The idea of crossing the surface of a frozen river wasn't very appealing to Luke, but in the end, since so much snow had piled up there, he assumed it was safe to do so. Still, to avoid problems, he left his skeletons behind, under a pile of snow controlled by Shalia.

Once they reached the lake, they had to cross five hundred meters of ice to reach the island. The elves certainly had a lot of work to build a shelter there. Despite their hard work, life still was tough since they couldn't find their fruits and vegetables in such a cold area. They could only eat fish they found at night… Regardless, when they approached the island, a hole in the snow appeared, revealing the entrance of the place and one old looking elf.

"Your Majesty…" the old elf said and then tried to bend his knee, but then he stopped midway because of a back pain.

"Let's skip the formalities," Rina said. "Can we enter your shelter?"

"Of course," the old elf said.

Although he said that, he frowned a little when he saw Luke and Shalia. That annoyed Luke… it was weird since he was a bit lenient with strangers that were allies of his friends, but then Luke realized that what pissed him off was his appearance and not his actions, the old man looked familiar…

"His name is Luthor… he is Luthi's father," Rina explained. 

"Now things make sense," Luke said.

Luke and the other entered the shelter and he frowned when he saw that the interior was a lot less rougher than he had imagined. The interior was pretty bright since the walls were made of ice and now they weren't that thick. Several pillars supported the whole shelter and prevented the accumulated snow above from making things fall. As for the interior, it looked like a proper house, but a massive one capable of housing fifty people. There were chairs, tables, fishing tools, clean water, and a pile of some big ass fish. In any case, Luke stopped looking around when the elves recognized Rina and then began to bend their knees. That joke was good, so Luke tried to bend the knee as well, but Rina pulled his ear and prevented him from doing so.

"As expected of our queen… to be able to return so soon," Luthor said. "Thank you for trying this hard for us."

"Thanks are unnecessary, by the way, Luthi is doing well, he should be able to return in the next few weeks," Rina said.

"Is that so? I am glad…" Luthor said. "He always had been a bit reckless, so I hope he didn't cause much trouble to you."

"No, he has been of great help," Rina said. "As you can see, I have returned sooner than planned and I am planning to reunite with all the survivors while we prepare to take down all of our enemies. However, I didn't find anyone in the hideout south of here, do you know what happened to them?"

"I am Sorry… but we didn't hear a single thing about them," Luthor replied. "They didn't come here and our people are barely moving across the area due to the number of monsters."

"We are solving that problem already…" Rina said. "Still, to think that they wouldn't come here, even though it is the nearest camp… Well, we will have time to look for answers. Regardless, are you all prepared to come with us? We can clear the area of the monsters, but it wouldn't be the best solution since we will need everyone's power to defeat the big ones."

"Of course, we can depart in one day, tomorrow morning we would have finished packing our things," Luthor said. "Please, rest for the day. We will be ready tomorrow morning."

Rina nodded. While they could keep moving to the next shelter to hurry things up, it would be better to move with them as a group…. at least for a while. Once the group gets big enough, they can return to that mountain and prepare themselves. Luke also would use that opportunity to gather his skeletons and bring them to a place where they would be more useful. After all, there were only so many monsters the crystals could spawn and Luke was getting the notifications pretty often. In a single day, he already recovered the gold coins he invested on the staff.

In any case, while the elves were preparing to leave, Luke saw himself pretty bored. While he could go out and hunt, it would be better to avoid that since they couldn't afford to be seen until all the elves were ready for battle. Maybe he should go and check things back home instead of just sending a letter… Rina probably would like to tell Luthi that his father still was alive, after all. However, when she realized what he was thinking, Rina shook her head. It seemed that disappearing now, when they just met one of the groups would cause problems. If they keep doing that, some day, they might disappear due to an enemy attack and the elves will keep waiting for them to return, only to fall for a possible trap from the enemy. Now more than ever, they had to be sporadic with those trips back to Earth.

Since Luke didn't have anything better to do, he just trained his Water Manipulation. Adding things like a lot of spinning to a projectile before throwing it, or a hollow point to make the enemies suffer even more from internal bleeding… It was a pretty nasty way to die, but since most of his opponents were stronger than him, Luke couldn't afford to show mercy.

Regardless, once the preparations were done, Luke saw the elves leaving the shelter one by one and he checked their status. Their levels were between 100 and 130.. However, their strength was below that since they didn't have many skills. Their weapons also varied too much, so Luke had to solve that problem…