Chapter 95 - The Tournament Begins

It was over a month after Cecil and Lucia had enrolled in Arks Royal Academy, the duo along with their party of friends were currently completing a hunting quest that was issued by the adventurer guild in their academy's district.

"Ainz watch your back!"

"Ouh!"

At Cecil's warning, Ainz jumped forward while sending a wind blade behind him. The wind blade passed through a flying demon hawk that was pouncing towards him.

"Alright, let's clear the rest of 'em away!" Ainz shouted while casting spells with incredible speed.

Cecil dashed into the group of monsters alongside Elizabeth and the two wreaked havoc, cutting down the demon hawks in droves.

The demon hawks that the group was currently hunting were individually a C-class rated monster, but the adventurer guild had deemed the quest to be ranked A since a flock of more than 10,000 of these birds had appeared in the forest close to a village near the kingdom's capital.

There was supposedly even a Monster King leading the flock.

The focus of the demon hawks were centered on their 2 vanguards which were Cecil and Eli. The flock nearly blocked the rest of the party's sights of their two friends, but the constant screeching and falling of the monsters indicated that the two were in no trouble at all.

Nevertheless, the sheer numbers of the flock was nearly endless to Cecil's group. They have been fighting intensely for almost half an hour already since they've first encountered the flock.

Although Lucia and Cecil weren't exhausted yet, but Ainz and the rest were beginning to show signs.

"Tsk, these birds seem endless." Lucia clicked her tongue.

"Y-yeah... at this rate, I don't think we'll be able to clear it all in one go without first exhausting all our mana..." Fina added timidly.

"Don't worry so much Fina! We can just retreat before we even exhaust ourselves!" Velicia assured her from the side.

Lucia and Velicia were tasked with the protection of the party's 2 mages and the two were currently fending off the multitudes of demon hawks that were swooping down to attack them.

After another 5 mintues, Cecil and Eli burst out of the encirclement of demon hawks that were surrounding them. They quickly regrouped back with the rest and decided that it was time to retreat.

Cecil was shouldering Elizabeth who was visibly exhausted.

"Eli almost over drafted her mana earlier, we should retreat for today." Cecil said calmly.

"I-I'm okay..." Eli refuted.

"Come on, let's go. I'll bring up the rear, Fina support me. Ainz, Lucia, open up a path for us."

"Okay~"

"Roger."

Cecil entrusted Eli over to Velicia and defended their rear with Fina.

"LAVA BURST"

"OMEGA FLARE!"

2 tier 5 spells were fired into the flock of demon hawks, disintegrating them into dust. The 2 spells created a large opening to form in the encirclement.

"LET'S GO!" Ainz shouted.

Everyone enhanced themselves using a combat skill and dashed together out of the flock of birds.

For a while the flock of demon hawks chased after them, but with Lucia and Ainz constantly sending out mid-tier spells to slow down the flock, the group was able to successfully break away from their pursuit.

When they arrived at the village close to where the flock inhabited the nearby forest, the group quickly checked into an inn and collapsed on their beds.

Cecil and Lucia only washed up the grime and sweat that they acc.u.mulated from the entire day of fighting. The two quickly met up in front of the inn and went out to the local grocery shop to buy ingredients for their dinner.

"Cel... shouldn't we tell them now?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know full well what I mean you idiot!"

"Ahaha, nahhh... they'll figure it out once we've finished this quest."

"...we lied to them though..."

"Oh? How did we lie?"

"We said we'd only be taking on a Gold ranked quest!"

"Well, isn't this a Gold ranked quest?"

"It's a Gold ranked PROMOTION quest! The difficulty is already borderline Platinum ranked maybe even higher!"

Cecil just shrugged in reply. "A Gold ranked promotion quest is still a Gold ranked quest Lulu."

"That's just sophistry!"

"Ahaha, what's up Lulu? It's not like this quest is hard on the two of us. If we wanted, the two of us alone could have just blown away that entire flock of pigeons anytime we wanted. Why do you need to worry so much? Besides, don't you think that this is an opportunity to train our friends?"

"But... oh.... alright..." Lucia dejectedly responded. There was no fault in Cecil's words. The flock of 'pigeons' according to Cecil did in no way, pose a threat to him or Lucia. A quick tier 7 spell would be enough for the two to annihilate the flock in a blink of an eye.

This was a rare opportunity for their friends to train and experience what it was like to take up an almost platinum ranked quest.

