The Earth Online

18 Thaleos vs. Haya in the Inu Arena

“Well, that escalated quickly,” Kedric muttered under his breath, as he saw the two men giving death glares to each other.

“The audacity, imagine asking someone a favor and then adding another condition right after it.” Haya appeared to be appalled at Thaleos’ suggestion. The bearded man just responded by giving him a sly smirk and continued to provoke the other man,

“What? Scared of losing to me in a fight?” Thaleos uncharacteristically said while puffing out his chest. He gave Haya this mocking look, as if challenging him to fight back.

“Me? Scared of you?” The tan man said as he sarcastically laughed, “You’ve always been terrible at jokes, but this seems to be the worst one of them all. Fine, I’ll f*****g fight you.” Haya barked out as he took off his butcher’s apron and readied his weapons.

Thaleos’ eyes held excitement as he clutched unto his black katana and took out a small envelope.

“Here’s the Athletic Invitation, we can officially fight at the Inu Arena.” The bearded man retorted as he opened up the fancy looking invitation—it was just a piece of black paper that had golden letters engraved on it.

“What the hell is that?” Kedrick asked as he was trying to rack his brain about anything related to the invitation. He tried thinking if he heard this from the gods, but then he remembered how Thaleos quickly mentioned this as one of James’ journal entries.

Nightmare # 167

March 17

3:17 AM

I’m getting tired of these dreams. They don’t even appear in chronological order; they just show random moments from the crazy game. This time it was just the messenger of the gods explaining the Inu Arena.

The androgynous elf softly spoke, “Only those who are aware of the Inu Arena, either by chance or by intention, can attain the Athletic Invitation.”

“The Athletic Invitation can be used by humans to invite other humans to duel in the Inu Arena. The Puluhtu gods have created this space so that humans can challenge each other for certain items or skill points.” Ur said as he tucked the loose soft-looking curl behind his ear. His delicate eyebrows twitched as he slowly worded out,

“Those who manage to badly damage the other player gets a grand prize from the gods. And I quote, ‘the bloodier it is, the better the prize.’” Ur mewled out in a quiet tone and continued,

“Those who lose need to give one of their items to the winner.”

Kedrick only remembered parts of the information, but he did remember how the gods made a specific arena for human players to challenge each other.

Haya’s loud voice brought him out of his reverie, as he looked up, he saw the tan man shouting at Thaleos in a ticked off tone,

“I’ll only agree to this if the collateral is reasonable! I’m only offering a hundred shekels, take it, or leave it.” Thaleos responded by looking directly into his eyes and scoffed out,

“Deal. Your shekels and my blood souls are on the line. We have to shake on it with a few our bloods to start the battle.

Haya glowered at him but still maintained his decorum by lightly slashing his pinky finger and spreading the pooling blood around his palm. The bewhiskered man did the same, and the two towering men firmly gripped each other’s hand.

~ ~ ~

In the Annunaki Ziggurat City, the five gods watched over the trio through Anu’s golden fountain. They were all sprawled out in their thrones as the sprinkling liquid formed a mist-like screen showing the faces of Thaleos, Haya, and Kedrick.

“Interesting. He’s the first human to have ever challenged another human.” Nirah pointed out as he watched the bearded man with keen eyes.

“Ah, he’s my current favorite player, I’ve been slightly keeping tabs on him, what was his name again?” Irkalla drawled out as she called for Ur with a snap of her fingers.

Ur immediately popped up beside her and softly spoke, “His name is Thaleos Fincher. His human occupation is a Psychologist and his Godly Games’ occupation is a Beast Tamer. He is the first human to have ever reached level 4 within 7 days.”

The elf finished his last few words with a slight twinkle in his eyes since he greatly admired the human.

“Ah yes, Thaleos. Fine looking young man. Pity his tastes weren’t godly enough.” The gothic beauty criticized as she rolled her eyes.

“Maybe this is all just a ruse to fool us.” Enki said as he quietly stared up at Ur. The elf decided to look away and immediately transported himself outside Anu’s Temple.

