While the dark elves were working, and after Luke finished learning a new spell, Luke called his friends and told them about his thoughts. The dark elves that he had exterminated probably had been created through the red crystal and considering the direction they came from, it also would be weird if they saw his group near the crater. Shalia and Sylah didn’t look that troubled by the fact that their people had been forced into slavery and then sacrificed by some overlord, though. Instead of that, they just helped Luke find some monsters and tame them before sacrificing them to the red crystal.

"Considering how much mana we have now, and we can recover over time, it is only natural that some overlords would try to use us that way," Shalia said. "At least we learned which direction the enemy was in."

It was a good first step, but it was only obvious that the enemy would no longer be there. Still, instead of worrying about that, Luke decided to focus on increasing the mana of the red crystal. It would take a while for his fortress to reach the level of the overlords, too long, actually. So, he had to focus on speed and size in order to accommodate and find more dark elves.

"You have been looking troubled, master, these past few days," Nambra said. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"You can stop calling me master, for a start," Luke replied. "You should also consider your sequence of words better, but perhaps that is just me thinking too much about it."

"Create an earth tower, Luke," Shalia said.

"What for?" Luke asked.

"I can help you relax, and you will feel great afterward," Shalia said.

"I am not sure it is the right time and place for that," Luke said. "Even more so, after we saw a few days ago, we can’t afford to be that laid back."

"Oh, my... What did you think I was going to do?" Shalia asked with her bewitching smile, and then she began to massage his abs. "You are such a naughty boy."

"Your words don’t make sense considering your actions..." Luke said.

"It is just a massage, even I know that it isn’t time for that," Shalia said. "Besides, that there is the third wheel that would make things weird."

"You are the weird one here," Rina said.

Luke had to create a tower to make sure no one would reach the red crystal aside from him anyway, so he did that. Regardless, even though she was breathing roughly most of the time as if she was itching to make the massage end with a happy ending, Shalia didn’t do any more than she had promised. Luke didn’t know what he should say after that, and the right words seemed a bit misleading. Still, Shalia looked like she wanted to hear them no matter what.

"... You are pretty good with your hands," Luke said.

"Thank you, but it would have been better if you had said that while looking a bit embarrassed," Shalia said.

"I guess so..." Luke nodded.

In any case, as much as he liked those moments of tranquility lately, Luke had work to do. Thanks to the dark elves, Luke sacrificed fifty monsters after taming them in the blink of an eye, and thanks to that, he learned several things. First of all, the amount of mana that each soul would grant to the red crystal every second was determined by the power of the creature. All the monsters would only grant one extra point up to level two hundred. Still, afterward, it would increase every one hundred levels. However, the crystal stopped accepting sacrifices when the mana recovery per second reached the one hundred mark. Luke decided to ask Nambra about that.

"The red crystal becomes stronger the more mana it uses," Nambra explained. "So, you need to keep improving the parameters of the fortress if you want to keep improving the mana regeneration factor."

That made sense; thanks to all those monsters that had been sacrificed, Luke could use a lot of mana, and while he decided to keep some reserves in order to use while they move and for defenses purposes.

Expansion Lv 06: 6.000.000

Mana Shield Lv 06: 12.000.000

Summoning Lv 01: Starving Wolf Lv 220(50.000 MP)

Movement Speed Lv 07: 14.000.000

Search Range Lv 05: 15.000.000

Teleportation Lv 01: 5.000.000

Current Mana: 36.587.778

"Things are a lot easier when I don’t have to care about anything..." Luke thought while he was checking the status of the fortress.

Still, despite using tons of mana, he still couldn’t continue on sacrificing the monsters... So, Luke had to keep improving the parameters for a while. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but he was able to do that after all the parameters reached level five. While the cost wasn’t there, he had the chance to level up summoning by using one million mana points.

"We can continue with this later. Let’s look for more settlements of dark elves," Luke declared.

"Shouldn’t we keep a low profile until the fortress is a little better?" Rina asked.

"We could do that, but we entice the overlords to attack us by moving around," Luke explained. "They will realize that this fortress isn’t that strong, so they will wonder if this is a trap laid by other overlords. They will wait and see until the most inpatient ones decide to attack, and those are usually pretty stupid. We will have better chances against them."

Luke didn’t mention that, but he was also considering the possibility that most of the overlords had fled already after seeing the crater and contemplating the possibility of facing the one who caused that. However, anyone with half of a brain would realize after a while what that enemy was after, and they wouldn’t show up again until another big settlement appeared.