The only thing that could potentially be more valuable than flight was teleportation, but the only mentions of that I had heard of were in some of the stories of the Goddess Serragnin being able to travel incredible distances nearly instantly - meaning it was likely impossible for mortal Liberomancers to achieve.

"Ah, I - there are a few issues with that," Zeke said. "That grimoire I used was written in a language I don't know, so I cannot make a copy for you myself. It is also quite difficult to purchase something like that - to put it into perspective, I cannot even get a copy for my own younger brother right now."

I nodded. "I understand - I mean, this is not something that I'm absolutely demanding you do, and right now is the wrong time for it anyway given the incoming invasion, but as long as you make a good faith attempt to help me out in this endeavor, I'll be satisfied."

That was why reputation was everything - if you were known as someone who couldn't deliver or bilked on your promises, you would soon be shunned out of most pathways to advancement. People would soon start to refuse selling grimoires to you - and might also show hesitancy with buying them. The guild might stop cooperating with you or you might see attractive offers being given preferentially to other people.

Zeke could get away with things more than most people could given he was the governor's son, but there was a limit to it. The incident involving his younger brother, Drake, was proof of that.

And I knew Zeke's reputation beforehand - which is why I was willing to take something as tenuous as his word for it.

"Your terms are acceptable," Zeke said, and we shook on it. "Ah, I would not worry too much about difficulties with your role, however, I only wish for you to smooth things over. It can take a lifetime to train a politician - trust me, I know, so long as you don't do something especially egregious or cause conflict yourself, I think that we will be fine. I only ask that you listen to both sides as best as you can."

I nodded. "That I can try to do."

"I hate to ask this of you as well," Zeke said. "But, we are having a meeting with the other lizardmen Rank Three Liberomancers of the city this-" he looked outside, "-very soon actually. I wanted you there, but if we want to get there in time, we would need to leave almost immediately."

It was like sitting for a job interview, and when you asked, 'When can I start?' the interviewer said 'You got the job. You start immediately,' and then lead you to where you'd be working right then and there.

"I hope this will not conflict with anything you were planning on doing?" Zeke asked.

"Ah, no, it can wait for later," I told him. I did have some things to discuss and arrange with Granny Qi, but that could also be done tomorrow. "Let's go then."

We made our way to his carriage. I had ridden in a few of them before - if you had to travel long distances you could pay one like you would a taxi, though I usually just walked around.

It was kind of expected that the interior of his carriage was way fancier and more comfortable than any of the public ones. The seats were also larger - being designed specifically for a lizardman.

I saw Zeke relax as he sat down, letting out a sigh of relief.

"I apologize - most of the furniture in the house must've been too small for you," I said. A lot of the 'human' furniture was also somewhat small for someone like me; humans in Chipker were on average shorter than back home so the problem was likely even worse for someone like him.

He chuckled. "I have very rarely been in a human house before, and those I do frequent have a chair or few reserved for lizardmen… I guess I can't really complain however, dropping by like that unannounced."

"Still, it's never nice to feel uncomfortable like that," I said.

The ride towards the governor's palace took about thirty minutes, and it was only the two of us in the carriage, which made things kind of awkward to just be staring at each other without saying anything.

Then again, what was there to say? I barely knew the guy. I was also never very good at small talk, and on the subway or the bus I'd usually be doing something on my smartphone right now. People in the days before then would read the newspaper on long journeys.

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I had nothing like that.

"So, have you given any thought to what you wish to specialize in?" Zeke asked after five minutes of neither of us saying anything aside from general comments regarding the weather and other mundane topics.

This was the equivalent of asking someone what they were majoring in if they were in college - basically a standard question to ask when there was nothing else to talk about.

"I uh, haven't really decided yet," I said. I had only recently become a Rank Three Liberomancer, though that was an important question to consider regarding which grimoires I'd add in the future. "I have considered becoming more of a generalist…" I trailed off, because saying that was kind of like saying that your major was Undeclared - in other words, something only people with no direction in life tended to say.

