Chapter 376 - Lakeside Extermination 2

Cecil quickly took care of the monsters in his area. It took him close to 2 hours to completely clear all of the monsters out. He could have done it much quicker, but after his initial show of force, he had decided to tone it down a bit and take things slow.

His slow was still quite fast to the others since he had cleared his areas long before anyone else had been able to finish up theirs. Cecil was now just taking apart all of the monsters and separating their materials into large piles that he'll leave for the Exploration Group and the Little Kings to take care of later.

There were no mishaps except that Lucia had come over to Cecil's area, leaving behind his sister to tend to their area alone. When she had arrived, Cecil was a little bit dissatisfied because she had left her alone, but after Lucia sealed his mouth with a kiss and reassured him that the little girl would be fine on her own with her large horde of monsters, Cecil put the matter to rest.

Of course, this was only because Lucia started seducing him again. He would normally be reluctant to do it but after Lucia tempting him over and over again he gave in and they did it right after Cecil set up a barrier around them and Lucia set up an illusion to mask their area.

A few hours later, everyone was finally finished raiding their areas and had completely cleared it out of monsters. Their tasks weren't over yet since they needed to dismantle the monsters for their materials.

This took them quite a while to do and by the time the day ended everyone still wasn't finished. Only Angelia and Cecil had finished their collection tasks. Angelia had her monsters helping her out while Cecil had finished his extermination early and had already halfway finished his monster dismantling before Lucia came and decided to interrupt him. After that, he had asked for her help to finish the job so the two were able to wrap things up before the day ended.

The operation continued onto the next day, but all there was left to do was to dismantle the monsters while some teams patrolled the vicinity to keep out any monsters that were attracted to the smell of blood that was coming off of the corpses of the monsters that they had killed.

Things were going so well until late in the afternoon, a large roar rose from within the depths of the lake. Everyone was immediately alarmed, but only Cecil had grown excited when he heard the roar.

From the moment he and everyone had entered into the areas around the lakeside, Cecil had been feeling a dangerous gaze observing him from the depths of the lake so after he heard the roar he instantly knew that the origin of that threatening gaze was this monster.

The waters at the deeper end of the lake began stirring and Cecil could make out the silhouette of a large monster coming closer and closer to the shore. Before he could take action, Angelia immediately spoke up from next to him.

"B-Big brother, s-something terrible is coming..."

"Hahahahah, I know! Just sit tight and let big bro take care of it!"

"J-Just so you know, I think I can tame it..."

"Oh really? Perfect, once you tame it, we'll have the monster become the port city's guardian!" Cecil said with a chuckle before he flashed away.

"Cecil wai—ah, there he goes again..." Eli said.

She and the others had just arrived back at the campsite. They had immediately returned and issued out an order for the other squads to retreat when they heard the loud, monstrous roar. Right when they were about to ask Cecil what they should do, he had suddenly disappeared from the campsite.

All of the old members of Little Kings knew where he was headed and they quickly readjusted their plans. Once everyone else got back to the campsite, they all noticed that Cecil was the only one not present.

Some were about to complain before they all saw that a large, monstrous creature rose from under the depths of the water. The creature had a large draconic head with a thick serpentine body.

The body wasn't too thick near the head, but it did get bigger as it went on downwards. It gave out a large roar and shot a beam of water into the sky as if it was announcing its presence. Before anyone could even say anything, a large explosion suddenly struck the monster before numerous smaller explosions buffeted it.

"Hey wait, isn't that—"

"What the hell is he doing out there?!"

"He's trying to take that thing on alone?!"

The other members of Little Kings and the Exploration group still weren't quite sure of how strong Cecil was. They had only heard stories from their higher-ups and weren't convinced of his prowess just yet.

They did see that he was able to quickly take care of his area alone yesterday, but for the Little Kings, they all knew that their 4 captains could similarly do the same so they didn't think that it wasn't anything special, but now that they saw him attempting to fight alone against the monstrous creature whose aura radiated that of a high rank, they started reevaluating him.

Of course, most of them thought that he was being crazy and out of his mind, but as the fight continued, they all noticed that the high-ranked serpentine monster couldn't even let out an attack after it was struck by Cecil's initial wave of mana bolts.

They soon saw him immediately unloading spell after spell on the monster which made it so that the creature couldn't even fight back. It only continued to take on Cecil's attacks as it roared out in pain and agony.

In the next moment, however, another large serpentine head popped up from the waters and this one immediately cast a barrier spell around the first monster that Cecil was attacking. The barrier began blocking out a few of his attacks but it soon broke once Cecil brandished his sword and sent an Ascending Blade at the first monster.

Its head was immediately severed and the monster quickly fell back into the water with a little bit of its severed head landing on the shore. Cecil turned his attention to the newcomer and was just about to flash over to it but the waters near the area of the fight began greatly stirring.

"...Oh shit..."

Very quickly, numerous serpentine heads began plunging out from under the waters. Cecil had to dodge away after he saw numerous ice and water spells being sent his way. Lucia saw this and she immediately took action.

