“Sir Drake,” Mark said, standing up. “Thank you for dropping by our table - but we are only here for an evening dinner after work.”

  ‘Drake’ was the closest thing that I could think of to this lizardman’s actual name, and not how Mark had actually addressed him. He seemed important from the way the others were looking at him, but I had never heard of him before… which wasn’t saying much given how little I went out.

  One of his friends tapped him on the shoulder and whispered something to this Drake fellow. “Alright, sorry for bothering you,” he said, dropping the subject of a duel entirely as he staggered off and out of the restaurant, being supported by his friends.

  Our table was silent until the moment we were sure he had left, after which we exploded.

  “Man, that almost scared me for a moment!”

  “He really is too reckless though - challenging people to duels willy-nilly like that.”

  “You’d think he’d learn to behave after the incident last week.”

  “Probably why he dropped it so quickly. At least his friends have more sense than he does.”

  “No wonder his father favors Zeke over him...”

  “Um - who was that?” I asked, feeling very out of the loop.

  Every eye was on me and Teal even laughed, saying, “Good one!” before realizing I was dead serious about the question.

  “Weren’t you at the tournament?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t see him,” I said.

  “He’s the younger son of the city’s governor,” Mark explained.

  Ah, that explained things. He was the guy who had made such a ruckus back in the tournament!

  “Oh, was he upset because I was trying to make a grimoire?” I asked. It sort of made sense to me now - if he knew I had ranked second and saw me making one, it probably awakened bad memories in him. Still, it really was something else to just walk up to someone else demanding a fight. Especially given how likely it was that I would’ve beat him only embarrassing him further… and to add to that, he might’ve burnt the restaurant down if he threw a tantrum which would’ve been a bigger issue.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I would’ve normally thrown the match rather than let it come to that - but if I hadn’t known who he was (and he didn’t seem to be the type inclined to introduce himself, more of ‘you should already know who I am) I would’ve likely swept the floor with him.

  The atmosphere at our table never really became fully relaxed after that, and we hurriedly concluded dinner and went on our own ways. I never even finished the wine grimoire I had been in the middle of making and it ended up being nothing more a soggy piece of paper and a waste of mana.

  I didn’t have the energy to finish the grimoire I was working on that night, and so I was only able to finish it the next day.

  I couldn’t help but hold in my breath as I made the last stroke with the ink brush I was using. The gentle blue aura… it finally turned green!

  I pumped my fist in the air - I was home so thankfully there was no one to see me do this.

  This was the first Rank Two grimoire that I had managed to make - and I was successful on my first try!

  Was this luck? I knew there was an aspect of luck involved while making grimoires, but the Luck stat didn’t seem to help in any way. Some people had told me that a higher Wisdom stat did make it easier to make grimoires, but much like with Luck and actual fortune, there was no real way to confirm that.

  No one in this world had been born with an instruction manual - and to them these features were as normal as any of the natural laws back on Earth. But that didn’t mean that they were obvious.

  I had just enough mana to finish reading the grimoire, after which it disappeared.

  There was a knock at my door - there was only one person it could be. “Come in!”

  “Thought you’d like some tea,” Granny Qi said. She noticed the strange paraphernalia on my desk. “What is all of that?”

  I thought about explaining things to her - but then figured a demonstration would be more effective.

  Looking back on things, I realize that I probably should’ve told her what I was going to do so she’d be prepared.

  I activated the spell I had just learned, [Invisibility]. As I did this, I didn’t notice anything off about myself, but somehow knew deep inside my mind that I was invisible.

  And if that wasn’t enough, the fact that Granny Qi shrieked and drop the cup she was holding was more than enough to let me know that something had indeed, happened.

  I ended the spell and started helping her clean up while she stared daggers at me.

  “Sorry - I just, well, I thought it would be easier to show you what I had been up to rather than explain it,” I told her.

  I thought that I was going to break a rib from all the effort to keep myself from bursting into laughter when I remembered the look on her face.

  Once we were done and she had calmed down somewhat, she asked, “Why the fruit?”

  “Ah,” I told her. “So, you can use lemon juice - I wanted to get lemon juice, it’s these small yellow fruits we have back where I come from, but I didn’t find any - but you can use any citrus fruit actually, and if you write with it it will disappear, but if you heat it up - it becomes visible. I thought if I wrote a grimoire with it I might be able to camouflage myself or make myself invisible… so I wrote one on the properties of light with it and it worked!”

  It was also my first time making a grimoire that required something other than normal ink and paper in order to make it, and I was glad that my idea had been successful.