A few days later, Cecil and everyone got adjusted to their new living spaces and were going about their lives as they normally would. At the moment, Cecil was currently training by himself in his private training grounds in the basement of his new home. He was practicing only his family's martial arts, completing each form with the utmost focus and diligence. As he was circulating his mana while doing the forms, a bit of aura could be seen rising from the boy's body.
Yuna was on the side gazing at him, intrigued by his peculiar way of training. It was peculiar because supposedly, Cecil was a mage, not a warrior. The way he was training was more reminiscent of how warriors trained, not mages. Usually, mages would train their mana and focus their efforts on being able to cast their spells faster and with greater precision. Of course, she did think that the way the mages trained was a bit flawed.
With such a fragile body, it was easy for them to die if an enemy got too close to them. Sure, there were various magic spells that could help a mage escape and open up a distance between them and their enemies, but it wasn't without flaws. If an enemy was quick enough, they'd be able to catch up to a mage even after they used escape spells like [Blink] or [Teleport].
As a dragon, Yuna didn't have to worry about that sort of flaw since she inherently possessed a strong body. She was also a mage, but mana cultivation for a dragon like her came as naturally as breathing. Her unique mana cultivation method was something that could be done anytime and anywhere, regardless of what she was doing. All she needed to do was focus for a bit and channel her mana through her body according to the cultivation method. Since she didn't really need to train as intensely as Cecil and Lucia, she spent a good amount of her time just lazing around and relaxing in the house.
Seeing her just staring off into the void in the corner of his eye, Cecil called out to her, "Wanna join Yuna? I can teach you!"
"Hm? No thanks, although I can see it'll be of great help, I'm not a close combatant. Although I could fight to some degree, I'd prefer using my magic."
Cecil nodded hearing this and focused back on his training. Not long after, Lucia called out to the two from the ground floor.
"Hey, you two~ Lunch is ready! The others are here as well! Cel, go and take a bath before you eat!"
"...your wife's calling." Yuna teased.
"Can it."
Cecil quickly finished his last set of movements, grabbed a towel and wiped off his sweat. Meanwhile, Yuna had already gone up so he was left alone down in the basement. He spread his Mana Sense and sensed that his other party members were already in the living room.
"Already here, huh?"
After taking note of them, he directed his senses into his body to check on his condition. He examined the Mana Pathways in his body and smiled a little. He was slowly evolving those pathways into circuits just like how he did with the pathways in his limbs. It was excruciatingly painful at first, but he found a way to alleviate this pain and that was by training and circulating his mana using his family's martial arts.
It would be faster if he used his previous method, but it was too dangerous. If a mishap happened, it wouldn't end with just him crippling himself. In the worst case scenario, he might even die or go berserk from the mana overload burdening his heart and mana point. The new method he discovered was actually turning his family's martial arts into a legitimate mana cultivation method and the results actually went above and beyond his expectations.
There were still a few things he needed to work on before his family's martial arts could become a mana cultivation method that could be passed down and used by others, but he was experimenting as he went and taking note of how other cultivation methods worked and adjusting his cultivation method accordingly.
The progress in the rest of his body's Mana Pathways turning into Mana Circuits was slow, but at least the progress was steady and vastly less painful. Once he finished inspecting his body, Cecil walked up to the ground floor and quickly headed to the bathroom. The bath was already prepared and he took a dip in it.
"...she's acting like my mother..." Cecil mumbled while inside the bath.
Ever since Lucia began living together with him under the same roof, the girl's been babying him. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, she prepared everything, and when he needed to take a bath or do his laundry Lucia was already on top of it. It was nice, but Cecil felt like Lucia was behaving more like a mother instead of his friend. He did want to help her out with everything, but he never got the chance because she had already done them.
Cecil did address this issue a day ago, but Lucia said that she didn't mind doing all that since she wanted to. They did get into a small argument because it didn't sit right with him leaving all of the burden of taking care of everything in the house to her, so they came to a compromise. Lucia could do everything that was mentioned before with Yuna helping a little bit on the side while he was tasked with cleaning and going out to buy their groceries if they ever ran out.
