However, there was a simple excuse that would let Stefan worm his way out of this sticky situation.

  “He would not have needed to declare himself,” she said, “because he was not a Liberomancer at the time. He only started just a while back, after he was already in the city. And after that happened, the shop he works at must have registered him with the Liberomancer’s Guild once he started working for them.”

  “Ah, yes, he is registered with the guild - which is why this discrepancy was noticed in the first place,” the officer said. “But - did he really just start a while back? I find that hard to believe.”

  It was not technically impossible for anyone to become a Liberomancer at any age - all you needed to do was to learn how to read and write in one language. That said, nearly all of them had started basic training and finished it by their late teens.

  His speed of progress was also unheard of - reaching Rank Two in only two months? From the way he wrote and the depth of his knowledge of literature from his home country he seemed to display, he should’ve been at that level years ago.

  “I mean,” the officer continued. “We know how he performed at the tournament - it was like he had been practicing Liberomancy for years!”

  “And yet,” Qi Nan said, “it is true. I saw him make his very first grimoire, you know?” She did not have the [Inspection] spell itself, but she had enough brains to put two and two together. If Stefan had known magic beforehand, he would not have been wandering the streets like a common vagrant. He could have been pretending - but what for? To get into her, a random old lady’s, good graces?

  No, she had seen the light flash into his eyes when he had realized how magic worked. Without a doubt, that had been genuine surprise.

  “Ah, is that so?” the officer said. He didn’t seem to be very convinced, but in the light of what Qi Nan had said, he had no real rebuttal. “Well, we were also hoping we could have a word with him as well. He isn’t here today?”

  “Ah, no,” she said. “He’s at work - I can give you directions to the shop.” She was quite eager to see them leave - though she felt she was obligated as a host to offer them lunch if they stayed, which they thankfully declined.

  She waved them off as they walked away, quite happy to see their retreating backs.

  Still, this did nothing to satiate her curiosity.

  If he hadn’t come in through the gates, where did he come from then? The sea? No boats went further than the coastline, and they didn’t get ships from far away countries due to regional factors like the sea serpents limiting travel that way. There was likely a way to smuggle goods and people into and out of the city, that was almost a given, but why would he want to be smuggled into here in the first place?

  It really did seem like he had just fallen out of the sky one day - but that was impossible!

  Over the next few weeks, I tried making more Rank Two grimoires. However, both of my next two attempts failed. I had been trying to create a grimoire that would give the spell [Water Whip], an offensive step up from [Create Water] much like [Fireball] was to [Create Flame], but my approach wasn’t working so I had to switch tactics.

  I had been trying to write more about water and its uses hoping it would get me something, but given that had failed twice - I changed to something that I was more familiar with.

  Even with a basic knowledge of human biology, I was able to write out several pages detailing the functions of various organ systems of the body and how they meshed together.

  And from this, I was successful and created a grimoire that gave the [Mend Injury] spell, a massive step up from the Rank One [Soothe Wounds]. While [Soothe Wounds] only worked on minor scratches and abrasions, [Mend Injury] worked on any wound so long as there was no major damage to any of the target’s internal organs. Repeated applications of it could also be used to mend broken bones faster.

  Without a doubt, this was a life-saving spell in many situations. Even when it couldn’t fully heal internal injuries, it could often patch them up long enough for either [Regeneration] to work or for you to find a healer for a more permanent solution.

  Being a spell, it could also be cast on other people unlike [Regeneration], though this also meant that there was a mana cost to using it.

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  I remembered that I had human physiology textbook saved on my smartphone - if I had been able to access it, I likely would’ve been able to create a grimoire that would give the Rank Three [Fountain of Vitality] that could save one from all but the most life-threatening injuries.

  But, I still had no way to charge it, so it remained little more than a fancy brick.

  Still, even if I didn’t have my phone, I could leverage this new grimoire and start selling it in the shop and also swap it with some of the others in the shop who were Rank Two to get a few more.

  That alone made the effort more than worth it.

  Unlike the grimoire that gave [Invisibility] I had no problems with selling this as [Mend Injury] was already a well known spell.

  But now my mind went to what I was going to write next. That was what my thoughts mostly revolved around - what grimoire I should either write or find next, even while I was walking down the street.

