Anna pinched her brows and had a troubled expression on her face seeing her son act so recklessly. She had a helpless smile on her face since she knew this was just how her son was, as long as it was practical and efficient, anything goes. They had only spent a few months together as a 'family', but Anna was able to accurately judge Cecil's character within that relatively short period of time.

She sighed before saying, "Alright you two, you can go back now. I bet your friends are beginning to worry."

"Yes, mother."

"Okay, mama... when...when will I see you again?" Lucia asked. She was clearly unwilling to separate with her mother just yet. It's been almost a year since they've seen each other and it goes without saying that she dearly missed both her parents.

"Don't worry, honey. You'll see me real soon."

"And Papa?"

"Papa as well, now go, stay with Cecil alright?" Anna gently said. "Remember, be a good girl. Don't give Cel a hard time, okay?"

Cecil nodded in agreement with Anna's words, but Lucia frowned before saying, "Mama, you've got it all wrong! He's the one who's been giving me a hard time!"

"Oh? Is that so? Cel?"

Cecil turned away before nervously replying with a laugh, "Haha, it's nonsense, mother..."

He just remembered that in the past few days, he had indeed given her a hard time because of his reckless use of mana. Since he couldn't refute Lucia's words, he tried deflecting, but that wasn't really what Lucia meant when she said that Cecil had been giving her a hard time...

Anna was a little surprised that it was Cecil that was giving Lucia a hard time, so she let out a chuckle before saying, "This is something new! Looks like many things have changed since you guys left the village!"

"Yeah, Mama, that's for sure!" Lucia replied.

"Anyway, you two run along now. Mama also has to get going~"

"Mhm, okay. Bye-bye mama!"

"Bye-bye, pumpkin~" Anna said, but the she quickly leaned in to Lucia's ear and whispered, "Make sure you don't let any other foxes steal your Cel~"

Lucia blushed madly at this and only bobbed her head up and down shyly.

"Hahaha~."

Cecil was already waiting for Lucia near the door. The girl quickly arrived by his side and pushed open the door for them. He paused for a moment and turned back, he could see the gently smiling Anna waving them good bye.

He smiled at her and said, "Good bye, mother."

Anna smiled back in reply before saying, "Keep my daughter safe, sweetheart. Oh! I almost forgot... I left a little something in your ring, be sure to take a look at it. It'll help you with your current... problem."

She gave Cecil a wink before meaningfully glancing at his arms. Cecil widened his eyes in surprise and bowed once more to his foster mother before leaving. It seemed as though nothing could escape her attention.

On their way towards the moving platform they discovered a lonely Headmaster who was currently sipping his tea on a bench close to the platform. The two quickly approached him and greeted in unison, ""Headmaster.""

"Oh~ are you 3 finished?"

"Yup! We'll be going now, sir! Thank you for sparing us your time!"

"No problem kiddos! Ah! Don't forget about the king trials! I look forward to everyone's performances!"

"Yes, please look forward favorably."

"Of course~"

After the short chat, Cecil and Lucia got onto the platform and headed straight down. They quickly exited the building and went back towards their dorms. It was already late in the evening by then. Along the way, Lucia was tightly holding onto Cecil's hand as they walked. Cecil was just puzzled by her actions, but he let her be. He was currently scrutinizing the information that he received on his MID about the king trials he and his friends had to go through.

"Hmmm... doesn't seem so hard," Cecil mumbled and Lucia agreed as well.

"Mhm... they're pretty easy."

Cecil's trial was only to bring back an A-grade level natural treasure and submit it to the academy. Lucia's trial had her bring back the core of a manticore, an A+ level monster. It honestly wasn't anything hard for them. The monsters they faced during their quests were much harder. For them, the trials were easy, but the same couldn't be said for their friends.

They had similar trials with similar difficulties as Cecil's and Lucia's, but the trials were meant for only a single person to do. They had experience facing monsters on A+ to S grade, but that was when the party was facing it together. Completing such a feat by themselves may prove difficult for them, but Cecil had faith that his friends would be able to complete their trials too.

It was only until the next day that the other party members voiced out their concerns to Cecil and Lucia. Telling Cecil about their worries was something they were going to regret for the rest of their lives because the moment heard them. a devilish smile crept onto his face and he announced that they would immediately begin their 'training'.

