Chapter 110 - Pride of Lions

The group went out and headed towards the White Wood Plantation, the area where the pride of monster lions had nested upon.

When they got to the plantation, it was indeed infested with many lions and lionesses. They numbered in the hundreds and Cecil wondered how such a large number of lions had even made their way to the place.

It was reported that there were only 50 or so in the pride, but the amount that they were witnessing had at least doubled or tripled.

"Yeah... this is totally sabotage." Ainz said in exasperation.

A vein popped on Cecil's fore head. "Bastards... if the trees weren't in the way we'd be able to clear the whole area out with a wide scale area spell."

"Can't do that though~ the chief will probably become furious if we destroy the trees~" Lucia said with a smile.

"Why are you so happy?"

"Hehehe, I'm going to go and test my new original on these oversized cats~"

"..."

Lucia jumped out from behind the tree they were hiding and raised her finger and formed a gun with her hand. The lions nearby noticed her and moved closer to surround her. Lucia smirked seeing the lions come closer. She pointed her finger at one of them and concentrated.

From the tip of her index finger a large amount of fire element particles gathered and soon a small red orb formed. Once the red orb formed, Lucia then yelled,

"Red Laser!"

The highly concentrated laser of fire elemental mana was fired from the orb and it pierced through a lion that was about to pounce on her.

The laser punctured through the lion and continued onwards to the monsters behind it, it only stopped after piercing 2 other lions behind the initial lion.

"Yes! It worked!"

Not long after the lions collapsed, their bodies immediately began to immolate. Lucia proceeded to point her finger to another lion that flinched when it saw her pointing at it.

"BLUE LASER!"

A small blue orb formed on her finger and another laser shot out. This time however, the laser was blue and it was formed from water elemental mana.

This laser didn't pierce the lion, but instead once it made contact with the monster, it immediately froze it.

"Hehe~" She quickly blew her finger, posing like a cowboy after a shootout.

"...let's go support her, there are still more of those things coming." Cecil said and took out his weapon from his spatial ring.

He pulled out his spear and quickly took his stance. He activated Mana Burst and he aimed at one of the lions and flickered forward.

After Cecil pierced through the sides of one of the lions, he began flickering and moving around the battle field at high speeds, piercing and killing every Fanged Demon Lion in his sights.

The rest of the party immediately got into action. The group made sure that they didn't damage any of the trees in the surroundings while they were fighting. Since they didn't want to damage any, the mages of the group played a supporting role while the close combatants were the main force this time around.

Fina arrived by Lucia's side who still firing her laser beams at the lions, carefully avoiding the ones that were too close to the trees.

Velicia equipped her new weapons, the Vorpal Claws that Radon had crafted for her and jumped into battle, slashing and rending each and every monster in her way. It was kinda reckless so Ainz was behind her to support her and help create openings.

Eli was flashing around the battlefield like Cecil and cutting down the lions in an orderly fashion.

The A+ ranked monsters were... somehow weak. At least those were the thoughts that were going through every one's head, except for Cecil and Lucia.

Of course, it wasn't that the monsters were weak. If any other party were to face against the hundreds of lions, their first thoughts would be to run away and abandon the quest. The monsters appeared weak right now because of Cecil.

His tips to mana control and the unique skill that he inadvertently helped everyone learn, Aura Manifestation, was what gave everyone the edge to easily defeat these A+ ranked monsters.

Aura Manifestation, it was the downgraded version of Cecil's Mana Burst and Lucia's Elemental Burst. In reality, the skill couldn't actually be described as a skill in Cecil's eyes. The skill was only a by-product of Cecil's lesson's to mana control.

The user of the skill only had to simply wrap Mana around their bodies to manifest the aura. It wasn't complicated like Cecil's and Lucia's Bursts. Nevertheless however, the aura created from Aura Manifestation served as major physical enhancement to their friends.

The skill enhanced the user's physical level to some degree at the cost of Mana, while at the same time it also acted somewhat like a barrier against attacks. The aura mitigated a small degree of damage dealt to the user's body.

The person who unintentionally developed this skill was Eli. She was intrigued with the way Cecil and Lucia enhanced their bodies, so when she was observing them fighting the other day, and the way the two were wrapping mana around their weapons to create the aura, she tried the same, except instead of her weapon, she wrapped mana around her body. The results lead to a skill that somewhat copied Lucia and Cecil's Bursts.

Unlike conventional body enhancement spells and skills, this skill didn't need the complicated chants and precursors for activation. Just wrap your body in mana, maintain that, and you're good to go. The output was also on an all-round scale, much better than the specific body enhancing skills.

Velicia and Elizabeth were very adept in the technique since they were fighters, using the skill they were able to display a higher level of fighting ability. This lead to the misperception of the A+ ranked monster being weak.

