The Earth Online

27 The Suburban Wild Cage

“The Suburban Wild Cage, as in the boring old zoo in the middle of Ellis Town?” Kedrick ask while giving Thaleos a doubting look.

“Yes, Kedrick. For the tenth time, yes, it is specifically that boring zoo we’re going to. I don’t how much we can paraphrase this for you to get it.” Haya said in an exhausted manner as he kept his eyes on the road.

They were currently drive from the Melam Base back to Ellis Town.

“That can’t be right. I mean this is the same place where fifth graders have their field trips.” Kedrick answered back, and Thaleos decided to take out James’ journal and say,

“Fine, dude. I’ll even read it to you out loud just so you can believe us.

Nightmare # 85

May 13

3:01 AM

Who would’ve known that the Suburban Wild Cage Zoo would be one of the most important locations in Ellis Town?

I remember throwing up, in the fourth grade, after seeing a hyena eat another hyena’s vomit. Now, it has the most powerful earthly creatures with good blood souls.

In this dream, I was standing in the middle of the zoo, the area where the elephants were put in. I made sure to look around since I was pretty sure those elephants would be humungous now.

I’m slowly accepting these dreams, especially, when it stopped showing those horrible dreams,

I’m hoping they don’t come back.

As I was walking around the zoo, I heard some animal chirps and growls from the man-made forest part of the zoon.

I hid behind one of the large palm trees and spotted all the animals congregated in one location, they were surrounding this large Tiger—it was an albino tiger that had terrifying fangs.

They seemed to be communicating, as they were pinpointing to the large gorilla locked behind them.

The gorilla seemed to be way more intelligent than the other animals. It had these sparkling golden eyes that seemed to change colors whenever it hit the sun’s rays.

As the gorilla made some noises that caught the albino tiger, the latter immediately growled at him in a threatening manner—snapping its jaws in irritation.

After talking for another couple of minutes more, the tiger called forth a small chimpanzee. The tiny chimp lugged around these larger tweezers.

Once reaching the tiger, the albino creature signaled one of the large chimps to take the tweezers and use it on the gorilla.

As the gorilla made no movement, the tiger became angrier and hurried the other chimp to start removing its eyes.

The large pitch-black gorilla hollered in pain as its golden eyes were forcibly taken out. One of the creatures with opposable thumbs took one of the eyes and proceeded to rub it on the lens of a pair of human glasses.

“What the hell are they doing?” I muttered to myself, and as soon as they finished rubbing the eye’s golden flakes on the glasses, they started cheering like crazy.

While everyone was making noise and hollering, I sneaked around and wore the glasses. I was willing to change it since most of the dreams are just illusions, and they can’t see me.

After gradually adjusting to the tinted golden glasses, I started looking around and spotted the albino tiger. As soon as the glasses locked unto the tiger’s face, a dialogue box on the right appeared—showing all the relevant information and status of the tiger.

They were Insight Glasses.

~ ~ ~

“Ohh, that sounds pretty neat! Wouldn’t mind getting those insight glasses for myself.” Kedrick jokingly said as soon as Thaleos finished reading the journal entry.

Haya just rolled his eyes as a response, while Thaleos just gave his own little chuckle.

As they were driving through the plain green fields of the stretch between Mount Uruk and Ellis Town, the beast tamer remembered their group’s last conversation with Ulfrick and Igor.

After the revolt, Ulfrick, Igor, and the other creatures decided to take over The Purple Mansion and make it into a base.

The expansive location was enough to fit 50 people, so they decided to turn some rooms into training grounds. Thaleos chuckled while remembering Ulfrick and Igor’s words before they left,

“Playing those moaning sounds in the beach was totally worth it.” Igor piped in as he was smiling from ear to ear.

“Also, the passing out part, kinda worth it to be a damsel in distress. Not that I have anything against that trope, they can be anything they want.” Ulfrick chimed in and quickly rectified his first statement.

“Always the worry-wart, but then again, Annaliese does get angry when you say stuff like that.” Igor piped in while laughing at Ulfrick’s frantic words.

“What are you smiling about? Have another secret? Wanna let me in on it? We can forget about Haya over here.” Kedrick always had these days where he was super hyper, which made Thaleos smile even more.

