None of the actors were lizardmen either, so this was clearly a play by humans for humans.
“Mankind did not possess wings with which it could fly away. Mankind did not have sharp claws which could cut through the hides of beasts. Mankind could not breathe fire, could not spit poison, and could not burrow into the ground to hide from his predators,” the narrator said.
The various actors wearing masks then surrounded the old man wearing rags. Some of the ones wearing masks had spears or other such weapons they pointed at the man, who had now fallen onto all fours.
“Mankind could do little but suffer,” the narrator said. “Because suffering was simply mankind’s lot in life. During those old days, thousands of years ago, my friends, mankind could do nothing more than hide in the caves, scrounging and foraging, hoping that the next day would not be his last. In short, our lot was worse than that of animals.”
If you wanted to, you could train as something like a swordsman or archer in this world. Only thing was that your strength and speed would still be limited by a human body’s limitations when it came to those two factors. In other words, there was no ‘class’ called ‘Swordsman’ or ‘Archer’ like in some games. If you wanted to go beyond what a human could normally do, magic was the only way to go. And the only form of magic that humans could use in this world was Liberomancy.
This story though, was about what it was like before Liberomancy existed.
“So terrible were the predicaments that surrounded us, that we were nearly driven to the brink of extinction,” the narrator continued. “That, or other species kept us around like farm animals, giving us the bare minimum before slaughtering us like they would cattle.”
I couldn’t help but think to myself- ‘maybe that wouldn’t happen if you had dogs to help you?’ It was a bit tongue-in-cheek of course given what little dogs could do against most other wild animals let alone magical beasts, but I had found out from Granny Qi that Rose wasn’t simply ignorant when it came to dogs.
No, my worst fears were confirmed - this world had not managed to domesticate dogs from wolves.
“During those days, we did not even have the plow or the sickle to till the fields,” the narrator continued. “And so, those were humanity’s darkest days, my friends. And it looked like all hope was lost for our race.”
The old man now began to weep. He was clearly a good actor if he could cry on command like that, or those were tears faked through magic somehow. The ring of actors surrounding him now began to circle even closer, cutting him off from the view of the audience quite quickly. Dramatic music was now playing in the background.
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“And so, what was mankind to do? Mankind had few advantages to its name, its wisdom and intelligence, but without the tools to make use of them, intelligence and wisdom were more curses than blessings. Because it was due to them that we realized how hopeless we were,” the narrator continued.
“Save me! Help me!” the old man’s voice came, even though he wasn’t visible himself, and carried far. He likely had the same skill as the announcer.
“Not so fast!” a voice suddenly came, cutting through the crowd. A woman walked in from offstage, wearing a pure white robe. She was glowing - both figuratively and literally.
She not only had a radiant smile on her face, but a literal halo of white light surrounded her form. She wore an ivory crown atop her head, and flower petals gently rained down upon her from seemingly nowhere. She carried a staff in her hand, atop which was mounted the same four-headed owl I had seen in Granny Qi’s home.
Even someone like me, who had barely been in Libraria a month, recognized that she was playing the Goddess Serragnin.
She approached the ring of people surrounding the old man, and a small fire appeared in her free hand. Though I didn’t know what kind of magic she had used to get that halo of light or the flower petals to rain down on her, I recognized [Create Flame] was what she had used to make the fire.
At the sight of the fire, the actors surrounding the old man backed off. Several of them dropped their weapons while three of them clutched their heads in their hands - though you couldn’t see their expressions behind the masks, it was clear they were trying to act terrified. After that dramatic withdrawal, they exited the stage.
The old man stood up and looked up at the woman with a mixture of hope and reverence. “Lady, thank you for saving my life. But who are you?”
“My name is Serragnin, Mother of Learning, and Goddess of Wisdom,” she said. She extinguished the flame in her hand. “You do not need to thank me for saving you. Such was my pleasure and kindness.”
A voice came from behind the stage. “Help!”
“Ah, but I must go,” Serragnin said. “After all, there are others in need.”
“But O Goddess,” the old man said. “If you leave me, they will come back. And I will surely be done for then.”
“There is no need to fear, my child,” Serragnin said. “Because I have a gift for you.” She twisted her free hand, and from it, a sheet of blank paper appeared and gently fell to the ground.
I raised my eyebrows - that was the [Create Paper] spell.
I hadn’t seen it before, but I had heard people talking about it. It was far less useful than what you’d think, because if you spent all your mana making paper, you wouldn’t be able to have any left to actually make grimoires, read grimoires, or cast other spells.
It was a spell mainly used in poorer regions where for some reason or the other, paper was not widely available. Still, if you were a Rank One Liberomancer, all you had to really do was write in the dirt. You didn’t even need a stick or instrument for that, just your finger would do.
Rank Two and higher grimoires were longer and thus could not be made like this, but any Rank Two Liberomancer could easily find work in a city where paper would be relatively plentiful.
While there were healing herbs in this world, despite how game-like some of it seemed, there were no such things as health or mana potions. And as such, every drop of mana you had was valuable and had to be utilized fully. Using it to create paper was normally considered extremely wasteful, though it had a greater purpose here - as a sort of ‘special effect.’