Chapter 236 - What Else (10)

At the end, when the sun was about to set, Luke finished searching in all the other regions in a radius of sixty kilometers. Those two were as clueless as they could be, but they were smart enough not to leave any traces of their fights behind… but that only caused more headaches to Luke and that was really annoying.

"When I find those two! When I find those two…" Luke said while having a hard time controlling his anger.

"You will…" Rina said.

"I will take away their cellphones for one week! They also won't get any ice cream for two weeks!" Luke replied.

"I see… that sure is… harsh, I guess," Rina said while frowning.

Luke didn't know how to punish kids without returning to some chops in their heads, so he thought that doing the same his parents did to him when he was an annoying teen would work. It wouldn't… Nevertheless, Luke couldn't stop searching since they could move away from him even more. He also skipped the previous night of his sleep, but he would be fine if he didn't sleep for two or three more nights. Or so, Luke thought. He forgot to consider that he didn't sleep properly after the previous fight.

After moving around for six hours, Luke found several packs of monsters but no signs of survivors or crystals. It goes without saying, but it was nearly impossible to look for traces of Danielle at night, so Luke focused on looking for camps, but after a while, he noticed that his attention was wavering. He needed to rest for a short while…

"Let's stop the search for now," Shalia said. "We restart this at first light and head further south… There is a big camp there, or at least it was six months ago."

"Didn't you say that they should avoid your people?" Rina asked.

"That camp is different, there is a large concentration of monsters there and crystals are always appearing when some are destroyed," Shalia explained. "They might have gone there to help, because it was the area where we grew up."

"How far away?" Luke asked.

"Around two hundred miles," Shalia replied.

With his current speed, while making sure to conserve his energy, Luke will need a few hours to reach the place, and his speed will keep decreasing while he is that tired. There wasn't another option… he had to rest now and bet his search on that area the next day.

There weren't many places they could use to rest. The smell of smoke covered the whole area, but Luke felt satisfied in just finding a big enough tree that wasn't on fire. Even with Shalia's teasing, he quickly fell asleep. In the end, he slept for several hours without waking a single time and showed Luke how much exhausted he was, even though he never noticed it. While sleeping while sitting and with his back against the tree wasn't the best option, he still slept quite well since Shalia was literally all over him during the whole time.

"Did you sleep well?" Rina asked with a cold smile on her face.

"I guess so… did I miss something?" Luke asked.

"Aside from some spiders and ants entering your mouths? Not much," Rina replied.

It seemed that Rina was in a bad mood since she wanted to scare Luke like that. She was a bit jealous… their relationship had progressed that much, after all. Besides, Shalia was a lot more proactive than her. Regardless, after having a hard time making Shalia wake up, they headed to the area that she had mentioned.

While Luke already could run one hundred meters per second, he couldn't maintain that speed for long. The problem wasn't stamina. It was his endurance… while moving that fast, even small particles in the air could heat and damage his body quite a bit. Rina and Shalia were protected from that since they were behind him. Still, it was insane to think that one needed the endurance to run as fast as possible after a certain level or maybe not... Maybe it was an alert for Luke to make his parameters more balanced...

After a couple of hours, Luke and the others saw in the distance that the area that Shalia had mentioned was almost free from the smoke. So, it seemed that they weren't fighting fire-type monsters. That was good since it would let them breathe more. However, they wouldn't be able to sneak around that easily.

"Nothing of their presence yet?" Luke asked.

"Nothing… at this point in time, I am starting to think that they have been moving while using a skill to conceal themselves," Shalia replied. 

It was a pain that they decided to smart only in the moments that they could give such a headache to Luke. After thinking for a while, Luke realized that he wouldn't find them while being careful. He would have to accept some risks and do what Shalia wanted already.

"Your people think that strength is everything, right?" Luke asked. "So, if I bear them half to death, they will become my soldiers?" 

"Some will, others are stupid enough that only death can cure them," Shalia replied. "Since you aren an outsider, even fewer people will be willing to follow you."

In the end, the plan to subjugate the dark elves will be a bloody one. To avoid killing as many of them as possible, he will have to show that he is the real deal and that he came to help.

"Let's fly for a while as we check the area ahead from above," Luke said.

Doing that would be risky since the dark elves were good at magic, so they could pretty much attack him even while he flew above them. Still, he had to try because they weren't invading his planet, nor were they fighting his allies… they were doing the same as him.. They just were a bit more radical than him.