Seeing that it was already high noon, Lucia asked the party,"Why don"t we take a lunch break? We"ve already hunted down a couple dozen packs of monsters already~"
From morning until now, the party had hunted without breaks, hunting down one pack of monsters one after the other.
The packs of monsters ranged from a mere 5 to as high as 20 or more. They had hunted plenty and it was high time they took a break.
Milly immediately agreed with Lucia when she felt hunger kicking in.
"Yeah, let"s eat first then go back to hunting."
"are we g-going to eat h-here? O-or are we g-going back t-to the r-ranch?" Cathy stuttered.
"It"s safer if we go back, but we"re already so deep into the forest..." said Miles.
While everyone was debating about staying in the forest to eat or not, Tyr sat down and took out his lunch from his knapsack.
"Let"s just eat already! I"m hungry!"
"H-hey! It"s dangerous eating here in the forest!" Miles exasperated.
Tyr was already digging into his lunch and ignored Miles" warning. Seeing that one of them was already eating, Cecil immediately suggested,
"Let"s take turns eating then. Tyr and you girls eat first. Miles, Silver and I will watch the area."
"""Okay"""
"...*sigh* alright."
Hearing the suggestion, the girls immediately plopped down and started eating their lunch with Tyr.
Miles could only relent after seeing everyone taking their lunch out. So he kept watch of the surroundings with Cecil and Silver.
"... shouldn"t you be eating Tyr?" Cecil asked in surprise when he saw Tyr was also keeping a look out with them.
"What!? I"m done already! HAHA!"
"..."
Tyr only just sat down a couple of seconds ago. Cecil started wondering if he just shoved his whole lunch pack into his mouth in one go.
Seeing Tyr going back to patrolling the area a bit, Cecil immediately activated his mana sight and quickly scanned the area.
Upon noticing that there weren"t any monsters close to them, Cecil relaxed a bit.
The girls were quick with their lunch and it was time for the guys" turn to eat. Minus Tyr of course.
Lucia handed Cecil his lunch and he immediately dug in. While he was eating, he saw Tyr eating beside him...
"W-what the heck Tyr?!"
"Hrmm? *munch* what"s up Ce?"
"I thought you said you finished lunch?!"
"HAHA! This is my second serving!"
"..."
Miles was on the side quietly eating his lunch. It seemed this was a normal occurrence for him. From time to time he would glance around the area and at Milly. Even while eating, Miles put the safety of the party and his sister first.
"As expected of an older brother" Cecil thought.
Cecil remembered how protective he and his brothers were towards their sisters. Especially towards the youngest, Angelia, the brothers literally pampered her to death and wouldn"t tolerate her being bullied or even crying.
The brothers once started a ruckus at her grade school when Angelia came home crying with their mom.
Cecil chuckled at the thought and resumed eating. He missed his carefree days with his family.
Feeling someone staring at him, Cecil looked up and saw Lucia staring at him. After briefly making eye contact Lucia turned away and returned to keeping vigilant of the area.
Cecil smiled and thought,
"It"s like having another younger sister. I wonder if my older bros would pamper Lucia the same way we do to Angel."
Cecil thought it was funny since they most certainly would, if it was a girl then they would protect, if it was a boy... well... let"s not go there.
Cecil remembered the last time Fatima introduced the male vice-CEO of her company.
"Grandpa, Dad, Gabe, Matt and Luca weren"t pleased at all."
He wasn"t one to talk since the one with the biggest reaction of disapproval was actually Cecil himself. His mother had to placate him and kept on repeatedly telling him not to hack the man with his training sword.
Cecil quickly finished up his lunch. He unbundled a huge steak from his bag and fed the steak to Silver. Silver finished the steak in one bite and went back to patrol the area.
"Okay, let"s rest up for 30 minutes and continue our hunt! We gotta get first place everyone!" Milly exclaimed.
The girls started chattering amongst themselves while the boys were polishing their weapons and glancing around the area from time to time.
Cecil was sitting down with his eyes closed in meditation. He was quietly condensing mana into his eyes, trying to solidify the mana in his eyes.
He only had partial mana sight so he wanted to use every moment he had to train and quickly gain perfect mana sight.
As for his mana stage, he wasn"t too worried about that. He already had as much mana as the mana core stage, so all he needed to do was focus more on his mana sight training.
The faster he gained mana sight, the faster he can resume his mana training.
Not even 10 minutes into their break, Cecil sensed a disturbance in the surrounding mana. Not long after Silver came back and started barking at them.
"Rah!"
"I feel it too... everyone I think a battles happening somewhere to our west!"
Cecil immediately notifies his party and waits for everyone"s decision on whether to check it out or to stay away.
"Hmmm... maybe it"s only another party battling monsters, we shou–"
Before Milly could finish her sentence, an SOS signal was fired into the air. It was coming from the area west to them!
"Scratch that! Everyone hurry!" Milly yelled.
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She was already rushing towards the area where the SOS signal was fired from. Miles and Tyr quickly caught up to her and rushed ahead.
Cathy and Lucia were running behind Milly while Cecil and Silver were bringing up the rear.
It didn"t take them long to reach the source of the SOS.
They arrived at a clearing... no it wasn"t actually a clearing. The reason why the dense forest had such a huge clearing was because the trees in the area were all hacked down.
Tyr and Miles who were up front, quickly halted their steps and scanned the area. The area was devastated. Numerous gouges and pits littered the area. It was evident that a hard battle had taken place here just now.
When the rest of the group arrived behind the two, they also scanned the area. What they couldn"t find though were the party that sent the SOS and whatever it was they were fighting.
Right when Cecil was about to activate his mana sight again, a loud intimidating roar sounded out at their 2 o"clock direction.
The party quickly dashed towards the direction of the roar.
"Oh s.h.i.t!" Cecil thought.
"BLADE URSA!" exclaimed Tyr.
"d.a.m.n, it"s a whole tribe of them!" Miles said.
"I see the party! They"re being surrounded, let"s hurry up and help "em!"
Miles, Tyr and Silver were already charging towards the tribe of ursas right after Milly gave the directive.
Milly started prepping her spell while Lucia started enchanting Miles and Tyr"s weapons. She quickly turned around and saw Cecil glancing around the area, after confirming that it was only the tribe around Cecil immediately charged forward.
Seeing as Cecil was already charging ahead, Lucia started chanting and quickly fired her spells at the ursa tribe.
"WE"RE HERE TO HELP!" Tyr quickly announced his and the party"s presence to the ursa tribe as well as the party who requested for back up.
"T-thanks! Thank G.o.d!"
The ursas were surrounding the party so Cecil and the rest could only here a "thanks" from behind the wall of monsters.
The Blade Ursa was a monster in the shape of a bear with sharp claws, a blade like horn and had two sickles growing out of its elbows. It was 5 meters in height and was a very familiar monster to Cecil.
"d.a.m.n... I didn"t expect to see an old enemy here"
Cecil smiled at the thought. He quickly unsheathed his sword and dashed towards the closest blade ursa. These were the monsters that he faced right when he was first teleported into Alterna.
"This time... I"ll kill you myself!"