Was that guy really that suspicious? The only reason I had thought so was because he was a foreigner - but, then again, so was I. Even the lizardmen had given me puzzled looks when I mentioned that fact, likely noticing the irony of what I was saying. Even if they had trouble distinguishing human faces they also worked with human guards so that shouldn't have been a problem (or at least I hoped so).

  What he had said about diamonds and the like was odd, but maybe it was just part of a poem that he and a friend liked to recite together? It didn’t necessarily mean that it was something nefarious, after all.

  I began to feel guilty as time passed.

  I mean, what if he was just a normal guy and I ended up causing trouble for him by reporting him? My gut told me that something seemed off at first glance, but after thinking over it a few times and second-guessing myself I couldn’t help but feel like I had made the wrong call.

  Still, there was little that I could do about it now. I just tried to assuage my conscience by thinking that at most, the guards would drop in, ask him a few questions, and that would be it.

  No harm done.

  Right?

  Zeke and Drake stood outside the remains of what had been a house.

  “Did they recover the template?” Drake asked.

  “Looks like it was destroyed in the fighting,” Zeke said, sighing. That template had cost a pretty penny and was not easy to replicate. It had come from another city, and the reason they had wanted a template in the first place was that no corresponding grimoire of the same was available. But the loss of the template was not the main concern.

  “Six people are dead,” Drake said, sighing. He began pacing around nervously.

  The bodies of the two assailants were brought out. One of them matched the sketch they had been given, the other was another human, but neither of the brothers were very good at distinguishing human faces.

  Was this a foreigner? Likely, but they would need one of the humans to tell them.

  “To think we found two demonic Liberomancers here in the city,” Zeke said. He was nearly as nervous as Drake, he was just better at hiding it. “How did they get in? What were the guards doing?”

  All Liberomancers were inspected when they walked into the city - and the main purpose of such inspection was to weed out those who might possess demonic grimoires or had learned the such.

  How had these two made it past those checks? And were there more of them?

  The only people who could give a real conclusive answer regarding that were the two of them, and they were dead.

  Any secrets they were carrying had gone to the grave with them.

  “Father isn’t going to be happy about this,” Drake said.

  “Relax, this isn’t your fault,” Zeke told him. While their father didn’t have a high opinion of Drake, this was one thing that was very clearly not his fault.

  “Why did they steal the template I had ordered though?”

  “I doubt they were here for that,” Zeke said. “I think we’ll need to speak to the human who saw this man first - but it looks like they were here to exchange something. But, if the human’s testimony is to be believed, he spoke with that man before your template was stolen. So they were likely exchanging something else and just so happened to hear of your template and thought it was a decent opportunity to steal it.”

  Drake sighed. “We really need to find out how they got in. Do you think there’s a defect along the wall? Or a tunnel that goes under it leading to someone’s house?” Those two ideas seemed fantastic and improbable, but what else was he supposed to think?

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Zeke shook his head. “If it’s smuggling things, they most likely came through the side of the city facing the sea. It would be much easier to get a single rowboat past the checks of the harbor at some times of night than it is to get into the city via a land route.”

  The two brothers concluded their investigation for now - but something popped up later on in the day.

  “Look at this,” Drake said. “They found a demonic grimoire - an actual active one!”

  Zeke took a look at it. It was written on old, yellowed, crusty paper with black ink that was clearly dried blood. A gentle green aura hovered over it like with all complete grimoires. It was surprising that it had survived the aftermath of their raid.

  But, Drake was right, this was definitely a demonic grimoire - Zeke could tell the moment he took it in his hands.

  More likely than not, the demonic grimoire had been made somewhere else and this was what the two of them were buying and selling. One could not sell demonic grimoires in an official bookstore, after all.

  “Alright, what do we do with this?” Drake asked.

  “Mmm… if I’m not wrong, there’s something we have to do with this,” Zeke said. “And I don’t like it, but our hands might be tied.”

  The events that transpired after I had given the description of the guy I had met over the weekend to the guards ended up going far beyond any expectations that I’d had.

