Looking at my build, it was clear that it was a mess. There were far too few mana-raising grimoires for it to be viable and there was too much of everything else.

Many of those slots would have to be overwritten later on, but for now, I was just happy that I could finally work on crafting Rank Two grimoires, and even buy a few. Even if I didn’t win one and had to buy a translation device with my own funds, I was fairly certain that I could buy at least two or three Rank Two grimoires with the money I had left over.

I still had no way of knowing what my current base stats were though. If I knew my base stat total, it would be easy enough to extrapolate given what boosts I had gotten to know what my overall stat total was, but I simply did not know right now. There were grimoires that let you know this, I just didn’t have access to any at the moment.

Even if I knew what my total stats were, the mystery would still remain on what it was that they exactly did.

Some of them, like my mana bar, Attack, and Resistance were relatively easy to understand, but what things like Wisdom and Luck accomplished were things it looked like not even the people of Libraria were completely certain of. They knew that certain spells were boosted by those stats, but regarding whether or not they had any other effects - who knew?

Right now though, I had had a busy last few days, and I wasn’t going to start trying to make Rank Two grimoires anytime soon. For now, I would enjoy the Book Fair, and focus on the tournament.

“So what now?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Granny Qi asked.

“Well…” I said. I wanted to check out some other things - but there was so much to do, and the sun would be setting soon. What was the one thing I wanted to do most?

We wandered around the stalls aimlessly.

For once, I didn’t feel like I stood out like a sore thumb as I had since I had arrived in Arconia. My features really set me apart and oftentimes, even now, people would stop to stare at me for far too long. Back when I had been homeless, the stares were mostly those of disgust, though now they were just of curiosity. It did get old after a while, but here, where there were many merchants from various places and of different species, I was now finally just another face in the crowd.

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And that felt so good!

I kept my eyes out while we walked, looking out to see if anyone’s mouth movements matched what they were actually saying. I was kind of used to everyone talking as if they were in a badly dubbed movie as of now - but I wanted to see if I could identify someone who was from Earth. But, not only did I not find someone like that, I didn’t find a writing system from Earth either.

Something did stick out to me - the lack of any accents that I could hear.

You’d expect wildly different accents from people coming from far away lands, but everyone’s speech sounded strangely sterile and bland. The slang they should’ve been using wasn’t apparent either making it seem that most of their personality had been drained from their speech when they talked. This was probably just a function of the translating magic that existed in this world, but the more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed, though again, there was little I could gain by wondering why it worked that way.

Some things were translated and others weren’t - for example, I heard the word ‘denarius’ being used for the currency, but I could tell that wasn’t what other people called it, just what I was hearing. It was quite surreal - during my first days in this world I had been too lost and preoccupied with other things to notice it much, and I did slowly get used to it, but it still felt very odd at times.

Seeing all these stalls, many of which had wheels at the bottom for easier transport, made me wonder about something I had been thinking of before.

“Why does the Book Fair come over land? Wouldn’t it be easier for them to have a fleet of ships?” I asked Granny Qi. After all, moving things via water was much cheaper and easier than over land. And yet, whenever I had gone near the docks, all I saw were small ships that were built for fishing near the shoreline and not for sailing into deeper waters. I couldn’t find any large ships - and I think the city’s lack of ethnic diversity spoke to itself regarding how little foreign traffic it usually got, something that would be vastly different in a large and busy port city on Earth.

“If you go too far out to sea,” Granny Qi said, “It is too dangerous to sail there. You’ll encounter huge whirlpools and sea serpents - creatures who are very territorial. It is harder to fight such creatures on a boat than it would be on land. Not to mention strange weather phenomena that are hard to predict.”

“So why not sail along the rivers?” I asked her. From what I had heard, the Ragini was the largest river in Libraria, with many branching segments. If you couldn’t sail along the coast, why not along the Ragini, following it to the Arconia, and then to this city?

“There are important spots where the river doesn’t flow near like the capital,” Granny Qi said. She would normally be exasperated when I asked too many questions like this, but she was in a rather good mood today. “And some areas where it passes through which are dangerous, in territories not controlled by humans. Some places can use it to their advantage for moving things here and there, but Arconia is not one of those countries, at least not on a large scale.”