The Earth Online

54 Demons Know How to Deep Dive

Thaleos tried running away from the voice, as he literally had no weapons on him and he knew that the duel space won’t work in astral space.

“Think you can run, huh?” The three voices furiously shouted in unison. “How dare you give all those pesky humans those rules?! The game isn’t fun anymore if you tell them how to survive!”

The beast tamer could feel his astral body burning up as the three dark silhouettes got bigger and bigger—they didn’t stop growing until they became as large as skyscrapers.

They were towering over Thaleos pointing fingers at him and continuously shouting profanities.

“You have spread the word around, now more humans will survive the second stage!” They kept roaring at the bearded man.

The loudness of the unison voice made him crumble to his knees.

Suddenly the voices and shadows were gone. Mind-numbing and ringing silence dominated the room.

It made Thaleos wanted to scratch his ears out from the ringing. The temperature started dropping lower and lower until he was a shivering mess.

Suddenly it became sizzling hot, his astral soul couldn’t take it as his body started wavering and turning into translucent smoke.

He kept fighting back and tried his best to focus on his mana center. The beast tamer could feel himself withering away.

Before he became completely translucent, the whole surrounding turned into one bright blinding light.

The only thing he could see was a faintly illuminating figure five feet across him. The mysterious figure only whispered a simple, “Go” and his astral spirit immediately went back into his body.

It felt like he was going through another vortex, as the experience made him a little bit nauseous.

Once he was fully conscious, he could see the three other team members panicking around him. Kedrick was doing his best to utter all his skills at the same time, as Haya and Ygritte tightly clutched unto him—looking terrified that he might leave.

Seeing that Thaleos’ body was no longer convulsing nor burning in black flames, the three members just blankly stared at him.

Ygritte found herself slowly slipping to the floor and Kedrick nearly passed out on his bed—from exhausting too much of his mana and health on trying out all the healing spells he could.

Haya was shaking, and the three of them has glistening eyes.

The young druid shakily asked, “T-Thaleos, are y-you okay?” The other two didn’t even attempt to speak as they were terrified that their friend might go back to his fearful state earlier.

Thaleos felt disoriented since his body felt both cold and hot. Although drowning in the state of confusion, he managed to calmly answer his friends, “Don’t worry, guys. I’m alive. I’m here.”

The moment he said, the other three couldn’t help but tear up a bit as they approached the beast tamer.

The three recollected their memories from earlier as they stated that they woke up from the constant and sudden shift in temperature.

Once coming to one by one, they saw how his body was levitating and was being devoured by black flames. The next half hour was hell as they did everything they could to bring him down on the bed and heal his black burns.

Although they stated that he wasn’t shouting from the pain or anything, they could hear him mewling from the pain and saw the tears streaming down his face. It was the very first time they saw the beast tamer crying from the pain.

“To be honest, we didn’t know what we were doing and we just tried out every spell we could. We even prayed to the gods as a last resort. We did everything we could.” Haya muttered under his breath in despair.

Thaleos flinched when he heard the word “gods” and just directed his gaze elsewhere. Kedrick gasped for air a bit and chimed in,

“Dude, we were literally at our wit’s end. We didn’t know what to do anymore.”

“The only it stopped was when you were suddenly covered by a white light for half a second, and then your body gradually went down on the bed again like nothing happened. All your bruises, cuts, and burns were gone.” Ygritte explained while clutching unto the man’s forearm—she was terrified that he might disappear.

“What happened in there?” Kedrick asked while staring at the disoriented beast tamer. Thaleos tried his best to recollect his thoughts and explained,

“I’m not quite sure, too. What I remember is that there were three big shadows shouting at me and burning me alive, then the next thing I knew, just before my astral soul was about to disappear, my whole environment turned into a white light, and blinding figure suddenly appeared.”

“You think it was Jesus?” Kedrick seriously asked and Haya just lightly smacked him across the head.

