It was likely what had been used to kill those guards. In terms of pure damage output against a single target, it was better than any Rank Two spell and would likely only be matched by a Rank Three spell, and was a bargain in terms of mana cost as it still cost the same amount of mana as a Rank One spell.

  Anyone who learned it could probably still find it useful even at Rank Three.

  Disregarding that, my first reaction was to just burn it. It was considered sacrilegious to burn a grimoire, given how much effort went into making them, but it turned my stomach at the thought of someone profiting from another person’s murder.

  Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anything like forensic science in this world that could be used to find out the victim - if we were back on Earth, I wasn’t sure if there would still be DNA they could test for after all this time, but it would’ve been worth a shot to find out the victim’s identity.

  Some nameless person had been killed to make this grimoire. They probably had family or friends who were wondering what had happened to them, and if we could locate them, we could give them some closure. And I thought that if anyone deserved to keep this demonic grimoire, it would be their next of kin. Not to mention finding out who the victim was would also help in deducing the identities of the two criminals in question.

  Sadly, it didn’t appear that such methods existed here in Libraria.

  “I’ll think about what to do with it later,” I told her and decided to stash it away for now.

  Thinking about the demonic grimoire did give me the idea to see if I could make a grimoire that might be good for investigative issues if I wrote something in it about forensic science.

  I had only a tenuous grasp over that subject, but I combined that with some of the knowledge I had from watching crime shows to see if I could put something together.

  It wasn’t done by the time the week rolled around, and it was just another day at work where I was trying to copy things I’d already made when someone walked into the store.

  Nothing unusual, just another customer, and it wouldn’t have even registered on my radar until I was told they wanted to talk to me specifically.

  “Uh, yes?” I asked them.

  “Is it true that you have a demonic grimoire?”

  “Yes…”

  “May I see it?”

  “I don’t have it and… I’m afraid I have to decline that request,” I told him. I didn’t want to go waving it around unnecessarily and drawing attention to myself.

  “Ah - I would be interested in buying it,” he insisted, undeterred. “One thousand Denarii.”

  That was more than ten times the price of a normal Rank One grimoire! “Uh… I’ll think about it…” I hadn’t decided on what I wanted to do with it yet.

  I was still leaning towards burning it. The only reason I hadn’t was because if it was found out that I had done so, the backlash would be severe. Grimoires were the lifeblood of Liberomancers, and one of the biggest social taboos was against burning or willfully destroying grimoires. That sentiment extended to even demonic ones. Even someone like me, who had only been in this world for a few months, knew how seriously such a matter would be taken, as it was one of the first things that had been drilled into my head. It was considered far worse than book burning back on Earth.

  He immediately offered to not only double, but later triple the price, but I still had to turn him down with a ‘I’ll think about it.’

  He wasn’t the only one - two more people came forward later on in the day asking to buy it.

  But it turned out that my problems regarding that grimoire had just begun.

  The customers who visited the shop were all lizardmen, but when I went back home, there were four humans standing outside with similar offers.

  As news spread throughout the city over the following days, this only got worse.

  I could tell my other coworkers were bothered by the people coming to the shop not to buy anything, but to talk to me.

  Well, some of them did buy something just to show that they weren’t wasting time, but a lot of them were just making noise and driving some of the actual potential customers away.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  At home, it wasn’t much better. People were standing outside of Granny Qi’s house even today and the line was just getting bigger as time passed.

  The next day, when I came back home and narrowly dodged the crowd of people standing there, Granny Qi even complained about it.

  “They are becoming quite troublesome,” she said. There was a hint of annoyance in her voice, which for her, was a huge deal.

  By then I had said ‘no’ or ‘I’ll think about it’ so many times that I was frustrated out of my mind.

  And seeing this issue affect Granny Qi was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  I immediately stopped eating, went upstairs, fetched my translation device and the demonic grimoire.

  I then walked outside - many of the stragglers were still there.

  On hindsight, I probably should've thought what I was about to do once with a cooler head, but in the heat of the moment I had lost myself and just wanted to be rid of the grimoire.

  “Hello!” I called out to them. “Good evening - this is the grimoire I think you all wanted.” I waved it out in the air for them to see.

  I then channeled mana into my translation device to read the grimoire.

