The next morning, Cecil woke up early with Lucia clinging on to him. He wasn't surprised since this was a common occurrence back when he was still living with Lucia's family. They shared the same bedroom and just like this inn, they had different beds, but every single morning Cecil would always wake up and find Lucia clinging on to him like an octopus. He was surprised at first, but then thought nothing of it. His little sister, Angelia, also did the same back on earth whenever she was too scared to sleep alone.

Looking out the window, Cecil saw that it was still a bit dark outside. He turned towards the girl clinging onto him and shook her gently awake.

"Hey, Lulu... wake up, it's time for morning practice."

"Hrmm... uhnm, five more minutes Cel..."

'Hah, typical Lulu.'

Seeing that the girl had no plans of getting up anytime soon, Cecil stopped shaking her and moved his hand down slowly towards the girl's waist. Sensing something ominous about to happen to her, Lucia immediately snapped open her eyes and stared back at Cecil with a menacing look. Her golden colored pupils glinted brightly in the dark. Seeing her stare at him, Cecil stopped his hand and stared back at her and asked, "What is it?"

"...What were you planning on doing just now?"

With his intentions seen through, Cecil decided to play dumb.

"Milady, whatever is it that you are talking about?"

"Gah! I knew it! Whenever, you talk like that, it's only when you try to do something bad to me!"

'Wow, her reaction is almost just like Angelia's'

"Haha, so... are you getting up or not?"

Since Lucia already knew what he was going to do, Cecil brazenly put his hands on her waist while smiling. From the very start, he planned on tickling her awake if she continued to keep on sleeping.

"F-fine, just don't tickle me."

"Hehe, good. We should never neglect our morning training no matter how tired we are."

"...Meanie..."

"Heh, if you just stayed on your bed then you wouldn't need me to wake you up so early!"

"NO! I like sleeping with Cel~"

Lucia said this and quickly got off of him. With her finally no longer clinging onto him, Cecil stretched his body and quickly put on his boots before walking over to the small basin on the table nearby. He turned towards Lucia and said, "Lucia, help please?"

"... Wait a bit."

After combing her hair, Lucia walked over to Cecil, extended a hand over the empty basin and concentrated. After about 2 seconds, she opened her eyes and chanted, "Aqua."

A small magic circle appeared above the basin right after her chant. From Cecil's Mana Eyes, he could see that the mana in the air was flowing into the magic circle after which the mana started transforming. After the mana was swiftly transformed, water started to gush out slowly from the mana circle. Quickly, the basin was filled with water.

"You've gotten better using the water element now."

"Yup~"

Lucia smiled brightly after receiving his compliment.

"Okay, so le–"

Before Cecil could say anymore he was quickly interrupted by the smiling Lucia.

"Haha, idiot Cel, are you seriously going to make a lady wait for you?"

"...Lady's first."

"Glad you understand."

Lucia washed her face first and after doing a quick wash, she emptied the water into the sink next to the table and filled it back up once more with water.

"I'll wait for you outside."

"Okay."

An hour later, after finishing up their morning training, the duo went to take a proper bath in the inn's public bath area. The bathing area was divided between genders and last night, it was completely full of customers from the inn. It was to the point where neither of them could go inside to take a bath so since they had no other choice, the two of them had to bathe inside of their inn's room using the large basin the inn provided which was why they had their little squabble last night.

It was very early in the morning right now, so the public bathing area was completely empty. The two of them took advantage of the empty baths and thoroughly cleaned themselves. After their bath, they quickly ate breakfast and hurried out the city gates. They went towards the ranch on the outskirts of town and fed Silver the food they ordered back at the inn.

"Silv, we're going to go back and meet up with our temporary party members. We'll come back to pick you up when we go out for the hunting event."

"Cel, you wait here with Silv. I'll go and meet up with Milly and the rest and pick you both up later~"

"Eh... okay? You sure, Lulu?"

"Hehe, don't worry so much~. Silv's probably real lonely here by himself."

"... Alright."