It's only been a few days since they started living in their new home, so there wasn't much cleaning to do and they were still well-stocked on groceries, so Cecil didn't have much to do at the moment except training. He felt like nothing had changed despite the compromise they reached, but he couldn't do anything about it now becaues Lucia would just refer to their agreement from before.
When he finished bathing, Cecil quickly got dressed and went towards the dining room. He saw that everyone was already there and eating together.
"Hey, Cecil, come eat!" Ainz said while stuffing himself with the pasta in front of him.
"Pasta?" Cecil said as he raised an eyebrow towards Lucia.
Lucia smiled back at him and replied, "Yeah! I finally figured how to make them!"
"Woah... let me taste!"
"Come try it!"
Cecil quickly sat down and Lucia brought a plate of pasta for him. He quickly took a bite of it and he widened his eyes at the nostalgic taste.
"Wow... it's...it's the same!"
"Yay!" Lucia cheered. Only she understood what Cecil meant by when he said the 'same'.
Cecil began to happily eat his meal and even Silver was wolfing down his food right next to him. Ainz was eating ravenously, but in a noble-like manner while the girls, Elizabeth, Fina, and Velicia, were also doing the same. It was a first for them, since they've never eaten pasta before. The meal was great and everyone completely cleared all of the unique-looking and tasting food that Lucia made today.
The foxkin girl was always surprising them with new and strange cuisines every now and then. They wondered where she got all those ideas from, but she never divulged anything to them since it would leak Cecil's most important secret.
"Okay, since we've finished eating... let's get the meeting started," Cecil said after seeing that everyone had finished eating and were all beginning to relax.
Everyone became serious at his words. Today they would be holding a meeting, since tomorrow was going to be the start of the Dueling Tournament and also the selections for the participants of the National Tournament.
"Ainz, did you get the info?"
"Yes, here it is. It's the bracket formations for all the fights happening during the first 5 days of the qualifiers."
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Ainz quickly transferred Cecil the data that he had secretly acquired which showed the order of fights for the tournament. Cecil was a little confused since he didn't see any of the Little Kings' names. He could only wait for Ainz to explain the reason. The latter stood up and began explaining to everyone after he sent them the data.
"There are 10 qualifier brackets in total, with 100 participants in each bracket, which means that there will be 50 matches in every bracket. Every participating faction has sent anywhere from 50 to 200 students to participate in the tournament, half of them will be participating in the qualifiers while the other half, along with the faction leaders and Kings, will be seeded into the Tournament's main stage matches. We'll only be participating in the main stage matches on the 5th day of the tournament when the top 3 from every qualifier brackets have been selected to participate in the main stage."
Ainz finished his report and sat back down. Normally, the boy would be joking around and boasting here and there, but when there was a need to be serious he was as serious as anyone could get. Surprisingly, he also had a very good information network in the academy, so he was able to get this information for the party.
Cecil nodded and smiled in satisfaction, "We're all seeded and it seems the main stage matchups haven't been decided yet, and let's just hope we won't bump into each other until the latter half of the tournament... unfortunately, only Yuna wasn't seeded since she's not a King."
Everyone turned towards the newest member of Little Kings, the dragon girl, Yuna. Only Lucia and Cecil knew about her actual identity of being a dragon and the fact that she was in a pact with Lucia. Everyone else only knew her as Lucia's friend from her hometown.
Yuna was currently eyeing the data in her MID and she shrugged. "Well, there's no helping it. I'm no King, but I can guarantee a spot in the qualifiers. I'm super strong after all!"
Everyone smiled seeing her confident response.
"We'll come and cheer you on!" Lucia said.
"Yeah! We're all right behind you, Yuna!" Fina added.
Everyone else nodded and gave her words of encouragement. Yuna was confident in her abilities and felt no need for it, but she was still happy receiving the support, her dragon tail was waving back and forth in delight.
"Okay, now we'll talk about whether or not we should preserve and hide some of our abilities." Cecil said.
"Yes, we should just do enough to make sure we win! We shouldn't overdo it and show too much of our capabilities. Remember, this is only the Selections, our real goal is the National Tournament." Eli said while reminding everyone.
