It has been a month since Cecil and Lucia 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 diving towards him and split it in half.

"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 as they cut 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, while the rest of the group just fired off magic spells from a safe distance. 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 minutes, 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.

"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"

"MEGA BLAZE!"

2 tier 5 spells were fired into the flock of demon hawks, disintegrating them into dust and creating a large opening in the monsters' 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 accumulated from the entire day of fighting before quickly meeting up at the 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 at anytime. 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. If they really got serious, the two of them alone could annihilate the flock in a blink of an eye, but this was a rare opportunity for their friends to train and experience what it was like to take up a gold ranked quest that was borderline a 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 just 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 were avoiding the factions, the 4 people were caught in a dilemma because 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 still haven't joined any of the factions despite all the invitations. The others in their class have already joined their respective factions, so it was only them in Class S that were factionless. 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 if need be.

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, which was a pretty slimy move from the faction she wanted to join. Since this was the case, Velicia went ahead to join their party because 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 within his faction.

When the other members of the student council's faction questioned his membership and loyalty, Ainz explained that he was just in the faction to get the benefits from joining it. He didn't care about anything else and was only focused on getting stronger. The results from his training with Cecil was really apparent as he was able to go head-to-head in a sparring match with some of his faction seniors.

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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 pretty much became the senior members of the student council's errand boy because they wanted to put him down and teach him his place.

Naturally, they did it out of jealousy and spite, but considering Ainz's pride, he wasn't going to just sit around and take it. However, he decided to endure because joining the faction was pretty hard and getting kicked out or leaving could put him on the student council's blacklist and he didn't want that.

Unfortunately for him, something happened and his relationship with all the members of the student council became irreconcilable. Some of the members of the faction began insulting his friends and he didn't take it lying down. He threw insults back at them and even challenged them all to a match which they were naturally happy to accommodate for, especially since it gave them the opportunity to teach this arrogant junior of theirs a lesson.

The results, to even Ainz's surprise, were overwhelmingly in his favor, but he eventually lost because the student council members decided to gang up on him when they saw that they couldn't beat him in a one versus one battle. Just as he was about to be beaten up, his savior stepped up and pulled him out of the dire situation he was in.

Coincidentally, Cecil was around the stadium to take a look at the students sparring against each other and he happened to see Ainz's match. When things started going awry for his friend, he quickly stepped up to save him from the humiliation of getting beaten up and the situations were immediately reversed. Instead of Ainz getting beaten up, it was the group of student council members that were trashed.

Cecil loved fighting and he didn't care who it was with as long as they were willing to be his sparring partners, aka punching bags. If the student council president didn't suddenly appear and step in when he did, the entire faction would've been humiliated by a single student that day. It was the first time Cecil met someone that piqued his interest, but he remembered that he didn't want to cause too much trouble and remain low-profile, so he dropped the matter right on the spot and even apologized.

Unfortunately, the student council didn't want to take it lying down. They threatened right in Cecil's face that they'd do all they can to hinder their progress in the academy's tournament if they didn't join the faction right then and there. This didn't deter Cecil and instead only served to ignite his fighting spirit as he welcomed the challenge since it would make the tournament a little more interesting for him.

After returning to their dorm, 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.

This obviously was a complete demerit in Cecil's eyes. What was the point of going to this academy if you only worried about contributions and grades while not being able to train yourself to get stronger? He was right not to join any of the factions if that was all they could provide. Of course, they could train all they want once they won the chance to go into the Time Formation, but not everyone could go in there.

It was only the ones with the largest contributions that could go, so if they had to start as grunts, it was practically impossible for them to get enough points to make it into the ranks of those that were going into the Time Formation to train.

The first segment of the tournament was the adventurer segment so with Lucia, Eli, Fina, Velicia, and now Ainz, he formed a party with them and named it the 'Little Kings'. When he officially registered the party, he and Lucia kept their adventurer ranks a 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 theirs yet since that may cause another uproar within the academy and draw attention back towards them when everyone was currently focused on the academy's tournament.

It also had to be known that this was a tournament, so competition was everywhere. If their ranks were made known to everyone, 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 since with their high ranks, they could accept gold ranked quests that were worth way more points than bronze or silver ranked quests.

They needed to be particularly wary of the people from the 10 factions. The student council's members were already on their tail, so they didn't need to add more people to the list of disruptors. 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 when they found out.

The two of them didn't expect to be able to keep the secret for long. Once they were promoted to platinum-ranked adventurers, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the guild found out and in turn, the students from the academy.

"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 preliminary training for them, but it was already pretty hard and incredibly exhausting. Once they start the REAL training...they might actually die, however, all of this was necessary. Just like Lucia's mother, the two were trying to create a party whose every individual had strength on par or close to that of a King or a faction's overall strength. They can't compete with quantity, so they were going to compete with quality.

If every member of Little Kings was able to complete a high-tier Gold or low-tier Platinum ranked quest individually, then the points they could collect in this segment of the tournament would be astronomical. That was why Cecil was trying his best to push his friends to get stronger and what better way to do that than actual hands-on experience? The fastest way for a person to get stronger was through combat, so he was going to pack the next few weeks with a lot of battles, sparring, and hunting.