Chapter 272 - Oath (5)

Luke wondered if increasing the weight of the fortress would make it consume more mana while moving. Still, considering the current size of the structure, he assumed that it was fine creating a few layers of walls. Speaking of that, he also implemented his dad's idea on that fortress. He made some watchtowers and assigned some archers to them. The next battles will be a direct confrontation, so there was no need to hide the fortress, and the archers would be safe in there.

After creating two other layers of Earth walls, Luke assumed that it was enough and decided to check the conditions of the elves. Most of them were already fine, but some looked tired, mentally speaking. The scale of the last battle messed with their hearts a bit, and while that never got even close to happening, they imagined themselves getting crushed by the falling fortress.

"I guess this is PTSD… we can't let them fight again, at least for a while," Luke said.

"Their numbers are around two hundred… this might be a problem," Rina said.

"No, it will be fine, I will compensate with my skeletons," Luke said. "I suppose I should focus on making riders and knights to avoid others getting the same thing."

It was an effect of trying to use even those who weren't suited for fighting. While Rina was a bit worried since it was kind of a wound that her magic couldn't heal, she didn't lose her focus. One of her biggest goals was already close in sight, so she had to keep herself and her followers on the line and on guard. They couldn't mess up now…

After selecting those that would come and those that would stay behind, the group began to enter the fortress. There was a massive number of corpses left on that battlefield, so Luke had planned to create his skeleton army there before looking for the overlords. That would be easy with all the mana he had access to now.

"Do you know where we can find the remaining overlords?" Rina asked.

"As I said, they aren't that brave, so unless they are fighting each other or planning to join forces to take this group, they would be hiding," Nambra replied. "Considering all options, I wouldn't say that they are orbiting this world and looking for you, they wouldn't have enough mana to do that considering their actions."

That was one less problem to worry about, but the elves' world still was massive. It might take months to find them… and Luke had promised his parents that he would be back in one week.

"I think I will spend a day here raising the skeletons while you guys look for them… stealthily," Luke said while he was looking to the battlefield of a few days ago from the fortress. "Do you know what that means?"

"Why are you asking that while looking at me?" Amanda frowned.

"Shouldn't we just wait here and use this chance to charge the red crystal as much as possible?" Rachel asked.

"That is another option, but we don't know yet why so many were on this area, so we should hurry up," Luke said.

"They were here to increase the power of their armies, we can also gain mana for the red crystal be defeating strong enemies, so they were probably aiming for that," Nambra explained. "Compared to the two groups that you dealt with before, ours was just too weak."

They were grinding… Luke considered that, but he still didn't fully accept the theory. Not to mention, Luke didn't think that they were weaker. Perhaps the match was just that bad. In the end, they decided to stick together, and Luke only raised skeletons during the night, so he got two thousand of them. Unfortunately, he didn't get any level in necromancy. That was quite something, but in the end, it would be weird if Luke could make it level up that easily on its current uncommon rank.

"This should be enough…" Luke said. "It is time to sail, sailors of Captain Moron."

Since a lot of elves were feeding the crystal with their mana, they now could travel for quite a while. Even during the day, Luke made the fortress fly. He did so in order to draw a map and then write down the regions and which type of monsters could be found there. Once his job is done, he will have to split the weapons and make them guard those areas, after all, since they need to keep getting stronger.

"You sure are dedicated to helping them," Amanda said when she saw Luke drawing one of the maps.

"... You know me the longest of this group, do you really take me for someone dedicated to helping others?" Luke said after frowning. "This is to avoid future problems down the road and extra work. Regardless, I am not seeing you with Celia lately."

"Is that a statement or a question?" Amanda asked. "Everyone knows that you don't like Luthi, and despite that, she respects him, so you are the one being avoided here. He helped her protect her parents for quite a while, after all."

It seemed that Luke was also the cause of the problem, but he was fine with that in the end. He barely helped Celia, so she did the right thing and stayed on the side of the person who helped her most. Even though he was an asshole, who Luke had a hard time controlling his urges to punch.

Regardless, Luke's maps were too simple, and he wasn't patient enough to draw every single mountain. So, he just wrote the distance between some monster territories. Thanks to that, after a couple of days, he had many pages drawn and a massive puzzle that, in total, would make the world map for the elves.. However, they didn't find any signs of the overlords. They kept looking for a full week, and they didn't find any signs of them…