"So, who's coming with me up the mountain?"

Lucia obviously raised her hand and so did Angelia. Everyone else in the party had done so as well and only Quinn didn't because he already knew that his task was to watch the Wanderer and Sleipnir.

Cecil turned towards Quinn and said, "Alright then, Quinn, I leave Sleipnir and the Wanderer to you!"

"Yes Master," Quinn respectfully replied with a bow.

"Everyone else, let's head out! We should finish this hunt before the sun goes down!"

"Ouh!"

"Yay~!"

"Mhm."

"..."

Cecil turned towards his ever silent brother, Gabriel, and asked, "Gabe, you good?"

"Mhm. Just leave Angel to me. I'll look after her," Gabriel dully replied.

"Hehehe, big bro sure hasn't changed one bit! You're still Angel's babysitter even after so many years!"

"Mhm... she's reckless after all..."

"Hey! No, I��m not!" Angelia protested.

Gabriel and Cecil only eyed her with a gentle smile and walked up the mountain together.

"Hey! What's that look supposed to mean?"

Lucia quickly caught up next to Cecil and she wrapped her arm around his. Even though their objective was to find Angelia a few monsters to tame, Lucia treated it as a family outing. It's been a while since she could go out on a relaxing stroll with Cecil...through a mountain full of dangerous monsters.

After a few minutes of walking, Angelia began to curiously look around the area for any monsters she could tame. On the way up, the group encountered a few mid-ranked monsters, but Angelia's intuition didn't kick in so they weren't monsters she could tame. This continued on for quite a while.

To Cecil's surprise, the requirements for her to tame a monster was pretty stringent. Even after a few hours of roaming around and encountering a few wyverns, griffins, and other kinds of monsters, his sister still hadn't tamed a single one!

"Big bro, I think I can feel a monster that I can tame somewhere close!"

"Hm? Well, okay, lead the way then. Just be careful."

"M'kay~"

Angelia took the lead and began sprinting forwards. Gabriel was already chasing after her with Lucia, Ren, and Cecil following after from behind. Ren wasn't all that athletic so Angelia let him ride on Mao, if not, he wouldn't have been able to keep up.

As they moved deeper and deeper into the mountain, they encountered stronger monsters but Cecil and Lucia easily took them down. There were occasionally some monsters the two would let pa.s.s so that Angelia's pets could have a little bit of action but surprisingly, the one who was most active had been Gabriel.

All of the monsters were quickly dispatched by Gabriel and Cecil was surprised that his brother could fight really well. He didn't panic and only had that dull and tired look on his face while fighting, it was like he was already used to it all. It seems that during the times where he disappears, Gabriel had been busy and wasn't only lazing around.

"Brother, you're pretty good, huh!" Cecil said with a grin.

"Hm..."

"Do you train by yourself whenever you disappear all of a sudden?"

"Mhm... more or less...I am part of the expedition squad...so I'm usually not at home a lot of times..." Gabriel said with a clear tinge of reluctance in his voice. It looks like he was forced into the position.

"Oh...I didn't know that."

"You never asked..."

"Hahaha! You're right!"

After a few more minutes of running, Angelia led the group towards a cave and inside was the first monster Angelia detected that she could form a bond with. Before they could head in, Lucia stopped the group for lunch.

It was already midday but they had only found one monster after searching around for the whole morning. Cecil thought that it wasn't very time-efficient, but Angelia was pretty excited to meet her new friend.

Cecil could only smirk at how confident his little sister was that she could easily tame this new monster.

After lunch, the group entered the cave. There were a few undead monsters inside the cave and Cecil couldn't help but make a face at this. Was the monster that Angelia sensing an undead? He hoped that his little sister wouldn't be averse to those kinds of monsters.

"Hey, Angel...you wouldn't mind if this new pet of yours turned out to be an undead, would you?"

"Hmm... I'm not that picky, but I hope it's nothing too disgusting! As long as it looks cute then I'll take it!"

'...I don't think any undead would look cute...'

Cecil felt a little exasperated at Angelia's conditions to form a pact with a monster. She basically couldn't pick and only monsters which had a certain fate with her would be able to be contracted. Even after hunting down all those griffins, wyverns, and golems on the mountain, not a single one of them had been able to contract with Angelia.

