Just before the sun peaked its head over the horizon, Cecil's party, the Little Kings, were already heading back out into the forest to finish their quest. This time they had a plan and it would revolve around Ainz and Lucia's area attack spells.
Yesterday evening, Cecil had everyone sit down around a campfire they made outside of the village they were staying and brainstormed various plans they could use to complete their quest even though everyone was pretty exhausted. Thankfully, his friends were all very cooperative, so they were able to form a solid plan–the plan that they were going to use today–before Lucia finished making their dinner.
While eating dinner, everyone reflected on the mistakes that they made during their fight earlier that day. Their party was just newly made, so they still needed to learn how to work and synergize with each other to make their group more cohesive. Even Cecil and Lucia made a few mistakes because they weren't used to fighting with everyone else. Their synergy with each other was obviously the best, but when it came to cooperating with Ainz, Eli, Fina, and Velicia they still had much to learn.
It was really great that everyone in the party realized this and pointed out each other's mistakes without being shy or feeling hurtful about it. The first part of solving a problem is knowing that there is a problem. Once the group began talking about it with each other, suggestions to fix the problems that they had were brought up and this only served to improve their party's synergy. While it was all good in theory and words, now they had to test things out and see if their discussion from yesterday actually bore any fruit or not.
"Remember, okay? Eli, Veli, and I will lure the flock into the open area in the middle of the forest that we were fighting at yesterday. After that, I'll 'Blink' the three of us out of there and once we've cleared the area, Ainz will cast Tornado and Lucia will follow it up with Crimson Pillar," Cecil said as he reiterated their plan.
"Un. We practiced it yesterday with lower-tier spells and the synergy was great. If this plan works, we'll be able to take out a large majority of those birdies!" Lucia excitedly said.
Cecil nodded at her words before turning to everyone and asking, "Everyone all set?"
"""Yes.""""
Everyone gave their affirmative except for Fina who had her hand raised in the air. Cecil turned towards her and asked, "What's up Fina?"
"I-Is it alright if I don't do anything?"
"What do you mean you're not doing anything? You're on support, Fina. Keep watch of the area and help us out in case something unexpected happens and we get stuck in the middle of the flock later."
"O-Okay, but I just don't feel good doing nothing and waiting around while you guys are out risking your lives..."
"Fina, listen. Your job is just as important as the rest. If anything happens, I'm counting on you take bail us out. It'd be great if everything go as planned, but you can't think that way. It's too naive. You should always assume the worst and prepare for it, especially in this case when all of our lives are on the line. After all, it's monsters out there that we're fighting."
"Okay! Leave it to me, Cecil!" Fina replied with a strong and determined nod.
"Say...don't you think our plan is a little dangerous?" Lucia frowned. "We're essentially using you 3 as bait..."
"That may be true, but think of it like this. Instead of us being the bait, just think that me, Eli, and Veli are just a bunch of bird herders and we're herding the bird over to our killzone!"
"Still...something bad might happen..."
"That's why I have Fina waiting on standby to help in case something DOES happen, so all we have to do is make sure we don't screw up later!" Cecil replied with a nod. "Although not everything will probably go as planned, but at least we should take measures to prioritize our safety while at the same time make sure we complete our mission."
"...Alright."
As they were talking, the group finally arrived at the clearing where they would stage their plan. Cecil turned to his 2 friends and asked,
"We're here, so let's start. Eli, Veli, follow me."
"Okay~"
"Alright."
"The rest of you guys, go and hide. Remember, stick to the plan."
Cecil dashed forward with Elizabeth and Velicia following behind him. Right after they moved a certain distance, he turned around and said, "Okay, Eli and Velicia go to the east while I'll head to the west."
"Let's go, Veli."
"I'm right behind ya!"
Elizabeth and Velicia split up with Cecil and moved towards the east of the forest to lure the flock of demon hawks over there. Cecil took a glance at them and nodded. He then activated Mana Burst and disappeared from his spot.
