"I am not sure if I am the most suited person for this kind of job," Mark said. "Can I leave the command of the battles in the hand of someone else?"

"I am giving you the command because you can do whatever you want with it," Luke replied. "I know that you won’t let the monsters advance too much. Besides, I know that Mom is going to help you and as for the others... I don’t trust them with such an important task."

"You should at least say that I won’t let the monsters advance at all..." Mark said and then sighed. "Also, you should trust your friends a bit more. Regardless, you can leave it to us." 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

----

"What do you think, dear?" Julia asked while she was looking at the flying fortress moving away from the coast. "Luke seemed a bit different."

"... Yes," Mark said after a long sighing while he was looking around and saw Luke’s friends preparing to work. "I guess something must have happened, but we can’t talk about it right now."

More than anyone else, Luke’s parents knew of his problems and the things he experienced in the past. While he surpassed and left those in his past, sometimes, things happen that bring old and annoying memories. Sometimes, those events make people question if they really got over those events. It was hard to imagine what made Luke change a little bit and look the same as a few years ago... They knew that their son survived all of those ordeals because he was strong physically and mentally, but even so, they couldn’t help but worry.

Asking him if something was bothering him wouldn’t work. Luke was that kind of person. He would never show any signs of weakness, even less so with words. Regardless, they were worried, but there was nothing they could do for Luke right now, and they had a job to do, so they were forced to focus on the task ahead. They could only hope that Luke would overcome his problems just like he overcame those who bothered him more than a little bit in the past. He was their son and part of the job of the parents were to believe that their kid could do that much.

— —

After leaving his parents near the coast, Luke made his fortress fly for a while, and he got the corpses of the monsters defeated by the dark elves and humans. After turning them into skeletons, he warned everyone that he would only come once a day to do that since it would be better for the fortress to fly high and let him see the entire area. After that was done, he resumed his own training.

"I suppose I should buy the remaining overlord skills since some humans joined my aside and in order to increase the survivability of everyone," Luke rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Once again, in the blink of an eye, Luke used for million gold coins. He ignored that once he saw the skills leveling up... In any case, he should save some coins now since many of his skills were leveling up, and he will have to upgrade their rank soon.

Tame was also leveling up pretty fast now that Luke’s pets were almost fifty, and they were close to him. He now had slots for three more monsters, and he should choose them as soon as possible in order to make things efficient.

"What do you guys want to do?" Luke asked. "I am getting stronger thanks to my followers, but you guys aren’t getting that much experience, right? I am going to train my skills for as long as you can, I think you should fight some monsters."

"Shouldn’t we do that together?" Rina asked.

"I will get most of the experience if I help," Luke said.

"It is fine then, there is a skill that I want to practice and using monsters won’t help," Rina said.

"Same here," Shalia said.

Luke was the type who could put more effort when he was alone, but he couldn’t ask them to leave him alone now. That would be beyond stupid... They survived together for months, and they should continue like that.

"Luke, you shouldn’t think too much about Aivern said," Rina said. "The future isn’t set in stone and how many times have we said that you still have so much more potential?"

"I wasn’t thinking about that, I am just thinking that I need to put more effort since I got my ass kicked in that fight," Luke said.

"You won, though," Rina said.

"Not the way I wanted," Luke said. "Regardless, it doesn’t matter. Let’s train together then."

Luke didn’t need a weapon to use Concentrated Strike, so he just began to punch the air while using the skill. Thanks to his high energy recovery, he could punch the air more than a few times per minute without running out of SP, and since he wasn’t boosting his punches with absurd extra points of strength, he wasn’t putting any pressure on his body. Still, the skill wasn’t leveling up as fast as he wanted... He wanted to make it reach the next rank before the next confrontation...

Without any other choice, Luke began to punch himself while using that skill, and while that made him look like a madman, it didn’t take long for him to notice some improvement in his progress. Even better, his Pain Resistance began to level up as well.

Rina and even Shalia looked like they had something to say about that, but the current Luke needed to let some steam out, even in that suspicious way. Otherwise, he might lose his head again in another fight, and he wasn’t the type that does well when he isn’t thinking clearly.

Slowly but surely, Luke began to feel like he was shaping himself to be the kind of fighter he wanted to be. Still, he wanted to reach a much higher level.