“You’ll call it Earth, right?” and out of the blue, she said something quite weird and unexpected.

“Come on! It’s not like you are part of my race or planet to begin with!” I raised one eyebrow, and she responded with a short laugh.

“Don’t give me this look. The ones who got to join you seemed to get infected with… What do you call it? Humanity? Yes, humanity’s genes or something.”

“Stop joking! It’s not the time for that!” I laughed at her words, and she laughed as well.

“I’m not! Just ask anyone from another race and he or she will tell you that.”

“For real?!”

“Sure,” she smiled, “don’t you believe me?”

“I do,” I laughed, “but we have an issue here. What shall we call you then? A humanoid race or what?”

“Well, you can just name us humans, that will be enough,” she winked, “after all, won’t everyone joining the kingdom be considered humans?”

“Sure,” I laughed, “now let’s return to speaking a bit more seriously. What shall we do about all this?”

“Like always,” she shrugged, “we’ll just cling on your back and you’ll carry all of us, hahahaha!”

“Stop joking! It’s not funny!”

“I’m not! Didn’t you always do this all the time? Take the lead, go forward and meet up with that risk without any hesitation.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean I will just keep doing this alone! Right?”

“I don’t buy this,” she shook her head, “you will always move on your own, take the lead, and do everything your way.”

“But…”

“I know this time is a bit different,” she finally said something serious, “and that means you’ll have to overexert yourself a little bit more than usual.”

“Come on!” I rolled my eyes, “stop fooling around!”

“Who said I was? Hahahaha! That’s you! Since day one I met you and you always did it this way.”

“Ok, I’ll just think about a plan and tell you about it later on,” as she kept joking like this, I decided to depend on myself and come up with the right tactic.

“Why bother with any of that? You already gave all of us instructions.”

“That won’t differ that much,” she shrugged, “more forces are coming to help us. Why shall we bother with them?”

“This… The Hescos are coming…”

“They are all eyeing the big prize in the end, and that prize isn’t us, right?” She finally said something helpful. Thank God! “They will either end up trying to save their lives, or do their best to contend with us over the big prize. Either way, we are going to end up getting help, with enemies becoming distracted, and things will get better for us.”

“Don’t forget the enemy is bringing more forces here,” I said just in case she missed this point.

“And we got fresh blood, reinforcements. Don’t forget, we came all the way here deprived from most of our entire forces. And right now? All the worlds are going to merge with us. And that means even if the forces we sent out there to secure other worlds are going to join us as well, right?”

“Yes… You got a point indeed…”

Her casually looking words opened my eyes on something that I totally missed. Earth was coming here, and that meant I’d finally get to fight with all my strength.

When I came here at first, I was only here with twenty of my people, with one that I couldn’t even dare to release her out.

And just as things got better, I got more forces on my side, to even forget about my initial great handicap that I suffered from the start.

But right now, and with her reminding and helpful words, I got to know this was a chance for me as well.

Just like she said it, even the forces I sent before to invade other worlds would finally be freed from all that! I could now call back any forces from anywhere, let them help me and my side in crushing the enemy.

Even if the Hescos brought their forces here, even if more races joined, and with the enemy calling for aid, I was also getting my full forces at last!

And that alone was enough to make me feel much more confident and secure. This war wasn’t that helpless and desperate as I thought before.

“I can also use the forces back at my second Earth world,” I also realised this. The moment the merge would happen, my access to that hidden world would also get activated again.

And that would let me get my hands over a very important chip that I honestly missed.

I started to look differently, much differently than before about this merge thing. It was just like what that higher up said, I had to do all my best to make sure things would end up in my favour.

And it was indeed quite hard for anyone to dethrone me. This world… This quest… It was all going to end up mine!

“But I still got that damn threat to worry about…” I knew if I got my hands freed and not tied down by the impending risk of these bombs, then I’d get things done in my way.

I’d slowly chip my enemies and eat them piece by piece, making sure to crush them after adding as much as possible from their forces to mine.

But now I have to first handle this imminent threat. The bombs lying underground were a very annoying and troublesome thing to worry about.

“It’s up to you champ,” Lily patted on my shoulders, “go out there, kick their asses, and let us have our time in dealing with the arriving races and enemy forces.”

“That means…”

“Yes, the initial plan we devised won’t change,” she nodded, as if she knew this from the start, “I’ll make the best use of all the extra forces joining us.

And hell yes we’ll need all of them in this war. But everything still relies on you. You have to go out there, fight everything solo, and take down these bombs. Once done, it’s our guaranteed win, no matter how long this war took.”