"Alright guys, let's begin your tortu–keheum, training," Cecil said with an evil smile.

"...this brat..."

"He was about to say torture, wasn't he?" Elizabeth said with a blank look.

"Owh... here we go again..." Fina tiredly said.

"Hic... n-no... I wanna go back!" Velicia screamed in horror, just as she was about to escape, Cecil grabbed onto her tiger tail and stopped her in place.

"Hohoho~ I'm sorry... but since you guys are complaining only because of these low level small fries... looks like you need some serious training! Naturally, from yours truly, so be prepared!"

"How?! How could a person of our age be such an unreasonable devil?! AND! A-rank monsters aren't small fries!!!" Velicia yelled.

"Oh really now~ but, I'm no devil. I'm your trainer~"

Thus began their hellish training. The 4 friends were bashed, mashed, and thrashed by their demonic trainer. Lucia only offered her prayers in silence and went ahead to go finish her trial with Silver. It didn't take long for her to finish it–just 3 days to be exact–and it was thanks to Silver's speed cutting her journey short.

The manticores' habitat was much farther away than any of the places the Little Kings had previously visited as it was close to the Magic City's domain. Usually, the journey going there was 5 days by carriage, but thankfully, she had Silver, the 5-day journey was cut down to only a little over 1 thanks to his speed. The fight itself didn't even take that long as well as Lucia finished the King Manticore off with a salvo of Red and Blue Lasers.

The moment she collected the King Manticore's monster core, she immediately headed back to the capital. So, all-in-all, it was about a 3-day round trip for the entire journey to complete the trial.

When she got back to the Academy, she immediately went to look for Cecil. She searched around the Academy once and couldn't find her party members, so she injected her mana into the bracelet Cecil gave her and tracked the source of his mana. She found that it was outside of the city deep into the forest where they normally trained after finishing a quest.

Lucia hastily made her way over and found 4 corpses lying in the middle of the clearing. She then saw the 'Devil King' leisurely sitting next to a campfire close by. Lucia took another look at her 4 friends' 'corpses' and saw that they were still alive and breathing. They were only knocked out from the harsh training and it wasn't like Cecil was seriously going to put their lives in danger with his training.

She stealthily made her way towards Cecil and jumped on him, "Cel~"

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"Oof!"

Cecil was a bit too focused on making the food in front of him that he didn't notice her despite having spread out his Mana Sense. Lucia was also actively concealing her presence, so she managed to get under his radar this time around.

He naturally knew that it was Lucia, so he didn't try attacking her or anything despite being surprised for a brief moment. All he thought in his head was, 'Dang it, how did Lulu sneak up on me like that?! Look like my awareness is still lacking, I've got to practice some more...'

Not knowing what he was thinking, Lucia rubbed her face against Cecil's and wrapped her arms around him before looking at what the boy was doing and saw that he was making some sort of stew.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Cooking, of course, but I can't seem to remember to recipe... are you done with your trial?"

"Yup~"

"Hm, that was quick. Anyway, what am I missing..."

"Do you want me to make it?"

"Eh? Sure, perfect timing actually. I'm pretty sure those 4 were in need of something good to eat. They were complaining that they had to eat barbecue all day long for the past few days, so now they wanted something else for a change."

They had Cecil to blame for that. All the time he spent on his family's private island learning about survival, the only skill he got in regards for cooking were related to barbecuing and roasting meat.

"Alright~"

Lucia took over and started getting busy. Cecil went over to his friends and carried them up with Silver's help over to the campfire. He asked Lucia to cast a cleansing spell on all 4 of them before he quickly took out blankets and some bedding. He then laid them down and let them rest so they could recover from their exhaustion.

"How are they? Are they good enough now to take on their own trials?" Lucia asked while she was cooking.

"Hmm... actually they already are. I can imagine them winning against any A-Grade monster that they encounter on their trials, but they seem to lack the confidence in doing so. It's mostly been our entire party fighting against A to S-Grade monsters, so I can see why they'd lack confidence in doing it alone."

"I see... it's better if you just tell them to go do their trials now. They won't be building any confidence if you keep thrashing them around like this."

