I found myself entering a large room with several benches arranged in three rows - it sort of looked like one of the lecture halls back in my college, though a bit more old-fashioned with no computers and an actual blackboard.

The moment I walked in, everyone who was seated got up and stared at me expectantly. Half of them even bowed.

It took me a moment to get what was going on - they had seen the purple sash I was wearing and thought that I was the teacher!

"Uh, no, I'm just here to learn like you guys-" I said and awkwardly found a seat, my face slowly turning red from embarrassment. People gave me confused looks, and time seemed to completely freeze to a standstill until the actual instructor walked in.

The class was a mix of humans and lizardmen - things had gotten pretty heated up after there had been an incident where a lizardman drunkenly killed a human, but with the upcoming dryad army people seemed to have put a pin in that issue and were cooperating as much as possible. To me, it was kind of amazing how much things had improved in that regard seemingly overnight. At least, there were far less conflicts on the surface and things had gone somewhat back to normal on a superficial level. If there was lingering resentment, people on both sides had chosen to bury it deep down for the time being.

The instructor was a human, and did a double-take when he saw me. "Ah, Master Liberomancer, this is an introductory class. Are you perhaps lost?"

One of the downsides of becoming a Master Liberomancer, I quickly found, was that people expected you to already have the answer to everything.

Before, it wasn't such a big deal if I wanted to ask a question.

I had asked a lot of stupid questions (at least, they were considered stupid by the standards of this world) when I was a Rank One Liberomancer, yet aside from an occasional exasperated look, I had never felt too weird asking those questions. People could excuse your ignorance at that level and no one really gave me a hard time then.

Now though? Not only was I a Master Liberomancer, but also a very young one - so people thought I was some sort of prodigal once-in-a-century genius. "Do you not even know something this simple, Master Liberomancer?" - no one openly said that, but I could tell they were thinking it. People would of course find it odd, much in the same way that if they saw a person who had a doctorate in mathematics having trouble comprehending basic algebra,

"Uh, no, I came here on purpose," I said. "I uh, it's been some time since I've brushed up on the basics, and I don't have that much combat experience, so I came to see if there was anything new to learn… uh, I hope that's alright?"

"Alright?! It's more than alright!" the instructor yelled with newfound enthusiasm. "I like your attitude Master Liberomancer, after all, you're right - it's never a bad idea to revisit the basics, and you can always learn something new, can't you?"

"Uh, right…"

"Ah, most of this class might be pretty boring for you though," he continued. "We are going to be going over a lot of very basic stuff, after all. Now, everyone, my name is Zhen Liu, I am a Rank Two Liberomancer and I've spent a good portion of my life hunting dangerous magical beasts either with a team or alone. Needless to say I've got a good bit of combat experience, though even for one such as me, fighting the dryads is a novel experience. I know many of you are nervous about the upcoming dryad beast tide, but worry not - so long as we stick to a concrete battle plan and keep cool heads there should be no issues."

Turns out when he said he was going to start from the very basics, he really meant it.

"Humans and other intelligent creatures, even if they are not Liberomancers, have a small amount of energy known as 'mana'," Zhen Liu started. "What puts Liberomancers apart is that along with knowledge of a system of writing, they can imbue works of writing with mana and create magical texts called grimoires that can impart magical abilities. Grimoires and Liberomancers have Ranks, and for Liberomancers each Rank is divided into ten levels. Each level can hold only three grimoires, and by advancing, one can reach the next Rank…"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I had to try really hard not to fall asleep in this next segment. It was boring and slow, but then again - this was a beginner class and I had been the one who had insisted on being here! It's just that I hadn't expected so much of it to be so basic! This might've ended up being a waste of time - though from the looks of the other people there, I got through stealing small glances at them, it seemed that quite a few of them did need these things spelled out for them.

Right, there was no formal institution for training Liberomancers within Chipker. As such, their knowledge regarding Liberomancy greatly varied - there were organizations like universities in this world just like back on Earth, but none within this kingdom.

The closest one, geographically speaking, was the University of Hitutsa. Unlike universities back home, which tended to be dedicated to a wide variety of subjects, the ones in Libraria were almost entirely focused on Liberomancy. In addition to training Liberomancers for a fee, they had libraries that were said to have tens of thousands of templates for various grimoires. Even though I wouldn't be able to use any of them, I had still intended to visit at least one such institution because Liberomancers naturally gravitated to such places and the chances of finding a rare grimoire were higher there.

There were a couple of reasons that there was no such institute within Chipker - lack of faculty, better opportunities in other sectors, etc., but the real reason was likely the political divide within Chipker.

Hitutsa was nearly homogeneous, being almost entirely human. It lacked the inter-species tensions that plagued a country like Chipker, in other words. It also had a single standard writing system that was quite similar to the one used by the humans in Chipker. This made it much easier for the Liberomancers there to come together in large numbers to create an institute like a university.

Chipker on the other hand, had to contend with two extremely different forms of writing being widely used, and also the friction between humans and lizardmen. Even in the best of times, I could see how it would be very difficult to get the two sides to put their differences aside and create an institute like that. With the ebb and flow of difficult situations such as the recent one, it became even harder to seek cooperation in that regard. There likely wasn't enough demand for there to be two universities - one for humans and one for lizardmen separately. And because of these structural issues, like there being two very different writing systems with very little in common with each other and some inherent friction between the two species, making a singular institute was, with the current state of affairs, nothing more than a pipe dream.

Liberomancers were trained, therefore, in haphazard manner within Chipker. They would get instruction from their families, or relatives, with some of them like Hei Nan having to basically forge their own paths.

Theoretically speaking, anyone could become a Liberomancer at any age. All they needed to do was learn how to read and write in any language.

Practically though the story was quite different. Learning languages, including how to read and write, was far more difficult once a person was past their formative years. This world wasn't like Earth either where such a thing would be easier to access - I hadn't heard of anything like night schools or even regular schools on a comparable scale to what we had back on Earth here. Learning would require a large upfront investment not only in the form of time but also to purchase ink and paper.

There was a famous story of a man near the capital who had, after a long life of farming decided at the age of sixty that rather than retire, he wished to delve into Liberomancy. It had been his lifelong dream, yet, he had been born into a peasant family and as such for most of his life his dream was unattainable as he had to work hard to support his family. Adding to this, not a single person in his village was literate, but he had saved up some money from decades of long labor as his family's fortunes had somewhat improved and found himself a tutor in a nearby city. After a road paved with difficulties and hard work he finally found himself a Rank Three Liberomancer at the age of eighty-one; ultimately achieving his lifelong dream at that ripe old age.

But the reason that this story was so famous to the point that I had heard about it in the first place was because such a story was that rare! It was natural, in such circumstances, for training to be uneven and for many lower-ranked Liberomancers to harbor superstitions and other beliefs about Liberomancy that were not entirely true.

That was why the lesson was interrupted occasionally by someone asking a question that I felt was extremely basic- but I had to remind myself where I was sitting. And anyway, that was the whole reason the Liberomancer's Guild was holding these session free of cost- in order to get everyone at a reasonable level of knowledge before the siege began. Zhen Liu, however, moved onto a subject even I was curious about as to what his opinion was regarding - stats.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.