Back to where the rest of the party were at near the clearing, Lucia and Ainz were getting themselves ready while Fina was on lookout duty.
"Alright, let's get started?" Ainz asked as he began chanting.
"Prepare thoroughly and don't mess up later," Lucia said as she took out her magic pen, ink, and scrolls.
"Yeah, yeah."
While Ainz was meditating and quietly preparing, Lucia started drawing inscriptions on her magic scrolls. It was quick and after she wrote them she started placing them all around the field. She also turned to Fina and asked her for help.
"Lucia? What are these for?"
"Plan B, just in case Plan A goes wrong."
"Oh! A contingency!" Fina exclaimed.
"Just like Cecil said, we should prioritize our safety while at the same time finish our mission. At least I hope this will help."
"Mhm!"
Over at Eli and Velicia's side, the two were drawing near the area that they remembered where the flock of demon hawks had decided to nestle down on. When they arrived, they could see that many of the hawks were just awakening from their slumber or were still asleep in the tree. The two of them stopped at a safe distance and Elizabeth turned towards Velicia before whispering, "Okay, here should be good enough...let me cast a Flame Sword to attract their attention. Veli keep an eye out."
"Okay," Velicia whispered in reply.
Elizabeth quickly finished her spell and she locked onto the area where the most demon hawks were congested. She pointed her rapier at the spot and yelled, "FLAME SWORD!"
The flaming sword cut through the air and struck the spot where the flock of demon hawks were resting and exploded. Many charred corpses of the hawks rained down from the air and littered the forest floor. Her scream and the resulting explosion from the spell startled awake the entire flock. The monsters all began cawing and screeching in fury after having been rudely awakened. They quickly located the two trespassers and immediately swooped towards them.
The sheer amount of demon hawks that flocked towards the two girls would have caused anyone to freeze in fear, but Elizabeth and Velicia only smirked before turning tail and running away. Since this was already the second or third time the two girls were facing such a situation, they had adapted and no longer froze in fear at the majestic, but deadly sight of hundreds of thousands of monsters rushing at them and aiming to take their lives.
"Heh, they don't look so scary anymore!"
"Princess, I think we should start running a little faster?"
"Yeah! We don't want to fall behind Cecil!"
After saying those words, Velicia cast a combat skill on the both of them and they picked up the pace. She led the way forward and struck down any of the monsters that suddenly appeared in front of them while Elizabeth was keeping a close eye on the monster birds behind them and sending more Flame Swords at the flock to keep the monsters' attention all on her. After her fourth volley of Flame Swords, the monsters' attention was completely grabbed by her now, so the two of them ran very quickly towards the clearing where they would spring the trap on the flock.
Over on Cecil's side, he had long since located his flock of birds, but there was a problem. The Demon Hawk King was currently present in his part of the flock, so he couldn't make any rash moves as he didn't think it would be here because in his previous fights against this flock of monsters, the Demon Hawk King would always appear very late, making him think that it was always away from the flock.
Perhaps because it was expecting an attack from the humans that have been bothering its family, the monster was waiting here with the rest of his flock. Cecil clicked his tongue in annoyance and continued to observe the monster from afar. This monster king was huge in comparison to the normal ones and there was a red and yellow crown-like plume on its head that basically screamed to him that it was the flock's king.
It stood at least 3-4 meters in height if it was standing on the ground and the 2 large wings on its sides were adorned with steel-like razor-sharp feathers. Its dark claws were also glinting with a greenish light making it painfully obvious that its claw attack was poisonous. Cecil took a mental note of this and continued to observe the monster before making a move. He needed to see if he could gleam any other abilities the monster king had before luring it over to the rest of his party.
"Tsk...this could pose a problem...but wait, what's that?" Cecil exclaimed to himself after his Mana Eyes picked up something peculiar on the tree the Demon Hawk King was perched on.
