Normal Liberomancer Duels were ‘best of three’ but the Duels in this initial round were simply a single session for the sake of expediency. And so, he had lost.

That said, you only had to win three out of five Duels you were assigned to this round to advance, so it wasn’t like this had doomed the guy. He still had a chance of getting to the next stage.

The referee remarked that he hadn’t been expecting for the Duel to end so quickly, and then said I was free to go. The next Duel was tomorrow morning, and I would have another one later that afternoon as well. Any plans to start working on a Rank Two manual were thrown out the window given that I had to preserve my mana for them.

I picked up the grimoire I had made - it gave +1 to Speed. While this effect was somewhat more useful than some of the ones I had memorized, I didn’t think it was worthwhile enough to erase one of my old slots because Speed was not very essential to optimization. It would be better to just sell it to someone - since I had made it without the shop’s ink or other resources, I was definitely not giving them a cut of it.

“See?” Granny Qi said as we walked out. The other Duels were still ongoing - it was not unheard of for a single set to last an hour or so while the two participants failed two or three times to make a successful grimoire. “You were losing confidence for no reason and giving up on ever reaching the top before anything had even started! But look how well you did!”

I shook my head. “That guy there was only doing this casually. There are going to be people who actually train for these kinds of events the higher up we go. They won’t be so easy to beat.”

“With that kind of defeatist attitude, I am surprised that you learned to walk and didn’t just lie around crying on the floor your whole life,” she replied, with a look that said, ‘you’re hopeless!’

There was still some daylight left, and I went to find a buyer for my grimoire - I found one within five minutes. It was one of the benefits of being at the Book Fair, the stores here needed to refill their inventory, and with all the buying and selling going on it was incredibly easy to find someone willing to buy it.

Otherwise this kind of grimoire might’ve ended up waiting for hours or even days at the shop during normal times.

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I did try to check out the magic show given I still had time left.

It turns out that a ‘magic show’ was mainly performers blending magic in ways that were supposed to be performative. Some of them simply showed mastery over a single spell - like the lady who could use [Freeze] to create lifelike ice sculptures. Others combined spells in various ways, like one person who created a storm of falling leaves that turned into rose petals as they drifted over the audience.

I couldn’t figure out what she had used to create that kind of effect - and the adage ‘a magician never reveals his secrets’ applied to this world as well.

People in the crowd were also guessing which spells she had used, but it didn’t look like any of them had guessed correctly. Part of the fun seemed to be in figuring the trick out, just like with magic shows back on Earth. Only thing was that it was a bit harder given they were allowed to use actual magic - still, I saw stuff that I felt that I couldn’t explain so it wasn’t like they were bad at their jobs or anything.

After that, daylight had faded and it was time to hit the hay. There was still so much of the Book Fair to explore, but that would have to wait for the coming days.

I woke up feeling well-refreshed the next morning - getting two nights of adequate sleep and rest did wonders for the body.

Granny Qi told me that she would be sitting this round of Duels out, but that was fine with me.

The first round started in the morning before I could get any other shopping or exploring done.

This time, both the referee and my opponent were lizardmen. The referee wanted to check my fountain pen once before the round started to make sure I wasn’t cheating with it - I didn’t see how that was possible but I complied and he just handed it back to me a minute later.

He then reached into the bag of folded chits and picked one out.

The word was ‘lightning.’

In a flash I remembered a story that I had heard back on Earth.

Benjamin Franklin, in order to prove that lightning was a form of electricity, walked onto a field in the middle of the thunderstorm flying a kite. Attached to the kite was a metallic key, and when lightning struck the kite, it flowed down the string to the key.

Now, I wasn’t sure if this was something that actually happened or not - and from what I understood of physics, if you did something like this you were probably guaranteed to get electrocuted and die, but making grimoires wasn’t entirely about being factually accurate.

I took out my pen, contemplating on how to frame the story, and once that was done the words seemed to flow on their own.

I finished- and the blue aura turned green, signifying that I was successful.

My opponent was still writing, and he actually succeeded in what he was writing out, but he had done so nearly half an hour after I had finished. It was a Rank One manual just like I had made, so I won being the person who had finished earlier. Like I had done before, I thanked him for the round and shook his hand.