“The hell, Kedrick. This isn’t the time.” The umber man gently massaged his head and stated that he wasn’t joking. Thaleos just laughed at the gimmick of his two friends and gave the three a large smile.

“I survived but I think this is a warning from the gods. I shouldn’t interfere too much in the game or they’ll permanently remove my soul from existence.” The bearded man looked down and just gave out a big sigh.

He knew that his moral compass was getting more and more twisted as the gods were forcing humans to treat this as a “survival of the fittest” kind of thing.

The four of them were all tired from the gods and, in that moment, just wished they were back in their own lives.

Before the melancholy mood could completely sink their systems, Thaleos shook his head and took the time to fully reassess the event from a couple of minutes ago.

After realizing what really happened, he looked around his little group and saw how disturbed everyone was. The psychologist in him suddenly came out and said,

“Admittedly, this whole thing sucks and I wish it was over. I hate this, you all hate this. I just want to keep saying f**k the gods and I f*****g hate this game, but we don’t want to give them that privilege. They should be the ones suffering from their sins, not the other way around.” Thaleos stated in bubbling anger.

“If we lose hope now, we’d lose all the things we worked so hard for. If we survived the apocalypse then, then we can do a hella good job with this one.” The beast tamer knew that these words weren’t enough, but he knew that he had to reestablish their motivation.

Part of the battle is staying sane, and they only had each other throughout this journey.

Although all of them were still wary about sleeping back, they chose to still rest knowing that they need to save up on all the energy they could.

Thankfully, Thaleos didn’t experience any nightmares after going back to sleep. He didn’t even remember having any dreams after that.

The next day, they all woke up right before lunch. Most of them had a hard time going back to sleep, but managed to get some rest before the sun rose.

“So how do we do this?” Haya asked while packing up their stuff after having a nutritious brunch. Kedrick burped a bit and continued Haya’s line of questioning, “Yeah, do we have to fight monsters already or not really?”

Ygritte nodded her head while wiping her bow clean. She watched the bearded man fix his things and took out the same trusty golden glasses they had back on earth.

“Dude, no, don’t tell me! Are we going to use the Insight Glasses? Ugh, yes!” Haya shouted in excitement. The tan man was obsessed with the pair of glasses that could see the locations of monsters and spot important herbs.

The berserker felt like he was in a spy film every time he wore the golden pair.

“Yep! Since we’ve been collecting and looting for a bit, I’ve managed to perfect my collection technique. I can tell you the location of important herbs and we can all look for them together. Those herbs can make up pretty good potions against the beasts in this world.” The beast tamer explained as he steadily opened up the cabin door.

Before fully exiting the location, he quickly called up the blue dialogue box and claimed the cabin as one of their bases.

The registration was quite simple, as it just asked for Thaleos to rename the cabin. As soon as he named the location, it was officially registered under their name.

“Alright, let’s do this!” The beast tamer exclaimed while putting on the golden Insight Glasses.

~ ~ ~

“Wow, isn’t this one of James’ favorite herbs? The Neon Eucalyptus?” Ygritte explained while staring at the neon pink glowing herb. She was fascinated at how the plant looked like it was pulsing in different neon shades.

“Yeah, dude was obsessed with it because of its healing capabilities. One lick of these babies and all your bruises and cuts would just disappear.” Haya stated while carefully picking another neon eucalyptus from the tree.

“Aside from its healing capabilities, when mixed with nightshade seaweed, it can create strong illusion powders.” Thaleos added while Kedrick crushed one of the neon eucalyptus leaves in his hand, staining his fingers with fascinating neon colors.

But after a couple of seconds, it quickly disappeared.

As they were going around the forest, a couple of miles away from the cabin, they heard the rustling of leaves and saw a group of five people approaching them.

Two of them looked like alchemists and the other three looked like warriors and assassins. One of the mean-looking warriors ask, “Praytell, how do you know all these things? Similar to how you knew about the three basic rules in this world?”