There were people who tried to do a little bit of everything, but much like on Earth, the best way to get ahead was to be very good at doing one or two specific things. A generalist did have more options, but from what I had found out, in ninety-nine scenarios out of a hundred a specialist would be better off.

Usually the only people who were generalists were those who had either given up on really advancing further in Liberomancy due to a lack of interest, or those who had other obligations like family or the like that they had to support. These people were not necessarily generalists out of choice, but more of the fact that they were unable or unwilling to try to accumulate more grimoire to eventually become respected specialists.

"What did you specialize in, and why'd you choose it?" I asked him, trying to flip around the question.

"I am a fire elementalist," he said. "As for why- my father was one, and so was my grandfather, and so was my great-grandfather." He chuckled. "And if I ever intend to inherit [Inferno] I needed to be one anyway, so it made sense."

Elementalists were Liberomancers who specialized in dealing damage with a specific element and would get grimoires to support that element.

As an example, fire elementalists would use grimoires like, [Blazing Heart] which increased damage from fire spells by twenty-five percent, [Inner Heat] which reduced the mana cost of fire spells by thirty percent. Those were Rank Two skills, but there was also the Rank Three skill [Internal Volcano] which increased both range and damage done by fifty percent, as well as [Fiery Spirit] which let you cast a fire-elemental spell twice every hour without consuming any mana. You would also invest in attacking options other than [Fireball] or [Grand Fireball] like [Incinerate] which was a spell that did massive damage to a single target rather than doing moderate damage to many targets like [Fireball] and the like.

I didn't know the criteria for learning [Inferno] given it was kept a bit hush-hush as it was a Rank Four spell, but presumably it required knowing two Rank Three fire elemental spells in order to learn.

That was one reason why it got harder to add more grimoires to your repertoire as you went up in rank. Like building a pyramid, your options would greatly decrease as you added on more layers, and you couldn't make a top layer larger than one beneath it. As an example, even if you could somehow theoretically get thirty Rank Four grimoires from around the continent, you would likely not be able to read all of them as some of them might require you to know one or two Rank Three spells to learn them. The amount of different Rank Three spells required would likely, because of this, number more than thirty. And since you could only have thirty slots for each rank, you would likely find yourself in a situation where even if you had thirty of them some were incompatible as a combination because of this limitation.

"Fire elementalists are pretty popular here," I said offhandedly. "I've often wondered why…" I knew a lot about fire elementalists in particular as Granny Qi talked about them - Hei Nan had also been a fire elementalist.

"Oh," Zeke said. "The royal family are fire elementalists, and the lizardman who invented [Inferno], my great-grandfather was also one. So people naturally looked up to these figures of authority, and thought that they too, should do the same, and it leads to a positive loop where most of the grimoires available revolve around becoming a fire elementalist, and so the easiest thing to specialize in is that field, so more people do so, and the cycle repeats itself."

That was true. Say, for example, I decided to become an earth elementalist - well, then, I was in for a rough time because there were basically none of them in Arconia. I would have to almost make each grimoire myself, assuming that I was able to create them in the first place, or have them imported from far off lands which half the time would not even be possible especially for Rank Three grimoires given the distances involved unless I went there personally.

"Yeah, I've given some thought to becoming one myself…" I said.

"It isn't a bad field," Zeke said. "I mean, my entire set of grimoires is basically the same as my father's and grandfather's, as it was set up which ones I would read even before I was born. But- I did have to specialize in something. Not to mention, I think it's a good thing that we have so many dedicated fire elementalists. The incoming dryads are weak to fire-based spells after all. Same reason it's a similar situation in Hitutsa, where they also have a lot of fire elementalists in order to deal with them more effectively."

There was of course, a drawback to specializing in an element - if we ever encountered an enemy in the future who was immune to or resistant to fire, it would be an issue. Granted most Liberomancers did have some spells from other disciplines that would come in handy so they wouldn't be completely useless, but it did mean that their effectiveness would be greatly reduced.

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