After finally getting rid of the Demon Hawk King, the rest of the flock scattered away into the forest sensing that their leader had been killed. Lucia, Eli and Ainz began burning the unusable corpses of the demon hawks while Fina and Velicia began collecting proofs of subjugations and materials from the usable corpses. Cecil was currently taking care of the Demon Hawk King's corpse.
It took another half hour for the entire party to take care of the cleanup. Cecil was able to harvest the claws, feathers and crown plumes of the Demon Hawk King. He also collected a couple vials of its blood and most importantly, the Demon Hawk King's monster core. All that was left of the corpse was a naked body that Cecil cut up into tiny pieces and stored into his spatial ring. Like he said, they'd be having the oversized bird for dinner later. After finally taking care of everything, the group turned their attention to the large tree that the Hawk King had nested upon.
Up in the branches of the tree they could make out the 2 reddish brown fruits that were emanating a large amount of mana.
'Hmmm, these things are pretty huge.' Cecil thought to himself.
Now that he was able to take a much closer look at the fruits, they were indeed, very big. Each fruit was at least half a meter in size and according to Fina, these fruits were right for the pickings. It was unfortunate for the demon hawk king since if it had just a little bit more time, it could have used the fruits to perhaps evolve and grow a stage stronger. Too bad that Cecil and co. just had to barge in and kill it before the hawk king could do so.
"So...do we just pick it from the tree?" Cecil asked.
"NO! Don't do that! Just wait for it to fall! From what I see, it could fall any second now!" Fina suggested.
"Why do we have to wait?"
"Because if we don't and we pick it prematurely, the entire tree will wilt and die! Not just every tree can grow this kind of fruit y'know!" Fina replied strongly.
With how assertive she was, Cecil shrugged and complied with her suggestion.
"So, it's good that we preserve the tree then? Talk about environment friendly."
"Huh? Oh, of course not."
"What?"
"Once the fruit has fallen, we'll be cutting down the tree. They'd make good materials to create wands, staffs, and even bows."
"...so that's your objective, huh?" Cecil said with a look not knowing whether to cry or laugh.
The girl didn't want to preserve the tree. She just didn't want it to wilt so that they could harvest the wood.
"We won't be using the entire tree, so the excess we could sell and get funds from... since we're a proper adventurer party now, we need to have a collective fund to function our party! You don't expect us to take money from our personal funds to buy potions, repair equipment and buy rations now do you?"
"Urk... sorry I hadn't thought about that," Cecil replied guiltily.
On the side, Lucia was looking at their exchange and she whispered towards Eli.
"When did Fina become so outgoing?"
"...beats me." Eli shrugged.
"Maybe she was just like that! Except she was shy since we didn't know each other so well!" Velicia said.
Ainz who was on the side laughed and said, "A proper party, huh... this is way better than joining a faction!"
The party waited until it was almost deep into the evening before the fruits naturally fell from the tree. They carefully collected the fruits and stored them into Fina's spatial ring. Cecil's was full with the demon hawk king's materials while Ainz, Lucia and Eli didn't have any room to spare since they had to store the demon hawks materials and subjugation proofs.
They quickly felled the tree and cut it up into smaller pieces and they stored it into Velicia's ring. The group quickly made their way back towards the village and rested for the rest of the day and even stayed the night as they planned to return to Angla city first thing tomorrow morning. The girls were able to sleep at the village's inn, but Cecil and Ainz had to camp outside because there just weren't enough rooms for their party of six.
"Oi~i, Cecil, you awake?" Ainz called out from his sleeping bag.
"...what is it?" Cecil yawned in reply.
"This party... Little Kings. Do you think we'll be able to go far with just us in the tournament?"
"...I dunno."
"Hey! Be serious about this! If we're just going to be half-assed about this then we'll be throwing away a huge opportunity!"
"...do you see any of us here being half-assed?"
"..."
"Lucia and I... we're seriously gunning for 1st place y'know? I can see the same goes for everyone else in the party... including you."
"...you don't honestly believe we can actually pull it off do you?"
"Of course I do... just wait until we get back... then we'll show you just how serious we are."
"We, as in?"
"Lucia and me... we'll show you our resolve," Cecil said before he fell asleep.
Even after Ainz called out to him a few times, he no longer responded. He could only sigh a little in frustration because of how carefree his friend was being. Although it was much better than his time in the faction, he couldn't help but doubt that their small party of 6 could make it anywhere in the tournament. While he did have his doubts, but Ainz still resolved himself to fight for the champion's spot with all his might, just like everyone else.
************************
It took about two days for the group to get back to Angla City from the village they were staying at. Cecil thought that it took way too long since they were traveling by foot, but there was no other mode of transportation to get to the village since it was way out in the sticks. Not even carriages go there, so walking was the only way. He wanted to bring Silver out with him, but Silver couldn't possibly carry all 6 of them on his back even though he was so huge, so he left him back at the city.