“Fool us? I think you’re overestimating humans. They’re completely selfish and obsessed with themselves.” Nirah snarled out as a response to Enki’s claims.

“That maybe so, but they’re still sentient and rational beings.” The tawny skinned god claimed since he strongly believed in the importance of wisdom and intelligence.

“I swear, Enki, humans are basically apes. Even they say so themselves.” The snake god remarked snidely and let out a bitter chuckle after uttering the last word.

“Nirah’s got a point. Humans are too individualistic. I mean, they can’t even detach themselves from their thoughts and always assume that the universe centers around them.” Irkalla piped in with her own hatred of humans.

“Irkalla, they’re modeled after us. We, ourselves, think that the universe revolves around us, that’s why we even started this game to begin with.” Innana pointed out their hypocrisies as she stared at Haya and Thaleos.

The two were now facing each other off at the Inu Arena. They were transported there by the Lagash Interpoint guards, and one of the guards, a centaur, acted as a referee.

Anu carefully observed the two skillful players as he stroked his beard in deep thought.

“Looks like it’s about to start!” Nirah cheered out.

As soon as the referee signaled the start of the battle, Haya and Thaleos immediately charged at each other. Enki rolled his eyes at the predictability of humans.

“Humans are always like that, just hacking and slashing with no strategy whatsoever. I’m sorely disappointed at Thaleos, he seemed so smart, too.” Irkalla agonized. Although the human was interesting, there are millions of other species more who are just as, if not more, interesting.

She could care less about one human being.

The two humans just continued fighting with all their might and fiercely swung their swords around. After a couple more minutes, the beast tamer managed to trip the other man, making him fall on his knees.

Before he could even s***h down on his shoulder, Haya declared his surrender.

Nirah abruptly lost his interest upon seeing this and just continued to down all the golden liquid down his throat. Irkalla and Enki followed suit as they were already watching other humans and species fight on their own personal screens.

Only Innana and Anu were left watching,

“A pity,” Innana started and Anu responded by solemnly nodding his head. Innana slowly continued, “Although it was quite interesting to see the human discovering the Athletic Invitation.”

Anu just continued stroking his white bushy beard as he gazed at Thaleos.

~ ~ ~

“Congratulations! You are the first person to ever win a battle in the Inu Arena. All our viewers from thousands of universes have voted you as the winner! Your prize from the gods is a Golden Bull Horn!” The centaur bellowed out in an exciting manner.

“This prize is quite special since this is the first Inu Arena challenge battle. Rubbing the horn can lead to you gaining an additional, random skill. The catch here is that you can only use this each time you level up. Other than that, it basically just functions as lovely memorabilia.” The Lagash guard explained as he brought out this large golden horn that was sprinkled with emeralds and rubies.

The Inu Arena looked like an ancient Greek coliseum, but instead of empty seats, it was filled with holograms of shouting viewers—every line of seats had different species seated on them.

Thaleos just bowed at the applause of the viewers and proceeded to take the golden horn. As soon as he took hold of the prize, a blue pop up screen appeared, informing him that he has leveled up.

“Congratulations, you have reached level 5! You now have access to the Heart of Tyranny passive skill, Anger Strike active skill, and Bloody Rage.”

After feeling his beast mark throbbing, they have immediately teleported back to Haya’s butchering stand in the Lagash interpoint city.

After going through the feeling of being swirled up from one dimension to another, Haya and Thaleos decided to lean on the stand to wait for the dizzy feeling to go away.

The pair looked incredibly pale as they were still getting used to the transportation spell.

“Are you guys alright?” Kedrick asked in a worried tone as he saw his two friends looking green. After a couple of minutes, Thaleos could finally balance himself again and asked Kedrick for a bottle of water — to which the umber man responded by immediately giving him his water canister.

“The plan was perfect.” Haya gasped out as he finished the remaining water from the canister and asked in an out-of-breath tone. “So, what’s next?”

“We’re buying the f**k out of all these blood souls.” The bearded man said as he excitedly took out a heavy bag of shekels.