The translation item was worth less than the grimoires, naturally, which is why it was the placed lower than them on the prize list, but it was what I was really after.

Granny Qi sighed. “Even so, why would you start out aiming for fourth place? Shouldn’t you at least aim for the top?”

“I don’t think I have a chance at winning first place,” I told her. I had only just started my journey of Liberomancy a few months ago, after all.

“Still, what kind of loser aims for just fourth place from the very beginning? Why don’t you set your sights higher?”

“I just… don’t think I can. And I don’t want to be disappointed if I fail to hit that kind of target, you know?”

“When you first learned to walk, did you not stumble over and over? If you were so afraid of failing, you’d still be crawling on all fours,” Granny Qi said. “Well, whatever it is, I can’t force you to be more optimistic. Let’s hope you put on a good show at least.”

The first round of the tournament was five Duels against different people - you had to win at least three of them to qualify for the next round, which was set up in more traditional tournament fashion with brackets and the like.

The rounds were set up in a large building that belonged to the Liberomancer’s Guild which had been reserved for this very purpose. I was led to a small room where there was space for spectators on the side, though other than Granny Qi no one was there. That was kind of to be expected for the first round.

My opponent for this round was another human from Arconia. We bowed before starting and took our places, with each of us getting several sheets of paper as well as ink and an ink brush. I showed the referee my fountain pen and he said it was fine for me to use it instead if I so wished.

We both took our seats. “Do you need the rules explained?” the referee asked. Both of us shook our heads. He reached into a hat filled with folded pieces of paper and took one out. “The word is ‘sword.’”

That was how Liberomancer Duels worked - a word would be stated, and we had to make a grimoire revolving around said word successfully. A higher ranked Liberomancer would have an advantage in having a larger mana pool and more experience - but it was not a guaranteed win based on simple ranking.

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I had realized that people like Rose did not spend much time making grimoires on their own. There was little point - after all, it is easier to walk on a path that has already been made in the woods rather than carving your own. You might make something interesting, of course, but you were more likely to fail, and even success could be counted as a failure if you took opportunity cost into account.

That was another reason that such tournaments existed - to incentivize innovation of new grimoires.

As such, I had a massive advantage in the sense that nearly all that I had been doing up till now was mainly making my own grimoires.

But I had another ace up my sleeve - my education from Earth!

It wasn’t completely correct to say that I was carving my own path here. I was relying on knowledge that I had learned back on Earth- that was why I wanted so desperately to find a way to recharge my smartphone so that I could have access to a wider library - as it was, it wasn’t like I had memorized every single text or poem I’d read.

Still, even the basic education system back on Earth was far superior to what it was in Libraria.

That wasn’t to say that the people of this world were dumb or anything - quite the contrary, they did the best they could, but they still lived in a pre-industrial society and relied heavily on agriculture or fishing to sustain themselves.

Those who were ‘literate’ could mainly just write their names, and although there was a patchwork of standardized schooling in some places, most of the people there could only read and write at what would be considered a fourth or fifth grade level back on Earth at best. That was fine for some Rank One grimoires, but you would want to be able to read at least at an eighth grade level to really get any mileage.

Universities did exist, but most of their textbooks were rather paltry compared to even high school textbooks back home from what I’d heard. Paper was not as cheap as it was back home, and as such, the rigor of such places was also beneath what you’d find back on Earth.

Writing grimoires could be said to be sort of like an essay writing competition in a way, which is something anyone back on Earth would have far more experience of than most people here in Libraria if they’d gone through school.

Once again, the people of this world were not dumb by any means - but it was often said that your modern high school math textbook would have information that Archimedes would’ve given a limb in exchange for.

It was much the same in this world, it was just that I had been exposed to more literature and written more than what many of the people of this world would have.

Coming to actually writing the grimoire - now, I had initially had a success rate of only fifty percent with writing Rank One grimoires. After some trial and error, I had come to understand some of the nuances and what you could do to increase the chances of successfully creating a grimoire. Many people understood that some works of writing were more likely to be successfully converted into grimoires than others, though few of them knew what would set such works apart. This was because few people tried to make as many new grimoires as someone like me, and though I’d had to go on this journey without any guidance, I had picked up a thing or two.