should take you there,” Zeke said as he led me out to the front gates of the palace and called for a cab. He spoke to the driver. “He’ll also take you home. Let me know if any issues should arrive.”

“Wait - you’re not coming with me?” I asked, a bit alarmed.

Zeke shook his head. “They will look at you with even more distrust if I’m with you. I’m sorry, but it’s better you go alone. Do you remember the overall details of our plan?”

I repeated what I had heard and summarized it for Zeke, who corrected me in some spots, and then deemed that it was sufficient. He handed me a letter of introduction written in both the language of the humans and lizardmen of Arconia with his official seal on it as well as his father’s, describing my position. Hopefully it would help in some way. “Good luck!” he said as I rode out.

It was close to evening now, and as I was alone in the carriage, I nearly dozed off and only came to when the driver tapped on the door after I hadn’t disembarked for over five minutes despite him stopping.

“Ah, sorry,” I said groggily, getting off. The carriage was far more comfortable than what I was used to.

I hadn’t been to this part of town before, though it was clear it was quite a classy part of it as even now, I couldn’t see any beggars or the like on the streets.

The building I had been dropped off in front of was one of the bookstores that belonged to the Zie family. There were three families who controlled the human side of Liberomancy within Arconia - the Zie, the Pei, and the Liu. Other families of course worked as Liberomancers, but only as adjuncts or under these three.

If I had not managed to make a Rank Three grimoire myself, I might’ve ended up on their doorsteps asking for a job eventually.

There were guards near the entrance.

“Halt!” they said. “What is your business here?”

“There is a meeting of Rank Three Liberomancers, isn’t there?” I asked. “I am a Rank Three Liberomancer.” It was not clearly visible in the low light, so I brought up my sash so that the distinctive purple color would be apparent.

“You… aren’t on the guest list,” one of them weakly protested. However, I could tell that they were definitely in a dilemma regarding whether to turn me away or not.

“One of you should run in and ask Master Jiah Pei, he’ll be asking for me,” I said.

It was a bluff - I didn’t even know if Jiah Pei was in the building or if he would want me there or not, but it seemed to work as they did not even take me up on my offer to verify things first and instead just decided to let me in.

This was why I had wanted Zeke to tag along - it would’ve give me some authenticity and they wouldn’t have turned away the governor’s son even if he was a lizardmen - right? At least, I would assume that would be the case.

It was likely Zeke didn’t see this as an issue and thought it would be easy enough for me to get in. He was right after a fashion, but it still annoyed me somewhat that I had to somewhat bluster my way through.

“Ah, forgive us, Master Liberomancer,” the other guard said as the opened the gate.

The shop was about thrice as big as Lauren’s, and while it obviously showed off the human-style architecture that was preferred in Arconia, what stood out the most to differentiate it from a lizardman shop was a statue of the Goddess Serragnin placed near the entrance. A plaque had something written on it beneath her, though I couldn’t make out much of what it said.

There were other people within the reception of the shop - it looked quite a lot like the storefront where we would sell things back in Lauren’s shop except slightly fancier.

It was my first time being in a human bookstore, though I had to note that it wasn’t that much different from a lizardman one, save for the large statue of the Goddess Serragnin placed in the interior, closely mirroring its counterpart placed outside. The one inside depicted her hands folded rather than holding a book as the one outside did - I didn’t know if that was just by chance or there was a deeper reason behind that.

Many lizardmen acknowledged Serragnin’s existence and importance, and some of them prayed to her, but they had their own religion with multiple deities unlike the humans here who saw Serragnin as the ‘one above all.’ Because the lizardmen religion was polytheistic, they did not seem to have much of a problem adding Serragnin to their own pantheon, though they also did not hold her in as high regard as the humans did.

I also saw a large painting of Serragnin hung up on the wall as well - it depicted her sitting upon a golden throne, analyzing a sheet of paper that was delivered to her by her vessel, the four-headed owl she was almost always shown associated with.

Whenever one wrote out a text with mana in an attempt to make a grimoire, who was it that judged whether or not it was ‘worthy’ enough to become a grimoire? Those who worshiped Serragnin as the ‘one above all’ said that all grimoires were sent to her after her apotheosis, and it was she who judged which were worthy or not. That was likely what the painting was trying to portray - the goddess in the process of judging whether a text was worthy or not. Quite fitting for a bookstore.

