North of the Hitutsa Kingdom was a large forest that had been uninhabited since the fall of the Ruler of the Astral Winds. The soil there was very poor in quality, but the place was home to a large number of magical beasts known as dryads - which from the descriptions that I got were essentially evil trees that were sentient and could walk around. They could get most of their nutrition from water and sunlight, but the thing was that because of the soil quality, in order to obtain some of their other nutrients they had evolved a lot like plants such as Venus Flytraps back on Earth in that they were carnivorous.

Only instead of eating insects, they hunted large creatures like deer and cattle, and when such prey were scarce - they would also resort to hunting humans.

As a consequence of the poor soil and foliage, the availability of prey in the forest was limited, and the dryads were able to replicate at a rate much like rabbits on Earth so long as they had enough sunlight and water - which given the Ragini flowed through the area, they had an abundance of.

As a matter of fact, it was because of their presence that people couldn’t simply sail down the Ragini with goods towards Hitutsa or Chipker as they would be attacked by them along their journey.

The dryads would replicate to the point that their need for blood could not be satisfied by the forest, and then descend towards the frontier villages of Hitutsa before being repelled by its armies. They would occasionally, after several years, overpopulate to such numbers that they came not in the tens of thousands - but the hundreds of thousands. They would be defeated at the cost of a large number of lives, and the cycle would repeat.

“I think we’re going to see a big wave soon,” a trader told me. “This wave was around twenty thousand, but I could still see so many in the distance. Barely got away with the skin of me teeth.”

“How… intelligent are they?” I asked him. “Can you talk to one?”

“Barely smarter than animals,” the trader said. “Can get a few words off, but there’s no negotiating with them. They want blood and they’re out for blood. I’d stay away from Hitutsa for the next few years at least - next year I think we’ll skip them entirely and come here straightway.”

“I see, thanks,” I told him as I wandered off to go check out the other attractions in the place.

I saw a short play called M’kartha which was interesting but didn’t tell me much else about this world.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I did see one other thing of interest - someone advertising a magic show.

I couldn’t help but think- did people still do magic shows in this world, even though there was real magic?

Or was it more of using magic in a way that was performative - like theater troupes sometimes did, only on a larger scale?

Maybe it was just authentic fake magic instead.

The show started late, and I would’ve missed my round in the tournament if I stayed behind for it, so I couldn’t check it out, but I made a note to drop by if I ever got time later just out of curiosity.

I had bigger fish to fry - it was time for the tournament to begin!

When I had first heard of a tournament, I had thought it involved Liberomancers duking it out on a battlefield with magic.

Thankfully, that notion was wrong. If that had been the case I would have just declined to participate in the first place.

Because, much as non-Liberomancers did not want to fight Liberomancers, Liberomancers did not usually want to fight each other either. Conflicts would naturally arise between people, but to have it escalate to the point of an all-out fight?

What kind of people became Liberomancers? Mainly shut-in bookworms. If they were not like that, then they would usually become like that.

And people with such temperaments usually did not rush to fight other people (at least, even if there was an argument or disagreement, they wouldn’t rush to violence as a first resort). Even if you agreed to use non-lethal spells, all it would take would be someone casting [Diarrhea] on you to ruin your day - as well as your pants for that matter. And if the fight got very intense, even if you were the victor, your enemy might decide they may as well take you with them with their final move.

That was to say nothing of the collateral damage such fights could cause. Many spells had area-of-effect damage that could harm multiple bystanders and buildings if they were used.

So what to do? Liberomancers throughout the ages had scratched their heads of finding a solution - a way for Liberomancers to compete without blowing up half of a city block. They could just agree to fight outside the city walls where there would be no one to get in the way.

But, the death of a high-ranking Liberomancer was a great loss to any country. And even if it was someone low-ranking, that Rank One Liberomancer who died could’ve been the person to invent another mana-raising grimoire or the like in the future.

And so the concept of a Liberomancer’s Duel had been made.

The idea was simple- what did Liberomancers do? Create grimoires of course, and that was what such Duels tested.

The idea had caught on to such a degree that people trained for such things like a competitive sport, and that was what this tournament was about.

“Thanks for coming,” I said to Granny Qi as I saw her waiting for me near the reception.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said. “Now, remember what I told you?”

I nodded. “I’m sure that I can win fourth place.”

She frowned. “Fourth place?”

“Yeah, the prize for Fourth Place is a translation item,” I said. Third place was a Rank Two grimoire, second place was also a Rank Two grimoire (though a better one), and first place was a Rank Three grimoire.