Everyone in the academy already knew they were strong. Their King Titles proved it all. Now they should just do the bare minimum to guarantee a spot for themselves. Their main objectives were to win the National Tournament. This time even Lucia was in agreement, as was everyone else.
"Okay, first off. Aura Manifestation and Burst, we can't hide this anymore since everyone's already seen it before. Just use it if you need to," Cecil said, taking a pause before continuing, "Next is the high tier magic spells, I'm pretty sure everyone agrees with me when I say–"
"Off limits!"
"I second that."
Fina and Eli were the first to open their mouths, they voiced to conceal their ability to use high tiered spells. Of course, many have already speculated that they could use such spells from the footage shown during the First Segments Awards ceremony, but it was better if they didn't expose too much. Everyone else also nodded in consent.
"...good, so we're all in agreement. Honestly, high tiered spells are a little overkill. I mean, it's not like we're trying to kill our opponents, right? That includes your Laser-series spells, Lucia!"
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Lucia gave him the white eye; it's not like she was that unreasonable.
"Weapons?" Velicia asked.
"Well, we can't really hide that now can we? That's unless of course, you guys plan to take down your opponents with your fists like me," Cecil said with a wry smile on his face.
"Yeah, we'll just use them as we see fit."
"Yup."
"Finally, we have our pets...the tournament does allow us to use them, but what should we do? Are we going to use ours?" Fina asked as she eyed Silver and the Frost Wyrmling perched on her shoulders. She had named the little fella, Ruru, since the Wyrmling always cried out 'Ruuu' whenever it wanted anything.
The Frost Wyrm egg that Lucia bought at the auction was given to Fina since Ainz said he had found a newborn wyvern hatchling when he was doing his trial. The hatchling in question was currently in Ainz's arms, being slowly fed with liquid food that Lucia had specially created.
"Well, I can't have Maxi here fighting now can I? He's still a child," Ainz said as he continued feeding the little monster. He had already formed a pact with the wyvern and named it 'Great Wyvern Maximillion Ainzdu Bernstein the First'. It was a long, cringe inducing name and he would always call out to it in its full name...but it was only until Cecil forcibly stopped him from doing so that he settled with just Maxi instead. Since he had already bonded with the wyvern, Ainz only needed to continue feeding the little guy with food while nourishing the monster with his mana to help it grow.
Right now, the party's new monster members were still in their infant stages, so they couldn't possible enter the tournament matches yet. They were still way too young and had no viable combat capability whatsoever. Sure, they could use some basic spells, but they probably won't have any impact on the match. The only concern was Silver, but there was no way Cecil would have him assist in his fight.
"...I guess we really don't have to discuss this right?" Velicia said.
"Yeah...only Silver will be able to fight, and knowing Cecil... there's no way he would allow Silver to fight his battles," Lucia stated.
"Now, let's talk about the tournament rules... Ainz, you're up again."
"Mhm. Well, it's the same as any other tournament. The match has a 30 minute time allotment. Each student will be wearing academy issued safety gear that will block any incapacitating attack. Once their gear's protective enchantment triggers, the fight ends. If you send your opponent off the stage then that will be counted as your victory and the match will end. In the case where your opponent sends out a pet, you will only have to incapacitate the monster to achieve victory, or just directly knock out the owner."
Ainz stopped and began thinking, ""Yeah, I think that's all. Oh, forgot, one more thing, since personal equipment is allowed, no instant-use potions or poisons are allowed to be used. If you are found to have used a potion or a poison then you will automatically be disqualified, and for the poison offender, he'll be imprisoned in the academy until further notice."
Cecil nodded after hearing all the rules, there were some other smaller rules in the information that Ainz had sent them, but they were inconsequential. It was pretty loose and the rules didn't constrain the participants as much. After a while longer discussing this and that, Cecil finally dismissed the meeting and everyone went back to the living room to sit around and relax. It was clear that they were all anticipating the start of the tournament.
They wouldn't be participating in the tournament until the 5th day, but it was still exciting to wait for the tournament to start.