When I had first begun accumulating grimoires that increased Luck, I hadn't been sure whether or not they affected my actual luck in real life or not.

Now, however, I had a clear answer.

Which was 'no.'

"I can't believe it," I said, pacing inside the house furiously. I couldn't organize my thoughts with how anxious I was. It felt like I was a soda can someone had shaken so much that it was going to explode the moment it was opened. I did try to keep calm - with the emphasis being on the 'try' part. "How can this be happening? Why is this happened?"

In contrast, Granny Qi was quite calm, sipping tea while watching me nearly have a mental breakdown.

Yeah, I probably should've felt a bit embarrassed that she was keeping herself more composed than I was, but my thoughts were too scattered to comprehend that at that moment. I also think that the reason she was so composed then was because she was watching me freak out; and she decided that between the two of us, one had to keep their cool.

"I… I… I…" I began to stutter, unsure of what words in the English language I should use to express my frustration. I wanted to swear, but Granny Qi was in the room, and so all I did was take a seat opposite to her. I ran my hands through my hair - beads of sweat had already coated my forehead. My heart was still racing with no end in sight. "I don't know what to do now. Has this happened before?"

We had gotten news that there was a dryad army approaching the city within a few day's distance last evening. Many people were panicking more than I was, but the reason I was so frustrated in particular was because I had been planning to leave the city in a few weeks! These dryads really had no respect for anyone's schedule, did they?

"Not in living memory," Granny Qi said. "In my entire lifetime, this city has never faced a large external threat. It's not like the capital, most people consider Arconia to be quite safe by comparison."

"So, the year that I come to this city, a never-before-seen event happens the moment I want to leave preventing me from leaving," I groaned.

"Yes, I think you're a bad omen for us," Granny Qi said with a slight smirk. "Who knows? This might be an omen from the heavens signaling that you are destined to stay within this city forever. You should find a nice girl, get married and settle down here." She was joking, likely in an attempt to get me to calm down, but I really didn't appreciate the humor at the moment.

"I really don't know what to do…"

"Isn't the choice simple?" Granny Qi said. "Either you take your chances and run, or you stay here and fight."

Some people had chosen to flee towards the capital which was better fortified and less likely to be as much of a target as Arconia. Given the size of the enemy army and how close they currently were; those people didn't have a very good chance at making it, but some people still chose to roll that die. As for me, I had zero experience navigating the wilderness on my own and would likely end up running directly into the dryad army if I tried to escape.

On top of which, from what I knew, nearly every experienced Liberomancer in the city was choosing to stay and defend the city. I was new to this world, so I was choosing to believe in the wisdom of the crowd - if they thought they had a better chance of survival staying here, well then, they were probably right. Not to mention, I could see why they would come to that conclusion; it was far easier for Liberomancers to fight behind fortifications.

"I can't fly, if I could do that, I could possibly get away." Even if I could though, I knew that deep in my heart, I would not be able to abandon Granny Qi to potentially die like that. And so, I knew what the answer was, I just didn't want to accept it. "I have no choice but to stay and fight… but it's just so frustrating… I had everything ready to head out and then… even if we repel the dryads successfully, the Book Fair is going to skip Chipker for now so I'll have to wait another year for them to come around..."

The merchant caravan, naturally, was not going to walk into potentially dangerous territory and had not entered Hitutsa, choosing to take a detour. That meant that even after this disaster was over, my initial plan would be on hold, potentially for another year or two depending on when the merchant caravan thought it was safe enough for them to come back to Chipker.

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Granny Qi placed a hand on my shoulder. "That is life, my child. Things will not always go your way, and even the best-laid plans will crumble in the face of destiny. We can only adapt when that happens."

I slumped into my chair. She was right, but I just didn't want to deal with this right now.

Of course, I had to.

I then got up. I felt like I needed to do something, anything, else I really would explode. "I'm heading towards the Guild - I think I could use some training."