Once they arrived back in the academy district's adventurer guild, Cecil used his privilege as a Gold Ranked Adventurer to use a private booth. This feature was reserved for only adventurers at gold rank so everyone besides Lucia was very much surprised to see this.
Cecil turned to look at his dumbfounded friends and smirked, "What? Surprised? Haha, you ain't seen nothing yet. I told you Ainz, I'll show you our resolve because like they say, actions speak louder than words."
Not long after, a familiar female guild staff came into the room. Cecil and Lucia immediately recognized the woman and Lucia exclaimed in pleasant surprise, "Big Sis Mimi!"
As for Cecil, he stayed silent as usual, "..."
"Arara~ why isn't it our two upstanding prodigies! I didn't think that Silent Inferno would be back at adventuring only after a month of absence~" The harpy, Mimi, laughed in response. To some degree, Mimi was Cecil and Lucia's personal receptionist back when they were still actively adventuring at Angla City's adventurer guild.
"How come Big Sis is here now?"
"Well~ a certain troublesome duo happened to come back into service again~ so the higher ups reassigned me as your personal handler now, especially since you two did something unreasonable again~"
"Ahaha, sorry~" Lucia laughed apologetically while Cecil remained silent.
"..."
Their exchange was surprising for the rest of their party members. It could be seen that this wasn't the first time Cecil or Lucia worked on a quest. Since the two had kept their ranks a secret, no one in their party were privy to this information.
"Well, two gold ranked quests in just 1 week, and now you guys went ahead and did your promotion quest without even informing big sis~ I'm a little hurt y'know~"
"Ayaya, we had to do it in secret! I mean, Cecil wanted to keep things under wraps so..." Lucia immediately tossed the ball Cecil's way.
Mimi only took a look at Cecil and saw the usual expressionless face. Cecil only nodded and Mimi immediately got the message.
"I see~ Well, it's no biggie," She then hugged the two youngsters before continuing, "At least I get to see my cute little juniors now~"
"..."
"Ahahaha~"
While Lucia was laughing with Cecil remaining silent, the rest of their party members took in the information that the guild staff, who was now apparently their personal handler, had inadvertently said.
"Wait, what promotion quest are you talking about, miss?" Ainz asked on behalf of everyone else.
"Oh? Did you two not tell the rest of your party?" Mimi turned towards the rest of their party members and asked with mild surprise.
"Yeah! We registered only a week ago! We're the Little Kings!" Lucia happily informed.
"Wah, my two little juniors finally made their own party! Oh! I see that even the renowned Sword Maiden is in your party as well!" Mimi said after carefully observing every member in the room.
"Are all of you classmates?"
"Yup! We're all part of S class!"
"Ahaha, as expected of you two!"
"Uhm... like I said... what promotion quest?" Ainz asked once again. He really couldn't keep up with the frequent change of pace in their conversation.
"Well, I guess we should all sit down first yes?" Mimi invited everyone to sit down before she began her explanation. "Well, first of all, on behalf of the entire guild, we congratulate both Lucia Yukihime and Cecil Silvaria in their successful promotion to Platinum Rank!"
Mimi clapped her hands and cheered. Right away, another guild staff walked into the rooms and presented Cecil and Lucia their new guild badges. Although it had the same color as the silver adventurer badge, the silver adventurer badge was a dull silver color, while the platinum badge was all shiny and on the badge was a single gold star with a red outline etched on it. The two took their new badges and kept them in their spatial rings.
On the side, Ainz, Elizabeth, Fina, and Velicia stared dumbfounded at their two friends.
"Y-Y-You two are PLATINUM RANKED?!" Ainz screamed in surprise.
Cecil kept his usual taciturn silence when he was in the guild, while Lucia started to laugh smugly at her dumbfounded friends.
"Didn't we tell you guys? We'd show you our resolve! And like Cecil said, actions speak louder than words!" Lucia replied smugly.
The saying that Cecil and Lucia had repeated would later on be the motto of their party, the Little Kings. The four other members of Little Kings just sat there, flabbergasted at the news of their two friends' promotion to platinum rank.
It was already known that the highest ranked adventurer in the academy was the student council president, Zephyr Arks. He was a 5-star Gold ranked adventurer which was already very close to Platinum rank, but even he would need to do at least 20 or more gold ranked quests to get the qualifications to promote to platinum rank, so it was quite unbelievable to them that their two friends, who were much younger than the president, were now already at the platinum rank.
"By the way, this is for you!" Mimi took out a brocade box from out of nowhere and presented it to the party.
