The Earth Online

68 Strategic Beast Taming

Upon checking the moving tree, Thaleos noticed that the antiquated and humungous tree actually had eyes. It was directly staring at him like he was some pesky mosquito that it wanted to kill.

“Mother f*****g tree orc.” The beast tamer muttered under his breath as he called forth his wolf-eagle and rode it a couple of feet away from the moving ancient beast.

The majestic looking tree orc was pulling its roots from the ground, which turned out to be its feet. It moved a bit slowly, but the killing intent was still quite evident. Thaleos scouted the area and tried looking if there were other tree orcs near the location.

James explained in the journal that the wooden creatures were usually splayed around different mountains, hills, and green terrain.

They were considered as guardians of the forests and were designated to certain locations. The tree orcs usually only woke up because of a disturbance in their terrain or an overwhelming aura of power emanating through the air.

The beast tamer doubted that it was because of the latter. He knew that directly sitting on one of its main branches probably triggered it to wake up.

Once it was fully out of the ground, it started waving its branches around to catch the beast tamer. Thaleos was flying around the tree with his wolf-eagle and legitimately looked like a mosquito compared to the size of the wooden beast.

The beast tamer was looking for the tree’s weak points. Since it was large, he knew that it moved quite slowly compared to other beasts, but his problem was that he wasn’t sure what its attacks were.

He tried to be as cautious as possible. So, he tried closing his eyes for a second to focus on the tree's mana center. When he sensed that it was directly in its center, he figured out how much of a challenge it was.

The beast tamer tried taking out his bow and arrows and lathered the arrow’s tip with werewolf saliva as it helped penetrate through tough materials, such as metals or cement. It had this melting agent that made it easy to break down elements of certain materials.

The ancient and wise-looking tree seemed to understand what Thaleos thought as it sharply stared at him and suddenly huffed its breath.

This created such a strong rustle of air that the bearded man almost fell off his wolf-eagle, including his bow and set of arrows. Since the tree won in strength, it was hard to attack the wooden orc directly.

Thaleos noticed that most of his attacks and skills were somehow related to close combats. He had multiple skills that focused on heightening attack or magic points, but he hasn’t used them yet in creating wide-range attacks.

He flew at a higher distance away from the tree and took out the monarch butterfly from his duel space. Since he couldn’t simply take down a hundred feet tall tree, he needed to find a way to decrease its strength.

The beast tamer realized that he needed to use his beasts strategically, and he needs to stop getting attached to them like they were pets. In one way or another, these beasts were designed by the Akkadian gods to mess with humans.

Were it not for his beast taming profession. The animals would probably have already ripped him apart. As the monarch butterfly flew near him, he took out his dagger and thinly sliced through its stomach.

Although not fatal, the wound was deep enough to cause external bleeding. The bearded man then ordered it to approach the wooden orc and drop some of its blood on different parts of the beast.

The beast tamer immediately got to work in distracting the tree orc as the butterfly started spreading its green blood all over the tree. He could see the monarch butterfly struggling by the end of the order.

When Thaleos saw the amount of green blood on the tree, he was satisfied and brought back the monarch butterfly in his duel space so that it could start healing itself. The beast tamer then activated his Painful Torture skill and Mental Whipping Skill.

As soon as the Mental Whipping Skill took full effect, he immediately whipped his wolf-eagle, which caused it to be five times faster and stronger than usual. While going around the tree, trying its best to catch him, he directed the Painful Torture skill at the tree orc.

This made the beast’s movements slower and attacked weaker. Thaleos took this chance to bring out his chicken beast and ordered it to slice through the tree orc’s eyes.

Once Attila the Hen successfully sliced through one of its eyes, before the tree could even kill the chicken with one of its fatally sharp and strong branches, the beast tamer rapidly took the pitch-black chicken back into his duel space.

The tree orc didn’t make any sounds, but there seemed to be this vibrating sensation that surrounded the whole mountain when it opened its mouth. Thaleos felt in his gut that something was wrong.

He proved his hunch right when he saw dozens of beast ants and vermin going out of their hiding places and following the vibration reverberating through the ground. The beast tamer panicked a bit at what he saw and hoped that his initial plan would work.