However, it could be seen that she had put a lot of hard work over the past years into being able to capture and tame over 50 of these fated monsters already. Losing even one of them must have been very painful for her.

Angelia herself didn't seem to be very picky about her monster's criteria but her ability sure was! And this was what exasperated Cecil.

"Well, let's get this over with. It's really hard to believe that after searching for almost half a day we were only able to find one monster..."

"It's okay, big bro! This time we were extremely lucky! Normally, it would take days or weeks just to find a compatible monster! There were many times when we had to return empty handed! It felt like a complete waste of time because it was only on rare occasions that daddy would let me out of the valley..."

"Dad can be very strict at times. You can't blame him, if I were still here during those times I'd rather have you not venture out of the valley. I'm surprised dad actually let you out at all!" Cecil replied.

"Well, mommy was there to persuade him! If it wasn't for mommy, I wouldn't have been able to go out!"

"And because of that I was forced to babysit you every, single, time..." Gabriel added from the side.

"Eheheheh..." Angelia could only sheepishly laugh in response.

"Heads up guys, I think that's the monster we're looking for, right Angel?" Lucia warned from up front. Cecil turned his attention back towards the front and soon noticed a unique looking skeleton wandering around the large pa.s.sage ahead of them.

It was unique because of the two large boneswords it was carrying around and the fact that it was bigger than all the other skeletons around. Its bones were also black in color instead of the usual grayish white.

"Ohh, that's the one! I can feel it!" Angelia exclaimed happily.

"Is that...a Skeleton Champion?" Cecil thought aloud.

"Uhh, Cel, I think it's a Champion that's almost evolved into a Lord..." Lucia said while pointing at the protruding spikes that was growing on the monster's skull.

"...Angel, do you—"

"I want that!" Angelia exclaimed excitedly.

"Eh?"

"He looks so cool!"

"C-Cool?"

When Cecil heard his sister's words, he began questioning his own aesthetical tastes. That eerie, black-colored skeleton monster wielding two maliciously large boneswords that was walking around radiating a dense amount of killing intent...was cool in her sister's eyes?

'That's...cool?'

Cecil couldn't wrap his head around it so he decided to just quickly end this already.

"Ugh, never mind, Lulu, let's make this quick!"

"W-wait, big brother," Angelia called out hastily.

"What's up?"

"These kinds of monsters that I want to form a connection with won't submit to me unless I personally take them down..."

"Oh?"

"Unlike an injured monster which I could use my healing powers to befriend and form a connection with, I need to gain this one's acknowledgement through combat! So, you need to let me fight this time!"

"...that's a monster that's almost S-ranked y'know..."

"Yeah, but I want it so I have to fight it myself!" Angelia determinedly said.

"But it's dangerous!"

"I know, but—"

"Cecil, let Angelia do it..." Gabriel interjected.

"Huh? G-Gabe, you can't be serious?!" Cecil replied in shock.

"Don't worry so much. She's got her friends with her. She's not going to be fighting alone..."

"We can also jump in to help her if things look tough!" Lucia added. Ren also nodded his head and began preparing his Gun.

Gabriel nodded before smiling at Angelia, "Show your big brother what he's missed out on..."

Angelia nodded determinedly at Gabriel before turning her attention back towards the skeleton in the distance. Chi, Mao, and Orochi immediately felt their master's intention to head into battle and quickly changed into their battle forms. Jewel, who was still attached to Angelia's hair, started glowing as if to tell her that it was ready to fight.

Angelia pulled out a few rods from her bag which she then quickly a.s.sembled into her spear before jumping onto Mao and yelling, "Let's go!"

The monsters all rushed forward immediately at her command. The Black Skeleton Champion in the distance immediately became aware of Angelia and her monsters rus.h.i.+ng towards it and it readied its two blades as it got into a battle stance. The skeleton waited for the girl and her monsters to get into its attack range. It clacked its jaw as if it was laughing at Angelia and her monsters for daring to attack.

Cecil couldn't help but widen his eyes a little when he saw the weapon that Angelia had just a.s.sembled. It was a spear!

"Oh that's neat. She uses the same weapon as me, huh?"

"Well, she did admire you the most amongst all of us siblings...she naturally copied you to some extent," Gabriel said.

Up ahead, Angelia and her pets quickly arrived within range of the undead monster and began attacking it. Chi and Orochi were using spells and skills to attack it from afar while Mao and Angelia closed in on it.