"The event starts at noon, so I'll come pick you up around that time~"

'What's with her all of a sudden?' Cecil thought to himself. Normally, the two of them were inseparable because Lucia didn't like leaving him alone. He also preferred going around with her because he felt like he had to be there to protect her. It had become the norm for them to be together all the time, so it was weird that Lucia was leaving him alone like this. Before he could say anything further, Lucia was already walking back to the town.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

'It's probably a girl thing.'

He decided to drop it and turned to his pal, "Hey Silv, let's go kill some time in the forest after you eat okay?"

"Rawr!"

Silver responded with a positive bark and quickly gulped down his food. It was basically 'play time' for him. After eating, the two headed towards the forest close to the ranch. Cecil heard from the ranch master that although that part of the forest was closer to the town, it didn't mean that it wasn't any less dangerous. Despite the warning, Cecil still left with Silver as he didn't think that there would be anything too dangerous that neither he and Silver could handle.

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THWACK CRACK

In the forest, Cecil was currently in combat with an ape-like monster. The ape monster had barbed spikes that were spread all over the back of its body. It had sharply curled claws that were currently slashing towards him, threatening to disembowel him. Seeing the claws coming at him, Cecil quickly stepped forward and closed the distance between him and the ape. With his body close to the ape, he extended a hand and smashed at the wrist of the ape.

Seeing how Cecil was doing something so foolish as to come closer to it. The ape was excited and didn't pay any mind to his fist that accelerated towards its wrist. It instead tried to slash at him with its other hand, aiming for a pincer attack, when suddenly, its body went rigid and it quickly raised a pain-filled howl.

The ape looked down at its wrist and saw that it was bent back in a way that it wasn't supposed to be. The small creature it was fighting had snapped its wrist with a seemingly light punch that it had underestimated. The monster ape first felt pain and confusion, then it morphed into rage. It quickly looked down at the boy and froze a little bit in fear.

What it saw were apathetic, golden-colored eyes gazing back at it. Right then and there, the ape felt a looming sense of death just by staring at the small creature's golden eyes. Cecil struck at the ape's flank and leaned in with his shoulder before knocking the ape back, making it stumble from the impact of his shoulder thrust. He then pulled back his fist and directed a punch straight at the ape's defenseless abdomen.

BAM

Like a kite with its string cut, the ape flew back and smashed into a tree. It was fully embedded into the tree with all its limbs broken and blood seeping out of its orifices.

'Nice. It worked!'

Cecil was happy with the outcome of his battle. After he and Silver had gone into the forest, they went a little too deep inside and met with a pack of Barbed Apes. Since they were humanoid monsters in the shape of apes that were 3 to 4 meters in height, Cecil thought that they'd be good targets for his experiment. He used a variety of his family's martial arts techniques and picked out the ones that he could use in a fight against a humanoid while infusing the techniques with his newly acquired mana.

With all the monster ape bodies strewn around, one could say that Cecil had successfully finished his experiment, aka training session. After finishing his fight with the last ape monster, Cecil took a look around and saw Silver walking up to him.

"Good work Silver."

"Rawr!"

Taking a glance behind Silver, Cecil could see that over a dozen corpses of the Barbed Apes were strewn on the ground. Some were disemboweled and others were split in twain. He looked back at his handiwork and saw that there were twice as many Barbed Ape bodies strewn about on the floor or embedded into the surrounding trees.

"Heh, looks like I win this round, Silv."

"Rah!"

Silver shook his head and his tail began to wag back and forth. He opened his mouth and seeing the bloody chunks of meat in between his teeth, Cecil could see that some of the monster apes had been eaten by him.

"What the heck, you ate some of them? Jeez, Silv. Can't hold back your appetite? You just ate earlier!"

"Grrah!"

Cecil shook his head and patted his companion's head. He went to check on the monster ape corpses that he had killed and noticed that every single one of them had at least 2 or more of their limbs broken while blood was leaking from their orifices.

"Being able to incorporate a little bit of mana into my attacks really works wonders! There's no way I could have done this back on Earth, haha!"

