The group went out and headed towards the White Wood Plantation, the area where the pride of monster lions had nested upon and when they got there, it was indeed infested with many lions and lionesses. They numbered in the hundreds and Cecil wondered how such a large number of lions had even made their way to the place. It was reported that there were only 50 or so in the pride, but the amount that they were witnessing had at least doubled or tripled.
"Yeah... this is totally sabotaged," Ainz said in exasperation.
A vein popped on Cecil's forehead. "Bastards... if the trees weren't in the way we'd be able to clear the whole area out with a wide-scale area spell."
"Can't do that though~ the chief will probably become furious if we destroy the trees~" Lucia said with a smile.
"Why are you so happy?"
"Hehehe, I'm going to go and test my new original on these oversized cats~"
"..."
Lucia jumped out from behind the tree they were hiding and raised her finger and formed a gun with her hand. The lions nearby noticed her and moved closer to surround her, but she only smirked upon seeing the lions coming closer. She pointed her finger at one of them, concentrated, and from the tip of her index finger a large amount of fire element particles gathered and soon a small red orb formed.
Once the red orb formed, Lucia then yelled, "Red Laser!"
A highly concentrated laser of fire elemental mana was fired from the orb and it pierced through a lion that was about to pounce on her. The laser punctured through the lion and continued onwards to the monsters behind it and it only stopped after piercing 2 other lions behind the initial one she struck. The monsters collapsed dead on the ground and in the next moment, their bodies began to burn into a pile of ash.
"Yes! It worked!"
Seeing that her spell worked, Lucia cheered before she pointed her finger at another lion who visibly flinched when it saw her pointing at it, and did the same thing, but this time, the spell was a little different.
"BLUE LASER!"
The spell was the same as the last one, but instead of using fire element mana, Lucia used water element mana. This laser didn't pierce the lion, but instead once it made contact with the monster, it immediately froze it.
"Hehe~" She quickly blew her finger, posing like a cowboy after a shootout.
"...let's go support her, there are still more of those things coming," Cecil said and took out his weapon from his spatial ring.
He readied his spear and activated Mana Burst. He aimed at one of the lions and flickered forward. After Cecil pierced through the sides of one of the lions, he began flickering and moving around the field at high speeds, piercing and killing every Fanged Demon Lion in his sights.
The rest of the party followed suit and jumped into action. They made sure that they didn't damage any of the trees in the surroundings while they were fighting since they were important resources for the elves living in the village nearby. Since they didn't want to damage any of them, the mages of the group played a supporting role while the close combatants were the main force this time around with Lucia being an exception.
Fina ran forward and quickly arrived by Lucia's side who was still firing her laser beams at the lions and carefully avoiding the ones that were too close to the trees and letting Cecil or Elizabeth deal with them. The two of them quickly took care of the monsters she didn't aim at while Velicia was on the other side of the field, testing out her new weapons.
The Vorpal Claws that Radon had finished crafting for her was finally being put to use. Throughout their journey here to the village, she had been constantly polishing the weapon and hugging it dearly because it was something made by their kingdom's best blacksmith and she had been desperately wanting to use it. Now that she had her chance, Velicia slashing and rending apart every monster in her way while laughing at how easy it was to deal with them because of her powerful new weapon.
It was kinda reckless, so Ainz was supporting her from behind. The A+ ranked monsters were somehow weak... At least, those were the thoughts that were going through everyone's head, except for Cecil and Lucia.
Naturally, it wasn't that the monsters were weak, it was just they who were strong. If any other party were to face against the hundreds of lions, their first thoughts would be to run away and abandon the quest. The monsters only appeared weak right now because of Cecil. His tips to mana control and the unique skill that he inadvertently helped everyone learn, Aura Manifestation, was what gave everyone the edge to easily defeat these A+ ranked monsters.
Aura Manifestation was the downgraded version of Cecil's Mana Burst and Lucia's Elemental Burst techniques. The user of the skill only had to wrap Mana around their bodies to manifest the aura and they were good to go. It wasn't complicated like Cecil's and Lucia's Bursts, but nevertheless, it was actually a pretty hard thing to do since not just anyone could wrap mana around their bodies and maintain it without having great mana control.
The person who unintentionally developed this skill was Elizabeth. She was intrigued with the way Cecil and Lucia enhanced their bodies, so when she was observing them fighting the other day, and the way the two were wrapping mana around their weapons to create the aura, she tried the same, except instead of her weapon, she wrapped mana around her body. The results lead to a skill that somewhat copied Lucia and Cecil's Mana and Elemental Bursts.
Unlike conventional body enhancement spells and skills, this skill didn't need the complicated chants and precursors for activation. The output was also on an all-round scale which was much better than the specific body enhancing skills and to increase the effects, you only needed to increase the output of your mana.
After taking a few days to properly learn the skill and make it usable in battle, Elizabeth and Velicia were now fighting on a completely different level than before, but the two of them didn't even realize it yet. It was because of this that the group had the misperception of the A+ ranked monster being weak.
