The Earth Online

31 Preparations for the Next World Part 1

“You know what? Yeah, let’s just go for it! We’ve been doing this for half a year, we can f*****g survive this.” Kedrick shouted in a pumped-up tone, making all of them energized and ready to fight off more elite beasts.

“Yeah, damn right, let’s get them and go crazy with the blood souls!” Haya energetically responded to the umber man’s encouragement.

Thaleos and Ygritte found themselves smiling at the energy of the two other men and just followed their lead.

Since Ygritte remembers most of the elite beasts’ locations, she brought them to the nearest one—which was an upper mid-tier siren found in the nearby falls.

“Alright, so this is what we’re going to do.” After Thaleos laid out his plan, all of them agreed with Haya and Ygritte adding details.

They readied their weapons and entered the silent sanctuary with wide smiles.

~ ~ ~

Once they were done with the last batch of elite beasts, a blue pop-up immediately appeared in front of Thaleos stating,

“Congratulations! You are now a Level 10 Beast Tamer. Increase 50 in Health Points, 50 in Magic Points, 50 in Strength. Painful Torture Skill Unlocked! Beast Aura Skill Unlocked! Mental Whipping Skill Unlocked!”

While the pop-up just kept flashing blue, the beast tamer was curious as to what these skills meant. As if hearing his question, Ur, the messenger of the gods, suddenly appeared.

“Feel free to ask questions within the allowable range of the gods.” The elf muttered in a hushed tone.

“I would like to know what the three new skills are all about.” Thaleos promptly responded. The three other team members were still going through their different loots, as they already leveled up earlier.

Ur just nodded his head and continued, “The Painful Torture skill targets a certain opponent and would immediately feel a strike of pain across their whole body. This attack effectively reduces their attack power and attack speed.”

The bearded ma was just listening intently and imagined the skill in his mind. The elf then continued,

“The Beast Aura Skills increases the effectiveness of your tamed beast’s combat. This skill makes their attack comparatively stronger and more targeted. The last skill, the Mental Whipping, causes a form of mental damage to your target,” Ur felt visibly flinched at this skill and looked uncomfortable talking about it.

“Apologies, this skill delves a bit into the dark arts—something, my people tend to avoid.” The elf cleared his throat and continued, “The Mental Whipping skill causes damage to one’s mind through psychological shadows.”

Thaleos paused at his words in deep interest, as this was something that challenged his whole bachelor’s degree. After a split second of suspense, Ur started,

“Once these psychological shadows are activated, this increases the chance of activating your Heart of Tyranny skill. The mental whip itself can be triggered by a pseudo whip. This whip can be used to lash your beasts, damaging their HP and triggering them to produce their version of adrenaline. As a result, this increases their attack speed.” The elf faltered a bit in the end and finished his explanation with a bitter expression.

“Do they feel the pain?” Thaleos prodded with an expressionless face, to which Ur responded with a shaky nod.

“Just like how the dwarves treated my people, the beats feel pain, as how we feel it.” Ur disclosed as avoided staring at the beast tamer.

Thaleos was always at crossroads when it came to these issues, but he promised himself that he couldn’t get attached to the beasts.

If this was still the earth he knew before, he would’ve definitely said no. But he knew, and so did Ur that this game’s nature requires the worst version of themselves.

The beast tamer just let out a heavy sigh and nodded his head in acceptance. After that response, the pop-up message disappeared.

~ ~ ~

After spending a couple of hours more fighting dozens of elite beasts, they had nearly a hundred blood souls.

Everyone was exhausted as they all sat down in the Melam Base’s living room and greedily drank bottles and bottles of water.

Although the priest had mostly healed their bruises and cracked bones here and there, they were all still mentally tired.

“f**k, dude, I am so hungry.” Kedrick complained and everyone groaned in agreement. So, the priest decided to take out some ingredients from the pantry and started cooking a whole feast with the help of Haya.

Everyone felt their tummies rumbled as they smelt the garnish and seasoning wafting through the kitchen and living room.

“Damn, that was tiring.” Ygritte said as he could just imagine sinking his teeth into Kedrick’s heavenly meals.

“How was the elite beast killing fest?” Abheek quietly asked them, as he was looking at one of the blood souls’ swirling red waves.

