A carriage approached the walls of Arconia, but it didn’t go for the main gate used by the ordinary pedestrians of the city.

  Instead, it halted before a smaller gate to the side. One look at the insignia inscribed on its doors - that of the city’s governor, explained why it had not used the common entrance.

  “Sir Zeke!” one of the lizardmen guarding the door said as a lizardman with deep blue scales stepped out of the carriage.

  Zeke was the eldest son of the city’s governor. He had been away on a mission on behalf of his family in the Royal Court of Chipker in the capital, and was returning to Arconia after several months.

  He headed towards the governor’s palace, but did not go to immediately visit his father - or to rest and freshen up for that matter.

  Instead, he went straight to his brother’s quarters.

  He had heard some… disturbing rumors about his younger brother’s activities while he had been away. If even half of them were true, his brother was in deep trouble, and the news of his father being extremely irate with him made sense.

  His younger brother, Drake, was in his study, though he wasn’t studying much, just absentmindedly looking out the window.

  “Oh, elder brother, welcome home,” he said upon noticing Zeke enter, which he didn’t until Drake was practically hovering over his shoulder. “What’s with that look?”

  “Is it true? What they say you did?” Zeke asked.

  Drake sighed and his tail began to thrash around in agitation. “I… I’m sorry for what I did. I didn’t mean to strike out like that but…” He then buried his head in his hands, clearly ashamed.

  Zeke sighed. This was a hard thing to fix.

  Their father only had two heirs - and though Zeke loved his younger brother dearly and there wasn’t a hint of bad blood between the two, only one of them could inherit their father’s title as governor.

  Zeke had done his own duties without reproach in the capital, while his brother… had humiliated himself badly.

  Someone else in Zeke’s position might’ve felt happy, as it would’ve secured their victory and ensured their position at the top.

  But the only thing that Zeke could feel was extreme sorrow at his brother’s condition..

  “Why even bother with all of that?” Zeke asked.

  “I… wanted to show that I could do something on my own,” Drake said. “I just… hadn’t expected it to be so hard.”

  Zeke understood. Drake was a Rank Three Liberomancer just like him, but both of them had been practically spoon fed grimoires their entire lives. They had had their paths carved out for them due to their family’s wealth and influence.

  Neither of them had made a single original grimoire in their lives - because there was no need to!

  At the level that both of them were at, it made far more sense to manage their family’s estates, take the profits, and buy the grimoires they needed. That was a far more productive use of their time.

  Still, Drake was right that if he had done well in the tournament, it likely would’ve raised his standing with his father. The reason that their family was so powerful and influential was because their great-grandfather had been an extremely wise Liberomancer in his own right.

  After meditating near an active volcano for a decade, he experimented for almost a decade more before creating the Rank Four grimoire that granted the [Inferno] spell. [Inferno] was an upgraded version of [Grand Fireball] - it contrasted with the royal family’s signature Rank Four spell [Magma Pillar] in that [Inferno] was an area-of-effect spell while [Magma Pillar] was more suitable for striking down a single target.

  It was thanks to this that their family occupied the position they did right now. Making a new Rank Three grimoire was an incredible feat in and of itself, enough to grant one the title of Master Liberomancer - but to make a Rank Four grimoire marked one down as a genius that was seen only once every few generations.

  Rank Four grimoires were national treasures and could not be bought or sold. Most Rank Four Liberomancers only had a single or at most two Rank Four grimoires given how rare they were - and how no one was willing to freely trade them. They were incredibly powerful spells which could spell ruin if they fell into the wrong hands.

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  Replicating them was a hassle as well given how much time it took. No matter who you were - whether you were a peasant plowing the fields or a king ruling a country; both only had twenty-four hours to work with in each day. And both only had about a century to live.

  People who knew Rank Four grimoires were people in high places - and they had other duties to attend to, such as governing and the like which consumed most of their time. Such people could usually only make two or three copies of the Rank Four grimoire that they knew in their entire lives.

  And given that many people had multiple children, not all of them would be able to inherit a Rank Four grimoire.

  Zeke’s father was much the same - he had almost completed a copy of the Rank Four grimoire that granted [Inferno] and had promised it to whoever he would select as his heir.