"Eli, Ainz, I'll leave you guys to command the group, I'll go and support Cel!"

"Wait, Lulu—"

Eli couldn't even finish her words before Lucia activated her Elemental Burst and disappeared.

"Th-those two—Everyone, hurry! We have to go and support Cecil and Lucia, I count at least 12 heads! From what we've seen, those monsters are likely S to SS ranked. I want you all to form 4 units. 2 will be in charge of fighting the monsters in a melee, while the other will be in charge of providing support from afar! The last unit will act as a backup unit! Your jobs are to replace any injured members from the vanguard unit!"

"Yes, Ma'am!"

Gabriel didn't say anything and only told the other captains of his Exploration Group to immediately comply with Eli's orders. It was better if there was only one commander on the field since taking commands from two different heads would only result in confusion.

They all agreed with him and began following Eli's instructions. Elizabeth assigned Gabriel and his captains to lead one of the vanguard units while she assigned Velicia to the other one. Ainz was in charge of the support unit while Lucius would be in charge of the backup unit.

Angelia wasn't left out and was instead separated into her own individual unit. Eli asked her to use her monsters to provide direct support to Cecil and Lucia but only from afar. She knew what the battlefield was going to be like once those two began fighting in earnest so instead of having any of the units provide direct support for them, she wanted them to attack a few of the monsters so that they could direct some of the heat away from their two primary fighters.

She would be going in to see if she could provide any direct help to her two friends. Elizabeth had trained herself until she was practically the strongest person in her organization. She didn't know whether she could match up with the abnormal couple that had just left and recklessly charged at the monsters, but she believed that she wouldn't be a burden to them either.

"Alright, let's set out!" Eli commanded.

After everyone got moving, she activated Aura Manifestation and a sublime crimson-colored aura rose from her body and congealed itself around her. She kicked off the ground and shot into the air and flew straight towards where Lucia and Cecil were fighting.

Angelia let out a long whistle and her monsters began mobilizing. She hopped on Chi and quickly took to the skies as well. She also had some of her flying monsters come down to pick up a few members from the support unit so they could provide back up from the skies.

The other quickly led their units over to the lakeside. Once they got there, Ainz quickly had the mages prepare battlements and magically constructed towers all over the shore while Velicia and Gabriel led their vanguard units to attack the monsters closest to the shore.

They had their mages freeze the water so they could fight on top of the frozen area and hopefully restrict some of the monsters' movements with the ice. With how powerful the monsters were they could only take on a few of them at a time.

Their maximum capacity was only 4 monsters, 2 for each unit. Any more and they'd have to stretch their forces too thin and if the worst-case happened, they might be overwhelmed.

Back on the shore, once Ainz and his unit completed their preparations and had all climbed onto the magically constructed and reinforced towers, they began providing ranged support for the vanguards, giving them a little bit more breathing room to take on 1 or 2 more monsters.

With this, they had taken away exactly half of the monsters that were attacking Cecil and Lucia. Soon, one of the monsters they were fighting was overwhelmed by their combined attacks and Gabriel was able to quickly sever its head.

Before anyone could rejoice, however, another monster popped up from under the ice, quickly replacing the one that they all had just killed.

"It doesn't matter! We'll just kill this one as well! Keep going!" Velicia roared out.

They continued their attack once more and quickly felled another 2 of the beasts, but once again, more monsters popped out from under the water, breaking through the ice and assaulting them once more.

It was then that everyone finally noticed. The monsters that were attacking them from the start had somehow increased instead of decreased. When they looked over at Cecil's side of the battlefield, they all saw a cl.u.s.ter of monsters firing their attack at the man in the sky.

"What the hell?!"

"How are they so endless?!"

"Damn! Keep attacking! Keep attacking!"

"It's no use!"

Kill one monster and another popped up from under the ice. This greatly frustrated everyone and they immediately thought that maybe they had provoked a nest of these things. This was greatly shocking because all of these monsters had strengths at the S rank.

"We kill one, but more just keep on coming!"

Ainz who was at the back had a much broader view of the battlefield so he could see something very different. It didn't matter if their vanguard unit killed one of the monsters or not because more and more of these things kept on surfacing from the water.

Even when Cecil and Lucia had sent a combined Ascending Blade at them, severing multiple monsters in half, a large cl.u.s.ter of them would just immediately rise from under the water.

"Damn...we're getting nowhere...if we keep this up, we'll end up exhausting ourselves..."

"Ainz, you take the backup unit and go to the frontlines, I'll stay here and hold the fort on the shore," Lucius suggested.

"...Alright."

Ainz agreed and quickly jumped off of the tower he was in.

"Everyone, gather up! We're heading out!"

"Finally!"

"It's about time."

Ainz was about to lead the unit towards the frontline but he noticed that the skies had suddenly brightened up for some reason. He immediately looked up and saw a large array of large mana bolts making their way down from the sky.

"H-Holy shit!"