Chapter 237 - Escort Quest 2

The Gorux party leader, Sak'arh, saw the two girls rush straight at the lions in different directions and quickly yelled out in exasperation upon seeing the two reckless young ladies.

"Hey! Don't be reck—"

Before he could even finish his words, the sounds of pained lion roars resounded in the air. The scene in front of him was too absurd for his and anyone's eyes to take in. The bodies of the large lions began to fall one by one.

Large sword wounds decorated their bodies and some even had their heads decapitated or their hearts stabbed through.

Kil'na had also stepped out to help with the defense since other than being the Kil'gor President she also doubled as quite the decent mage.

"Huaaahhh...so boring..." Cecil yawned as he witnessed the girls rampaging about the battlefield.

As per their agreement, the two girls didn't use any skills and only relied on their sword techniques to clean up the saberlions.

Serilla was flickering around the battlefield at high speeds, wielding her longsword and hacking apart the lions. Before the other adventurers could even react, multiple lions had their heads decapitated.

Lucia was on the opposite side of the caravan that Serilla was on and she was also quickly dispatching each monster with a swing of her katana and her kodachi.

Unlike Serilla who was more clean and straightforward in her fight, Lucia was going around the edges of the battlefield, kicking or punching any of the lions and rounding them up together. Once they were bunched up together, Lucia jumped into the air and quickly slammed into the ground, crushing every lion in the vicinity with her pile drive drop kick.

She didn't use any skills like usual, but she had unconsciously used a little bit of mana to generate the shockwave that crushed all the lions in her impact radius.

"Lulu, that's cheating!!!" Serilla yelled when she immediately noticed the loud bang and the small leak of mana coming from Lucia's side of the battlefield.

"Hahaha~ sorry, it was reflexive!"

"Muuuhhh...I'm using my Intent then!"

Serilla released her intent and quickly sent sword waves at the faraway wolves, quickly cleaning up the rest of the monsters on her side.

Now that the girls were fighting unrestrained, the lions were quickly taken care of. Lucia and Serilla met up together where the Alpha wolf was at once the last of the lions were killed. The monster in question was currently trembling in fear and was slowly backing away when it saw the two girls approach it.

It was also nervously roaring and growling at the two. The adventurers who saw this couldn't help but feel a little sympathy and pity for the monster.

"Hey Lulu, how much you get?"

"44..."

"Same here."

"That means..."

The two glared menacingly at the alpha lion and said together, "Whoever kills this one wins!"

Just as they were about to rush at the wolf, it suddenly collapsed.

"Eh?"

"Cel! No fair!" Lucia turned back and yelled.

At the rear of the caravan, Cecil was leisurely resting on top of Silver and had his finger pointed at the two girls, or more precisely, at what was behind the two girls. He had fired off a concentrated mana ray from his finger and quickly ended the alpha lion's life.

"Hmph, no way I'm letting you guys win. Let's leave it at a draw so that no one wins! Seriously, using me as a reward..."

"I don't get you Cecil...shouldn't you be happy?" Yuna said in wonder from behind him.

"Should I be?"

"Well...those two are beautiful in their own right... so how come you're not one bit interested in eating them up?"

"Eating them up? Hey, I'm no cannibal!"

"...That's not what I meant..."

"Then what did you—woah!"

Cecil immediately flashed away and avoided someone's kick.

"Cel, why'd you butt in like that?" Lucia said while pointing at Cecil who had escaped.

"Because... I don't want either of you two to win..."

The two girls who had just arrived immediately misunderstood his meaning. They thought that instead of competing for his kiss, he'd just give it to both of them, but...

"Since it's a draw, that means your wager is null. So no one won, that means no one will be kissing anyone...heh," Cecil ended his sentence with a smug smirk.

Seeing his accomplished, smug face caused Lucia to fume silently, but Serilla already knew from seeing her silent reaction and tried to calm her.

"Lulu, calm down~"

"Guhhh...I wanna bash him in the head..."

"Yeah, but you're going to have to catch him first..."

"...That's gonna be hard..."

Silver growled and Yuna agreed with him.

"Yup, that master of yours is hopeless. When someone else comes around to take away these two...I wonder how he'll respond."

Silver let out an amused growl and Yuna laughed with him. "Haha, that's probably true!"

As the party was having their usual conversation, Sak'arh and Kil'na approached them.

"Cecil! Thank you for that timely help!" Kil'na gratefully said. If they didn't have Cecil's party, then although they would have most likely made it through alive, but who knows how much damage to lions' assault would have done to their cargo or to anyone in the other adventurer parties.

With Lucia and Serilla's quick response, they were able to safely make it through the battle without any casualties and damage to their caravan.

"Hm? Don't thank me, thank the girls, they did the most of the work! All I did was take care of the Alpha..."

