The Earth Online

6 Human are just the game of Gods

Looking up at the sky, the enormous ziggurats took their breaths away. These square-shaped temples all had the same architectural style, but each one had their own unique carvings. Two out of the five temples had golden carvings of flowers and animals, while the other three had different mythical creatures and gods embedded on them in black glass art.

The temples seemed to have this sacred atmosphere. It gave off the same revered feeling that you get when you enter century-old mosques or when you see glass-stained art on old cathedrals. The three men just felt drawn towards the sacred temples.

Unexpectedly, a large virtual blue screen showed up on the sky and an incredibly bewitching woman appeared.

“Welcome to the Godly Gambles. I am Irkalla, Queen of the Dead and Ruler of the Underworld. We have multiple contending species hailing from different dimensions, planets, and galaxies!” A soothing and sultry voice came out of the beautiful goddess’ supple red lips.

“Can’t believe they’re treating this just like a boxing round, the woman’s out here hosting like we paid for a damn ticket.” Kedrick said as he judged the woman with luscious black hair, olive skin, and a wicked body.

“Alright, babes, the goal is simple, it’s basically survival of the fittest. Just like what that pesky human said, what’s his name? Yeah, Charles Darwin. Ugh, I hated saying that.” Irkalla said as one of her fine eyebrows twitched.

“Moving forward, all beings in this world are required to join the game. For humans, agreeably, you’re the weakest link to the whole game, so we’re giving you a grace period of sorts. For now, you’re only required to fight with the beasts.” It felt like the whole world held their breaths as they waited for the next line — deep down, they knew it was going to be terrible.

“After leveling up, you can head straight to all the other dimensions, worlds, and galaxies. Each species has their own home base, and you have to fight and conquer these stages.” She said as she drank from a wine glass filled with this golden-like substance.

Irkalla paused for a few seconds, almost as if taking in the exquisite taste of excitement at the humans’ collective fear.

This was the kind of fear you felt after hearing that another country was bombing your homeland, or the horrifying feeling that takes over you after feeling the incessant shaking of large-scale earthquakes.

Everyone was extremely terrified.

Amid the panic, Thaleos remained level-headed as he was still wrapping his head around the question, “Then why are there aliens and demons committing g******e on the streets of Haine, right now?”

If what Irkalla said was true, then these other species shouldn’t be on earth yet.

As if hearing his thoughts, the goddess moved her head towards his direction and muttered,

“Odd, right? Well, it was Nirah’s idea, the snake wouldn’t shut up about ‘shock value.’ He wanted to single out the smart ones from the dumb ones. But after this, Stage Earth will be accessible to the aliens, demons, elves, and the whole lot.” She responded with a sly laugh.

“Here’s the catch, humans, since you’re basically billions inhabiting this earth, we need to cut the competition down to the most competent. If you fail to breakthrough all the levels, then you’ll become NPCs. This means that you’re literally bait for other species to kill. Only the best players from earth can access the second stage.” Irkalla said as she drank the golden liquid in one gulp, and then made the wine glass disappear.

“That means if we can’t outwit those creatures and demons, we would basically become NPCs. Wow, the audacity of these gods, I swear.” Haya muttered under his breath with a pissed off look.

“Thank god for James’ journal. I mean, for sure, we would’ve survived, but who’s to say? We’d probably become wolf-eagle chow at some point.” Kedrick said as he tried to lighten up the mood. Haya couldn’t help but crack a smile, knowing that he had his two closest friends from the streets with him right now made things more bearable.

Thaleos calmly accepted this fact. James was pretty insistent about this, he kept repeating how essential it was to plan smart and discover breakthroughs.

“Well, that’s about it, I’d be happy to treat this like an online meeting and answer all your questions, but, frankly, I don’t give a damn. Have fun!” Irkalla’s red lips ended the last part of the sentence with a sultry smile.

As soon as the virtual screen disappeared, they heard a blast from one of their meeting rooms. When they went back to one of the bunker rooms, apparently, the TV exploded and got fried.

When they turned on the radio, the frequency was so muddy that they had to take the whole thing outside. As they returned to one of the military towers, the frequency got slightly better, but the feedback was still terrible.

“Just in, after the virtual screen vanished, major power supply stations are now malfunctioning. Households left and right are losing electricity. We’ll try to update everyone as much as possible, we’re still waiting to hear from President McGuigan.” The choppy voice snipped out.

“Bullshit, that dude’s probably hiding in his billion-dollar mansion, like what he always does.” Kedrick grunted as he kept fixing the radio’s antennas.