What Cecil saw with his Mana Vision were 2 low-hanging fruits that were radiating an incredible amount of mana and this mana was slowly increasing over time. From the looks of things, the fruits were still in the process of maturing and the Demon Hawk King was likely protecting them, so he deduced that it must be some kind of natural treasure.
"Woah, if that's a natural treasure, doesn't that mean we've hit the jackpot?"
He's read in many books on Earth that treasures like these 2 fruits were usually incredibly helpful for one's cultivation. Of course, it was all fiction and just in the books, but he was going to believe it because all the fiction from the books were all now his reality. Cecil immediately began to think. Since the Demon Hawk King was protecting those 2 fruits and waiting for them to mature, then even if he lured away the flock by directly attacking them, there was no way the monster king would chase after him.
"Good, if it's really protecting those fruits, then hopefully, it won't chase after me. This is the perfect opportunity for us to deal with the small fries first then come back for that oversized chicken and take the fruits for ourselves!"
Cecil made up his mind and quickly dashed towards the flock of monster birds in front of him as he charged up a Mana Bolt and fired it at the tree. He was first going to test if the Demon Hawk King was actually protecting those fruits or not with this attack. If it did, then him attacking the tree would likely enrage it and it would most likely order its minions to chase after him, saving him the need to attract the monster birds' attention.
He was taking a gamble because if the monster king didn't move to protect those fruits, then his attack would likely destroy the 2 treasures and just incite the rage of the monster king and its entire flock. Luckily for him, the Demon Hawk King woke up from its slumber the moment it sensed his Mana Bolt being charged and when he fired it at the tree, the monster flew forwards and smacked the golden bolt away with its steel-like wings before letting out an enrage screech.
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"KRRREEEEEEEEEEE!!!"
Its enraged cry immediately woke up the rest of the monster flock that was still sleeping. Once awoken, the regular demon hawks quickly flew up and circled around in the sky after being startled awake as the Hawk King let out a few chirps and cries, probably ordering them to quickly attack the trespasser that had tried to destroy the treasures it was protecting.
Seeing that he got the positive reaction that he wanted, Cecil smiled and immediately fired off a Mana Volley at the hawks. He fired at the tree which further enraged the Demon Hawk King who moved to protect the 2 fruits growing on it and fire at the small fries that were in the air. He managed to kill a few of the ones in the air and continued to fire off more Mana Volleys.
The Demon Hawk King let out an incredibly enraged roar and this time, the flock of monster birds around him immediately began moving. They quickly swooped down to attack Cecil and this only caused him to smirk.
'That's it, come to me.'
He kicked off the ground and began dashing backwards while continuing to fire more Mana Volleys at the monsters, killing more and more of them. He also fired a few shots into the surrounding area in the hopes of attracting more and more demon hawks his way.
Back at the clearing, Ainz, Fina, and Lucia immediately noticed the commotion within the forest. Lucia immediately used a sensing spell and found her two friends, Elizabeth and Velicia, running together back towards the clearing, but didn't see Cecil around. She projected her spell even deeper into the forest and finally found him. She immediately frowned after seeing that there was something wrong since Cecil was slightly deviating from their plan.
Next to her, Fina saw her reaction and spoke up, "Is something wrong? Did one of the 3 get into some kind of trouble?"
"No," Lucia said as she shook her head. "Eli and Veli are making their way back now with a flock of demon hawks. Cel is...doing something else. It looks like he's trying to attract all of the demon hawks in the forest, but there must be a good reason why he's deviated from the plan, let's just trust in him."
"Alright..." Fina nodded.
Ainz had already sensed the commotion, so he adjusted the area where he was going to cast the Tornado spell and tried to reinforce its power.
"Good thing that I set up all those inscriptions earlier, judging by how huge of a commotion Cecil is causing, there seems to be twice–no, three times as much birds he's lured out compared to Eli and Veli's."