When the group cleared all the lions in the periphery of the plantation, they headed deeper in and slowly cleared the monsters in the inner areas. When they finished the inner area, they had a quick lunch break before continuing.

Outside the plantation a group of individuals were witnessing the quick speed in which the Little Kings were clearing the monsters.

"What's with this?!" One of the persons in the group said in disbelief.

"Just... they're just kids!"

"...damn... the info provided by our clients were wrong! They were totally wrong!"

"They wanted us to obstruct their quest... with just us?"

"Boss...you sure that our client isn't working for one of our enemies? This request is a total trap! Even if they're just kids...I can say for certain that I'll be killed if I fight with that boy wielding the spear."

"Who said we were fighting them? Our client only wanted us to OBSTRUCT them... leading all those lions into the plantation is more than enough to complete our mission. The client never told us to make them fail."

"Oh? So, can I hear more about this client of yours?"

"Huh?"

An unfamiliar voice rang in the midst of the group. They immediately turned towards the source of the voice and saw a boy holding a bloodied spear standing close to them.

"I'm guessing you bastards are the ones who are sabotaging us, yes?"

"..."

"...listen kid, we don't want your life. We were only sent to cause hindrances to your quest."

"I see...can't be helped right?" Cecil nodded in understanding, before he smiled eerily and continued, "Can I also assume that you were the ones who stole the Tree Sap?"

"..."

The group remained silent and they began eyeing each other discreetly. Cecil took their silence and reactions as an affirmative.

"Well, if you only lured the monsters then I wouldn't mind. They'd just be there to help our friends practice, but now you actually stole our reward... now that's a problem~" Cecil said playfully.

He channeled his mana inside the spear and the array activated. The spear immediately became enveloped in a golden storm of mana. The group immediately became alarmed at Cecil's obvious display of hostility.

They immediately unsheathed their weapons and readied themselves for a fight. Cecil chuckled seeing their actions.

"Ahahahaha... do you all honestly believe you'll be able to put up a fight?" Cecil was angry enough to the point where he deliberately taunted them. He wasn't exactly angry at their actions of obstructing their quest, since they too were only issued a quest to cause his party problems.

But stealing from him? The rewards would be given to him for his quest completion so in a sense they were his to begin with, but now some idiots had gone and stole it. Cecil hated that, especially since the reward was something essential for their training.

"Conceited little brat!" One of the men dashed forward in response to his taunting.

Cecil only stared at him and thrust out with his spear. The golden storm of mana flew out and smashed into the man, eviscerating his body and sending him crashing into a tree.

"ATTACK! KILL THE BOY IF YOU HAVE TO!" The leader quickly yelled in command.

Cecil smiled coldly and he took up a stance with his spear pointed at the ground

"Just so you know... I won't kill you people... I'll hand you over to the furious elves who had their treasure stolen. I'll let them deal with you bastards."

After Cecil said his piece, he flashed forward appearing at the back of the group. He swung his spear at the two people who were apparently their mages. The golden storm flew out once again and smashed the two mages away who were in mid-chant.

After Cecil quickly incapacitated their mages, he rushed towards the rest and quickly took each individual down.

"Tsk... weak... monsters are much more of a challenge than these fools." Cecil mumbled in disappointment.

Cecil took out a rope from his spatial ring and quickly bound the infidels. He whistled and Silver came rushing. He handed the bound group of people to Silver and checked the spatial ring that he looted from the leader.

"Hmph. They did steal the sap..." Cecil retrieved the 3 jars of tree sap and stored them inside his spatial ring. He rummaged around inside the of the leader's spatial ring, trying to find anything else of value that was worth taking.

"Eh? I guess these people weren't all that useless after all." Cecil smiled and took out a monster core. "They're the ones that actually killed the Monster King... no wonder there weren't any other movements from the pride even after we went on a rampage in the inner area."

Their leader was already dead, so the entire lion pride couldn't coordinate their attacks and only the monsters close to each other were the ones that came to support the lions that were being attacked by their group.

"The claws, fangs, fur... tails, and its head. Okay... looks like that's all." Cecil quickly took out the Monster King's materials and stored them inside his ring. He tossed the ring back to the unconscious leader and headed back towards his party.

Silver quickly dragged the unconscious group of people and headed back towards the village.

Back at the inner area of the plantation...

"So, did you get them?" Lucia asked.

"Yeah, they were weak, but they were strong enough to take down the monster king."

"They killed the fanged demon lion king?"

"Yeah, I've already taken the materials and the sap with me."

"Heeehh~"

Cecil shrugged at Lucia. He didn't say anything more and returned to killing the lion monsters.

"Hurry up Lulu, let's clear the plantation before nightfall. We still have one more quest to do closeby."

"Alright~"

The group upped their clearing speed and they were able to safely finish their quest before the evening.