It was the next day and the Little Kings were currently on their way towards their next destination.The party had completed the lion hunting quest and they successfully acquired the tree sap and the A ranked monster core. Two out of the five additional ingredients were procured and they were currently headed to the location that housed their third ingredient, the monster heart.
"Hey, this monster heart... is it like a literal, monster heart? I mean if it was... then couldn"t we get that anywhere?" Ainz asked.
"Monster Heart, it"s a type of plant that high tiered monsters love to eat. The reason why it"s called Monster Heart is because the flower the plant blooms has the shape of a heart. It"s a red purplish colored flower and it"s highly toxic to us people if we ingest it, but to a monster it"s an incredibly irresistible delicacy and for alchemists it"s a wonderful catalyst to create pet enhancing potions." Fina explained.
"Oh... so all we have to do is pick this flower then?"
"Basically, but I hear that high tiered monsters protect the flower all year round."
"We"ll just kill the monsters and take the flower for ourselves!" Lucia declared.
"Bulldozing through with strength again..." Eli smiled helplessly.
"The person with the biggest fists has the final say in everything!"
Cecil smiled at Lucia"s remark. It"s just as she said, the person with the biggest fist has the final say. Since they were strong, they could just eliminate every weakling and just take. There was no need for any excess thinking or plotting.
"But is this okay? I feel like we"ve become way too complacent..." Cecil had his own worries. Things were going great for them indeed, but he kept on thinking was this okay?
Of course, it wasn"t like things were easy for them to begin with. The group had trained and trained madly every day. They constantly trained and upped their combat capabilities.
They were much stronger than their peers, and the people who could contend with them were probably only a handful. Even adult adventurers and mercenaries couldn"t hold a candle to their party anymore.
The party wasn"t platinum ranked just for show. By Cecil"s estimates, each individual of Little Kings literally had the power of a King now. All they needed to do was report to the headmaster that they wanted to take the test to be dubbed kings of the academy. The only thing that caused Cecil to frown and worry was that they acquired this power in only over a month"s time of training.
Of course, he could be wrong and maybe the powers of the Kings were much stronger than what they have now, but Cecil didn"t believe in that possibility. He witnessed for himself just how serious his friends had trained and even he was proud to say that they were "strong" individuals now.
*****
Before midday the group arrived at the location of their third ingredient.
"Okay guys, let"s split up in groups of 2 and search for the fruit."
"Okay~ Fina with me~" Lucia said while hugging Fina.
Fina opened her mouth and said, "I"ll go with Veli this time Lulu..."
"Eh?"
"Well, if it"s us two... then you"ll be the one doing most of the fighting..." Fina said with a helpless smile.
Lucia immediately understood what Fina was getting at. The girl wanted to train as well, and she didn"t want to always rely on Lucia to be there to save her or help her.
"Oh okay... then I"ll go with Eli then!" Lucia said while she bounced towards Elizabeth and hugged her.
"Okay, so it"s you and me Fina! Let"s find that flower before everyone else!" Velicia said while pumping her hands in the air.
"Okay!" Fina closed her eyes and chanted a spell. After she waved her staff, 2 magic formations formed on the ground in front of her. A blue, watery wolf formed slowly as the magic formations raised themselves from the ground.
Once the two water familiars formed they howled and one of them immediately rushed out. The remaining water wolf bent its body down and Fina climbed onto its back, she pulled Velicia up too and the two girls rushed out following the previous familiar.
Ainz whispered in amazement at Fina"s new spell. "Woah... this is the first time I"m seeing that!"
"Fina used that spell when she was hunting the golems~" Lucia said. "So, shall we go Eli?"
"Yeah." Elizabeth spread her wings open and she took to the skies. Lucia used her steam magic and raised her body in the air and quickly followed after Elizabeth. She turned around for a moment and waved her hand at the two boys on the ground.
"...when could she do that?" Ainz said while pointing stupidly at Lucia who was flying next to Eli.
"Long before we came to the academy." Cecil plainly said. He was unfastening Silver"s harness.
"Shall we get going as well?" Ainz asked.
"Wait a bit, let me free Silver first, he"ll help us find the flower too, since he"s also a monster."
"Okay... but is it alright to leave the carriage unattended?"
"Lucia already cloaked the carriage with an illusion spell. Didn"t you see her wave her hand earlier?"