  Drake, for all that Zeke loved him, had trailed behind his elder brother when it came to official matters. His younger brother was too carefree and oftentimes lax with his duties.

  In an attempt to bolster his reputation, he thought by either winning the tournament on his own merits or at least getting a respectable ranking that he would be able to emulate some aspect of their great-grandfather by demonstrating a proficiency in creating grimoires. Most powerful noble houses were similarly founded on the efforts of one genius within the family line who had managed to make a Rank Four grimoire that was then later passed down through the generations - but, simply because the family line had created one such genius, it did not mean that the latter generations would also have such ability.

  Drake thought that if he made a good showing, it would signal to their father that there was a slight chance that he too, in the future, might have the potential to make a new Rank Four grimoire.

  However, this idea had backfired significantly. Drake had lost three rounds in a row - a laughably terrible performance.

  However, even if Drake had performed miserably, this could be brushed off.

  After all, participating in and of itself and showing a willingness to learn - if one wanted to, one could say that Drake had demonstrated those qualities at the very least.

  Such a statement would be a bold attempt to stretch the truth and save some ounce of his dignity, but that might’ve worked. Somewhat at least.

  But then Drake had attacked someone after his loss! Such a thing was unacceptable - even more so given his status and position! No wonder his father was livid - it wouldn’t have been a surprise if Drake had been exiled for what he had done.

  “Ah… I really screwed up, didn’t I?” Drake said, once again burying his face in his hands.

  Zeke took a look around the room. There were empty wine jars scattered about, and the servants had told him that Drake had stopped going outside a few days ago - likely because he was afraid of someone recognizing him and what people would say when they spotted him.

  It even looked like Drake was close to tears at this point - and in that moment, it was as if the two of them were no longer in the study.

  No, Zeke thought of them as they had been when they were children, playing outside. Once, Drake had fallen and skinned part of his knee and started crying. Zeke had calmed him down and cast a minor healing spell at the time, fixing it. His father had praised him for his talent at the time - but simultaneously, this was also likely one of the first times that Drake had felt inferior to his brother.

  Zeke even felt guilty, strange as it might seem, because he felt that he was responsible for this in a roundabout way. If he hadn’t been so successful - no, if he had just been in Arconia when this had happened, he could’ve prevented this from happening.

  “Relax, brother,” Zeke said, placing a claw on his brother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry - people will soon forget this. And about your actions - I’ll also speak with father. He will calm down as well and this will all be water under the bridge. I just… just please stop drinking so much, alright? And why don’t you come with me for a walk later on this evening through the city? I think some fresh air would do you good.”

  His brother protested but eventually agreed.

  Later on in his study Zeke was going over a grimoire that the servants had bought for him while he was away.

  “Sonnet 95,” he mused to himself, reading the title. That implied there were ninety-four more of these things, but if they were all mana-raising grimoires like this, he would’ve expected more to be on the market.

  Even though he was Rank Three, his set was not fully optimized yet. It spoke volumes to how difficult it was to do so if even someone with his connections struggled, though this was more a function of Zeke’s tender age rather than lack of resources.

  This year’s Book Fair was disappointing as it did not have a single Rank Three grimoire up for sale which he had not already memorized by now.

  He took out a translating device. He had been taught how to read the scripts of both the lizardmen and the humans who lived in Arconia, but this belonged to neither of them - even though, strangely enough, it had been made within this city as per the servants who had bought it. A logo of one of the stores within the city was stamped at the bottom. He recognized the stamp as belonging to a lizardmen bookstore - which made such a thing doubly curious as there were no large populations of lizardmen outside of Chipker. So why was a lizardmen within Arconia writing in a completely foreign script?

  He channeled mana into the device to try to read it - and found that it was surprisingly frustrating to do so. The language was complex and he failed to read it once - thankfully though, failing to read a grimoire didn’t destroy it, it only meant that one had to read it again from the beginning and the loss of howsoever much mana was used to try to decipher its contents. The second pass was usually easier than the first one and more likely to succeed as well given a Liberomancer would retain some comprehension from their first failed attempt.