"What? When? I only saw you here at the back taking it easy while leaving all the fighting to the girls!" Sak'arh exclaimed.

"You don't need to know about that~"

Sak'arh frowned when he heard Cecil. He was just about to speak up again, but Kil'na immediately cut in.

"Nevertheless, I have to thank your party for taking care of the entire lion pride, as expected of a Platinum ranked party! Even an A ranked threat is nothing to you guys!"

"Don't sweat it. We took on your quest so it's our duty to protect the caravan as per the quest requirements."

Kil'na smiled then turned towards the girls and thanked them. After which she went back to the front of the caravan and began making preparations to continue their trek through the mountains. The caravan was still at the base of the mountain so it was still a long way up.

Seeing as Kil'na had walked away, Sak'arh cleared his throat and spoke up.

"Ahem, well...we need to harvest all the materials from the—"

"Just take 'em if you want to, we have no need for the monster materials," Cecil replied before Sak'arh could finish. He didn't put these B ranked monster materials in his eyes since he had an abundance of higher ranked materials stashed away inside his spatial ring collecting dust.

"Hey! I was just going to ask you if your party wanted help and if you'd be willing to—"

"Like I said, just take it all. Divide it up with the other parties, we don't need it." Cecil said once again.

"..." Sak'arh went silent at his words, but he immediately said in the next moment, "We can't just take it all! None of us did anything after all!"

Cecil couldn't help but be impressed at the beastman's character. Although he was very prideful and had in fact looked down on his party just earlier, but he did pay to mind the principles of an adventurer and conducted himself properly.

While Cecil and Sak'arh were having their conversation, the other party leaders approached them and Cecil turned to address all the leaders present.

"Fine, we'll do this. You guys can take all the monster materials from the ordinary wolves, just leave the Alpha for us."

Cecil decided to compromise and did this instead. The Alpha Lion did have higher ranked materials than the normal lions, but even then it still wasn't something that interested Cecil at all.

"I-If that's okay with you..."

"T-thanks..."

"...have it your way, kid." Sak'arh said before turning around and instructing his party members to quickly get busy.

The other leaders also began directing their members and began collecting the monster materials.

Cecil shrugged and walked over to the front of the caravan where the Alpha Lion's corpse was. He pulled out a knife and began to expertly skin and strip the corpse of all usable materials.

Lucia and Serilla had followed after him, and Serilla was immediately intrigued at Cecil's adept actions.

"Wow! Darling can really do it!"

"...Didn't we tell you that earlier?" Cecil replied without looking back.

"But it's so cool to actually see you do it! A man at work is handsome after all! Even though you look like that right now..."

"Really now...? Heheh~"

Cecil let out a light chuckle at her words. He once heard her mother say the exact same thing when she went out to observe his father training one day.

"...I look handsome huh..."

Then he felt a piercing stare next to him and Cecil immediately looked to the side to see Lucia crouching down next to him and boring a whole into his face.

"W-what's wrong?"

"You seem to be happy at Seri's compliment..."

"S-so?"

"How come you're never happy whenever I praise you?"

"...have you ever? You mostly want to crush my face in or bash me into the ground!"

"That's my show of affection!"

"Then show it in a different way!"

"M'kay~"

Lucia was just about to pounce at him, but Cecil immediately clamped onto her head and stopped her.

"Stop, I'm still busy."

"Later then?"

"..." Cecil only replied with a blank, silent stare to which Lucia only giggled at. He turned his attention back to the wolf corpse and finished stripping it of all usable and sellable materials.

"...Like I thought...there's not much we can use..."

"Should I start creating quick-casts again?"

"I guess...I mean, we can always sell them whenever."

"Then gimme the blood! The alpha should be an A ranked creature, right? I'll be able to create some mid ranked quick-casts."

Cecil handed Lucia the bottles of blood that he harvested from the wolf and she discretely stored them into her spatial ring.

"Now that's settled, burn what's left of the corpse and head back to the rear." Cecil used Blink to arrive back on top of Silver and Lucia quickly cleaned up the remains.

It took another half hour before all the adventurers were finished stripping the monster corpses of materials. The caravan immediately departed after the remains were disposed of by Lucia.

Kil'na came back to talk with Cecil and his party. She wanted them to act as back up for everyone else other than the Morux Adventurer Party later up in the mountains. It wasn't that the others were useless, but it was for insurance since Cecil's party did have the means to move around quickly.

Since it was a request from the quest giver, Cecil naturally obliged. Kil'na was going to reward the party with some extra gold for taking up the request anyways, so he didn't see the point in rejecting.

Besides, it wasn't like an S ranked monster would just suddenly pop out of nowhere, right? The route they were taking was indeed risky, but it was the safest route through the first checkpoint on their trek to the Empire's capital.