The Earth Online

69 In War and Peace, In Nature and Industrialization

The beast tamer swooped down to where the tree's mana center orc was and opened it with the ax he borrowed from Haya earlier.

When he saw that the tree was struggling to attack him as he was near its chest, he quickly started chopping the tree with an ax. He planned to get a bit of the mana center to make it sleep again.

He had no plans of killing the actual aged tree as he knew that killing the mountain leader would create chaos for the creatures residing in those locations. He considered that this might cause more harm than good in the long run.

Although he wasn’t a hundred percent sure, he based this on gut instinct and knowledge of how the animal kingdom works.

Based on James’ obsession with floating whale beasts, Thaleos figured out that removing bits of a large beast’s mana center induces sleeping spells.

The man explained in his journal that this was a technique discovered by past players from a million years ago and was carved in picture form on the quartz cave walls. The beast tamer barely noticed that part as the cave walls were usually drowning in darkness.

Just as Thaleos was finished with his line of thinking, he has successfully chopped off the wooden center of the tree orc. It was screaming as loud as it could—causing an earthquake of sorts from the strong vibration.

The bearded man quickly looked behind him and saw how the pests were trying to run to where the tree orc was. Thaleos quickly took out his dagger and reached in deep to cut off a tiny part of the mana center.

He saw the beautiful blue, glowing orb and carved out a part as big as a human heart. Just as a large and was about to pounce on him, he saw an arrow swiftly going through the air and attacking it directly on its thorax.

Thaleos gave one last strong push and quickly took out the small part of the tree orc’s mana center. The beast tamer could see the beast slowly closing its eyes and all the vermin losing interest in what they’re doing.

Haya, Kedrick, and Ygritte already killed about twenty of the pests and critters and have successfully looted many things from the low-level beasts.

The beast tamer jumped back on his wolf-eagle as the ancient tree started sitting back to its original position. Since its branches and roots were stuck together due to the monarch butterflies' yellow specks, it basically just fell to the ground and stayed there until it was fully asleep.

This reminded Thaleos of the remaining monarch butterflies, and he was pleasantly surprised when he saw them all on the floor, basically dead. They all had arrows lodged unto their mana centers, and Thaleos knew that this was all of Ygritte’s doing.

The bearded man took the time to marvel at their team dynamics for a bit because of how efficient his team members were. After a few seconds, he went down on the ground and walked to where his friends were.

“So team, how was the first training session?” Thaleos asked with a grin on his face. Everyone started sharing their own training sessions with so much excitement and vigor while walking back to the vortex.

They still had a couple of hours left before nighttime, and they agree to go back at least two times more to get more beasts. Aside from recounting their training sessions, the whole team also listed down their looted and mined items.

The group of four safely arrived at the vortex and carefully climbed up the stairs. They were glad to see that there weren’t any more surprises, and they quietly exited through the door.

Upon arriving back on earth, they quickly got out of the gym room filled with infused mana and miasma smoke.

They saw Reiko, who was still working hard to train, and when the pale man spotted them, he paused what he was doing and ran to where they were.

“What happened? You all look like shit.” The whole team laughed at the Asian man’s remark, and Kedrick just replied with a “Dude, we tried keeping clean, but killing beasts isn’t really ideal in remaining prim and proper.”

The other man tossed his head back in laughter and agreed with the umber man’s words. “So, how did it go? Did your plan work?” The pale man continued asking while eagerly waiting for an answer from everyone.

“Well, yeah! But this training session was a bit different because we fought with one of the mini-bosses of the location. I mean, we survived, but we had to really go through a number of beasts.” Ygritte explained with a tired sigh as she sat on one of the benches near to where they were.

Everyone followed suit as Haya chipped in, “But we looted so many goodies we can experiment later on in our alchemy sessions! Ugh, I’m ready to be back in my element.” The tan man was practically daydreaming as he was imagining doing his little experiments again.

“So what mini-boss did you guys fight?” Reiko continued asking; Thaleos smiled a bit and narrated, “One of the largest, most powerful but peaceful beasts in the second world: A Tree Orc. They rarely wake up save for some disturbances in their territory, and they’re considered as leaders by the beasts living in their location.”

Reiko was fascinated by the story and remembered all the folklore and myths that his grandparents would always tell him before sleeping. His smile turned into a small frown as he remembered his grandparents telling him to leave them as they’ve already lived their life.

When he went back to visit them back in their old house, he couldn’t take it and left within minutes when he saw that they were just NPCs. They didn’t even talk to each other aside from the common dialogue of pleasantries.

He closed his eyes for a bit and forced himself to listen to Thaleos’ story. “…Yeah, and that’s how we beat the tree orc. It was a bit difficult, but we managed. Wait, are you alright, Reiko?” The bearded man asked as he clutched unto the paler man’s shoulder.

“Yeah, what? I’m alright. Don’t worry about it! It just reminded me of something. Thanks for asking, though! So what happened after you guys fought with the tree orc?” Reiko asked, and Thaleos took the hint that the man wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, so he let it go.

The beast tamer just continued telling his story, and when they noticed that it was almost 30 minutes, he told Reiko that they were going to get a snack first before they went back into the second world.

“Dude, Nala’s so awesome. Like, she even permitted us to get some snacks from their pantry. And the best part about it is that they have chocolate!” Ygritte babbled in excitement. Haya and Kedrick seconded her opinion as they listed down their own preferred snacks.

Thaleos nodded his head in agreement as he opened the door to their pantry and was welcomed with rows and rows of snacks; it looked quite similar to a mini convenience store.

“Ugh, so good!” Haya melted while eating some of the chips. For the most part, they rarely ate snacks as they needed to stay in tip-top shape while training.

After snacking a bit, they went back to the gym and said their goodbyes before going back into the vortex.

“Okay, you all know the drill. We go to our second set of assigned locations. We can’t let the monsters predict where we’ll be going. The most important thing is that Kedrick is in the middle of all of us.” Thaleos ordered while taking out his sword. They all agreed and stealthily ran off to their designated locations.

This time, the beast tamer decided to train in the cave as he needed to snag a beast that best fits a summoner. After going through the duel space's ins and outs and understanding how the behavior of his tamed beasts worked, he decided to move to the second phase of his beast taming capabilities.

He now needed to collect battle pets in a coordinated way strategically. He wanted to create a team of tamed beasts according to five occupations, such as the Warrior, Mage, Assassin, Summoner, and Archer.

He chose these five occupations as he noticed that they were the most useful fighting styles on the field. He realized that this was the best way he could strategically use the beasts and maximize their strengths.

The beast tamer noticed how he just used the wolf-eagle, chicken, and butterfly whenever convenient. He needed to complement it with strategies to be more efficient on the battlefield.

With this in mind, he entered the dark cave. Upon entering the dark and chilly cave, he heard whispers lingering around the location.

He couldn’t track where it was coming from until he reached the middle of the pathway to the inner cave. He jumped a bit when something suddenly whispered.

When he turned around, he froze.