Chapter 116 - Once more, into the Dungeon

Cecil woke up early the next day. He felt oddly refreshed and he vaguely felt that Lucia was in his dorm yesterday.

'Not sure if it was a dream or not, but the others were here as well, right?'

He went about his morning activities, making sure he didn't forget to go grab Ainz from his room and do their morning training routine together.

******

It was almost 8 now and Cecil was already waiting with Fina at the academy district's gates. It didn't take long before the two finally saw the other 3 people of their class' party.

"Good morning!" Fina greeted brightly with a cute smile.

"Good morning, Fina." Ghina greeted in return. The other two also responded to the little girl's greeting.

Cecil cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. Once he got their attention he quickly addressed them, "Good morning everyone. Today we'll be setting out to the Anglaria Kingdom's Dungeon. We might take 1-2 days exploring the place and write our report. So I'm sure everyone has already bought the items that I listed yesterday?"

"Yes, we've got them inside our spatial rings." Lu Garulle affirmed.

"Great! Now then, let's go!"

The group quickly turned on their heels and Cecil led them all the way out. Cecil and Fina had decided to hop onto a carriage or wagon bound for the dungeon's town instead of riding on Silver.

They didn't want to surprise their friends since the 3 only knew that Silver was a small puppy wolf that Fina carried around all the time recently. If they knew that the seemingly harmless wolf was in fact a majestically huge monster with capabilities that rivaled S ranked monsters...

So the two decided to drop Silver off by Radon's before they left.

Once they were on the carriage bound for the Kingdom's Dungeon Town, Cecil began reminding everyone of their positions and roles in the party. He made sure that they got a clear picture of what they were supposed to do later in the dungeon.

Although the dungeon was a boring place for Cecil, he knew that the place was still dangerous for the likes of his 3 teammates. So in order to make sure that they weren't put into danger due to their own inadequacies, Cecil kept on reminding them.

He didn't really want to help out too much later during their dungeon run. He wanted to only do the bare minimum and let his friends experience firsthand what it was like to dive into a dungeon. This assignment was supposed to be a task to help the students experience what a dungeon was like in preparations with next month's tournament segment.

If Cecil did all the work and didn't let his friends experience the struggles of dungeoneering then if they actually did dive into a dungeon next month, they'd be disillusioned to think that a dungeon wasn't really anything special and that it was easy to explore.

"Okay guys, let's head on in!" Cecil said while pumping his fist into the air.

"Yeah!" The party responded back in unison.

While the party was heading into the dungeon, Cecil noticed that there were other parties that were wearing uniforms just like theirs. It wasn't just them who had the thoughts of diving into the Arks Kingdom's Public Dungeon, but other students had the same intent as well.

After taking a casual glance at the 10 or so parties that were from the academy, Cecil led his party into the dungeon.

When they arrived at the first opening in the dungeon, Cecil felt that everyone aside Fina had begun tensing up. He smiled slyly and continued walking ahead.

When they came up to a corner, Cecil who was at the front quickly ran ahead as if he saw something. His party members tensed up in confusion, after a moment's hesitation they quickly chased after him. When they got past the corner...

"RAAAAHHH!!!"

"KYAAAH??!!"

"GUH?!"

"...!!"

"...Cecil..." Fina said with a helpless smile.

"Ahahahaha~" Cecil laughed uproariously at his 3 teammates' reactions.

"CECIL! THAT WAS UNCALLED FOR!" Ghina screamed at him after she saw that their party leader had played a childish prank on them.

"...Crap, I thought something serious was about to happen..." Lu Garulle said while releasing the breath he was holding in since earlier.

"..." Light just stared at his two teammates before looking back at Cecil who was still trying to stifle his laughter.

Ghina began pouting at the side and Lu began chuckling. Light turned towards Cecil and let out a relaxed smile and thanked him.

"Thank you, Cecil."

"Why're you thanking him Light?!" Ghina asked incredulously.

"Well, we shouldn't be so tense after just entering the dungeon... Cecil here just relieved us of that tension."

"Hm? Haha~ no biggie, just relax! If you tense up so much, you're just going to exhaust yourselves~" Cecil smilingly responded, but then right behind him, a cave creeper fell down from the ceiling.

Cave creepers, they were large gecko-like monster humanoids that had large curved claws and long wretched fangs. They inhabited the ceilings and walls of most labyrinth-type floors of dungeons.

Cecil seemed oblivious to the monster that was falling towards him. When the cave creeper got a little closer, it began screeching, releasing a sonic wave using wind elemental magic to disrupt its prey's senses. In this case, Cecil's senses, the monster then extended its claws with a clear intent to plunge it deep into the boy's skull.

Light and everyone else immediately noticed this and paled, they were just about to take action when suddenly a blue wolf jumped out from behind them and intercepted the monster that was still in mid-air.

When the blue wolf came into contact with the cave creeper, it suddenly expanded and enveloped the monster into its body.

"Freeze." A small voice sounded from behind the Ghina.

