My heart was racing as I unfolded it, only to see there was nothing written on it. Granted, even if it had someone’s name on it I wouldn’t have been able to read it, but both sides of this paper were blank. I was confused by this and showed it to the organizers.
“Ah, there are fifteen of you so one person was going to be moving up by default,” she said. “Congratulations! You’re quite lucky - you’re going to the next round automatically!”
I breathed a sigh of relief. That meant that I only had to get through the next round, and then I would be guaranteed fourth place at the very least.
Also, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a consequence of me investing a few slots into the Luck stat. I knew that most Liberomancers didn’t think that it actually worked like this - but did I get this default victory because of investing in my Luck stat or was it just my normal luck?
It was impossible to tell, which again, was likely why no one knew what the Luck stat did exactly aside from affecting the outcome and power of some spells.
There was now quite a bit of a crowd who had gathered to see the matches. I saw Granny Qi standing among them.
“Uh, turns out I lucked out and won this round by default,” I told her. I then shrugged. “It’s a bit anticlimactic but victory by default is still victory - I think I’ll go see some of the other matches just to check out the competition.”
Granny Qi nodded, and waved me off as she walked away. I guess she had mainly been here to see me, so if I wasn’t here, she decided to either go back home or wander the Book Fair.
The first round of matches had taken place in very small rooms, almost no bigger than my living room back on Earth.
These rounds, though, took place in large halls, and there were actual bleachers for spectators to sit on. A very elegant stone table was set on an elevated platform rather than a wooden one, and the windows were set so as to focus most of the light on the central area between the two contestants.
There were only four such rooms allowing for only four matches to be conducted at a time, which is why there was going to be a morning, noon, afternoon, and evening session. I was told it was not uncommon for this first set of contests to go well into the night given how long some of the matches could last for.
You couldn’t really call this much in the way of a ‘spectator sport’ - there was no cheering or jeering allowed after all, in order to let the dueling Liberomancers concentrate on the what they were doing. Not to mention you couldn’t really see what the two sides were writing from up in the bleachers either.
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A significant crowd was watching regardless.
I first saw a match up between two lizardmen - neither of them were the Master Liberomancers I had seen earlier.
There was definitely a lot more style and pomp to these matches than the first round, with the referee making a big show of taking a piece of paper out before reading it - “Bird.”
The two lizardmen hesitated for a few minutes before one of them started writing. The other one didn’t seem to be too perturbed that his opponent had already started and only picked up his ink brush five minutes afterwards.
The first lizardman naturally completed his grimoire sooner, but the gentle blue hue turned an angry red and it turned to ash.
The other lizardman had started later, but was able to finish his grimoire successfully.
“I concede,” the first lizardman said. At this point, there was basically no hope of him winning this round, but the duel was best of three, so it made sense that he wouldn’t want to waste his mana in a futile attempt to try to make a Rank Two grimoire and instead focus on the second round.
The referee declared a winner for that round, and the next one began.
This time, the first lizardman still started on his grimoire before the other one, but he was successful.
So, it was all up to the third set!
It was here that things got a bit exciting as it could go either way.
This time, both of them failed to make a grimoire the first time around, and it looked like both of them had run out of mana.
And so, there was nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs and wait while their mana recovered. This was why this first day was likely going to go well into the night, mainly because of issues like this.
Once they had their mana back, they started again, and it was the first lizardman who ultimately ended up victorious.
I was trying to view these matches in an attempt to get a feel of how other people were doing but these two lizardmen didn’t seem to be that much better than the other people I had been up against till this point.
The next set of matches had already started in the other rooms in an attempt to get things going. I walked into one of the rooms that had one of the foreign human Liberomancers I had seen earlier. I wanted to see if I recognized the script they used from Earth- I didn’t.
They were not that much better than the lizardmen, and I was beginning to become more confident in my prospects of victory.
This confidence lasted only until I later walked into the room with the human Master Liberomancer.
I learned his name was Jiah Pei - I recognized the Pei surname as one of the three big families that controlled the human side of selling and buying manuals in Arconia. So this man was likely an elder of that family.
He was in a league of his own - the moment a word was said, his brush would begin to move. Granted, I had been like that during the last match I had played, but I had been that reckless only because I knew that the outcome of that match didn’t matter.
He won the first round, and the second round as well. He did not fail in creating a grimoire either of those attempts, and his opponent conceded, not wanting to play a futile third round.
Should I change the chapter length and release schedule?