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Once Cecil opened the box, inside laid a small black ring with runic inscriptions decorating it. It was a spatial ring and from the looks of it, it was a high ranked one at that.
"This is a high rank spatial ring. It has a storage space of 10 cubic meters. It's a commemoration gift for our two cuties for being the youngest in history to promote to Platinum rank!"
"!"
The party was surprised hearing the news. The 'youngest in history'...now that was an incredible moniker. Even Cecil felt proud and nearly cracked a smile when he heard that.
"Thanks big sis!"
"That's not all! Since you're also in a party, the party's rank will also be platinum! You'll now have the privilege to have access to raid-type dungeons! Hooray!"
"Raid dungeons?" Ainz asked.
"Raid dungeons are a little different than your typical dungeons. The dungeons are a little magical and they appear and disappear in set intervals. The guild will provide the information to your party on where a raid dungeon will appear!"
Mimi stopped and let everyone take in the information before continuing, "Once a raid dungeon pops up, I highly recommend you to try it out! Although it will be dangerous, the rewards of a raid dungeon are just too great to miss out on!"
"Rare ores, herbs, magic weapons and even dungeon monster eggs that you could hatch and form a pact with along with so much more! There's too many to list, so it'll be better if you just experience it firsthand!" The harpy lady exclaimed with fanfare.
Lucia then voiced her concern, "Those raid dungeons... they're a whole lot different than normal dungeons right? I mean... they're not going to be as boring as a normal dungeon right?"
"Of course not!" Mimi exclaimed, "Rest assured everyone, a raid dungeon is much more different than a normal dungeon! It's also much more dangerous as well, but it would be better to experience it since it would be hard for me to describe it~"
"...does this mean that big sis has also entered one before?"
"Of course!"
"..." Cecil stayed quiet, but the raid dungeon did pique his interest. 'Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to try one out.'
"OKAY! On to the next reward!"
"THERE'S STILL MORE?!" Velicia exclaimed in surprise.
"Why of course! You guys still haven't received your high-tier promotion quest rewards yet~ since the quest that Cecil and Lucia had picked happened to be the most difficult promotion quest at the moment, you can expect that the rewards are pretty abundant~"
"...oh god..." Ainz and Velicia held their head in pain. It was no wonder that the monsters they had to subjugate numbered in the tens of thousands and they even had to face a monster king. Fina and Elizabeth had helpless expressions on their face, but the thought of their abundant rewards made their expressions lighten up a bit.
"The monetary rewards for the quest are inside this bank card!" Mimi presented a black bank card to Cecil.
Cecil turned towards Lucia and eyed her meaningfully.
"Uhm, big sis, this card can we–"
"Of course! This is a part of the reward y'know! The reward for your promotion to a platinum ranked party! There's also more inside the ring, so you should check it out later when you have the time!"
"Thank you!"
Cecil took the card and handed it over to their party's nominated treasurer, Fina. Once Fina took the card and had a look on the amount stored inside, she gasped in surprise.
"H-H-Hundred..."
"A hundred? That seems a bit low." Ainz said with a frown.
Fina merely raised the card to Ainz and it caused his eyes to widen.
"A HUNDRED THOUSAND?!"
Elizabeth and Velicia also turned to look at the bank card, indeed the total amount inside the card was one hundred thousand credits. It was only a couple of days ago that Fina was worrying about their finances, but then a hundred thousand credits just came falling down onto their lap.
"You guys should know that this is the normal amount of reward me and Cecil get after completing high tiered gold ranked quests~ we've at least amassed over a million in funds from all our time adventuring~" Lucia added.
"...so you guys are rich, like hella rich..." Ainz groaned. Even though he was from a prestigious family of mages that was well-renowned throughout the entire kingdom and was extremely wealthy, individually, he was rather poor–at least, in comparison to Cecil and Lucia. He only received around a 1000 gold coins every month as an allowance while they were earning hundreds of thousands of gold per guild quest thanks to their high ranks.
"Of course! Besides, we don't really spend a lot so there's quite a bit of credits saved up. Even if we had problems with our party's funds, me and Cecil could just take out a small amount from our personal funds to help, it's no big deal really~"
"A 'small' amount, huh?"
"Yeah, 100,000 should be enough, right?"
"Your concept of 'small' is really skewed..."
Since the party was going on a tangent, Mimi clapped her hands to get everyone's attention.
"Alright everyone, this is the last reward for today. May I please have the proofs of subjugation?"
"...aren't you supposed to take that before you announce our quest completion?"
"Ahaha~ don't worry~ Cecil and Lucia have NEVER failed a quest that they set out on!"
"..."
Cecil took out the demon hawk king's subjugation proof and presented it to Mimi. She smiled after confirming it and handed the proof over to the other guild staff that came in earlier with Cecil and Lucia's badge. He quickly took the item and was just about to get up and leave before Lucia stopped him.