Ghina turned around and saw Fina extend her hand that was holding a unique blue colored staff. Immediately, the 'blue wolf' that was now a big ball of water froze in response. The monster inside naturally froze along with it.

Cecil gave Fina a glance and smiled, "Thanks Fina!"

"Un."

"Well guys, like I said. Just relax, we've got more ground to cover and if you're already this tense you won't last until the 5th floor~" Cecil said nonchalantly. He was so unperturbed that it made the previous monster attack feel so insignificant.

"H-hey! How could you be like this?! Aren't you being a little too careless?!" Ghina called out when she saw their leader turn around and began advancing further into the dungeon.

Cecil turned around and scratched his head, "This is only the beginning of the dungeon... these are only small fries, so don't sweat it. And remember, we're in a party, we'll have each other's backs."

"But... shouldn't we be more careful now? That monster... it dropped outta nowhere..."

"Hmmm..."

A Cave Creeper was only a C-ranked monster. It was only a low class mid-tier monster. It was actually so weak to Cecil that he himself categorized it as only a D rank, but from how slow his party's response was to the monster's attack, with the exception of Fina, he did have to reconsider their party's strategy now.

'I didn't expect everyone else in class was so... weak. But I guess it's only because of their lack of experience and training.' Cecil thought while taking a quick glance at Fina.

'Yeah, even Fina was hopeless at first, but after almost 2 months with us she's now able to hold her own in a fight.'

Cecil clapped his hands and replied to Ghina's question, "Alright, let's do this a little differently. Lu, you're on point, we'll follow your lead. Ghina, you're our spotter, make sure you keep an eye on our surroundings. Light and Fina, you two are our mages, so you'll be our attackers!"

Ghina nodded with a smile at Cecil's commands. They were now taking the safer approach and having their tank on point. Before it was just going to be Cecil with Lu Garulle acting as a support.

Other than the members of Little Kings, no one knew of Cecil's actual strength. Normally Cecil would always be on point with everyone else following behind him and they'd just bulldoze through everything standing in their way.

Since Cecil wanted his 3 classmates to properly experience a dungeon he had to take this more seriously and apply other strategies.

"Uhm... Cecil what will you be doing then?" Lu asked after they got into their new formation and began walking further into the dungeon.

Cecil was currently at the rear of the party.

"I'll act as back up and I'll watch our six. You guys just focus on what's in front. I'll handle the back!" Cecil waved.

"Okay..." Lu Garulle turned his attention away from Cecil and narrowed his eyes, it was obvious that he was focusing his total attention towards the path ahead.

"Remember, relax. Don't be so tense!"

"Yeah!"

The party progressed slowly like this. On their way to the second floor, the party would encounter a Cave Creeper or two that fell from the ceiling, a giant monster rat pack, or a small flock of demon bats and other cave inhabiting monsters.

Whenever they encountered any monsters, Ghina would alert them beforehand and Lu Garulle would go forward to attract attention. Then Light, Fina, and Ghina would coordinate their attacks to quickly dispatch the monster or monsters.

If by chance a monster got passed Lu when they faced against multiple monsters, Fina would use her water familiars and make short work of them. Cecil didn't have much to do. Other than the occasional times where he would send a knife flying towards a monster that almost harmed his classmates, he'd just observe their fight, and then after the fight, Cecil would quickly dismantle the monster bodies and store it inside his spatial ring.

It took them about 8 hours since they walked into the dungeon to arrive at the stairway towards the 2nd floor. Cecil gave them a small reminder that the monsters would be a little different than the first floor's monsters.

Lu walked down the stairs carefully. He was totally focused at what was in front of him that Cecil could only sigh helplessly seeing the rest of his party get all solemn and serious. Even Fina was swallowed up by the atmosphere and began tensing up.

When they finally stepped foot onto the 2nd floor, Cecil's teammates all let out an involuntary cry of surprise at the scenery they witnessed.

"H-how?!"

"This isn't the exit is it?!"

"!"

"C-Cecil?! How is this boring??" Fina turned around and asked the boy who had an uncaring expression on his face.

Cecil shrugged and replied, "You'll get used to it... once you're used to it... then it's just gonna be a cycle of boring fights on different backgrounds."

"..."

The scenery in front of them was that of a beachside. When they turned to look back, they saw a large cliff side that extended far into the 'sky'. On this cliff side was the staircase that they traveled down on.

Not far ahead of them, there was this dungeon floor's rest stop. Although it was called a rest stop, it was more like a small settlement.

"So, what do you wanna do? Rest for a bit before continuing?" Cecil asked the party.

"...We've been fighting for a while... and I am a little exhausted." Lu responded.

Cecil nodded at this. Their large ape-kin friend was on constantly high alert during their entire time traversing the first floor. He was also the one who was tasked with tanking and attracting the monster's assaults, so of course he was bound to be more exhausted than the rest.

"Yeah, we should rest... I think Light is almost out of mana?" Ghina agreed and turned to look at the slightly pale Light.

"Only a little..."

"Okay, we'll rest for a bit. Then we'll quickly set off." Cecil said and led the party into the rest area.

When they got to the settlement, they had a little run in with another party.