"...you may be right. It's decided then. We'll have the 4 go and do their trials starting tomorrow! I'll let them rest for today. Let's consider the trial also a part of their training~"

"...Okay. You should get yours done quickly as well."

"Of course," Cecil replied with a smile.

"The stew's done. Just serve it to them when they wake up."

"Sure... Wanna go for a round or two?" Cecil asked while pointing towards the open field.

"...we're going to wake them up if we cause such a ruckus."

"No mana, skills, or magic. We'll only use our martial arts."

Lucia grinned and flickered towards the middle of the clearing. Once she arrived at a good spot, some tens of meters away from the campsite, she took her stance and beckoned Cecil over. Cecil smirked and flashed a couple of meters ahead of her. He got into a similar stance and waited. The two didn't move from their spots and waited for the other to make their move. The standoff tested their patience, but as usual, Lucia was the first to become impatient. She quickly dashed at Cecil with a soft cry and sent her palm towards his chest.

Cecil blocked and rotated his body while sending a backhand fist straight towards Lucia's flank. The girl blocked it with her arm and kicked at him. She used the centrifugal force of her body twisting to send her other leg towards his face which Cecil naturally blocked. Their martial arts were one in the same since Cecil was the one who taught Lucia his Silvaria family's martial arts, so they kept on evenly exchanging blows over and over again.

Despite only having learned it for a little over a year or so, Lucia had grown extremely proficient with the Silvaria family's martial arts. She never neglected her daily training and now she had grown to the point where she was finally able to actually put up a decent fight against Cecil and to him, that was very good news.

Whenever Cecil finished his mana training, he didn't always like spending his remaining time doing meaningless body training because no matter how much he trained his current body, it wasn't going to get any better than it already was. He was still too young and his body wasn't fully developed yet, so there were various limitations to him training his body.

Cecil opted to hone and train his techniques instead, but he never found a worthy opponent to spar with using purely martial arts and nothing else. Now that Lucia–the genius that she is–had finally arrived at a level where she could proficiently fight with him without using mana or anything else, Cecil didn't have to waste his time anymore.

The two kept going at it for over an hour and only stopped when Lucia couldn't handle it anymore. Without the enhancement of mana, her physique wasn't as great as Cecil's. So with every hit, block, and parry, her body was accumulating more damage in comparison to her opponent.

In the end, Cecil won since his body was much more fit and tolerant than Lucia's. Of course, he held back using any of his martial arts' advanced techniques on her, but he did fight at a standard that was a level or a half above Lucia's current martial arts mastery. He did this not only to help himself, but also to help Lucia as she was able to learn by observing and directly experiencing the moves.

Since the fight was over, Cecil picked up the exhausted Lucia into his arms and walked back towards the campsite. At the camp, Cecil found that his 4 friends were already awake and were currently eating their soup with some bread...while at the same time they were spectating the two's spar.

"Hmm...so how was it? Pretty awesome, right? We didn't even use mana," Cecil said in a smug tone. He quickly put down Lucia and began massaging the areas on her body that were aching and hurting from their earlier fight.

"...you two are just abnormal," Ainz replied.

Fina then said with a strained smile, "Well...your fighting techniques are certainly unique. It looks really hard to pick up if we wanted to learn it."

"Yeah... what Fifi said, but even then, it does look interesting," Velicia added.

"It's a shame that I already have my family's techniques engraved in me... it'd be hard to transition into using your fighting techniques," Elizabeth regretfully said.

"Well you guys should just stick to your own methods. Cel and I have been doing this since long ago, so it's been engraved into our bodies, the techniques and skills. You guys should just train and hone your skills so that it'll catch up to our standards," Lucia replied before wincing in pain and letting out a muffled moan at Cecil's massaging.

For Cecil it indeed has been a long time, but for Lucia, it's only been a year or so since she's started, but that was the setting the two had agreed upon so they wouldn't have to explain about Cecil's actual background.

"It's easier said than done," Elizabeth retorted.

Velicia followed it up by nodding her head profusely agreeing with her words, "Right, right!"

Cecil shook his head and smiled at them. He continued massaging Lucia until all the pain went away and he kept on doing it until she comfortably fell asleep next to him. He turned his attention to his 4 friends and spoke up, "This should be enough training. Tomorrow, you guys should hurry up and go do your trials. I believe that all of you are ready."