  For one, it turns out that I had actually been correct. The person who I had seen was, as a matter of fact, indeed guilty.

  The moment the guards came knocking at his door, it looked like he had panicked, thinking the jig was up, and began attacking indiscriminately. Six people died, not including the two criminals in the fighting that followed.

  Neither of the two killed were very powerful, both were only Rank One Liberomancers, but one of them had access to a demonic grimoire which is how he had been able to hold the guards off for so long.

  Ultimately, he ended up running out of all of his mana which is how they were able to apprehend him, and given the nature of his abilities, they had no choice other than to kill him to ensure he didn’t start casting again once his mana recovered. The other one had lit a stash of explosives when he realized that there was no hope of victory and destroyed most of their safehouse. Because of that a good portion of evidence from the scene of the crime was lost.

  As for how they had gotten into the city in the first place - the leading theory was that they had snuck past the docks when it had been past sunset, though no one could really confirm something like that.

  The only tangible piece of evidence remaining was a Rank One demonic grimoire, which they were likely selling, and was probably the reason they were here in the first place. It had been carefully stashed away which is why it had survived the fighting, as it looked like they didn’t have the time to destroy it.

  The remains of the stolen template were found, but they were half-burnt and were unusable now.

  And I’d thought that was it - but there was yet another small little twist to this tale.

  It was during the weekend, and I came back home after a stroll to see Granny Qi looking at me with a frown on her face.

  “Uh, what happened?” I could tell there was some kind of trouble.

  “This - is for you apparently,” she said, holding up a piece of paper that was slightly grayed out. It had a light green aura to it which I could see even from a distance, meaning it was a grimoire. I crept closer to realize that the letters were in a strange blackish ink and the characters were not something I was familiar with - meaning it wasn’t a language native to Arconia. “The demonic grimoire that they found with that man you helped apprehend.”

  I nearly dropped the piece of paper right then and there - that meant that the writing was in human blood! “You could’ve told me sooner! And what do you mean that it’s for me?”

  “The city guards dropped it off,” Granny Qi said. “It was your information that led to the arrest of those men - and as per city law, given that you are a Liberomancer, any stolen grimoires, if their owner cannot be found, so long as they are Rank Two or lower belong to you.”

  It took me a minute to process this. “Wait - so I own this? But it’s a demonic grimoire, surely this doesn’t count?”

  Granny Qi shrugged. “The law is strange sometimes - someone should’ve thought of that when drafting that law, but I suppose bureaucrats can’t think of anything now then - can they? There are all sorts of odd loopholes when it comes to the rules.”

  It felt wrong - but then again, it wasn’t like I was familiar with the laws of this world.

  There were also weird legal loopholes back on Earth. People who were deemed ‘not guilty’ of criminal offenses because of technicalities. Companies that didn’t have to pay old debts because of strange language in their contracts.

  Revulsion filled me again once I glanced down at the grimoire.

  The first thing I thought was that contact with the paper could’ve spread something like hepatitis given I had no idea who the victim was - though I calmed down somewhat when I realized that this had to have been made months prior so there was little risk of that.

  “What do I do with this now?” I asked her.

  “Hmm? I don’t know why you’re asking me - but a similar thing happened about twenty years ago in the capital. It ended up being auctioned off for a large sum,” she said. “That is, if you don’t want to read it and take its powers for yourself.”

  The grimoire granted access to the spell [Crimson Lance]. Despite being only Rank One, it was an extremely powerful attack against a single target - even if the initial blow did not kill them, it had an anticoagulant effect so the target would bleed to death eventually unless they had a Rank Two or higher healing spell. If it hit a vital organ or the like though, only a Rank Three healing spell could possibly save the target.

  What to expect:

  ● A unique, fully fleshed-out world and magic system

  ● Flawed but lovable characters

  ● Action and tension

  ● Humour

  ● Feels

  ● Secrets and mysteries

  What not to expect:

  ● Constant blue boxes

  ● An unending, 19+ book series

  !