Cecil's group took it easy on their way to the quest location. The group used a whole day to learn from Cecil while on the road. He was explaining some physic concepts that he learned from Earth. Although it was only middle school level material, it was enough to fascinate everyone on the carriage. Of course with the exception of Lucia since she was at the high school level now.

"Hey, Cecil... where in the world did you learn all this?"

"Well... I guess you could say that my parents were something like... explorers I guess?"

"...Explorers?"

"Well, from what I know. My parents were traveling all around the world before they had me. When they settled down nearby Fauxe Village, my house was filled with incomprehensible books and notes taken by my parents."

Cecil had activated his hyper-sensitivity and accelerated his brain's thought process.

'Crap... this is why I'd rather not have to teach these classes...'

He quickly spun a story in his head and lied to his friends with a straight face. On the side, Lucia was turned around and holding back the urge to laugh at Cecil's nonsensical story.

'Pfft...Kukuku, Cel you should become a story teller instead of a battle mage!'

By the time this session's lesson was over, Cecil was mentally drained. He didn't want to lie to his friends, but it was better if less people knew about his origins. The next day quickly arrived and in the morning, they finally arrived at the Elf's Forest Village, Calum. Just like the village's name that was situated inside the forest, the forest's name was also Calum.

When their group arrived, Cecil exclaimed when he took in the sights of the elves' unique houses. The village wasn't located on the forest's floor, but high up in the tall tree tops. The trees that were part of the village were all interconnected using the elves' unique nature magic that allowed them to manipulate the branches of the trees to intertwine with one another to create the foundations for the village and wide paths that acted as the roads in between each tree.

The 'plazas' of the village were entirely made up of intertwined tree branches and vines and the large tree tops were also hollowed out in the middle and that's where the elves built their residences and facilities. In order to get to the treetops where the village actually was, Cecil and his party had to go through a 2-way portal gate that was located at the base of the village.

Using teleportation to get in and out of a village. That was something incredible and Cecil was rightfully amazed by it. Even the Anglaria Kingdom's capital city didn't have such a fancy way of getting inside of it.

As the group explored the village a little more, Cecil noticed that there weren't any smithies inside of the village and the reason why was quite obvious. It was dangerous to use fire of extremely high temperature in a forest because if a mistake were to happen, the entire village would catch on fire and that fire could spread through to the entire forest.

Well, it wasn't like the elves needed a smithy in the first place since they used tools that were created using the wood from their unique magic and they did everyday tasks using magic anyway. Seeing the way the elves were living, Cecil couldn't help but ask to his party in a rather incredulous tone.

"...are all elf villages like this?"

He found it quite unbelievable that a small village had something so incredible like a fixed spatial gateway when the Anglaria Capital City didn't even have one. Not to mention that almost all of the village inhabitants were using some pretty advanced magic just to do some ordinary things.

"This is nothing, if you've been to Elfheim or Sunchaser city, then you'll see just how 'amazing' the elven country is," Elizabeth replied.

"I wanna visit an elf city soon," Cecil said with an expectant smile.

"We may visit one soon enough... did you hear about the changes the academy's doing to this year's tournament?"

"Changes? What changes?" Cecil asked the lizardkin girl next to him.

"I'll answer that!" Ainz interrupted from the side. "At the third segment, the Magic race, the academy has decided to do a collaboration on this year's tournament with the Elves' Urrug Academy, the Beastman's Royal Beast Academy, and the Seafolk's Oceanic Azure Academy."

"...so it's going to be a joint tournament?"

"Yes, the first 2 segments are the qualifiers and the tournament will straight on jump into the 5th segment."

"They're skipping the 3rd and 4th segments?"

"No, the 5th segment became the 3rd segment. While the 4th segment was changed completely to something new. I'm not sure about the details yet, but it has something to do with exploring an ancient ruin?"

"As for the last segment, I hear it's related to beast hunting."

"So... in conclusion... this year's academy is going to be fun, right?" Lucia smiled; clearly she was anticipating this year's joint tournament.

"There's going to be a lot of competition..." Fina said worriedly.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Oh, by the way. Fina, since there's a Seafolk's academy... why didn't you enroll there? Why come all the way out to the Anglaria Kingdom to enroll in Arks Royal?"