They coordinated their movements and attacks so their enemy would be too busy blocking or dodging the ranged attacks which would then give Mao and Angelia an opening to approach and attack at close range.

When they got close to the Skeleton Champion, Angelia jumped high up in the air from Mao's back. When she got just above the monster, she quickly thrust her spear down onto its head while red, purple, blue, and yellow rays of energy poured out of the small jewels decorating Angelia's hair.

The multiple rays of energy were Jewel's attacks. The rays of energy drilled small holes into the monster's bones and Mao came charging in soon after. He body slammed the skeleton and sent it stumbling backwards and quickly rushed under Angelia to catch her from her jump. Chi and Orochi moved in closer and began pelting the monster's body with a stream of attacks.

Angelia was dancing around and attacking the Skeleton Champion while expertly avoiding all of her pets' attacks. Cecil was amazed and was involuntarily smiling when he saw his little sister fighting using such adept coordination with her monsters.

He couldn't even begin to imagine all the hard work his little sister put into to master this degree of coordination. It was as if she and her pets were moving as one organism instead of separate ent.i.ties. Cecil also noticed that Angelia wasn't even using any physical enhancement techniques in her battle.

Angelia was relying on her own physical abilities brought to her by the Mana and Ki present in her body. Yes, this little lady actually had her Mana and Ki already cultivated. As for how she had grasped the presence of her Ki, even the girl herself didn't know. It came to her instinctually and before she was even aware, she already had the energy.

Right now, Angelia wasn't even consciously activating her energies like Cecil but instead was just subconsciously circulating them to enhance her body. The way she was using her energies was like a crude form of Cecil's Mana Burst.

"Wow, I didn't think Angelia could be this strong! She's still so young! Even I wasn't that—"

"Yeah, you can stop now. Don't overestimate her and don't underestimate yourself," Gabriel quickly interjected. "Please remember that a certain someone had awakened his own Weapon Intent before reaching Angelia's current age and that certain someone also didn't have Mana during that time yet he performed absurd feats like killing a bear with only a wooden spear and even hunted down a pack of wolves using only his fists and legs..."

"..."

"Cecil, I can only imagine how strong and freakish you have become ever since coming to this world. This place is literally our dream world y'know? We always dreamed of fighting monsters and dragons back on Earth, but now, we're literally living that dream."

"Good for us, right?"

"Not really..."

"...what's wrong, Gabe?" Cecil asked with a frown after seeing the sad expression on his brother's face.

"Nothing...anyway, the battle's over. Look, Angel's going to form a connection with the monster now," Gabriel pointed towards Angelia who had now wrapped up her fight with the Black Skeleton Champion.

The large undead monster was kneeling in front of Angelia and many of its bones were chipped and broken. Angelia placed a hand on top of the monster's cranium and her Ki started flowing into the Skeleton Champion. In the next instant, the monster's injuries began to heal.

"No matter how many times I've seen it, it still leaves me in awe... it's like our little Angel has literally become an angel, being able to perform miracles like healing wounds and stuff like that," Gabriel said.

"Angelia's been using the positive aspect of Ki...she's only using it to enhance her body and heal others with it. I'm definitely surprised that she can use her Ki to heal others without even knowing any sort of healing technique. That kind of thing is something I can only do when I use my Healing Arts... if I teach her that, I'm sure that her capability as a healer will surely rise..."

"So shouldn't you, Cel?" Lucia spoke up.

"I will, right after the war and after I've finished building the Teleportation Gate..." Cecil said before sighing. "Haaah... even after I've found my family, I haven't spent a lot of time with them, have I?"

"Did you figure that out just now?"

"..."

"You've holed yourself up in your workshop and you wouldn't have come out unless Mother, Seri, and I had dragged you out!"

"I'll spend more time with my family after all of this..."

"You better! We spent 4 years searching for them! Instead of cheris.h.i.+ng the moment, you're just off busying yourself like nothing's changed! Seri's pregnant as well and we're about to start our own family! Be a little more tactful and act more like a husband, will you?!" Lucia said in a slightly angry tone.

"...s-sorry..." Cecil said remorsefully with his head down.

Gabriel, who was witnessing all of this, immediately gave Lucia a thumbs up.