Scene surrounding the pair was straight out of a horror film, but all Cecil did was lightly laugh at the dead monsters. Looking up at the rising sun, he estimated that it had been at least half an hour or so since they've gone into the forest. He had to quickly put a stop to his fun because if he didn't go back right now, he might see a fuming Lucia waiting for him.

"Silv, let's head back. We've done enough exercise and experimenting. We won't need to be too worried about hunting in the event. Besides, if Lucia doesn't see us at the ranch by the time she gets back there... she's probably gonna chew us up."

"Raaah!"

After giving a spirited bark, Silver leaned down a bit to let Cecil jump onto his back. Confirming that Cecil was holding tightly onto him, Silver immediately dashed straight for the exit of the forest, heading back to the ranch.

-----------------------------------------

Over at Lucia's end, after she left Cecil and Silver at the ranch, she made her way to the town square. Passing through the gate, Lucia hurried on towards the agreed meeting place with Scarlet Blaze. When she arrived at the square she saw the party waiting by the event stage. It was pretty crowded, but the young party of four really stood out from the rest of the veterans that were crowding around the stage.

Lucia walked towards them and called out to the party's leader, "Milly!"

Turning around, Milly, Scarlet Blaze's party leader, saw a silver-haired, 3 tailed foxkin girl calling out to her. She let out a smile and waved at her, "Oh! Lucia! Quick come 'ere!"

Walking up to the party, Lucia saw that Tyr and Miles were looking around. Upon seeing that Cecil wasn't with her, Tyr immediately asked, "Cecil's not with you?!"

Expecting a question like that, Lucia answers briefly, "He's at the ranch with Silver, our monster companion. After the event starts can we go pick him up?"

"Sure, sure!" Tyr answers.

"Actually it's pretty convenient. The area where we're going to clear out is the forest close to the ranch."

"Eh?"

Hearing this Lucia started to worry.

'Knowing Cecil and Silver... they might just go have a small training session in the forest...'

Cathy could see that Lucia seemed to be worrying about something, so she tried asking what was wrong, "Uh..uhm... L-Lucia... is something, b-bothering you?"

"Eh? N-no, it's just that... knowing Cecil, he'd probably take Silver with him and train a bit in the forest near the ranch... Since there's supposed to be a lot of monsters in there, I'm worried that if he goes too deep into the forest, he might get into some trouble..."

"T-that's b-bad isn't it?"

"Uhm... I'm gonna go back and check on them!"

Seeing Lucia about to run back, Milly quickly spoke up, "Hey! Lucia, we'll go too. The announcements just about finished so we'll just go together and have a head start. Others have already skipped the announcement ceremony and are already hunting down the monsters in the forest."

Before Lucia could answer her, a loud voice resounded from the Monster Hunting Event stage, "WITH THIS, LET THE HUNTING BEGIN!"

The lizard-kin on the stage that seemed to be the mayor of the town had just finished up with his speech and announced the start of the hunting event. Before Lucia could even move, Tyr had beaten her to it and was already dashing towards the town's gates while saying, "Alright! Let's go already! The announcements are finished!"

"We're right behind you!" Milly yelled.

Lucia and the rest quickly chased after Tyr and the party quickly headed towards the ranch. By the time they reached the ranch, Lucia started looking around frantically after seeing that Cecil and Silver were nowhere to be found.

"They're already gone!"

Milly started prepping her party after seeing that Cecil wasn't there.

"Okay, formations as per normal. Lucia since you're a spellcaster like me, just stay close to me later!"

"Eh?! Uh, okay!"

Not knowing what was happening, Lucia was caught in Milly's flow and agreed to whatever it was she was instructed to do.

"Alright, since we're ready, LET'S GO!"

Just as they were about to enter the forest to look for Cecil, the party heard someone calling out to them in the distance.

"HEY!"

"""Eh?"""

The voice sounded familiar, so they quickly turned around and looked towards the person who was calling out to them. What they saw was a huge, 3-meter tall white wolf with a black-haired, 3-tailed foxkin boy riding on top of it waving his hand over at them. This was naturally Cecil and Silver. The group quickly ran towards them and Lucia immediately began scolding the pair.