This theory had several holes in it though - the main one being who had judged Serragnin’s grimoires when she had started writing them? Or did she have a hundred percent success rate at the time? Not to mention that there were other Liberomancers around when she hadn’t ‘ascended’ to heaven yet, so who judged theirs?

Others thought there was some sort of mystical ‘magic force’ that judged grimoires - but what criteria did it use anyway? I had a vague idea from trial and error, but there were a lot of inconsistencies in what was allowed to be a grimoire or not - if there was a precise formula to making a successful grimoire, no one had discovered it yet.

I shook those thoughts away for now, because this was not the time to delve into the mysteries behind Liberomancy - I had a job to do.

I saw some people who were likely scribes and other shop employees. “I’m here for the meeting of Rank Three Liberomancers - ah, would one of you be so kind as to point me in the direction of such?”

“That way, Master Liberomancer,” one of them said. They all gave me odd looks. It was as if they were more perturbed by my appearance as a foreigner than the lizardmen were at me being human - though this was likely only because I still couldn’t fully register the subtleties of lizardmen facial expressions.

Still, none of them even questioned my appearance and the fact that I was headed towards the meeting. The sash did all the talking for me.

There was only one guard near the door, and I asked him to introduce myself before I entered.

He was gone for a minute, during which I tapped my foot nervously. I was not actually expected - would they turn me away? Should I have handed the guard the letter first? I cursed Zeke again for not giving me an opportunity to change my robes before coming here. But it would have taken too long to go to Granny Qi’s house and then to here - and lizardmen robes would not have fit me even if I had asked to borrow a set.

Before my thoughts ran any further amok the guard returned, and said I was free to go in.

The interior of the room was smaller than the one I’d just recently been in, though it was almost as richly decorated. There was another statue of the Goddess Serragnin, and portraits of people who were likely Zie family members.

However, though it was smaller, it had about the same number of people in it.

Despite the fact that the humans were outnumbered several times over in Arconia, they had almost the same number of Rank Three Liberomancers as the lizardmen. That was why Lance had been so adamant that they were needed - Arconia would be losing half of its battle strength if the humans did not cooperate. No matter how strong Lance was, he was only one person who knew only one Rank Four spell, he could not cover the entire city. I also saw two people, one of whom was Jiah Pei, wearing purple sashes. The lizardmen only had one - well there could be more on their side, but I doubted that every single Rank Three Liberomancer had made it to that meeting.

As I entered, all eyes were upon me.

The meeting couldn’t have started much earlier judging from the nearby incense stick, but being the last to arrive was never a good thing.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” I said. “And I wish a good evening to you all. I was late because I was just at the governor’s palace for another meeting, but I also come here on official business.” I pulled out the letter Zeke had given me, and handed it to the nearest person there, who passed it to the man who was at the head of the table. He was probably the head of the Zie family - Granny Qi had told me his first name, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember it at that moment. He did not have a purple sash though, so it made me wonder why it was they had decided to hold this meeting here rather than in one of the other family’s shops. Maybe the three families took turns hosting these kinds of meetings?

Once he had the letter, he read out the main section for everyone to hear. I couldn’t read either of those scripts, so it was actually the first time I got to know its contents.

“Why is this person allowed in here?” someone said, pointing at me once the contents of the letter had been read out. He was a young man, probably no older than I was. “He is not one of us and a servant of the lizardmen we shou-” he got no further as Jiah Pei, who was sitting next to him, tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a disapproving nod.

The man shut up, and Jiah Pei stood up, cupping his hands and bowing slightly, to the astonishment of many people there. “Fellow Master Liberomancer, allow me to apologize on behalf of my nephew. I hope you can overlook his outburst given his youth and inexperience?” There was a huge emphasis on the words ‘Master Liberomancer’ when he spoke.

I likewise cupped my hands and also lowered my head. “It is not a problem, Master Jiah Pei. I am not as a matter of fact here on behalf of the lizardmen, I am here as a neutral arbiter to try to smooth things out between us and the lizardmen. Things have been very frosty as of late, and I know many of you have your grievances with the lizardmen, but the fact remains that all of us are in danger right now. We won’t survive the dryad invasion without each other’s help, and the lizardmen felt that I would listen to their concerns as a third party without my own biases. I hope that you can feel the same- so that cooperation is easier.”