So, why are Cecil and Lucia doing adventure quests when they were supposed to be having classes in the academy?

This was because the Arks Royal Academy's Year-Long Tournament had officially begun, 3 days ago.

During the past month, Lucia and Cecil stayed away from any factions' invitation and only kept a good relationship between each faction.

Eli, Fina, and Velicia also wanted to join a faction, but seeing as their two friends avoiding the factions the 4 people were caught in a dilemma.

Some of the factions that they wanted to join had special conditions attached which applied only to them, one such condition was persuading either Cecil or Lucia to join their faction alongside themselves.

So, up until when the tournament started, the 6 people have still not joined any faction. Eli held no interest in joining a faction if Cecil and Lucia weren't in it so she made up her mind to just form a small party with the two.

Fina found it regrettable, but she still decided to join their small party. Velicia wanted to join a faction with her other friends, but she was barred from joining if she couldn't convince her friends, Cecil or Lucia, from joining together with her.

Since this was the case, Velicia went ahead to join their party since she was left with little to no choice in the matter, the only good news for her was that her friends were able to join the faction without any problems.

As for Ainz... at first he did join the student council, but was then kicked out afterwards. He never participated in any preliminary tournament events alongside his faction since he joined. He also opted to continue training with Cecil during his free time and this caused him to be somewhat estranged with his faction.

When the other members of the student council's faction questioned his membership and loyalty, Ainz plainly said that he was joining the faction in order to get stronger and obtain more benefits. He also had Cecil as a friend who helped him in his training so why should he stray away from such an opportunity.

Of course, this earned him the enmity of a couple of fellows and his treatment in the faction went spiraling down into the drain. It was to the point where he was pretty much the errand boy. Considering his pride, he could no longer take it. The last straw however was the fact that some of the senior members of the faction began insulting his friends.

He wouldn't take it lying down so Ainz also returned the insults, calling them weak fools who wouldn't be able to handle the intense training that he was currently conducting under Cecil's guidance.

This of course caused the higher ups of the faction to be infuriated with him and they kicked him out of the faction. They also threatened that they would do all they can to hinder his and Cecil's attempts in the tournament.

Ainz only laughed it off and immediately joined Cecil's party since there wasn't much benefit in joining another faction starting as a grunt member. There was also no guarantee that he would be treated any better than what he experienced back with the student council.

Ainz shared his short experience in the faction, but all Cecil heard was contributions, contributions, contributions. They start out small as a grunt and they could only move up the 'social' ladder using contributions in the form of donating rare resources to the faction or completing quests issued by the faction.

They were too busy trying to chase after contributions that they had little to no time to train by themselves.

So, Cecil's small party of 6 formed an individual group outside of the factions and participated in tournament this way.

The first segment of the tournament was the adventurer segment so the party formed an adventurer party that they named, 'Little Kings'.

When the party was registered, Lucia and Cecil kept their ranks secret so the party's rank was based off of the current known highest in their party, which was Eli who was a 3-star Silver ranked adventurer.

Since the party's rank would be based on the member with the highest rank, Cecil and Lucia didn't want to announce there's yet since they may cause another uproar within the academy if their ranks were publicly known.

It also had to be known that this was a tournament, so competition was everywhere. If it was known of how high their ranks were, there was bound to be a multitude of people who were going to be dead set on obstructing their progress in this segment of the tournament.

Particularly people from the 10 factions, Cecil and Lucia long knew about this problem so they kept things secret. Eventually, their party members would find out about their ranks, but by then Cecil and Lucia would have finished their preparations to counteract the obstacles that the factions were bound to send their way.

"Come on Lulu, let's hurry. I bet our friends are probably starving to death by now."

"...yeah. But don't you think this 'training' is a little too harsh for them?" Lucia asked worriedly.

"Oh, come on. They've at least passed my test. This much isn't going to kill them."

"KILL??"

"AHAHAHA~"

Lucia prayed for her friends, this was only the prelim training for them. Once they start the REAL training... they might actually die.

This was one of the preparations that Cecil and Lucia were conducting. Just like Lucia's mother, the two were going to create a party whose every individual had strength on par or close to a King or a faction's overall strength.

They might not win with quantity, but at least they'll be able to win with quality.

If every member of Little Kings were able to complete a high-tier Gold or low-tier Platinum ranked quest individually, then the points they would stack up in this segment of the tournament would be astronomical.

When the two finished shopping, it was almost evening. The two went back to the inn and picked up the 4 corpses of their friends and brought them out of the village.