"IDIOT! Weren't you supposed to just wait at the ranch?!"

Cecil had wanted to tell Lucia about his and Silver's small feat in the forest, but seeing as Lucia was flaring up at him for no reason, his bright face darkened a little. Thinking that he didn't do anything wrong, he immediately tried to argue back, "W-what's wrong? It's not like I made you wait for too long. I'm back already so why are you so mad?"

"You just came back from the forest!"

"Yeah, so?"

Seeing him answer so uncaringly, Lucia flared up even more.

"IDIOT! It's dangerous there! Don't you remember why they even hosted the hunting event?!"

"To hunt monsters... I'm not stupid Lulu. What's with you anyway? Didn't we already hunt in the forest yesterday? Nothing bad happened, so why are you yelling?"

Hearing his careless remark and looking at his dull face. Lucia was just about to burst out at him again.

"Cecil!"

Seeing as the atmosphere was about to boil over, Milly immediately stepped in and raised her voice. Remembering that Lucia wasn't alone, Cecil started getting embarrassed that others were seeing them argue like this.

"Oh, Milly...everyone... Sorry you had to see this," He jumped down from Silver's back and quickly leaned close to Lucia and said, "Quit it already Lulu, if you want to argue at least do it later... we shou–"

"Cecil! Although we've only met yesterday, but you should apologize to Lucia right now!" Cathy immediately interrupted.

Everyone was surprised. The normally stuttering and shy Cathy had raised her voice and spoke rather boldly without stuttering! Taken aback by Cathy's sudden outburst, Cecil stammered in reply, "Wh-why?"

"Look at her!"

"Eh?"

Cecil immediately turned towards Lucia and saw that her face was flushed red. She was biting her lower lip and there were tears in her eyes. Seeing this, Cecil knew that he did something wrong.

"L-Lulu? W-what's wrong?"

"*Sniff* I-idiot."

Cathy raised her voice again, but this time it was at Lucia.

"And you Lucia!"

"..."

"I know that you're worried, but you shouldn't just flare up at him out of nowhere! How's Cecil supposed to know why you're mad if you don't tell him why in the first place?!"

After saying her piece, Cathy immediately realized what she just did and her face went red. She started clutching her tail in embarrassment right after and apologized, "Uhm... I-I'm s-s-sorry."

'Okay this is confusing' Cecil thought. He let out a sigh before pulling Lucia closer to him and asking "Why are you mad, Lulu?"

Milly was the one who answered him this time.

"The area of the hunt is at the forest you were just in... so basically that part of the forest is currently overpopulated with monsters."

"Huh?!"

Cecil recalled his trek through the forest earlier. Indeed, the forest was overflowing with monsters just like Milly said. Even at the periphery, there were so many monsters, but Cecil didn't realize this since he wasn't a local. He just thought that it was a common occurrence and didn't pay it any mind.

He even went further into the forest with Silver and battled against a huge pack of Barbed Apes. At that point, he should've realized that something was wrong, but because the monsters were so 'weak', he only treated the fight as sport. It was only now that he really thought about it, that Cecil finally found it rather unusual to meet with a such a huge pack of monsters. Even on their way back to the ranch, he noticed that the amount of monsters roaming the forest seemed to be even denser than when he first went in.

Thinking up to here, Cecil finally realized what he did wrong and quickly hugged Lucia. After hugging her and pacifying her, he then stepped back and immediately did a 90-degree bow and apologized.

"S-sorry, Lulu, for making you worry like that."

After being hugged by him, Lucia had already calmed down and was no longer on the verge of crying. Seeing that Cecil was now apologizing, she felt a little happy, but still a bit furious in her heart.

"...Idiot."

"Yes, yes. I'm an idiot. So please don't be mad anymore okay?"

"...Fine."

Seeing the two make up. Milly quickly barged in on their moment and said, "Okay, now that that's out of the way. Let's get to hunting!"