"What... that was for the illusion spell? Dang, I thought she was taunting us." Ainz laughed.
"She"s not that petty."
Once Silver"s harness was release, he stretched and bent his body down. Cecil and Ainz quickly jumped onto his back and the 3 shot into the distance.
"Hey, Cecil... that flower... since it"s supposed to be guarded by a group of monsters shouldn"t we just go and look for the place that has a high concentration of monsters in the area?"
"Good idea." Cecil immediately spread out his Mana Sense and tried to locate the area with the highest concentration of monsters.
After 15 minutes of searching he began to frown.
"I can"t find any places like that."
"Hm? Well... maybe we should focus on the quality of the monster then. I guess, not just any kind of monster can guard the flower. The weaker ones would most probably be driven away by the stronger ones."
Cecil released his Mana Sense once more and began scouring the area of high leveled monsters. After an hour of searching using Mana Sense and their eyes and other spells, the three still weren"t able to find the flower.
"...are we even in the right place?" Ainz asked skeptically.
"This better not be another one of those sabotaging plots again... it"s beginning to annoy me."
Ainz said dejectedly hearing him. "I thought this place was supposed to be filled with high leveled monsters all year round? How come not even a B-ranked monster is around? There are only C-ranked fodders and normal livestock monsters here..."
"Tsk...Let"s continue searching."
The two were about to continue their search, but then Silver began acting strangely.
"Woof! Grrrr..." He kept growling and pawing at his nose.
"What"s wrong Silv?"
"Grrrr...Woof!" Silver directed a fierce gaze in the forest in front of them and began stepping backwards. It wasn"t out of fear, but because he felt disgusted or something.
"?"
"What"s with him?" Ainz asked. He turned towards the forest ahead and pondered.
"Cecil!!!"
Fina"s voice came out from the forest and the 2 looked ahead. From the forest came Fina and Velicia riding on the water wolf familiar.
When the two came close to Cecil, he was able to spot the peculiar flower in Fina"s embrace.
"I found it! Haha!"
"Really? Great!" Ainz said excitedly. "It looks like we don"t need to go to the trouble of finding the flower anymore."
Cecil was a little skeptical of the situation. The area they were searching was supposed to be filled with high ranked monsters. How the heck did the area just suddenly emptied out of monsters when the flower was clearly still located in the area.
"GUYS! GUYS!!!" Lucia came from the sky screaming in alarm. Eli was behind her and she was also flying frantically back towards them.
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"Hey, Lucia! We found the flower already!" Fina said with a smile.
"Eh? Awesome! As expected of Fina! Wait– now"s not the time for this! We have to get outta here now!"
"Huh?"
"Yeah... we... we have to get away." Eli added while panting.
"What"s wrong?"
"Do you know why there aren"t any monsters here? It"s because some sort of army was clearing the place!"
"What?"
"It"s true, we saw the army with our own eyes... it was a beastman army. It was full of werewolves, werecats... the leading general seems to be a werelion...I think it was General Leonidas of the Orca Empire."
"...what"re the beastmen doing all the way out here?" Cecil asked skeptically.
"They seemed to be killing the monsters and collecting their remains. No one spotted us earlier I think, but I think it"s best if we hurry on out of here." Eli urged.
"Okay, let"s hurry back. Everyone get on Silver, it"ll be much fast this way."
"Woof!"
Silver barked in response and he further enlarged his body. His size was now as big as a 2 story building and the party of 6 was able to fit on his large broad back. After confirming that the kids on his back were grabbing onto him firmly, Silver activated his speed enhancing spell and quickly dashed away.
*******
At a hill not far from where the party was at, a large werelion and a werewolf were observing the kids making their escape.
"Milord... should we give chase?"
"...No...They"re just kids. And did you not see that lizardkin– no, dragonkin girl earlier? She"s obviously part of the royal family of Anglaria. We don"t want any trouble with them, especially now that those despicable humans are attacking us." The large, golden mane werelion said as he eyed the large white wolf dashing away from them on the plains.
"Yes Milord." The werewolf bowed.
"Come, Wul"von. We"ve got much to do."
The two turned around and immediately headed back towards their army on their black steeds.
Cecil who was now far away from their original location turned to look back at the hill where the 2 beastmen were just standing on.
"..."