“Where did you learn about this… invisible ink thing?” Granny Qi asked.

  “Oh, my father told me about it once,” I said. He had showed me how it worked back when I was doing a project in elementary school.

  “Alright, don’t do that again,” Granny Qi said, glaring at me. “If I were you, I’d keep that grimoire hidden for now. I don’t think anyone else has a grimoire that can give that ability in the city.”

  I understood what she was saying - right now, [Invisibility] could be a helpful last resort trump card, and if I went around selling a grimoire that gave this spell, people would know about it, making it far less useful. Not to mention it was one of those spells that could potentially cause a lot of chaos.

  However, I couldn’t help but sigh inwardly.

  This was another reason why it was harder to advance as one moved up the Ranks. As people found valuable grimoires, they would not want to sell them.

  The higher ranked ones were even considered national treasures at times and matters of national security for many countries. It was much the same way that a large corporation back on Earth would consider certain patents and other trade secrets valuable intellectual property - though unfortunately no such laws existed in this world.

  And because of this, many people, for the same reason I was withholding this grimoire, guarded theirs with intense jealousy. Once a copy was leaked out to the public, there was nothing stopping someone from making copies of it.

  “I won’t,” I reassured her.

  “Also, if I learn you’ve been using it to peep on women while they’re bathing…” she said fiercely.

  “I won’t, I promise…”

  She shut the door behind her.

  She didn’t make me another cup of tea, though I couldn’t blame her for that.

  Still, even if all of that hadn’t gone the way I expected, I was quite pleased with my work.

  Maybe there were people who knew [Invisibility] in the city, but just hid it? There was a Rank One spell called [Camouflage] that was somewhat similar, but it was only good for hiding if no one was looking at you closely. Thankfully [Invisibility] did not require you to know [Camouflage] in order to learn it.

  As it was, clearly there was a world of difference between Rank One and Rank Two spells. You could at most do what could generously be called exuberant party tricks with Rank One spells, but when you got to Rank Two you got some things that were very useful.

  This whole deal left the issue that I didn’t have a grimoire I could make and sell, so more experimentation would be needed. I did have two more Rank Two grimoires - the one I had won which granted [Regeneration] and the other that I had bought that granted [Fireball], but both of those were in different languages so while I could read and memorize them, I couldn’t replicate them.

  I didn’t have the mana reserves to read those two right now as they had been spent making this grimoire, but once I did, I would have three Rank Two slots filled up. That still left twenty-seven to fill, and without swapping with other people or buying more it would take forever to fill them on my own.

  For now, I wanted to know the limits of [Invisibility]. I had read The Invisible Man and so some questions popped into my mind.

  I decided to experiment a bit.

  When I turned invisible, my clothes also turned invisible, though the chair I was sitting on did not, and the floor did not change whatsoever.

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  I had only recently eaten dinner, though the food was not visible in my stomach even though it wouldn’t have had time to assimilate yet. Thank heavens for that!

  I picked up a pen - it turned invisible when I picked it up, but turned visible the moment I dropped it. However, I could still push my chair without it turning invisible.

  There were some things I knew about the spell by simple instinct. For one, I couldn’t cast it on anyone other than myself - not on another person, and not on another object either.

  Secondly, its use in combat was somewhat limited as it would stop working the moment I took an offensive action. Say I was to turn invisible and sneak behind someone and try to stab them - when I tried to stab them I would become visible. Same thing would happen if I tried to turn invisible and cast, say, [Fireball]. Perhaps there was a Rank Three stealth spell similar to [Invisibility] that got around those restrictions?

  Other than those specific restrictions to the spell, there were the more obvious drawbacks such as invisibility not hiding your scent or any trail you would make while walking.

  Still, even with these restrictions, it was no doubt extremely useful for both reconnaissance and also escape from situations where force could not prevail.

  I could maintain it for about fifteen minutes with my current mana reserve. I would have to work on making another Rank Two grimoire later, for now, I just cleaned up and went to sleep.

  As I drifted off, my train of thought took a different turn.

  I was not arrogant enough to believe that I was the first person to have thought of making a grimoire that gave this [Invisibility] spell, despite what Granny Qi said. In some other language it may not have even needed to be written in invisible ink. What could be invented by one person could very easily be thought of and invented by someone else. There were countless examples of different grimoires giving the same ability or spell.

  I hadn’t seen anyone disappearing in the middle of the street though. If there was someone who could use it though, most likely, like me, they would be hiding their ability.

  With that said, had I ever been out on the street, being watched by someone who was invisible, but I just didn’t know it at the time? It was a Rank Two spell, so it wasn’t like they could give it out freely to government officials, but it would be of immense use to certain people like spies.

  I tossed and turned in bed and resolved to think about this issue later. As it was, there was nothing I could do about it.

  Qi Nan closed the door to Stefan’s room.

  She had still not gotten over her shock at him suddenly vanishing before her eyes. That boy really was something else!

  Perhaps she had overreacted - but Stefan had not explained anything about what he was going to do and simply turned invisible!

  To her, it looked like he had vanished into thin air, which is why it had startled her so much.

  However, right now, that wasn’t what lingered on her mind as she made her way downstairs.

  No - it was a comment Stefan had made earlier. When he had told her that his father had shown him how to use that strange ink. It had been so spontaneous that she was sure that he was telling the truth.

  Qi Nan was not blind - she knew that something was definitely off about Stefan. His story did not add up in the slightest.

  When she had first met him, she had been sure that he was illiterate. Or why else would he be wandering around the streets with no job and not a Denarius to his name?

  But that clearly had not been true. He was clearly lying about where he came from. He said he came from a country ‘very far away’ but had taken weeks before giving it a name.

  Qi Nan had her theories as to what was going on.

  He was a foreigner, and the guards would not have let him into the city if he had no money or job lined up. They were known for throwing out beggars, vagrants, and the homeless who caused too much trouble inside the city limits.

  So, that meant that he had come into the city and some kind of misfortune had befell him causing him to end up like that.

  But why wouldn’t he simply tell her that?

  And that didn’t add up with another thing that was plainly obvious - Stefan was the dumbest smart person she had ever met in her life.

  There was a story told back in her village about a young girl by the name of Torako, who was a poor farm girl who grew cabbages.

  She had no family, and her entire day consisted of tending to her cabbage patch. One day, she found something odd while she was working - there was the head of a baby among the cabbage heads planted in the ground! She wandered over and saw that the baby was still alive, and she took it out of the ground.

  Despite her efforts, she could not find where the baby had come from - it looked like it had just sprouted out from the cabbage patch.

  Needless to say the other villagers did not believe this story, and what they assumed was that Torako had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, and so they banished her from the village.

  Still, Torako found that she could not abandon the baby, who had started to grow remarkably fast. Even at such a tender age, he was able to hunt and provide food for his adoptive mother, and was able to keep the magical beasts away from her. The boy eventually grew into a giant standing over twenty feet tall, and eventually Torako would get her revenge on the village that had scorned her so.