Being asked that question, Fina replied with a rather shaky response, "Uhhh... well, you could say I'm an exchange student?"

"I see! Well, don't hold back on your own people when we meet them later in the tournament! Just so you know, I plan to blast away everyone that stand in our way!" Lucia raised a fist and confidently said. Clearly, she didn't pay too much attention to her friend's reply.

"Y-Yeah... of course!" Fina also followed suit and raised a fist.

"Me too, me too!" Velicia joined in on them.

"...we have to make it past the qualifiers first..." Elizabeth added.

"It's in the bag! So don't worry so much Eli!"

Lucia grabbed her friends hand and also raised it up into the air. Only the boys were inching away from the girls at the moment and Cecil managed to quickly pull Ainz away to the side of the carriage.

"Shouldn't we join them?" Ainz asked hesitantly.

"She just declared that she'd blast away all the competition, that includes the elves... where are we right now?"

"At an.... Ohhhh!!!"

"Okay, enough with the jokes. Should be safe now." Cecil said while he kept his eyes on Lucia's group. "Listen, Ainz. I've been feeling a strange gaze directed at us ever since we crossed the gate into the village..."

"Really? Where's it from?"

"I don't know... I can't even find the source using my Mana Sense... this has never happened before and it's a little annoying," Cecil said with a frown. "Don't tell the girls. Let them stay like that so we don't draw suspicion from whoever's spying on us."

"Okay... but aren't we going to do something about this?"

"I'll keep my Mana Sense spread out to find the source. Just act normally."

"Well, what we're doing isn't exactly normal by the way."

"Don't worry about that, Lucia's already noticed as well and she's cast an illusion spell. So, to whoever's spying on us, we're still with the group."

"Okay..."

"Let's head back, just make sure you keep an eye out."

"Alright."

"Don't make it too obvious though," Cecil reminded again.

The two made their way back to the group and when Lucia saw this she dispelled her illusion.

"Okay, let's have breakfast first and then we'll go report to the village chief. After we've reported to him, we'll immediately head out and find the monsters."

Everyone gave their affirmation and the group had a quick breakfast. They made their way to the village chief and reported their quest.

"Ah, so it's you kids who are going to be doing this quest?"

"Yes."

"I can't believe how young you are?! Kids your age... already at the platinum rank...my gosh."

"Well, we have the ability, so you can leave the rest to us, chief. The reward is the tree sap, so we'll present you the head of the pride's leader and you'll give us the sap."

"Yes, of course... but, there's a slight problem..."

"Hm?"

"Last night, some group broke in and stole all the remaining sap."

"..."

"We could create more, but the pride of lions had decided to make our White Wood tree plantation their nesting grounds..."

"Don't worry... like I said, we'll take care of the monsters. As for the sap... I guess we can collect our reward another time?"

"...I deeply apologize," The elf chief bowed.

"Don't worry about it chief! But... let's say we find these thieves... can we keep all the sap if we catch them?"

"Of course! The sap was originally meant to be your reward, so it's alright if you keep it if you do find those abominable thieves!"

Cecil smirked and stood up to exit the house. His party followed suit and they made their way to the village's spatial gate.

"I feel like someone's deliberately sabotaging our quest," Lucia said annoyed.

"This isn't the first time someone's tried, but it is the first time it has worked," Ainz said.

"Despicable."

"You said it, Eli... but how'd they get our quest location? Could they have known of the quest we'd take beforehand?" Velicia asked with her hand on her chin.

"The messenger... he leaked the info," Fina mumbled.

"Yeah, it's definitely him," Cecil affirmed.

"Then... was Luc in on it too?" Velicia paled, her eyes colored in disbelief.

"Nah, he's clean. Don't worry Veli. Hey, guys. How about we go snatch Lucius away and have him join our party?" Cecil suggested with a sly smile.

"Hoho, I like the idea," Ainz said in agreement.

"How 'bout you girls?"

"No complaints here~"

"Same, I see no problem."

"Luc in our party? I totally agree!"

"An alchemist that can also act as our tank in battle... we just so happen to lack someone of that role, no?"

Lucia, Elizabeth, Velicia, and Fina agreed while respectively voicing out their thoughts on the matter.

"Well, we'll do that when we get back. Those factions... they're starting to get annoying," Cecil said as he walked through the gate.