Otherworld Adventure

The party made their way through the fourth floor labyrinth area and soon arrived at the fifth floor's staircase.

"Let's go... make sure everyone pays attention to the surroundings on the 5th floor, this way we won't miss anything later when we write our report." Cecil said.

"Okay. I'll write the report later." Ghina offered.

"Great, we'll leave it to you then."

The group proceeded to head down the flight of stairs, when they arrived at the 5th floor area. The party members were no longer exclaiming in surprise anymore. They had already gotten used to it.

Cecil smirked when he saw everyone's lack of reaction when they saw the frozen wasteland ahead of them.

It was chilly and Cecil reinforced his body using Mana Burst. He adjusted the output to a low degree so only a small golden aura rose from his body. Fina did the same. Although she wasn't all that adept with Aura Manifestation, she and Ainz had the bare minimum mastery to use the technique.

A small light blue aura rose from Fina's body. Everyone else wasn't expecting this kind of environment so they were a little helpless at what to do. Then they remembered the previous list of items that Cecil had handed to them. They quickly took out large thick coats from their rings and quickly put them on.

"Wow... you even anticipated this..." Light said with appreciation.

"Well, the environment on the 5th floor is ever changing. Right now it's a wintry wasteland... but the last time I came here it was a blazing desert. When we came back up only then did it turn into this frozen landscape." Cecil replied.

"How come you and Fina aren't wearing anything..." Ghina asked skeptically. After carefully observing the two only then did she notice the slight aura rising from their bodies, "What's... that?"

Fina was the one that answered the question.

"It's a technique called Aura Manifestation. An original skill developed jointly by our party!" Fina said proudly.

"W-What're the e-effects?! H-how come y-you two aren't even f-feeling this biting c-cold?!" Lu Garulle asked with his teeth chattering from the cold.

Cecil turned a weird eye at Lu. Everyone else was somewhat okay after wearing their coats, but Lu looked like he was still freezing cold, it was as if the coat had no effect in mitigating the low temperatures of the dungeon's floor.

"D-Don't mind m-me... us Ape-kin a-aren't so good dealing with the c-cold..." He replied after seeing Cecil's odd look.

"Oh! I see..." Cecil nodded. He then began walking ahead, "Alright everyone, let's get going."

He dodged his party member's earlier inquiry. Cecil didn't want the effects of Aura Manifestation to be known by outsiders and he thought it'd be a pain if other people began begging their group to teach them the all-encompassing body enhancement skill.

Cecil turned a discrete glance at Fina and she got the message. She only nodded back in response and kept her silence. Her 5 familiars followed after her, the water familiars soon froze over and became ice sculptures, but they kept on moving nonetheless.

Fina saw this and was immediately inspired.

"Ah, Ice familiars are plausible too! How could I forget that," Fina said while knocking on her head cutely. She waved her hands and soon smaller butterfly-like ice familiars formed in the air.

"Keep an eye on the surroundings for us." Fina said softly. The ice butterflies flew up high into the air and hovered around them. The familiars would send Fina a mental response to her via Mana when they spotted anything.

With the new familiars, Cecil was able to deactivate his Mana Sense, alleviating his mana expenditure to some degree, though it actually didn't matter. He was only being lazy.

Even on this floor's frozen wasteland, the group was able to have an easy time thanks to Cecil's preparations and Fina's familiars. The wintry environment had also empowered Fina's familiars as well as her own powers.

The group quickly found the rest area that Cecil had mentioned. It was located inside a large cavern situated by the side of a large mountain in the middle of the dungeon's floor.

The group went in and rested in the warm and cozy cavern. They did have it easy on their way here, but the biting cold still took a toll on everyone. Cecil and Fina were the only exceptions however.

When they settled down, Ghina quickly began writing their report. Light and Lu Garulle were besides her, helping with the details that Ghina might have missed during their descent to the 5th floor.

She was their spotter so it was natural that she took in more of the dungeon's details than everyone else, but there was a chance that she might have missed something since she was also busy with detecting whether any monsters were close or not.