The bearded man thought that he was safe since he was hundreds of feet above the ground, but the vermin and ants worked fast together as they started getting on top of each other and forming a structure of sorts.

Within seconds, they were already halfway away from Thaleos. The man couldn’t help it and started throat singing as much as he could.

This somehow caused a cut off pattern in the ancient tree's vibrating sensations, but the pests were still persistent in forming the barricade to attack him.

The tree orc was now working hard in healing its left eye as it was preparing its next attack.

When Thaleos spotted his friends from afar running towards his direction, he trusted them not to just run straight into the scene.

They talked about the most likely emergency scenarios, and they all agreed that the first thing to do is an area scope before attacking. They realized that attacking blindly might cause more harm than good.

When the beast tamer spotted the familiar blue wings flapping from afar, he couldn’t hide the smile he had on his face. From a distance, the hoard of 20 to 30 butterflies was flying straight towards their direction.

Haya, Ygritte, and Kedrick watched Thaleos, who was hundreds of feet above the sky, and saw him holding his hand up as a sign that meant “hold their attacks.”

They also implemented this communication tactic as a way to minimize the intervention of teammates in the fight. This was a measure they created in a case attacking as a team would guarantee their downfall.

Once the butterflies were a mere foot away from the tree orc, the beast tamer swooped right where they were and jumped on one of the nearest monarch butterflies. He ordered his wolf-eagle to be near them to catch him in case he falls.

Upon jumping on the monarch butterfly's back, he quickly took out his dagger and slashed through its neck. Copious amounts of green liquid started flowing freely, and the beast tamer quickly jumped back to his wolf-eagle and started spreading the butterfly’s blood on the tree and pests.

After successfully lathing all the enemies in the odorless liquid, the beast tamer quickly flew to where his friends were and picked up Kedrick and Ygritte to ride with him on the wolf-eagle.

He took out the recently healed monarch butterfly from his duel space and told Haya to hop on the majestic-looking creature. The berserker quickly nodded his head and swiftly jumped on the butterfly’s back.

They all flew up together a couple of feet above the wooden beast and watched as the monarch butterflies started releasing the familiar yellow specks. At this point, Thaleos borrowed Haya’s ax for his plans later.

Haya marveled at the sight and noticed how amber flakes seemed not to be affected by the wind as they just continuously fell in a straight direction.

Thaleos carefully watched as the ancient tree was having more and more of a hard time moving its branches as it was continuously being covered in the growing yellow flakes. It seemed to be the same in the vermin case as they could no longer detach themselves from each other.

The beast tamer then ordered the wolf-eagle to swiftly bring him to where the skyscraper of pests was in full speed. He shouted at Ygritte and Kedrick to hold on tight as he went straight ahead and hit the pests' tall structure.

The impact caused the vermin tower to fall. Haya smiled in blood lust as he watched the tower fall into pieces and even successfully falling flat on the pests and insects that were still on the forest floor. 

It was absolute chaos on the ground. “Okay, while they’re all stuck in the yellow flakes, this is the best time for us to steal their mana centers and kill them all,” Thaleos shouted in excitement.

As they all landed on the forest floor, everyone started attacking anything on sight. Since all the pests were stuck on the ground, they couldn’t fight back with the growing yellow specks.

Thaleos made sure that his friends and himself were also drenched in the green odorless liquid to make sure that they wouldn’t get stuck on the ground. They also made sure to attack at a distance away from the hoard of butterflies.

There was a fine line between being drenched in the green odorless liquid to ensure that the yellow specks won’t stick to you versus having certain parts of your body wet with the liquid. The latter would lead to you still being affected by the amber flakes and even heightening their attraction to covering you in those flakes.

Since the butterflies were busy battling with the ancient tree, Thaleos just observed on the side and made sure that everything was alright on both ends.

When he saw that the tree orc had successfully killed two-thirds of the butterfly fleet, he was also thrilled to see that the tree orc was struggling to even stand up as the amber flakes glued together its branches.

The beast tamer immediately went to where the tree beast was and whispered, “Time to end this.”