"Danielle, shouldn’t you stay here and just come to that world to tell me if something happens?" Luke asked.

"Eh, that would be boring..." Danielle said.

"You are not looking after the Koriri that I gave you... Mom is," Luke said.

"If you want to communicate over big distances, you can use these," Aivern said, and he took two rings from his cloak. "Just pour some mana into it, and you can send a voice message to the person using the ring."

That was useful, but Luke wished that Danielle would stay behind, and now he had no real excuse for her to stay.

"Aren’t you going to need help against the horde that you mentioned?" Richter asked.

"No," Luke replied.

His friends wanted to help, and while Luke appreciated the feeling, they were a bit troublesome with their conscience. Besides, the fortress would need as many of them around as possible if something happens.

After that, Luke and the others returned to the dark elves’ world, and he stripped the prisoners of their items. Those weren’t that powerful, but selling them was better than throwing them away. Once that was done, Luke threw the blocks of Earth from the border of his flying fortress.

You obtained 6.500 experience points.

You obtained 6.224 gold coins.

You obtained 6.300 experience points.

You obtained 7.424 gold coins.

You obtained 6.100 experience points.

You obtained 5.444 gold coins.

You obtained 8.343 experience points.

You obtained 9.878 gold coins.

After confirming that they had died, Luke checked with Seirion how much time they had before reaching the next camp, and apparently, they had half an hour. While he frowned while seeing someone new in the group, he decided to keep quiet about it.

"Just rescuing the dark elves won’t work," Aivern said. "If you let the horde keep going like this, their levels will increase, and even with thousands of dark elves, you won’t be able to do much."

Aivern just appeared, and he was already voicing his opinion without being asked. Still, now that he mentioned it, the levels of the monsters increased by ten since the last time Luke had checked. They had been fighting all the monsters on their way, so it was no surprise... Luke picked Seirion map and then saw that there were four camps nearby, and the next after that, one was further west. It was probably beyond the path of the horde, but Luke could see a slight inclination to the west coming from the movements of the horde. They would target that camp, but those five hours...

"We will fight once we finish rescuing the people of this area," Luke declared. "Prepare the dark elves that decided to follow me."

"Won’t we need the help of everyone?" Seirion asked.

"This is just the first fight. We will see how things will play out after this," Luke replied.

Using those that didn’t make the oath would mean that Luke would get less experience and gold coins, and his Overlord skills could level up more by using only those. Still, it was a gamble to use only fifteen hundred dark elves against who knows how many monsters.

"I will see if I can convince more people to take the oath," Seirion said.

Luke already has enough coins to buy the next overlord skill... To make sure that few of the dark elves would die, he didn’t have much of a choice but to buy it... It was an investment. Luke told himself that several times to convince himself of that.

You have learned Overlord Blessing of Tenacity.

"I suppose we should make some ice spears and then throw at the horde once the time comes. Preparing ahead will certainly help," Luke said.

"I would advise against that," Aivern said. "One attack like yours will leave traces, and while they aren’t watching this planet right now, your current enemies will once they see what you can do."

"Who are they?" Luke asked. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Just a group of small fries that are yet to reach level five hundred despite the fact that they have been around for a few decades," Aivern said. "What you need to watch out for is the overlord who made that crater. Sometimes, he has the potential to reach the upper echelon of the most powerful beings in the universe."

"Why only sometimes?" Luke asked.

"Because sometimes he picks a fight with the wrong opponent," Aivern replied. "As for the one who killed Rina’s parents... he is in the upper echelon, and he is crazy."

One didn’t have to be a genius to understand that Luke and Rina would ask about that overlord. Still, just knowing how powerful he was didn’t help them. It would be better if they didn’t ask about future enemies. Otherwise, they would just get anxious. Truth to be told, Luke was already feeling like that after he heard that he had no talent if compared to Rina and Shalia. He only tried to keep his cool because feeling down would be lame...

"In the end, it seems that I only survived because of plain dumb luck..." Luke thought. "I struggled a lot, but in the end, I was saved by luck time and time again."

Many people say that self-doubt is like a disease... Once it starts, it is almost impossible to stop. Luke never had much confidence in himself, after all. Be it with looks, brains... He always felt that he was average on pretty much everything, and hearing someone confirming that so plainly only made his thoughts bother him more than usual.

"I suppose that goofing around is the only thing I am way above average," Luke thought.

"What is wrong, Luke?" Rina asked. "You look a bit weird."

"I guess looking thoughtful doesn’t suit me," Luke said while forcing a smile.

Due to his lack of confidence and the fact that his life will be in danger in the future because Rina and Shalia are too pretty, Luke decided to work harder... And he bought some weapons to help with that.