They also had to write their personal opinions, but Cecil only said that it was boring, while Fina said that she would write her own later.

Cecil and Fina excused themselves from the busy group and they walked out of the large cavern. Cecil had his Mana Sense deactivated so unbeknownst to him, a small group of people followed after them.

When they got further away from the cavern, Fina released her familiars again and Cecil led the way towards the mithril vein that he and Lucia had discovered during their last trip inside the dungeon.

"It should be on the far north side of the floor. Hopefully no one's discovered the place. We should mine the whole vein this time. I don't plan on coming back here any time soon."

"...is that okay Cecil? You know, we'd get a pretty hefty reward if we gave this info to the guild!"

"For what? Better if we used it ourselves than give it to the guild. Please remember that we do have the Gramps to help us forge some stuff with the mithril." Cecil retorted.

"Haha, I guess you're right. When you have the number 1 blacksmith in the kingdom as your uncle, giving away a mithril vein is pretty stupid and pointless."

"Let's hurry. We don't want our friends to notice that we've been gone for too long."

"Alright."

Cecil began running in the direction that he last remembered the vein was at, behind him Fina had activated Aura Manifestation and was following after him. She didn't have a good mastery of the technique, but at least she could achieve the bare minimum of enhancing her body when she used it.

It was that she just couldn't use it in tandem when she was casting spells, so if it was just running it was no problem for her to maintain the skill.

Behind them...

"Hurry! Make sure you don't lose those two!" Vale said as he trailed far behind the two. "That little bitch is also with him. This saves us some trouble. Too bad that incompetent Light isn't with them...Where's Dahn? Is he ready with the trap?"

"Dahn's currently gathering the monsters with the powder you gave us earlier. He and Mane are probably almost done by now." A lackey answered.

"Good. Tell them our location. We'll lead the monsters towards the area those 2 are going."

"On it." The lackey answered and went in the direction of their party members.

"..."

"What? You scared?" Vale said, turning towards the last, clearly hesitant, member of his party.

"N-no... it's just...is this the right thing to do?" one of them asked.

"Tsk, if you're going to back down... then disappear from my face now! Get back to the surface on your own!"

"N-no... pretend I didn't say anything..."

"...Hmph. Spineless!" Vale disdainfully replied.

A blizzard soon began to kick in as Cecil and Fina kept on traveling northwards. When they arrived at the cavern where Cecil and Lucia had mined the mithril ore, the blizzard was in full storm.

"Phew, good thing we got here before the blizzard had properly set in..."

"We might... be here for a while." Fina said worriedly.

"Don't worry, we won't take long here. And if we really had to, I'll just blow away this blizzard."

"...you could do that?"

"No probs!" Cecil responded confidently.

'Punch your way out indeed.' Fina thought. She currently had a strained expression, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at Cecil's unreasonableness.

This time around Cecil came prepared. He took out a large pick axe from his ring, something that Radon had forged using a little bit of the adamantium they had.

Once he got a good feel on the pickaxe, he quickly located the mithril vein and saw that it was still untouched like before. The previous signs of destruction caused by their haphazard way of mining from last time were still present even.

Cecil began mining with the pickaxe. It was awkward for him at first, but as he got the hang of it he adjusted his posture and technique. He began to quickly and more efficiently mine the mithril. Fina was on the side quickly storing the mined mithril ore into their spatial rings.

It didn't take long for Cecil to mine all the visible mithril in the large cavern. He used Mana Burst to quicken his mining speed so it only took him around an hour or so to complete the task. Outside however, the blizzard was still raging magnificently. The winds caused by the blizzard rang throughout the cavern, making it pretty noisy for them.

"Hey Fina... do you hear that?" Cecil asked in a low voice.

"Hm? Hear what, the blizzard?" Fina answered jokingly.

"...No, but... it sounds like a monster cry...No wait!" Cecil quickly got to his feet when the sound he was listening to came closer and closer.

When he got closer to the entrance of the cavern, the loud noise caused by something other than the blizzard was much more audible. Even Fina could hear it too. Not to mention the large vibrations coming from the ground originating by whatever it was that was causing the commotion.