The Liberomancer's Guild was holding seminars regarding the dryads and the best way to fight them, as well as general classes on fighting with magic. I figured I might as well join them and see if I could learn anything useful before the battle began.

They had enacted a number of changes to try and deal with the incoming invasion. For one, they no longer asked for onerous fees and licenses for Rank One and Rank Two Liberomancers to sell their own grimoires. Second, any Liberomancer could ask for information that the guild had without any fee regardless of rank. Both of these things would've been quite useful to me just a few months earlier, but there was no use complaining about that. These changes were also 'temporary' to deal with the invasion but it was anyone's guess as to how long they would last.

As I walked, I saw that the streets were busier than I had ever seen them before - save for perhaps when the Book Fair had been in town.

For one, there was a flood of refugees coming in every day fleeing from the nearby villages. These people arrived carrying whatever they could on their backs, with worried faces tempered with relief once they were finally within the city's walls. Many of them looked like they had narrowly escaped death itself, with them regaling stories of how they had narrowly avoided the incoming dryad vanguard, and what those monsters did to whoever was unlucky to fall into their grasp.

These people had fled their homes, and it was highly likely that there would be no homes for them to return to once this was over. I felt deeply sorry for them - and while the city was trying to do something to find places for them to stay and to arrange for a food rationing system, I could tell that the homelessness problem was going to explode in the coming days. Some of these people had family ties in the city, and there were some people who generously opened their doors to some of them, but not enough.

Those people who were natives of the city were moving with a hustle and worry that I had never seen before. Some of them didn't even seem to know where they were going - they just thought that they had to go somewhere, anywhere, and to get their hands on whatever they thought was going to be in short supply in the future.

People had already started hoarding things - food, water, oil, paper, you name it. Laws were passed against this, but they did little to curb this kind of behavior.

I knew that Granny Qi had a few bags of rice stored up in her attic which she had thankfully not sold since coming back from the village, so I was sure that she would be okay. I still had [Fish Haul] should things get really bad on that front; and she knew [Create Water] so she wasn't going to go thirsty at least even without my help.

Here, though, my fame turned out to be a double-edged sword.

"Master Liberomancer! What are we to do?" was something many people stopped me on the street to ask. They were all complete strangers, yet, upon seeing the sash, they wanted some sort of guidance or reassurance regarding the situation from someone they felt they could trust.

There was a reason that Liberomancers were held in such high regard by the common folk, and Master Liberomancers even more so. In times of crisis like this, everyone was reliant upon us to deal with the incoming threat.

Respect was a two-way street after all, and part of the reason Rank Three Liberomancers justified the unequal system of the world was that in times of crisis, they would have to respond to powerful threats that only they could deal with. As such, they needed some degree of preferential treatment to prepare for said events.

That was the societal contract - Liberomancers were given respect and taxes were used directly or indirectly to help support them, and in return, they would help out the common folk with various problems and dealing with any big threats.

Well, the threat had come!

I already knew that I was going to be manning the walls in the upcoming fight, but the issue was that people seemed to think that I knew far more than I was letting on. Initially when I was asked questions like that, I wasn't sure how to respond, before I realized that nine times out of ten it was not a serious question and they were just looking for reassurance in some way or another.

"Don't worry, we'll fight them off," I reassured what felt like the hundredth person that day on my way to the Guild. I tried to fill my voice with confidence as I said so and it seemed to work for the most part.

In case it was a serious question, I tried to give them a vague answer or just say, "The other Liberomancers and I are still discussing our overall battle strategy."

I felt like a fraud, but I couldn't think of anything else I could really do. Even if I went outside without wearing the purple sash, my face had become so famous by this point that people still recognized me even without it. I didn't want to give people false hope - but at the same time, I figured that if I was wrong and we failed, they were not exactly going to be around to get angry at me for lying to them.

I finally reached the guild after what felt like far too long.

The guild headquarters were constantly crowded now due to recent events.

"Ah, where are the lessons taking place?"

"Right over there, Master Liberomancer."

"Thank you!"

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