“Don’t worry about it, dude. Just remembered Ulfrick and Igor.” The beast tamer dismissively said, which made the two other men smile.

“Who would’ve known that Igor and I would be the best of friends when it came to alchemy.” Haya uttered, remembering how they initially resented each other. The priest chimed in,

“Those dudes are cool, not to mention, the people and creatures we met at the pub.”

After a few more minutes of mindless driving, they finally arrived at the Suburban Wild Cage zoo. The whole place just screamed silence as there was no human nor animal insight.

They slowly traversed through the cages, making sure that they were in stealth mode. While gradually getting nearer to the man-made forest, they heard rustles here and there.

Once spotting the gorilla calmly locked in the cage, they decided to split up into three—using the same strategy that they’ve used multiple times, even reaching the point of perfecting it.

As they slowly unsheathed their weapons, monkeys jumped out of the trees surrounding them and climbed on their backs.

Behind the cage, where it had a larger Acacia tree, the albino tiger swiftly jumped down. All in all, they were surrounded by five chimps, two hyenas, and one albino tiger.

“What the f**k?” Kedrick shouted in pain as one of the monkeys successfully scratched his left arm and the other two tried taking his axe. Two monkeys cornered Haya and proceeded to forcibly scratch his face.

Meanwhile, Thaleos was fighting off the two hyenas from biting off his neck. The chimp hanging on his back persistently pulled at his hair, making it impossible to fully focus on the two hyenas in front of him.

The albino tiger merely watched the three of them and proceeded to stalk around the gorilla’s cage. As the gorilla grunted something at the tiger, the albino animal quickly growled at it in anger.

Seeing how everyone was struggling, he prompted everyone to use their specialized skills. As soon as Haya activated his Berserker perk, he bulldozed towards Kedrick’s attackers and proceeded to s***h and hack everything in sight.

This gave Kedrick the chance to move away at a safer distance and activated his healing sphere skill.

As the two other men were doing their best to survive against these mutated animals with metal parts, Thaleos activated his duel space and was immediately transported to the void.

Upon seeing his animals, he spent a couple of seconds petting them and brought one of the wolf-eagles with him.

After transporting back to the zoo, he spotted Kedrick finally finishing up his chant.

Suddenly, a large circle surrounded Kedrick and started giving off a soft yellow light. The three of them immediately felt the scratches on their arms and faces disappearing.

The tiger seemed to be startled as this was the first time that he saw humans using their specialized skills.

Thaleos used his full strength in slashing the two hyenas, as his wolf-eagle handled the monkey hanging off his back. With just one bite, the wolf-eagle managed to decapitate the screaming chimp.

This gave the beast tamer the leverage to finally finish off the two hyenas. As the two animals attempted to attack him on both sides, he imagined his wolf eagle dragging their bodies up with its talons and using it to distract the albino tiger.

Within a split second, the wolf-eagle swooped in to take away the two hyenas using its talons and flew over to where the cage was.

As Haya and Kedrick finally finished off the four chimps, they headed towards Thaleos’ direction and assumed their defensive stances.

The albino tiger immediately looked up and saw two hyenas falling towards his direction. The tiger swiftly jumped away to save itself and watched as the impact of the two hyenas’ fall broke the cage.

Seeing how the gorilla attempted to escape, it rapidly pounced towards its direction. Once seeing the two size each other up, the gorilla suddenly paused and grunted something towards the tiger.

The albino creature just nodded its head. As soon as it agreed to whatever the gorilla was saying, the two beasts abruptly ran towards their direction.

The three men prepared their weapons. Thaleos commanded his wolf-eagle to carry him behind its back.

After flying a couple of meters up, the two animals finally approached Kedrick and Haya’s direction and started pulling at their limbs.

Thaleos measured the distance, speed, and exact time of the attack, and after locking his target, he ordered his wolf-eagle to swoop down.

He prepared his black katana and assumed his attacking position. He commanded his wolf-eagle to go down faster, and upon crossing their direction, he swiftly sliced off the tiger’s head.

The gorilla was stunned and just stared at the rolling head of the tiger. This moment gave Haya the chance to bring out his sword and stab the large beast straight to the heart—effectively, killing it.

“f**k, yeah. Damn, these animals are straight-up crazy. Time to make those Insight Glasses!” Kedrick cheered on.