"C-Cecil... the ground... do you feel that?!"

Cecil had already activated Mana Sense and he was able to detect and visualize what it was that was causing the noise and vibrations. His face turned gloomier by the second as he saw the large pack of monsters heading their way.

"Th-these vibrations... what's causing this?!"

"It's a stampede... a Frost Mammoth stampede..."

"Huh?!"

Cecil began grinding his teeth in anger. 'Which bastard... it's that Vale and his party!' Cecil quickly picked up something else on his Mana Sense, and it was the bastard Vale and his party that was lying in wait from far away.

He grew incredibly angry when he saw this. Their satisfied smiles and relieved looks angered him to no end.

"Just because Fina hit you... you send this large horde as payback?! Ahahah... damn you..." Cecil darkly said. A sinister expression soon began creeping up on his face, but then it suddenly disappeared. A cold and apathetic expression soon replaced it.

"Fina... stand back... let me get rid of this rabble."

"Eh? C-Cecil?" Fina was unnerved seeing the abrupt change to the boy's demeanor. She had never seen such a Cecil. The cold vibe and the unapproachable aura Cecil was exuding...were unsettling.

Cecil walked just outside of the cavern. He began circulating the mana inside his body. A large golden aura soon enveloped his body. Streaks of what seemed to be lightning also flashed around his body. Cecil was also activating Mana Burst, using the skill to regulate the mana output.

He made sure that his mana expenditure after using his next technique was just before his Mana fell into a dangerously low level. Lucia wasn't around so he had to be careful.

He didn't want to cause any problems to Fina. He knew that he wouldn't forgive himself if he did something ghastly towards Lucia's best friend. He also wouldn't know how to face Lucia if something did happen to Fina because of him.

Once he was ready, Cecil spread his arms out and focused the Mana into his palms. Once he felt that he had channeled just enough, Cecil brought his hands forward and faced the incoming stampede of Frost Mammoths.

It was clear that the amount was insanely large. Even Lucia would have a hard time dealing with the large stampede currently present in front of him.

Cecil gritted his teeth at the pain coming from the large surge of mana in his arms and hands.

"I'll eradicate you all... DISAPPEAR! OVER FLASH!"

A deafening silence ensued in the next instant. The absurdly large golden beam of mana that Cecil shot in front of him caused all sounds to become mute. The sounds of the Frost Mammoths, the blizzard and the wind, everything became mute.

Fina who was behind him, stared in awe at the beautiful golden beam of death shooting forwards.

From afar, Vale and his party could only look on in horror at the large golden beam that just barely grazed past their location. Vale and his 2 confidents immediately paled and one of them even fainted.

Vale was struck frozen on the ground in fear, the two other hesitant members had already begun crying and breaking down screaming in fright, but no sound exited from their mouth since the empowered Flash Cannon had obliterated all the sound waves in the vicinity.

The golden beam continued forward and didn't stop, it obliterated any obstacle that stood in its way and only stopped until it reached the large mountain in the middle of the dungeon.

BOOOOOMMMMM

BZZZZTTTTT SSZZZZZZTTTTTT

After it crashed into the mountain, the air in the area that the beam had passed by was superheated to a high degree that it began exploding spontaneously.

BOOOM BBOOOM BBBOOOM BOOMMMM

Everyone in the cavern shelter was startled at the large explosions and they quickly exited the cavern and witnessed the appalling yet mesmerizing scene of the air exploding. It was like having fireworks close to the ground.

Back at the cave entrance where Cecil had fired off the beam, he exhaustingly let down his arms and kneeled down on the floor, panting.

Fina quickly snapped out of her awe and rushed towards him.

"CECIL!"

"Urk... hah...hah...hahaha... take that you bastards...just wait for me to deal with you." Cecil completely ignored the worried Fina and he stood back up and began dragging his feet towards the area that Vale's party was at.

Cecil had purposefully directed the blast close to them to teach the insufferable bastards the meaning of fear.

Now it was time to actually deal with them. Cecil was furious and despite his exhaustion he trudged his way towards the hapless group with a worried Fina in tow.