The flock of Demon Hawks that they just cleared away earlier with their trap was only around half of the entire flock of monsters inside of the forest. They needed to reduce the amount to around 20 percent of it's original size, so after one more round of their party's baiting plan, they had completed their mission and all that was left for them to do was take care of the Demon Hawk King.
They didn't have to finish the monster king off, but the party wanted the Millenia Sky Plums that it was guarding, so killing it seemed to be the only way because it was extremely unlikely for the monster to just give up on such an awesome treasure that it had probably been guarding for a very long time now.
It was almost midday, however, so the party took a quick rest and ate lunch a distance away from the forest clearing being it was quite disgusting over there. The charred corpses and ashes of the demon hawks that they killed caused a very horrible stench to waft into the air so they obviously couldn't eat there. They finished their food very quickly and immediately began preparing for their Demon Hawk King raid.
"Alright, everyone, let's get to it. I cleared away quite a lot of monsters in the west side of the forest where the Demon Hawk King and the fruits are, but I bet there's still going to be a large number of demon hawks there since their king is also there," Cecil said as he clapped his hands to get everyone's attention.
"That's why I said we should have just eliminated every single one of them before we fight the king!" Ainz added.
He shrugged at his friend's words and replied, "If we did that, the monster king might sense that there's something wrong and prematurely eat the fruits and besides, it's too tedious."
"Well...you have a point there."
"Well, think about it this way. Since we're fighting the Demon Hawk King, it might summon the rest of the demon hawks in the forest and then we can just eliminate all of them together like you want, Ainz," Velicia spoke up and said.
"Didn't we just say earlier that it's not good to kill all of them?" Lucia said with a shake of her head while Fina stood next to her nodding in agreement.
"I-I didn't mean it like that, okay? I only said it because I was a little pissed off just fighting those annoying things for the past few days is all..."
"Enough talk, let's get going," Elizabeth quipped as she took the lead and walked in the direction of the monster king. "Let's finis this up so we can go home by the end of the day."
"You guys heard her. Let's go," Cecil said as he followed after her with everyone else. "Anyway, I'll explain the plan as we walk."
On their way to the Demon Hawk King, Cecil began explaining their positioning and roles in the coming raid. Once everyone got a clear picture of what they were supposed to be doing later, the party picked up their pace and started moving faster.
Cecil and Elizabeth would be the two who would attract the attention of the Hawk King's attacks while Velicia would be in charge of protecting their Mages from the small fries. Ainz will be their main source of damage with Lucia supporting him on the side while simultaneously helping Velicia and dealing with the flock of demon hawks that were going to be attacking them. Fina was their support as well as their healer. Other than just healing their members who were injured, she also needed to maintain a barrier around the backliners.
Fina was feeling bad earlier because all she did was activate the traps that Lucia had worked hard to make, so Cecil gave her a very important role this time around as their all-round supporter. Fina was happy with it because she got to do something this time around.
As the party headed in deeper into the forest and got closer to the Demon Hawk King's location, Cecil had everyone stop while he went ahead to scout out the area. It was no longer early in the morning like before, so there was no way the Demon Hawk King would still be asleep. Not to mention all the commotion their group had caused, the entire flock of demon hawks would have already woken up and would be vigilantly watching the surroundings.
Once he got closer to the area where he first spotted the demon hawk king, it was just as he predicted. The entire flock of birds was alert of their surroundings.
'Just as expected...'
Cecil looked around the area and thought that their only choice of action was to head straight in for a frontal assault.
'Or we could just wait it out until sunset and launch another ambush at night...'
Cecil shook his head at the thought, 'No, we have to finish the quest by today. The tournament has started and we can't keep delaying or else the other groups and factions will only pull farther and farther ahead of us.'
Making up his mind, Cecil quickly rushed back to his party.
"Guys, from what I saw earlier. Our only choice is to do a frontal assault."
Eli frowned and said, "Hey, isn't that a little dangerous?"
"We could also wait it out until the evening and launch a night assault, but that would greatly limit our vision and if we delayed our attack until tomorrow morning to do an ambush like today, then we'd fall farther behind in the tournament."
Eli clicked her tongue at Cecil's reasoning, what he said wasn't wrong. They could also just give up and not raid the Hawk King, but according to Fina's explanation of the Millenia Sky Plum, it was too big of an opportunity for them to miss out on. The fruit could be eaten raw or processed into a potion that could help increase an individual's mana quantity. For people who are looking to proceed to the next level, the fruit could be used as a catalyst to help condense their mana into the next form.
For Cecil this was something he didn't want to miss out on. He could use the fruit to help him condense all the mana inside his body into liquid form so that he could officially step into the mana sea stage.
"...let's just do it. Ainz switch with me. I'll attack the bird and you deal with the small fries. Don't worry Cel, I won't be using fire magic. I'll stick with water magic this time around."
"Okay."
The reason why Cecil put Lucia as the secondary attacker was because of her preferred use of fire magic, he was worried that she might burn down the King along with the tree and the fruits. Seeing as they had to do a frontal assault, it was best to hand the attacking role to Lucia so she could quickly finish things off.
"Let's move out, we're having that bird for dinner!" Cecil spiritedly exclaimed, causing everyone to laugh.
"Ahaha, having a hawk king for dinner, huh? Now that sounds appetizing!" Ainz laughed.
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"...are they edible?" Eli skeptically asked.
"Of course! If Lucia and Ainz didn't scorch those birdies into ashes earlier, we could've had ourselves a chicken buffet!" Velicia replied in amusement.