"Wait! There's more!" Lucia poured out all the subjugation proofs of the demon hawks that they hunted and gestured for Ainz and Eli to do the same. Once the entirety of the table was full of them, Mimi could only smile wryly and motion for the collector to take it all.
"As expected of your party... well, it looks like we'll have to add more to the rewards. Okay, since the quest is over, do you guys have anything to sell?"
"Haha~ we've been waiting for this, big sis!" Lucia said and she happily poured out all the demon hawk materials in her ring, she also signaled for Ainz and Eli to do the same.
Once all the materials piled up in the room, Mimi tiredly sighed, "You two are always doing something unreasonable...the quest only asked for you to subjugate the demon hawk king...did you guys just go and massacre the entire flock while you were at it?"
"What?! LUCIA! CECIL!" Ainz yelled.
"Uhh... teehee?" Lucia jokingly replied while bumping her head.
"..." Cecil remained quiet to everyone's surprise. Normally he would give some sort of retort, but oddly enough, he's been quiet ever since Mimi had entered the room.
He only turned to Ainz and smiled sheepishly. Seeing his smile, Ainz once again yelled out in exasperation, "YOU TWO ARE INSANE!"
The other 3 could only nod in response.
"By the way... are you guys not selling the demon hawk king's materials?" Mimi asked.
Lucia was the one that quickly responded, "Nope! We'll be using the materials to craft some equipment for our friends!"
"Ah! Radon's helping out I presume?"
"Of course! Uncle Radon always helps us out!"
"R-Radon? You don't mean Radon Ironforge do you?" Eli asked in surprise.
"That's him alright! Don't worry! Uncle Radon will help us if we ask him nicely!" Lucia replied with a smile.
"..."
The party could only sigh at the surprising news, they no longer had the energy to be surprised at every little thing their two friends did anymore. Calling the number one blacksmith in the kingdom their 'uncle'...if it was anyone else, the kingdom renowned blacksmith would have most likely smacked them out of the smithy.
"So, big sis... how much do we get from selling all these to the guild?" Lucia inquired.
"Well... it'll take some time to inspect all these materials... come back tomorrow and I'll hand over the rewards. I guess you can expect maybe...fifty to a hundred thousand credits...maybe even more!"
"Alright then, see you tomorrow! Let's go everyone! We should go celebrate our success!"
"Wait a minute Lucia! Remember, we need the points stamp from the guild for our tournament!" Fina said in a hurry.
"Oh yeah! Almost forgot!"
The party turned towards Cecil and the boy took out a parchment from his spatial ring. There were two high tiered gold rank stamps already on it.
"Woah, our party already has 400 points!" Ainz exclaimed.
"And with this promotion quest it's worth the same as a low-mid ranked platinum quest so it's another 600 for you guys~" Mimi said while giving the group another stamp.
"Hooray! That makes 1000 points for us! We're already ahead in first place with a 500 point difference from second~" Lucia cheered.
The party got up and walked out of the guild's private room with Mimi leading them. Outside, there was a large crowd of students walking in and out of the guild building. Every one of them were quickly taking up quests or turning them in. Some of the students noticed the 6 walk out of the private room and it caused them to gasp in amazement.
"Hey! Those guys could use a private room! That means they're gold ranked! Woah!"
"Damn... gold ranked? Which faction are they from?"
"I dunno man, but look! They're all so young! They must be first years!"
"...isn't that girl Lucia? The first year's ranked 1?"
"You're right! Now that I look at them, aren't those guys the recent trouble makers? I hear that their group turned down every faction's invitation and they formed a small group of their own!"
"Hmph... how arrogant, just because one of 'em is a gold ranked they think that they could stand a chance facing off against an entire faction?! Don't they know that the student council president is also gold ranked?"
"Well, who cares? They're just digging they're own graves."
"...we better report this back to our faction. Hurry and inform the Student Council!"
"Us too, we better go and tell the Dark Moon's higher-ups!"
"Our princess will surely want this piece of news... you two, go back and report this to someone so they can tell princess Aurellia!"
"..."
While everyone was making their moves, Cecil and his party just strolled out of the guild and began heading outside of the academy's district. Cecil, who was finally out of the guild, began talking once again, "There's someone I want to introduce you all too."
Lucia smiled and asked, "Radon?"
"Him...and also Silver! We should get a carriage now with the money we've earned."
"You're right! Walking all around the place sure is tiring...I miss riding on Silvy~"
The other four could only follow behind the two foxkin as they headed out. When they heard the name Radon, the group prepared themselves for another round of surprises, except this time, no matter how much they prepared, they would sure jump in surprise at the second 'person' Cecil would be introducing to them.