I walked into the building where the tournament was being held early next morning.

  This round would consist of proper duels between Liberomancers, with us being paired off into brackets against each other until there was only one winner.

  When I walked in and spoke to the receptionist I was led to an area where the other people who had advanced to the second round were seated.

  Surprisingly, there was an almost even spread between humans and lizardmen, despite the fact that there were way more lizardmen in Arconia. There were also two humans from outside of Chipker, who were likely members of the Book Fair who wanted to participate.

  What immediately drew my attention were the two people with purple sashes on their waists.

  Purple was not an easy color to make in Libraria, just like it had been back on Earth during certain periods. I wasn’t sure if it was because it was also made from rare snails in Libraria as well, as I figured that there had to be a spell to dye clothes even if I hadn’t heard of such. Regardless, this specific shade of purple was hard to get your hands on.

  On top of the distinct color, these sashes had the emblem of the Liberomancer’s Guild, signifying that they were Master Liberomancers.

  In order to achieve the rank of Master Liberomancer there were two prerequisites - one was to be a Rank Three Liberomancer, and two, that you had to have created a new Rank Three grimoire that did not exist before.

  The first task was already difficult enough - many people in this world aspired to become a Rank Three Liberomancer much in the way people back on Earth would want to become a first-class physician or lawyer. It was not an impossible dream to achieve by any means, far from it, but it was not easy either.

  Far more people failed than succeeded, and many who succeeded did so only after decades of effort. Hei Nan, Granny Qi’s husband, had taken nearly twenty years to reach Rank Three, and it was even more impressive in his case given the fact that he had had no strong backer or resources to fall back on in the beginning. He also had to teach himself to read in the beginning, making it doubly hard for him.

  The second criteria was even harder still. You had to make a new grimoire - and not just any grimoire, but a Rank Three one. Rank Three grimoires were the size of shorter novels back home, and just the process of copying one could take months. The amount of effort involved in trying to make a new one - and given the fact that you could fail and have all of that effort and mana be for naught, dissuaded most people from even trying.

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  And even if they were willing to try, they needed some kind inspiration or deep insight to start writing the Rank Three grimoire in the first place. Many couldn’t get past this first step, and even if they could, they would find themselves floundering a third or a fourth of the way into writing the grimoire.

  I hadn’t met or even seen a Master Liberomancer up till this point - Granny Qi had told me what the purple sash meant, but neither Hei Nan nor Lauren, nor anyone else I had met up till this point, had been a Master Liberomancer.

  The second requirement was just that hard to fulfill.

  The fact that these two had experience in making new Rank Three grimoires meant that they were at least a cut above the rest when it came to this kind of contest.

  You could say that I had been lucky - or unlucky depending on how you looked at it, in that I hadn’t been paired up with anyone who was really serious about this kind of tournament up till now. The people I’d been up against had basically been hobbyists or those who had decided to join just for fun.

  That was why my victories had been so easy and one-sided which was good for my confidence, but that also meant that I had no idea what it was like to face off against someone who really knew what they were doing.

  Of course, these guys wouldn’t be trying to make Rank Three grimoires during the tournament. Your mana would run out way before you could finish a few pages - many Rank Two or even Rank Three Liberomancers did not even have the mana capacity to write a Rank Two grimoire in one sitting. Forget about actually being able to think of an entire Rank Three grimoire on the fly.

  One of the Master Liberomancers was an old man who seemed to be taking a nap, and the other was a lizardmen with red scales.

  Without a doubt, the competition was going to get a lot harder here on out.

  There were only fifteen of us rather than the sixteen there should’ve been, so I guess either the math had worked out funny or someone had dropped out.

  Since there were supposed to be sixteen of us, that meant that there would be four total segments to this round of the tournament. I wanted to get fourth place at the very least, which meant that I was aiming to at the very least get to the semi-finals.

  “Alright, everyone, we will be mixing in your names on some blank pieces of paper and will invite some of you over to see how you will be paired up,” one of the organizers said.

  I was third in line to pick out a piece of paper - I desperately prayed that I wasn’t going to be paired up with either of those Master Liberomancers. After all, this wasn’t a format where winning three out of five battles would still let you advance - if you lost, you were eliminated.

  I had very little confidence in being able to go toe-to-toe with either of them, and it would’ve been a rather sorry sight if I lost the very first duel during this second round.