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When the group cleared all the lions in the periphery of the plantation, they headed deeper into the area and slowly cleared the monsters in the inner areas. After they finished up with the inner area, they had a quick lunch break before continuing. Outside the plantation, a group of individuals were witnessing the quick speed in which the Little Kings were clearing the monsters.
"What's with this?!" One of the persons in the group said in disbelief.
"They're... they're just kids!"
"...damn... the info provided by our clients were wrong! They were totally wrong!"
"They wanted us to obstruct their quest... with just us?"
"Boss...you sure that our client isn't working for one of our enemies? This request is a total trap! Even if they're just kids...I can say for certain that I'll be killed if I fight with that boy wielding the spear."
"Who said we were fighting them? Our client only wanted us to OBSTRUCT them... leading all those lions into the plantation is more than enough to complete our mission. The client never told us to make them fail."
"Oh? So, can I hear more about this client of yours?"
"Huh?"
An unfamiliar voice rang in the midst of the group. They immediately turned towards the source of the voice and saw a boy holding a bloodied spear standing close to them.
"I'm guessing you bastards are the ones who are sabotaging us, yes?"
"..."
"...listen kid, we don't want your life. We were only sent to cause hindrances to your quest. We were just doing a job that someone paid us to do!"
"I see...can't be helped right?" Cecil nodded in understanding, before he smiled eerily and continued, "Can I also assume that you were the ones who stole the Tree Sap?"
"..."
The group remained silent and they began eyeing each other discreetly. Cecil took their silence and reactions as an affirmative.
"Well, if you only lured the monsters then I wouldn't mind. They'd just be there to help our friends practice, but now you actually stole our reward... that right there, is a problem~" Cecil said playfully.
He began channeling his mana into his spear and the mana array inside of it activated. The spear immediately became enveloped in a golden storm of mana and the group of ruffians immediately became alarmed at his obvious display of hostility. They immediately unsheathed their weapons and readied themselves for a fight, but Cecil only chuckled after seeing their actions.
"Ahahahaha... do you all honestly believe you'll be able to put up a fight?" Cecil was angry enough to the point where he deliberately taunted them for being weaker than him.
He wasn't exactly angry at their actions of obstructing their quest since they too were only completing a quest that was issued to them, but stealing from him and his friends? Now that was taking things too far. The rewards would be given to his party for their quest completion, so in a sense they were theirs to begin with, but now some idiots had gone and stole it. He hated that, especially since the reward was something essential for their training.
"Conceited little brat!" One of the men dashed forward in response to his taunting.
Cecil only stared at him and thrust out with his spear. The golden storm of mana flew out and smashed into the man, eviscerating his body and sending him crashing into a tree.
"ATTACK! KILL THE BOY IF YOU HAVE TO!" The leader quickly yelled in command.
Cecil smiled coldly and he took up a stance with his spear pointed at the ground
"Just so you know... I won't kill you people... I'll hand you over to the furious elves who had their treasure stolen. I'll let them deal with you bastards."
After Cecil said his piece, he flashed forward appearing at the back of the group. He swung his spear at the two people who were apparently their mages and the golden storm flew out once again and smashed them away while they were in the middle of chanting their spells. He quickly incapacitated their mages and then rushed towards the rest, quickly taking each individual down with relative ease.
"Tsk... weak... monsters are much more of a challenge than these fools," Cecil mumbled in disappointment.
He took out a rope from his spatial ring and quickly bound the infidels before whistling and calling Silver over. He handed the bound group of people to Silver and checked the spatial ring that he looted from the leader.
"Hmph. They did steal the sap..." Cecil retrieved the 3 jars of tree sap and stored them inside his spatial ring. He rummaged around inside the of the leader's spatial ring, trying to find anything else of value that was worth taking.
"Eh? I guess these people weren't all that useless after all," Cecil smiled and took out a monster core. "They're the ones that actually killed the Monster King... no wonder there weren't any other movements from the pride even after we went on a rampage in the inner area."
Their leader was already dead, so the entire lion pride couldn't coordinate their attacks and only the monsters close to each other were the ones that came to support the lions that were being attacked by their party.
"The claws, fangs, fur... tails, and its head. Okay... looks like that's all," Cecil quickly took out the Monster King's materials and stored them inside his ring. He tossed the ring back to the unconscious leader and headed back towards his party while Silver dragged the unconscious group of people and headed back towards the village.
Back at the inner area of the plantation...
"So, did you get them?" Lucia asked.
"Yeah, they were weak, but they were strong enough to take down the monster king."
"They killed the fanged demon lion king?"
"Yeah, I've already taken the materials and the sap with me."
"Heeehh~"
Cecil shrugged at Lucia. He didn't say anything more and returned to killing the lion monsters.
"Hurry up Lulu, let's clear the plantation before nightfall. We still have one more quest to do close by."
"Alright~"
The group upped their clearing speed and they were able to safely finish their quest before the evening.