"Weren't we supposed to tackle the east and west areas first? Why is he attracting the monsters from everywhere? Will he be alright after attracting so many monsters? Will we even be alright?" Fina asked as she fired question after question in worry.
"We'll be fine. I'm just worried about the reason why Cel decided to do this instead of sticking to the original plan. He's normally one that dislikes deviating from any plans he's made, so something must be up."
Fina shook her head and sighed, "If only we had some way to communicate with him when he's out there. I wish someone made some kind of spell that allowed us to do that."
"Oh, now that I think about it, I do have–"
"Quit the babbling and get ready, here they come!" Ainz spoke up and interrupted the two.
The commotion from the east side of the forest was getting closer and closer. Fina and Lucia quickly stopped their converastion and quickly got ready. Not long after, Elizabeth and Velicia broke through from the east part of the tree line and into the clearing. They quickly spotted their 3 friends and made a mad dash towards them while a moment later, an ocean of black monster birds broke through the tree line and chased after them.
"Dammit, where's Cecil and his flock of monsters?" Ainz said as he only saw Elizabeth and Velicia making it back.
He was sweating profusely at this point because he had been delaying the cast of this spell after completing the chant a while ago. The longer he delayed the cast, the stronger the spell became, but the harder it was to control it. It was fine to keep it delayed for around 5 to 10 minutes, but any longer and he would lose control over the spell and might accidentally misfire the spell.
Fina was keeping a look out on top of a nearby try and quickly saw the mass of birds not that far away from the clearing along with the occasional flash of gold that took down quite a few of them. Her eyes shined as she knew that this was Cecil and the horde of monsters that was chasing after him.
"He's already close!"
Just as she said this, the person in question broke through the tree line with a flock of demon hawks that was at least 3 or 4 times the size of Elizabeth and Velicia's flock chasing after him. Everyone in the party immediately paled a little bit when they saw this and even Lucia felt a little uneasy, but they were brought back to their senses after hearing Cecil shout, "GUYS! PHASE TWO! GO GO GO!"
At his shout, the 3 'baits' rushed into the middle of the clearing and after grouping up, Elizabeth and Velicia quickly grabbed onto Cecil, waiting for him to use his technique, Blink, to promptly bring them away from the spot. However, he didn't use it immediately to their dismay and just waited for the flock of angry monster birds to get even closer to them.
"C-Cecil? Anytime now?" Velicia uneasily said as her face began to grow paler and paler after seeing the monsters get closer and closer to them.
"Wait! They need to get closer!"
Elizabeth gripped his hand tightly and cried, "Just how close do you want them to be?!"
"As close as possible!"
"For goodness sake!"
Just as the demon hawks were about to collide with them, Cecil immediately executed his technique and the 3 disappeared from where they were standing, leaving behind the flock of birds to crash into each other in confusion. They appeared right next to where Ainz and Lucia were and upon seeing this, the latter immediately commanded, "AINZ NOW!"
'Finally! I was just about to lose control of the spell!'
"RISE! TORNADO!!!"
At his command, a small gale formed in the middle of the clearing just above the area where the demon hawks had collided into each other. The wind from the gale started spinning faster and faster before a large tornado formed and pulled in the incredibly large flock of demon hawks into its vortex.
"CRIMSON LOTUS!"
The flock of demon hawks was much bigger than what Lucia and the rest first expected, so instead of Crimson Pillar, Lucia casted her original spell Crimson Lotus. As the flaming lotus bloomed in the middle of the tornado, the winds picked up the flames and the tornado turned into a flaming cyclone that completely devastated the flock of monsters inside the vortex as well as outside of it.
The flaming cyclone's suction force kept on dragging in the demon hawks into it and even ejected some of the dead ones out while their corpses were still burning which only served to spread the flames into the surroundings.
"Fina! Stop the fire from spreading to the forest!" Cecil looked up and yelled at her.
Lucia immediately turned towards her friend and said, "Fina, the scrolls from earlier! Activate those!"
"I know!"