“Honestly, this government keeps acting like I’m the bad guy for selling military guns in the underground, when they’re the ones supplying us to begin with. The audacity. Face it, we’re all terrible people” He continued his rant.

“Yeah, the government’s bad, doesn’t really matter though. Their weapons can hardly do jack s**t to higher-level beasts or aliens.” Haya responded as he kept noting down all the things happening.

Thaleos was lost in his thoughts, as he was trying to make a plan on how they could advance faster. As the other two kept bickering with each other, the bearded man abruptly had this eureka moment.

“Let’s test out the blue mist.”

~ ~ ~

“Wow, this looks amazing.” Kedrick said as he looked up on the blue mist. They looked like the northern lights, but instead of the regular green hue, this magical mist had a neon blue tint to it. Thaleos looked up as he saw how the cerulean lights were slowly dancing around, like water flowing in a river.

“So, how do we even ‘absorb’ this magical mist? Is that even possible?” Haya asked them, as he stared at the excess light falling down like snowflakes — but before it could even reach them, they disappeared.

“Well, James did say, in one of his dreams, that these falling mist-flakes are attracted to living beings. He wasn’t clear on how humans could actually absorb it though. But he did mention how some animals just sat in silence near the trees, and then gradually grew twice their size after a couple of days.” Thaleos said as he extended his arm to reach out to one of the mist flakes.

“Oh, that makes sense! Trees are the source of life, and for this game, those flakes are our source of life, as well!” Kedrick bellowed in excitement. He immediately went to the nearest tree and sat down.

After a couple of minutes, Haya asked,

“Is it working? Do you feel the surge of magic?” To which Kedrick responded with scrunched up eyebrows, “No, I can’t say I feel it. Maybe I need to concentrate some more.” Thaleos held his chin in deep thought. He kept asking himself what the connection was between the tree and the mist — aside from their ability to give “life.”

“I kind of feel it, guys.” The two other men paused as the dark-skinned man proclaimed feeling the magic,

After a split second, they just heard a loud fart.

Haya chucked a twig towards Kedrick’s direction, making the other man quickly dodge the attack. “Sorry, I really thought I had something there. Turns out it was just bs — literally.” Kedrick jokingly said.

The three men bursted out in laughter. Haya clutched on stomach as his whole body was practically shaking due to the hilarity of the situation.

The mood suddenly became lighter. It was these little moments that reminded them of their life in the streets. Not to romanticize poverty, but they eventually learned that you need to appreciate the little things in life to stay sane.

If they survived then, they could survive now.

All of sudden, everything felt clearer, and Thaleos decided to analyze James’ dream and Kedrick’s little experiment.

Maybe concentrating did work, but you had to do something more.

Without even going near the tree, Thaleos decided to concentrate as basically emptied his mind of his thoughts.

After a couple of minutes of trying, the bearded man felt his presence slightly getting lighter. He felt this swirl within his body, as if cool water was pouring in. He imagined opening his body up more to the flow. As a result, he felt like the water was swirling in all around his body.

“It’s working, T! The little mist flakes are going straight inside your body!” Kedrick said as he reached out to touch one of the flakes flowing into Thaleos’ body.

Suddenly, the swish of water moved like a tornado inside his body. The pain felt unbearable, as he shook at its impact. The bearded man fell on the ground and started puking a bit of blood. The blue mist that was swirling inside of his body abruptly shot out of him.

Haya and Kedrick quickly went to Thaleos to help him up. “What happened?” Haya asked in a concerned tone.

“It was working the first half, and then it seemed like my body rejected the mist. It felt like my insides were being ripped apart.” The bearded man choked out, as he wiped the blood off his mouth.

“Seems like it doesn’t work on humans as it does to other living beings. That’s odd.” Haya questioned as be observed the floating mist flakes that came out of Thaleos’ body. Kedrick was busy helping Thaleos get up to his feet.

“I have to say, the gods are playing with us if they say that the blue mist is there to help us. It ain’t jack shit.” Kedrick complained. After getting himself fixed up, Thaleos suddenly piped in,

“That’s weird though because we were able to absorb some of the energy when we killed the wolf-eagle, I mean, that’s why I leveled up when we killed it.” They took a couple of minutes just to take in all the things that happened within the last ten minutes.

“I suspect that our bodies weren’t made to absorb this type of raw energy, maybe the gods designed it that way.” Haya started, and the other men nodded their heads in agreement.

“I think they want us to kill those beasts intentionally, just so we can get the blue mist life essence from them.” The bearded man slowly proposed.

“Then, killing those beasts it is.” The gentle giant muttered in a low threatening voice.