  It was not difficult to read because all it was was the word ‘DIE’ written over and over.

  That caused another wave of revulsion to come over me - there was no artistry or deep insight that went into the creation of this grimoire. The fact that an innocent was killed to make this added to the feeling that this grimoire carried no inherent value - if anything, it had a negative value on the world, the life that had been taken to make it.

  It was if anything ‘anti-art’, something that completely perverted the notion of Liberomancy and grimoires as I knew it.

  Still it meant that I was able to finish it in under a minute, after which it disappeared into a wisp of smoke. “I have already read it - it is no longer for sale, please disperse,” I told everyone and then walked back inside.

  I had overwritten Polonius Advises Laertes to learn it, but that wasn’t a big deal.

  I could just go upstairs after dinner and write out that poem again and have a copy of the grimoire as backup in case I ever needed to re-learn it for some reason.

  I had memorized that poem normally and still remembered it verbatim even if it wasn’t occupying one of the slots in my mind.

  “They won’t be bothering us again,” I told Granny Qi as I sat back down.

  She had a tiny smirk on her face - if I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought that she secretly approved of what I had done.

  I didn’t even know why people wanted it so badly - sure, there was the whole thing where you couldn’t buy it normally and that must’ve given it a certain allure, but most of those people didn’t even know what it did.

  If they had an idea of what [Crimson Lance] was like as a spell, the price likely would’ve climbed even higher, because even I had to admit that as a spell it was quite exceptional. But, I hadn’t told anyone what the grimoire did, and it still attracted that big of a crowd.

  I had heard of people back on Earth wanting to buy memorabilia of serial killers - maybe this was just something like that?

  Still, if it was me, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable buying something like that.

  My little stunt had had the desired effect though - people were no longer bothering me about it as it looked like news had spread that it wasn’t for sale anymore.

  A few days later I had finished the grimoire I was writing regarding forensics - although it was successful it gave a strange passive ability called [Unobstructed Sight] and wouldn’t help me find the victim of that demonic Liberomancer even if I still had the demonic grimoire.

  It didn’t enhance one’s vision whatsoever, but it allowed you to always see as if you were in ideal conditions. Fog, dust, smoke - none of those things would limit your vision, but there was a limit to this as you couldn’t see through completely opaque objects. It also basically gave the Rank One skill [Night Vision] wrapped into it as it also allowed for visibility even at night.

  I continued to work on trying to make new Rank Two grimoires, and when possible, to swap some of the ones I had for others. It was harder than with Rank One grimoires as now, people were very protective of some of their grimoires - much as I was with the one that gave [Invisibility].

  I made a grimoire of the ending of Romeo & Juliet that gave +1 to mana, which made this an instant best-seller as it was a Rank Two mana-raising grimoire.

  I made another grimoire which was a detailed biography of Mahatma Gandhi - I had made something similar back in high school so this was relatively simple, which gave +1 to Wisdom.

  A grimoire on cryptocurrency gave Luck +1, as did a grimoire entailing how the stock market worked. It looked like I was still going on the path to maximize my Luck stat for now.

  As time passed though, I eventually came to a standstill when it came to the progress I was making.

  Part of it was because I had to really think over what I wanted to write before starting. The penalty for failing a Rank Two grimoire in terms of time and resources was far greater than that of a Rank One grimoire.

  The failure rate for Rank Two grimoires was also higher. Although, with practice, I had been able to get my success rate at making Rank One grimoires to almost ninety percent, it was still only about fifty percent when it came to Rank Two grimoires.

  I found myself picking up my pen constantly, just about to write the first word, before abandoning whatever idea I had in my mind immediately, dismissing it as something that was unlikely to succeed.

  I had been relying on my education from Earth - but there were limits to that. I didn’t remember a large portion of the things that I had been taught, and having shallow knowledge of a large variety of topics was useful for Rank One grimoires but less so for Rank Two grimoires which were longer.

  I had never really put much emphasis on memorizing things back home, and would often forget nearly everything I’d learned once a test or exam was over. After all, no matter where I was, I would have the Internet or could just open up a book to relearn them if I needed to, right?

  Speaking of, my smartphone was still just as useless as it was before as I still couldn't find a way to charge it.