"L-Let's just be careful later, okay guys?"
"No worries, Fina! I'll finish things in a jiffy!" Lucia reassured.
The group carefully made their way towards the monsters' nesting grounds. When they arrived, it was just as Cecil had described. The birds were all flying in the air or perching on the trees vigilantly observing the surrounding forest.
When the group got close to the area, the Demon Hawks began screeching and some had started swooping down from the skies and trees to assault them. The monsters were easily dealt with by the party. They progressed further into the area and finally arrived at the spot where the Demon Hawk King was nesting. It was looking down at the party dismissively.
It screeched into the air and the surrounding forest immediately began to bustle with activity. From afar, Cecil could sense and see that the demon hawks in the forest were making their way towards their king with the help of his Mana Vision. He immediately whispered to his friends in warning, "Guys, here they come... get ready."
At his words, everyone began to quietly get into position, but upon seeing this, the Demon Hawk King screeched at them before flying into the air with a mighty flap of its wings. Cecil immediately sprung into action as he activated his Mana Burst skill and flickered into the air after the monster king. He appeared just above the Demon Hawk King and hacked down at the monster's wing with his sword.
The Demon Hawk King felt the danger and tried to shift its body away from the attack, but Cecil's strike was still able to connect and the aura wrapped blade sliced off a portion of the monster's left wing. With its wing sliced apart, the hawk plummeted to the ground while screeching in pain. The pained cry from the king caused the surrounding demon hawks to burst into a mad frenzy and they immediately began to assault Cecil's party.
Cecil who was in the air readjusted his body to face towards the flock of demon hawks coming in from afar. He grabbed the handle of his sword with both hands and injected a large amount of mana into it, creating a thick golden aura around its blade before swinging the sword upwards while shouting, "ASCENDING BLADE!"
A massive golden sword wave was shot out from Cecil's sword and it crashed into the flock of demon hawks down below before exploding. After confirming that his one attack had disintegrated a large number of the monsters, he quickly used Blink to move himself to a nearby tree as he gazed at the battle that was ensuing below in the forest.
'Okay, that should buy us a little more time.'
Lucia and Elizabeth were currently assaulting the Demon Hawk King with their spells and swords. Their figures flashed around the monster at incredible speeds leaving behind many injuries, but the hawk king wasn't a called a king for nothing. Even as they were moving around and striking it at speeds where sight alone couldn't possibly keep up, the Hawk King was calmly responding to it with its own spells and blocking the sword strikes with its mana-enhanced, steel-like feathers.
The only reason why Cecil was able to successfully cut apart the Demon Hawk King's wing earlier was because he had caught it off guard. The king hadn't yet reinforced its body with mana and took on Cecil's crippling attack with its body alone.
Ainz and Velicia were dealing with the demon hawks that were occasionally swooping in to interfere with Lucia's and Elizabeth's battle while Fina was on the side, casting aqua barriers on Ainz and Velicia, and forming water walls along with ice ramparts in the surrounding air to hinder the other hawks.
Cecil confirmed that there was nothing else besides demon hawks in their surroundings before immediately rushing into the fray. The Demon Hawk King quickly turned even more vigilant when it saw the beastkin that had severely injured its wing and it screeched in anger before swinging its uninjured wing at Cecil before he even got close to it. The boy had to quickly dodge away because the monster king had sent forth a flurry of razor sharp feathers at him.
He dodged and parried the feathers flying at him and not missing this chance when the monster's attention was momentarily taken away, Elizabeth dashed in and sliced at the bird's feet.
CLANG
It only resulted in her rapier being repelled, but in the next instant, Lucia had also come swooping in and slashing at the exact same spot where Elizabeth had struck at the monster's feet. The sound of metal cutting through flesh rang in the air. Elizabeth's attack was able to momentarily cut apart the mana that was wrapping around the bird's feet, enabling Lucia's subsequent attack to perfectly connect.
SCCCREEEEEECCCCHHHHH
The demon hawk screeched in pain and furiously thrashed about with its body, sending blade-like feathers flying all around it. Fina quickly moved her ice ramparts in front while everyone else dodged and hid behind them. The feathers powerfully struck into the ice ramparts, creating cracks or directly gouging the rampart and almost breaking it apart. Fina grimaced, but channeled even more mana into her ramparts, preventing them from thoroughly shattering into pieces.
Once the flurry of feathers had stopped, the demon hawks in the surroundings were flying away in fear. When Cecil took a quick glance at the surroundings, the feathers had also struck dead some of the unfortunate demon hawks that were in the projectiles' paths.
Cecil smirked, "Nice, friendly fire."
He then turned to look at the demon hawk king in the distance. It was vigilantly look at their group, but it still looked visibly tired. Cecil smiled and encouraged his party, "It's exhausted itself! Let's bring it down now!"
Cecil pulled out his spear and activated the array inside. The spear was quickly wrapped in a golden aura. He dashed out from behind an ice rampart and threw the golden spear at the Demon Hawk King. The Demon Hawk King saw the flying projectile and raised its wing to defend, but the golden spear powerfully pierced through its wing and embedded itself into its chest. Cecil quickly arrived in the next instant and he kicked the butt of the spear and embedded it deeper into the monster.
With both its wings impaired, the Demon Hawk King visibly panicked. Seeing the opportunity Cecil created for them, with only Fina as support and Velicia watching their backs, the rest of the party began to assault the weakened monster king. Not long after, the party was finally able to bring down the Demon Hawk King.