“Tiring but fulfilling.” Thaleos answered the young man who was hiding the excitement in his eyes. He knew that the young man was just readying himself to go out there.

“I think we should start training you soon to bring you with us in our adventures.” The bearded man prompted while quietly sipping on his ice-cold water, as if he was drinking draft beer.

The young alchemist slightly bowed his head, hiding his small smile.

Once they all set up the food on the large rectangular table, they all quickly dived into the feast. Ygritte was obsessed with eating all the hash browns, as Haya was basically inhaling all the tacos.

“That is way too much hot sauce.” Kedrick said as he kept piling up his plate with some burritos and nachos. Abheek was quietly nibbling on his fries and lava cake.

Thaleos just looked around the kitchen and smiled as everyone was smiling and eating everything on the table.

He thought to himself, it’s weird that it’s through this game that I finally found my family.

“How about you, dude? Get ‘em fried chicken.” Haya muttered while trying to chew at his food at the same time. Thaleos just shook his head and dug into his fired chicken with gusto.

After finishing their dinner and everyone cleaning up the dishes and table, they proceeded to split the blood souls equally.

Abheek went back to Haya’s lab, which was technically his lab now, and continued doing more experiments.

“Alright, how do we do this? I’ve never collected this much blood souls before.” Ygritte said while looking at the little red balls scattered on the table.

“Basically, we just need to consume this, and it helps us level up.”

Just like before, a blue pop-up screen appeared showing their stats. Thaleos thoroughly looked at all the skills he had and decided to focus a dozen on level 5 skills.

He mostly dedicated the red balls to the Heart of Tyranny, and the other dozen on his new set of skills.

Haya and Kedrick decided to split theirs between their general skills and level 5 specialized skills. They were both at level 9 right now and they were saving some of the blood souls for their set of skills.

Ygritte has already formulated a strategy when it came to developing her skills. Although she had 3 skills, she mostly dedicated her bloods souls to 2 of these skills.

Those two skills were the Ancient Incantation Skill and Summon the Undead Skill.

“Oh my god, those sound so cool! Like what do they specifically do?” Kedrick asked while peeking through Ygritte’s stats on the blue screen.

“Well, you guys have already seen the Ancient Incantation Skill. It’s when I mutter old Mesopotamian lullabies that causes sleep spells, but the more blood souls I put in it, the more lullabies I learn. Ur mentioned lullabies on gaining control of the opponent’s minds and lullabies on enchanting dead bodies to come alive.” Ygritte imparted with excitement.

“What the hell, that’s so amazing! I should’ve chosen to be a Tyrannical Summoner, as well.” Kedrick jokingly said and then he asked about the other skill.

“Oh, the Summon the Undead Skill mostly works in cave crawls or in places where there are undead bodies moving around. I can temporarily control them for about 10 minutes. This skill does have a double-edge sword though. I mean, once the effect of skill runs off, the undead turns immediately hostile.” The young woman explained with deep interest.

The three other men were listening, as it was the first time, they met someone who also chose the Tyrannical field.

Once they were done leveling up their skills, they all felt completely rejuvenated.

“This extra strength makes me want to just go out there and kill something.” Haya publicized as he felt the blood lust swirling around his body. Lately, whenever he used some of his skills, there some left-over killing residual in his body.

“Yeah, you definitely need to tame that blood lust, my bro.” Kedrick muttered as he was playing around with this healing sphere skill. He was trying to decrease and increase the scope of the sphere.

“Ugh, I hate to say it, but you’re right.” The tan man responded in an exasperated tone, making Ygritte laugh and Thaleos smile.

“Good thing the second world’s about to open up in a couple of weeks.” The beast tamer said as he was casually trying to tap into his Heart of Tyranny skill. This mana training helped him gain focus in activating the skill to its fullest extent.

“Say what, now? What second world are you talking about?” Kedrick asked with a confused tone.

“Dude, Thaleos said this while we were all drinking, remember? Like he went on in detail about and even read some parts of James’ journal.” Haya explained to the umber man and as if on cue, the other man’s eyes immediately widened in realization.

“Oh yeah! f**k, how could I have forgotten about that!?” The umber man was basically kicking himself over, making the beast tamer chuckle at his foolish act.

“Wait, what’s the second world?” Ygritte asked in confusion.