Chapter 83 - Ouch

When Lucia woke up she found Cecil sitting by her bedside meditating silently. She felt lethargic, but even then she still tried to sit up.

Cecil was roused from his meditation at Lucia's movements. He opened his eyes and saw the stubborn girl trying to get up from her bed. He quickly got up and helped her up.

"Hey, how are you feeling Lulu?"

"Uhm... drained. I guess..." Lucia said sluggishly.

"You did use up almost all your mana..."

Lucia groaned feeling the headache coming. She held her head with a grimace.

Cecil saw this and felt pained seeing her pitiful expression.

"You should have just released one of your cores, Lulu..."

"Huh? No way, not after how you told me off yesterday! Ouch, owwie~" She protested, but soon held her head again in pain when a piercing pain assaulted her head.

"..."

Cecil had no retort for that. He was now slightly regretting telling Lucia to hide a partial amount of her powers after seeing the pitiful state that she was in.

She was like this because she upheld her promise to him. After the pain subsided, Lucia quietly said.

"Well... not like it matters anyway... now that I look at it Cel... wasn't our battle... a little too... eye-catching?"

"...I'm not gonna lie, our battle was indeed a little too conspicuous. Everyone now knows of our abilities. I told you that we're far ahead of them, but we could have done that in moderation..."

"It's your fault for saying you're going all out at the start! Ouch..."

Cecil covered his hands in mana and began massaging Lucia's head to help her relieve the pain. After a brief moment, Lucia's pained expression quickly faded away like a lie and was replaced with a blissful one.

"Thanks Cel~"

"...don't yell so much." Cecil said in exasperation.

After resting for another 30 minutes, Cecil gave Lucia a piggyback ride out of the infirmary. Even though he wanted her to rest a bit more, Lucia kept complaining that it was stuffy inside the there.

Lucia wanted to head back to her dorm to rest so without any other choice, Cecil was forced to carry her out of the infirmary.

When they got out of the infirmary, Lucia had unwittingly fallen asleep on his back.

'Don't force yourself awake if you can't keep your eyes open Lulu..."

Cecil had the urge to just throw her back onto the infirmary's bed. It was only an urge though, since if he did so. Then the sleeping tigress would most likely chew him out later when she woke up again.

Cecil was walking down the corridor with Lucia sleeping on his back when they bumped into a group of upperclassmen.

Cecil bowed and stepped to the side to keep walking forward, only to be stopped by one of the upperclassmen who moved in his way.

"...do you need something, senior?" Cecil asked with his usual deadpanned face.

The person who blocked him was a male foxkin upperclassman, Cecil wasn't able to determine what year he was in, but the foxkin didn't respond to his question and only turned towards the person that Cecil almost bumped into.

That person was an orange haired foxkin who had an air of flamboyance. Not only was the air around him flamboyant, so was his attire.

"You're the 2nd ranked Cecil aren't you? And I take it that the person you're carrying is the 1st ranked Lucia?"

"Yes."

"Good, come with me."

After saying so, he continued walking forward.

"No."

That short reply was enough to make the flamboyant foxkin to stop. He turned around with irritation dyeing his voice and said, "What did you say?"

"I'm taking Lucia back to her dorm. So please excuse me since I can't follow you, senior."

After saying his piece, Cecil politely bowed and walked past the foxkin who had first blocked his way. He was too stunned to try and block Cecil again since this was the first time that he heard someone reject his boss' invitation.

"HALT!"

Cecil paused in his steps and asked, "Is there still something, senior?"

"You... did you just not hear what I said?"

"Yes, senior I did. But it's unfortunate since I can't go with you right now."

"Well, I'm not ASKING! I'm ORDERING you to come with me!"

Immediately after the gaudy senior said his piece, his underlings bypassed Cecil and blocked his way forward.

"Kid, it's best if you listen to our boss. You don't want to cross us and our boss, Friedrich."

"..."

Cecil remained unmoved and his expression was still blank as usual.

'SO this is what those young masters act like! Oh gosh, I'm actually in a scenario straight out of a novel! COOL!'

Thinking as such caused Cecil to smile a little, but this small change in his expression was seen as a mocking smile to the flamboyant senior.

Seeing Cecil's smile that seemed mocking, Friedrich's temper immediately flared. He was about to shout to his underlings to capture and detain the ignorant junior, but was forced to swallow his words.

FWIP

That was all he heard. When he looked around in the corridor, the target of his rage was nowhere to be found.

"W-where did that brat go?!" He screamed at his underlings.

They were similarly confused since they too saw that one second Cecil was still standing there in the corridor surrounded by them, then in the next second it was like he blinked out of existence.

"FIND HIM YOU FOOLS! How- HOW DARE HE MOCK ME!" Friedrich yelled in rage.

Cecil heard his scream just as he turned at the corridors intersection, he could finally see the exit and calmly walked out of the stadium.

'Yikes, didn't think it'd be like in the novels, haha~'

"Man, that was mean of you Lulu~"

"What're you talking about Cel~?"

"Pfft, no need to act coy Lulu, that illusion magic was too funny."

"I don't know what you're talking about~ I only got rid of a bunch of flies ruining my beauty sleep."

"Sleep? I'm not your bed y'know..."

"You are now! Muhnyah~" Lucia snuggled closer to Cecil and dozed off.

"..." Cecil shrugged and walked towards the girls' dormitory.

Earlier when they bumped into Friedrich and his gang, Lucia was startled awake when Friedrich had begun yelling at Cecil. She was naturally pissed off at the bug who disturbed her sleep and dared to yell at her Cecil, so she silently casted an illusion magic array on the corridor and told Cecil to keep on walking.

Cecil complied and was surprised to see the senior classmen and his gang just stand there staring blankly into space, he immediately caught on and figured that Lucia had casted an illusion magic on them.

"WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

Cecil was startled from his thoughts and turned back to look at the stadium. Even from outside he could clearly hear the excited cheers of the people inside.

"What's up? Wasn't our match the last one?" Cecil mumbled.

He shrugged and continued on his way to Lucia's dorm.

"Ah, I hope I bump into Ainz and Fina... they were supposed to get lunch for us–"

"Cecil?!"

'Speak of the devil.'

Fina who was a distance away had recognized Cecil immediately and called out to him, Cecil stopped and waited for the girl and Ainz to come up to him.

"Hey! Shouldn't you be by Lucia's– oh, there she is." Ainz said with a strange look.

"I'm heading back to her dorm, let's go."

"Oka– wait!"

"Yeah, Fina?"

"Lucia should be resting!"

"She is resting."

"Sleeping on your back doesn't count!" She yelled back in protest.

"Well, it's not what I want... Lucia was the one who insisted. She said that the infirmary was too stuffy so she wanted to get rest in her room."

"...fine, let's go then. But hurry, mana depletion may not be anything serious but..."

"Hehe, thanks for worrying Fina, like you said, let's hurry!"

Cecil started jogging towards the girls' dorm, but he made sure to keep his strides and posture steady so that he wouldn't disturb the sleeping fox on his back.

*YAWN*

"Crap, now I'm tired too..."