The Earth Online

67 The Throat Singers of the Ballistic Forest

Thankfully, the stairs to the vortex were wide, and Thaleos was still hanging on to the staircase’s edges. He lifted himself and proceeded to take out his sword.

Seeing that the horde of butterflies was surrounding him, he quickly took out one of his sleep-inducing potions and threw it on the ground. The puff of gas immediately went up and knocked out some of the butterflies.

This caused a commotion of sorts for the butterflies, so the beast tamer took this opportunity to make a run for it. One of the flying creatures noticed him and tried following the bearded man.

Once Thaleos jumped straight into the vortex, he saw that one of the butterflies unintentionally entered the vortex with him. He wasn’t quite sure how this would affect the butterfly, but he knew that his friends would back him up once he back to earth.

As soon as he was back in the gym, the butterfly with him started fluttering and thrashing around in confusion. He moved a few feet back, and his whole team was just about ready to fight it and even kill it.

The beast tamer raised his hand to signal them to wait. He approached the panicking beast, quickly held on to one of its legs, and activated his duel space.

They were soon both in the familiar dark space, and the butterfly who was thrashing around before seemed to have quieted down. The bearded man theorized that it was because the beast wasn’t used to the gasses on earth.

His other pets, one wolf-eagle, and Attila the Hen, started raising their hackles and aggressively clucking. The large monarch butterfly was also ready to fight, but Thaleos used his beast tamer aura, which calmed down the beast.

He discovered that this aura was mostly effective in the duel space. He tried it out sometimes in the outside world, but it wasn’t effective at all. He was still studying what triggers the effect of the aura aside from the location.

When the other animals realized that the monarch butterfly would be another pet, they both settled down and just continued playing as they did earlier.

Thaleos spent the next 30 minutes just training the beastly butterfly through flying and offense techniques. Compared to the other creatures that took him an hour or two to train, the bearded man was getting the hang of quickly training beasts.

After he was satisfied that the monarch beast could understand his orders and way of thinking, he went back to the physical space.

Once he got there, he saw his teammates still looking a bit wind up, but they visibly calmed down when they saw the beast tamer.

“The beast is in the duel space, I presume?” Haya asked while sheathing in his ax. The bearded man briefly nodded their head as they were all now walking towards the outside of the gym.

When Reiko saw them and spotted the familiar green liquid on their clothes, he asked, “The monarch butterflies got to you?”

“You have no idea,” Ygritte grumbled as she remembered the sticky yellow substance from earlier. Reiko then explained how he also experienced the hoard of monarch butterflies.

The Asian man stuttered as he recounted how he fought two of them, and upon successfully winning over them, more of their fellow butterfly beasts came to where he was.

“Man, I almost lost my life back there. It was absolutely horrible.” The beast tamer patted the pale man’s back as a way of saying that he understood the struggle and that he was glad that he survived.

The other three followed suit, and Reiko just nodded his head in appreciation. The Igigi Team explained their own side of the story and how they were caught in the monarch butterflies' trap.

“They’re definitely getting smarter; I’ll give you that.” Ygritte muttered that everyone fervently agreed, and Haya added a question in the discussion, “So how do we do this?”

“Well, we can still catch them off guard with the different time intervals. I think that the major obstacle that we have is fighting through them as they wait by the door.” Thaleos responded while thoughtfully stroking his beard.

“I mean, do we have any other choice aside from fighting back?” Kedrick piped in a while, looking at all the worried faces of everyone.

“Yeah, you’re right. We can either fight back or run to a closer, safe location. So in cases where there are many monsters or a few high-level beasts, we can do the divide and conquer route. But in the case where the monsters are all weak, regardless if they’re a lot, then we can fight them head-on.” The beast tamer carefully laid down his plan as he animatedly moved his hands around.

Kedrick, Haya, and Ygritte chimed in with their own strategies within the beast tamer's general plan and decided to set off back into the game immediately.

“This is perfect for throwing them off guard. I mean, it’s only been two hours max since we fought with the monarchs from earlier.” Haya held unto the doorknob and slowly opened it to reveal the familiar blue and purple vortex.

They knew that this was the perfect time because Reiko said that he usually goes in and out of the door in intervals of four hours. The Asian man reasoned out that he wanted to make sure that the coast was clear before entering through the door again.

At first, it worked, but eventually, the monsters started noticing the patterns and, ultimately, crafting their own plans to guard the door.

As soon as they entered the vortex, they were back in the second world. The whole group was cautious initially, as they looked around the location to check if there were any hiding or approaching monsters.

When they spotted the familiar peacefulness of the forest, they released a big sigh of relief and quietly went down the vortex stairs.

“Okay, we’ll split up now. Don’t forget to do the throat singing technique in case you stumble across any problem, but remember, don’t do it too frequently, or it’ll catch the attention of other monsters.” Ygritte tucked in the loose lock of hair behind her ear and eyed everyone with a serious look.

They were already walking down the last few steps of the stairs as Thaleos told them their assigned locations to practice in. They discussed this in-depth while practicing their throat-singing skills.

They figured that they should all train first in the environment they’re most comfortable with then gradually challenge themselves in unknown terrain throughout the next few days.

Kedrick was placed in the middle of all the assigned locations to use his healing sphere easily, and Ygritte was assigned near the cabin, where richer parts of nature thrive.

Haya was assigned to an open space area to easily transform into his berserker mode and wildly kill anything on sight. At the same time, Thaleos also carefully thought of his location and found an open area near a cave.

He wanted the berserker also to practice his stealth, as he lagged behind the whole team.

The beast tamer assigned himself to the trees at the top of the nearest mountains. He wanted to practice fighting in the sky and upper terrains to make as he noticed that he usually relied on his beasts to fight for him in that regard.

“Alright, let’s go.” The beast tamer muttered with a grin on his face, and they all went to their assigned places and readied their weapons.

They all had their own means of calling unto the beasts, so they patiently waited.

Thaleos took a bit more time reaching the top of the nearby low mountain, and upon arriving at the location, he immediately climbed one of the oldest and ancient-looking trees.

From that location, he could see all around the forest and spotted where his teammates were. He wouldn’t intervene, but in case he did hear their throat singing signals, he could just easily take out his bow and arrow and attack from a distance.

To attract some of the monsters to where he was, he took out his wolf-eagle from the duel space and placed a bit of the monarch butterfly’s blood on its wings.

Aside from attracting other monarch butterflies, the green liquid was also good in enticing other low-level beasts to follow it. Good thing, James explained a bit about the butterfly’s parts that can be used for alchemy or other things.

He ordered his wolf-eagle to fly around the area, just a couple of feet away from him, to make sure that the scope of attraction was little.

The beast tamer decided to lay down on one of the large branches of the tree while waiting for the beasts to arrive. He looked around the area and saw that Haya and Ygritte have successfully attracted a small group of low-level creatures.

The bearded man smiled as he saw how the two players were having the time of their lives as they went all out with their skills and weapons. Thaleos laughed a bit when he saw the berserker wildly waving his ax around.

Thaleos knew that that was pretty tiring, but he figured that the dude’s adrenaline was at max due to his bloodlust.

He stood up on the branch as he noticed that his wolf-eagle was agitated. Just as he was stabilizing his footing on the tree, it suddenly started shaking and rustling. When he looked down, he saw that the tree was moving.