Joseph let go of Boldee, and as he did, the latter limply fell to the ground, unmoving.
Luke's mind went into overdrive as his surprise attack had failed miserably.
'There's no way that I can face Joseph in an all-out fight, as I'm still lacking the appropriate elemental that could provide protection against his own thunder elemental!'
Boldee was already defeated, so the only thing Luke could do in this situation to avoid certain death was obvious.
He gathered the wind around his legs, and was seemingly preparing to charge at Joseph.
Joseph was grinning.
"Come then!"
Lightning started gathering around Joseph's arms.
Just when Luke looked like he was about to take a step forward, he jumped backwards through the hole in the wall, while still in the same position, and after landing on the first floor, turned around, and started fleeing.
Joseph's jaw almost hit the floor out of sheer perplexment. Luke's weird way of escaping actually bought him an extra few seconds.
As Luke ran out of the tavern, Lala quickly noticed him and joined him in his escape.
"What happened?"
Luke closed his eyes for but a moment.
"I was too late."
Lala noticed Luke's expression and decided to change the subject.
"Where are we-"
*Crash!*
A loud crash echoed from the tavern that was now around a few dozen meters behind them.
As they both turned their head around they could see a streak of lightning approaching them at a steadfast pace.
That streak of lightning was, of course, Joseph.
Luke could barely make out his face after enhancing his vision with the wind elemental.
His brow was wrinkled, his face contorted in anger.
Joseph's fury was well justified, at least from his own perspective.
"Lala, we need to go even faster!"
"This is the fastest I can go while also maintaining the water cage!"
She was still keeping the shadow elementalist imprisoned inside of the water cage.
Luke had to make a call. And fast.
'If we can't escape Joseph, we will definitely die. Lala's water elemental is at a disadvantage compared to his thunder elemental, and so are both of my elementals. Having a captive after we die would be worthless.'
"…We have to kill him."
"Is there no other way…?"
Lala had never killed a person in her life.
Her hesitation was to be expected.
Luke of course couldn't have known this.
"If Joseph catches up to us we're most probably going to be defeated and die, so we can either release the shadow elementalist alive or kill him. Since he's a tough opponent, it's better to just get rid of him while we can."
Lala bit her lips until blood started trickling down her lip.
Defeating someone and killing someone would never be the same.
Lala made her decision.
"I'm sorry."
The water cage dissipated and the shadow elementalist's limp body rolled across the unpaved street before hitting a rolled over wooden cart, stopping him in his tracks.
Luke sighed.
'It's what I expected she'd do, but it doesn't mean that it's not a shame…'
Letting the shadow elementalist live wasn't a good choice, but it was a morally good thing to do, depending on who you asked.
'It is what it is… Let's focus on escaping for now.'
There were still things that he could learn and do in this loop that would be useful later down the line.
He should push onwards as far as he can in each and every loop, so that he hopefully gathers any useful information or even powers.
Joseph was fast, but now that Lala had gotten rid off the water cage, she could move at full speed together with Luke.
As they sped up, the streak of lightning that was chasing after them gradually grew smaller and smaller in their vision, that being the effect of getting further and further away from Joseph.
Some elementals were better than others when it came to movement.
While almost every elemental is able to boost the elementalist's speed in some way, the effectiveness of it doing so would vary.
Soon after, they could no longer see anyone chasing behind them.
'Speed isn't Joseph's forte. I'll make sure to remember that.'
Luke and Lala were now in front of the forest of N'Gool in the dead of the night, and were heading into it, as they couldn't really head back.
They were using an artifact in the shape of a rod that provided them with light, so using Luke's lantern wasn't necessary.
'It reminds me of those neon rods that Alex used to bring over from the various parties he went to.'
Remembering Alex caused Luke's lips to curl into a bitter smile.
'Even though I haven't been in this world for long, I feel like I'm slowly becoming a different person. The old me would never have killed a person.'
Looking back at the few people that he had killed, Luke narrowed his eyes.
'Wait… That's right… I never would have killed a person before, so why did I do it in the first place? It's true that I had my reasons, but that still doesn't justify what I did.'
Luke was very confused.
As they walked through the forest of N'Gool, bushes kept rustling with a higher and higher frequency.
'I keep thinking of other people as trash, which really is true for some of the people in this world, but it was always like that, even back on Earth. Pedophiles, psychopaths, sociopaths, there were a lot of horrible people, yet I didn't use to judge everyone based on the very small minority. Could it be that-'
"Dinner."
Luke was immediately on alert after hearing the familiar, whisper-like voice.
Lala looked over at Luke, and he nodded.
The reason they were in this forest was because they couldn't really go anywhere else, at least for now.
Seeing how Luke wasn't currently alone, and has even obtained a second elemental, he wished to try his luck.
As Lala wasn't sure of where to go next, she tagged along with Luke after he asked her for help.
Their target: the mother Gleem.
They could've went to the small house, but Luke believed that he no longer had to hide from the mother Gleem.
A creature he once thought to be the monster overlord N'Gool was nothing more than an oversized Gleem.
Luke could see a pair of red, glowing eyes looking down on him.
Gleems started rushing out of the bushes and surrounding the pair of people.
Luke sliced them down in the dozens using his wind elemental, and Lala deployed nets made out of very thin strings of water interwoven together, that sliced the Gleems into tiny cubes of meat.
"Luke! They just keep coming and coming! Maintaining the water cage earlier drained a lot of mana out of me, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep this up for much longer, even if we're dealing with Gleems!"
Luke was confused.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm saying that it's as if there's an endless amount of these monsters that just keep coming out of nowhere!"
"No, not that! What did you mean by saying that you won't be able to keep this up for much longer?"
"Isn't it obvious?! I'm running out of mana! If I had more mana, I would've just went for the mother Gleem, but that's currently not possible for me!"
Luke was now doubly confused.
'You can run out of mana?!'
It wasn't really his fault for not noticing, as his time elemental acted akin to a huge magnet that attracted mana into his soul at a constant rate.
It had also expanded his maximum mana capacity by at least thirty-fold.
Rarer elementals had a bigger mana potential, with unique elementals being in a category of their own for a reason.
But even among the unique elementals, not all of them were equals when it came to mana potential.
Luke's wind and fire elementals were still at a level where he could use them restlessly without putting much of a dent into his mana reserves, as the amount of mana he'd consume was smaller than the amount of mana that constantly got absorbed by his soul.
For example, if you took a plastic water bottle and poked a bunch of holes into it, water would obviously leak out of it, but if the bottle was constantly being refilled with fresh water while still leaking, the water lost due to the leakage could just be ignored.
"Okay, let's try hurrying it up then!"
Luke gathered wind around his legs and propelled himself upwards, landing onto a nearby tree. He then started jumping from tree to tree, shortening his distance to the Mother Gleem.
Lala also followed Luke's example, and proceeded to walk through the air.
She wasn't actually walking through the air, but was forming small puddles of water midair that she could safely step on.
"Lala! Can you form a water shield similar to the water cage?"
"It's possible but I'll need to stay here, as it will drain the last of my mana. Are you sure?"
"Do it."
Lala nodded.
Before the two of them split up, Luke made sure to light his lantern.
A semi-transparent, hollow ball of water came into being around Luke.
'This much might be overkill, but it's better to be safe than sorry.'
Various wind attacks kept crashing and bouncing off of the water shield.
'This is definitely that annoyingly strong wind elemental.'
Luke kept charging on, and the water shield kept enduring.
He was now standing around a dozen meters away from the mother Gleem, and the monster's eyes started glowing with an even deeper shade of red, greeting it's new challenger.