There were a lot of murmurs at that, though Jiah Pei’s voice cut through all of them. “I think we would all like to hear what you have to say- though, Chang Zie, we should certainly first get our guest a chair?”

The man at the head of the table nodded. There wasn’t a chair prepared for me - because unlike with the lizardmen, my presence had not been expected.

They called for the guard, who brought in a chair, and room was made for me opposite Chang Zie.

“So, Master Liberomancer,” Chang Zie said once I was seated. “We were discussing the upcoming invasion just as you arrived - and part of our deliberation was on sending an envoy of sorts to the lizardmen, though your presence makes something such as that superfluous. Could you enlighten us on what the governor’s plan currently is?”

I began talking about the general strategy for the defense of the city. They had some concerns and questions, some of which I wrote down to ask Zeke to clarify later.

Still, they mostly agreed with Lance’s plan, probably meaning it was quite a good one. No one officially accepted me as a go-between for the two groups, but none of them outright rejected me either.

They seemed to be talking as if they had already accepted me in that role - so I never brought it up again.

The meeting went on nearly as long as the lizardmen’s, and occasionally they would ask for my input or mention something like leather which they were in short supply of and requested from the lizardmen.

I had a list of all of these things which I tucked into my sleeve as the meeting ended.

Much like the meeting with the lizardmen, after this meeting I approached Jiah Pei, another Master Liberomancer in the room. There was one other such person, but they had already left. I would have to reach out to them some other day. I had a limited amount of time, and I needed allies. The other Master Liberomancers were the best investments when it came to the reward to effort ratio that I could achieve through socializing. That, and there should be something akin to professional courtesy in this world even among Master Liberomancers.

As it was, Master Jiah Pei and I already had a connection in the past, even if it was rather brief. He had made a large impression on me, and it looked like the same was true likewise. At least, I hoped it was.

“Ah, I didn’t think we would meet again like this in such a circumstance,” Master Jiah Pei said. “I thought it would be at this year’s tournament.”

“Yeah,” I said, although I had no real desire to attend this year’s tournament even if it had been held.

“You know, I knew there was something remarkable about you when we faced off,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d reach this Rank so quickly though - it’s as if I barely blinked, and here you are!”

“Ah, I guess I was lucky.”

“Please, join me for dinner. I have a few things I wish to talk to you about,” he said.

“I uh, would - hold on, I just need to speak to my carriage driver, he was supposed to take me back but…”

“...no issue, my family has its own as well, let him know I’ll send you back!” Jiah Pei said.

I explained this to the driver, who said he would rather wait no matter how long it took. It seemed he took his job very seriously and I felt slightly bad for making him wait outside as I rode to Jiah Pei’s house and went inside.

Jiah Pei’s house was naturally smaller than the governor’s palace, but still quite fancy - of note he had the pelts of several animals hung up in various places, so he was clearly a fan of hunting.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” I asked as I sat down.

“Oh, this isn’t about business,” Jiah Pei replied. “I just wanted to get to know you better. Who knows when the next chance might come up? I was thinking of inviting you for dinner for some time now, but the right opportunity never came up. I was busy with something or the other - I’m sure you can understand.”

I nodded - he was probably extremely busy given the size of the small business empire he had built up.

I was a bit surprised by one thing though - after dealing with political bickering for the last few hours I found it hard to believe that there was no ulterior motive here from Jiah Pei. I had agreed to tag along because there really wasn’t anything else I was doing currently, and I did make it a point to try to at least build some connection with the other Master Liberomancers like I had tried to do back with the lizardmen. Reputation can take you nearly everywhere - but to build it I had to interact with people, especially because I would not be leaving the city as soon as I had thought.

“After all,” he continued. “It’s not every day that I get to meet someone who can beat me in a round. It’s not every day I meet someone who legally got their hands on a demonic grimoire. And it’s not everyday I meet someone who became a Master Liberomancer seemingly overnight - tell me, was the Rank Three grimoire that you made the first Rank Three grimoire you memorized?”

I nodded.

“And afterwards, you made yet another Rank Three grimoire yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Incredible - it’s almost unbelievable. They might be right about you then,” he said.

“Uh, regarding what? And who’s ‘they?’”