  That’s why I took a moment to react when someone called out my name one day during the weekend when I was taking a stroll, looking for inspiration.

  “Hey,” I said to the shopkeeper who had called out to me. He was a lizardman, and even now I had trouble remembering their names. This shopkeeper sold things like rope and candles. I didn’t interact with him much, I just knew him because his shop was close to our house and I’d often see him unloading goods sometimes in the morning when I was on the way to work.

  “Someone was looking for you,” he told me.

  “For me? What for?”

  “I don’t know - they were human and I - well, I’m not too good at telling you apart, truth be told,” he said. “But he had a different hair color than most of y’all. I think he was definitely a foreigner, and was asking around if we had seen a foreign Liberomancer who he was supposed to meet up with.”

  In this local area, ‘Foreigner Liberomancer’ pretty much only applied to me. “Really? Did he say what he wanted?”

  “No, but he went over that way,” he said, pointing. “He was wearing some weird clothes as well.”

  My heart began to beat faster as I considered the implications of this.

  Was… this someone from Earth?!

  I had gone back to the place where I had been dumped into this world countless times for nothing to happen.

  I had pretty much lost any hope that someone might be coming to rescue me - but my mind flashed back to that girl who had bought two of my grimoires.

  I was able to find no traces of her afterward - but did she have someway to go back home? Or to contact someone back home? Did the U.S. government secretly know about this world?

  All my thoughts on grimoires, on leveling up, on what to write next - they all went out the window as my legs carried me as fast as I could run.

  Now, my thoughts instead went to the taste of pizza from my favorite pizza place. To how much Cheddar must’ve missed me - I could barely forgive myself for missing his birthday, but I knew he wouldn’t be too mad, just happy to see me. I could almost hear the sound of his frantic footsteps as he bounded towards the door when he realized that I had returned.

  And drat; this meant that I had more than three month’s worth of coursework to catch up on once I got back!

  I couldn’t help but feel a wide grin grow on my face.

  I might finally be going back home!

  As I rounded a corner, I saw who they must have been talking about.

  But then, I faltered somewhat.

  Yes, their clothes were different. They were wearing a strange red gown that was not native to this country - and would not be common back on Earth either.

  Their facial features were different from those of the humans of Arconia, that was for sure, but they didn’t have anything like a smartwatch or smartphone or any of the other things you’d expect someone from my world to have.

  Still, maybe they were hiding those things in order to be incognito or whatever.

  “Hello,” I called out to this person as they turned to face me.

  “Hello,” he said, seemingly annoyed before he noticed my facial features. “Are you…”

  I faltered yet again. His words - they didn’t match his lip movements. So he was not speaking English for some reason, assuming that he could. “I heard you were looking for a Foreign Liberomancer?”

  “Ah, so it’s you!” he said, now far more pleasant. “The night sky is filled with diamonds as far as the eye can see.”

  I didn’t know what he was getting at with that last line. “Okay… but, are you here to take me back?”

  That didn’t seem to be the response he was looking for as he frowned. “The night sky is filled with diamonds as far as the eye can see.” He repeated those words again, more slowly, as if they had some sort of hidden meaning to them.

  “I… that’s fine, but I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I told him. “Are you not here to take me back home?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  My heart sank.

  This was not someone from back on Earth. It looked like this was someone from a different country here in Libraria, and he was here looking for someone who definitely wasn’t me.

  “What country are you from?”

  He frowned, his earlier cordiality now gone with the wind. “None of your business. Now, if you’re not the person I’m looking for, scram!”

  The man’s friendly demeanor had completely evaporated when he realized that I wasn’t the person he was looking for.

  Sighing despondently, I turned around and walked back home.

  I should’ve known it was too good to be true.

  “Did you find him?” the shopkeeper asked me as I made a slow trek back in defeat.

  “He wasn’t looking for me,” I told him.

  “Ah, is that so? Sorry, when he mentioned a foreigner Liberomancer who was a human you were the first person who came to mind so…”

  “Ah, it’s not a problem,” I told him. I understood why the shopkeeper had thought the way he did.

  It was bad enough to be stuck here in this world, but to have been given a glimmer of hope only to have it snatched away so abruptly- whichever deity ruled over this land, if there indeed was one, had a very twisted sense of humor to be playing this kind of a trick on me!