Fina was already sending her mana into the magic scrolls that she and Lucia had set up earlier. She really had to admire her friend's foresight on this one because Lucia had predicted something like this was going to happen and had set up magic scrolls that had the Ice Barrier spell inscribed on them all around the perimeter of the clearing. After a quick activation, numerous Ice Walls began erupting from the ground around the clearing and this prevented the fire from spreading into the forest.
Not only that, the walls also blocked the retreat of the monsters. They could easily just fly over the walls, but if they did do that, the flaming tornado was waiting for them. Ainz even controlled the incredible fire tornado to move around and suck in more demon hawks.
Seeing their plan work, Cecil shouted, "OKAY, PHASE 3 EVERYONE!"
Fina and Lucia quickly began casting aqua barrier onto their party's 3 vanguards. Once the aqua barriers were up, Cecil, Elizabeth, and Velicia charged forward and began picking off the demon hawks that weren't caught up in Ainz and Lucia's synergy spell. Lucia and Fina didn't just wait around and also helped out as they sent lava bolts, frost bolts, and aqua bolts at the flock.
There was also an unexpected development during their assault. When Fina's aqua bolt had accidently missed and was sent flying into the flaming tornado, a large explosion ensued. This caused even more damage to the flock, so Lucia and Fina began casting aqua bolts into the tornado. The water spells did smolder the flames a little, but Lucia immediately reignited them with a simple cast of another Crimson Lotus.
The party was able to quickly finish off all the demon hawks that they had lured, but more were still coming there way. Thankfully, the ones that were lagging behind and didn't get caught up in the trap weren't too many so after another half hour, the party was able to completely eliminate all of the demon hawks that had come to the forest clearing.
"Was...was that all of them?" Ainz asked as he plopped down on the ground, completely exhausted out of his mind. He had to maintain the Tornado spell for so long, but thankfully, he was just mentally exhausted and although he had depleted quite a bit of his mana earlier, it was still within safe levels. After a short rest and he'd be back on his feet again.
Elizabeth walked over to him and answered his question, "No, of course not. There's still some of those monsters left in the forest,"
"Huh? So we gotta do this again? Why not lure them all over and kill them all?" Ainz asked.
"We shouldn't," Cecil cut in and said solemnly. "If we kill them all off, then another group of monsters will just come in and take their place. I saw the Demon Hawk King earlier at the western side of the forest. If there's a monster king that's willing to reside here in the forest, then that means this place is a largely contested nesting ground for monsters."
"...I still don't get it."
"Think about it, if we kill off the entire flock. Another group of monsters led by a different monster king would just come in and occupy the forest since it's empty. We won't be helping the villagers this way because all we're doing is destroying the old monsters and letting in new ones to come and terrorize them later in the future."
"Hmmm, whatever you say, leader. Let's hurry up though, I'm starving!" Ainz laughed as he patted his belly. "And I guess, you're right. The quest did say we only need to thin out the monsters and not exterminate them."
Elizabeth and the rest of the party nodded at Ainz's words and started sitting down.
Cecil chuckled after seeing them start to rest, "Hold on, I'm not finished. The Demon Hawk King I saw earlier was guarding some sort of tree, and on the tree were 2 red-brown fruits that were radiating an incredible amount of mana. Do you guys know what it is? I think it's some kind of natural treasure, so I think we should go deal with that monster king right now and take the fruits for ourselves!"
"Red-brown fruits? Ah, are you saying that you saw 2 Millenia Sky Plums?" Fina asked excitedly.
"I dunno, that's why I'm asking you guys. I just assumed that they were natural treasures or something important since a monster king was guarding it. Even after I attacked its flock, it only moved to protect the fruits and ordered the other demon hawks to chase after me."
Fina stood up excitedly and exclaimed, "If what I'm thinking is true, then the fruits that you saw were definitely the Millenia Sky Plums! No matter what, guys, we have to get our hands on those 2 fruits!"