“The guild when they said that you might have a real shot at making a new Rank Four grimoire,” he continued. “You know, everything you see here- was started by my father. I built on the foundation he had given me - it was easy with this starting advantage, but I wanted to go beyond. To create a Rank Four grimoire - I tried twice but failed both times.” He sighed. “Years of effort down the drain - I’ve given up on that dream since then. But I thought that maybe one of my children or grandchildren might be able to - but no, sadly none of them had anything close to approaching my talent. Forget about surpassing it. You though,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “You’re still very young and you made it to Rank Three with your own grimoire. I think you have a good shot at reaching Rank Four.”

Rank Four…

I had no firsthand experience as to how hard it was to get there, but if someone like Jiah Pei had failed - someone who was called ‘the old monster’ even by lizardmen for his skill in making grimoires in Liberomancer Duels, no wonder the prize for making one was so large.

Rank Four grimoires were about the size of a modern textbook, or so I’d heard. If I could get my phone to work, I had a few texts in there which I thought would fit the bill. Either a textbook, or something like Hamlet might work - but I hadn’t memorized anything of that length from Earth. If I did have access to a modern library from Earth though, this would’ve all been so much simpler- even better than having my phone working again.

I was sure that I could probably make a full repertoire of thirty Rank Five grimoires and even some Rank Six ones (if they existed outside of legend) if I could’ve just had all the books that were in my local library with me right now. Unfortunately, I had been transmigrated without any of the books in that library.

It had taken a year for me to get to Rank Three, and if things went smoothly, I could perhaps fill out all of my Rank Three slots in another four or five years. This length of time could be shortened to around two years if I could get my phone to work, but I had failed with every attempt to do so up till now. Failing that, there were some television shows which I vividly remembered, as well as movies that had sequels or were trilogies, or stories from some video games, that I thought could be translated into long enough scripts to make a Rank Four grimoire.

Still, even if I succeeded, that didn’t mean that it would be something useful - I could end up making a Rank Four grimoire that just gave a stat boost instead of a powerful spell or ability. That, or it might give me a spell or ability that required me to have a set of Rank Three or Rank Two grimoires first which were not available within Chipker or otherwise very hard to obtain. I would still get the prize, but it would not be as spectacular as for creating something like the grimoire that gave out [Inferno].

Something clicked in my mind then - maybe the reason I was getting all this respect from everyone wasn’t just because I was a Master Liberomancer. While that title definitely played a role, I felt there was more to it than that.

Sure, if I wasn’t at least Rank Three most of these people wouldn’t even look twice at me - but a Rank Four grimoire had been mentioned to me pretty often by this point, so it was likely also on people’s minds.

Perhaps all of this respect was not because of what I was right now - a Master Liberomancer, but what I might become. Someone who would make a Rank Four grimoire and become an earl. I was a rising star, and maybe people wanted to latch onto that.

“Maybe, but that would still take a few years,” I said, feeling like I had repeated this line several times before.

“Of course, absolutely, the mightiest of oaks was just an acorn once,” Jiah Pei said. “You’re a foreigner, so I don’t know if you knew this - but there is no Rank Four Liberomancer who’s human in all of Chipker. We have been hoping one would appear - you know, in truth, a lot of us are terrified of the lizardmen.” He said the last bit in a slightly hushed tone. “I mean, Rank Four - there is a big gap between that and Rank Three. If we had someone who was Rank Four on our side anywhere though, we would feel a lot more relaxed.”

Was that why they had fought so hard to get the death penalty for that lizardman who had killed a human? They knew that they did not have the upper hand, and so they felt like they had to compensate for it by being aggressive? It seemed counter intuitive somewhat, but one reason I had been told as to why smaller dogs were more aggressive than bigger ones was because the smaller one were more easily threatened. If you felt you were powerless- you might be more likely to be aggressive, because you simply did not want to show any moment of weakness.

They had agreed to drop their insistence on the death penalty during the earlier meeting however, something I was sure Zeke would be happy to hear about tomorrow.

“You could indeed be that person,” Jiah Pei said. “If you’ve gotten this far - even if it takes you twenty years to do so, it would still be a great achievement. It’s too bad that I didn’t meet you earlier - otherwise I would’ve offered to marry my granddaughter off to you.”

“Ah I-” I wasn’t sure how to respond as I felt some of the wine I was sipping go down the wrong pipe, causing me to cough to clear it up.

“Well, she’s married already, so things can’t be helped there,” Jiah Pei said. “More wine?”