The Earth Online

57 Natalia Rosenthal

Nathalia was deeply staring at Thaleos and gave him a small smile. The beast tamer returned her smile and muttered under his breath, “Hi Lia. I’ve been great. How have you been?”

The red head smiled, and just as she was about to say something, the ground suddenly started shaking.

“Don’t tell me? Not again!” Kedrick shouted in frustration as he saw more Wintersbites going out of the ancient trees. The three wisp-looking creatures flew around them, and their long bodies almost circled them all in one location.

This was the third fight in a row, and most of them were injured to a certain extent. Although their injuries weren’t that deadly, save for Jay’s wound, they couldn’t handle the third wave of fights.

Their mana was quite low, and they were feeling the effects of fatigue.

Just as the Wintersbites were ready to attack them, the ground suddenly started shaking and rumbling—it was so strong that the trees themselves were shaking.

As if afraid of the movements and their implications, the Wintersbite quickly ran back into the ancient trees and disappeared as if they weren’t even there in the first place.

All of them were holding onto the trees just to keep the stable ground, but they knew what this was. It was the Alien Door opening again. They didn’t know which world or galaxy it went into, but they were sure that it was the door.

It was the same ominous feeling they got back when they were on earth, and the first door to the novice adaptation stage opened.

The familiar blazing and freezing temperatures from the miasma and mana scratched at their skin as they could feel the waves of air going through the forest.

Suddenly, the blue dialogue box appeared, and Ur showed himself with a light smile, “Good day, everyone! We have now reopened the door back to earth. Seeing how your life force decreases the longer you stay here, the gods have allowed humans to take intermittent breaks to recover their life force.”

The elf had a small victory smile as he was so happy that the humans were finally allowed to go back, well, at least for a couple of days.

Hearing the questions people had on their minds. The elf’s long eyelashes fluttered as he explained how their bodies get weaker in the world, “Since humans weren’t built for this kind of climate and atmosphere in general, the gods have layered you with magic from the mix of miasma and mana.”

Everyone looked like they had a eureka moment as they finally understood why those air waves were emitting around the doors. Seeing the looks on their faces, Ur was satisfied and decided to continue.

The elf lost the shine in his eyes a little bit as he explained the next part, “But suddenly that magic is not a substitute for your life force. It merely slows down the effects of this planet on you. Because if you continue staying here and the god’s magic starts to disappear, your body will get frail.”

The elf paused for a bit and then continued, “Having a physically unhealthy body can lead to all aspects of your power response to decline. Simply put, you would all experience a form of attribute decline—rendering your skills irrevocably useless.”

After hearing that, Haya unconsciously muttered under his breath, “Does that mean this planet’s just going to suck off all our life force?” and had his eyebrows knitted in the unjust game mechanism.

“But of course, that decline is merely temporary at most. As long as you can return to earth every once in a while, then you can easily recover the life force that you’ve lost.”

At that moment, it felt like everyone collectively breathed a sigh of relief as they heard that there weren’t any long-term effects on their health.

Kedrick thought to himself that the gods were logical and remotely considerate, at least to an extent. But he also knew that that consideration was not for them but was for their own convenience.

Of course, they want humans to live as long as possible; what else would they watch, right? Ygritte unconsciously echoed Kedrick’s thoughts since she knew that this “kindness” was all because the gods were obsessed with entertainment.

“One final thing, we highly encourage that you guys don’t spend the night in the alien world. Mana and miasma distribution is unstable on this planet so that you might come across incredibly weak monsters or a powerful one.” The elf cautiously warned the crowd with a serious face.

“Aside from the rules mentioned by one of the players, this is the official fourth rule. Break this and risk your life.” Thaleos now understood why he had that nightmare last night. Maybe his mind was relatively weaker due to the mana imbalance—giving the gods a pass to enter his astral plane mind.

All his teammates stared at him; the bearded man knew that his teammates were probably thinking the same thing as he was.

Soon after all the questions were answered, the elf waved goodbye, and the screen promptly disappears.

After healing Jay, they walked straight to where the intense amount of miasma and mana were and saw the familiar purple and blue vortex.

They marveled at its beauty for a few seconds as it was surrounded by the wonderful sunset sky of the current world. It was breathtaking to look at the million tiny planets and stars surrounding the vortex.

Once feeling the familiar shaking of the ground, they decided to hurry up and climb the stairs straight to the vortex. Ygritte, Kedrick, and Haya couldn’t hide their smiles since they were excited to go back to the Melam Military Base.

Thaleos also had a little smile on his face, but gradually faded away as he knew that earth right now just looked and acted like a simulation.

Since the only ones left on the planet were NPCs or staged beasts, he knew how the humans who weren’t able to become professionals gradually turned into one-dimensional characters for the past month—only giving limited dialogue and interactions.

Upon exiting the vortex, their big group of ten arrived at the gymnasium Thaleos’ group initially used to enter the alien world.

Looking around the manor, Thaleos noticed that something was amiss. The beast tamer was distracted as the other alchemists, warriors, and assassins quickly said their goodbyes and left.

Natalia was staring at the bearded man, as she knew that that was the look he had when he was confused or angry about something. Before she could even say something, Kedrick spoke in a whispered voice,

“What’s up, man? What’s wrong?” The priest whispered as he looked around the area Thaleos was looking at. When he spotted nothing, Haya clasped his shoulder and echoed the worried look the umber man had on his face.

“I didn’t tell you this, guys. But I originally planted something in this mansion before we entered the second stage. That was supposed to be one of our fallbacks.” The beast tamer lowly growled.

“What do you mean? What happened?” Ygritte asked in confusion as she couldn’t understand what the bearded man was talking about. The beast tamer let out a huge sigh and sat on one of the benches outside the gym.

As everyone surrounded him, Thaleos started recounting the story,

“As soon as we entered the manor, I already planned to plant these rare flower seeds. They take about a whole month before blooming.” Everyone marveled at how the man just kept on thinking more and more contingency plans.

“Wait, so does that mean you knew that we could go back to earth?” Natalia asked in bewilderment as he looked around everyone to see if they were as shocked about this fact as she was.

Seeing that most of them had neutral faces, she looked back at the beast tamer and said, “How did you know? Like, don’t tell me you’re actually psychic or something?”

The beast tamer chuckled a little bit because Natalia rarely reacted as emotively as she was acting now. Usually, she acted quite prim and proper, but Thaleos knew that she had this little side to her.

Ygritte could feel her heart twitching a bit but keeps pushing herself to just move on from this. She knew that she had so many opportunities to tell him how she felt, but she always chooses to bail before fully confessing.

She made her choice, and she knew that she couldn’t keep forcing these imaginations and feelings on the beast tamer. But just for tonight, she let herself feel the pain.

The beast tamer knew that they could trust Natalia as the woman was a stickler for principle, so she quickly explained the whole thing about James, which made the woman happy but mostly sad at the loss of James’ life.

“That is wow, the gods really are f****d up.” Haya and Kedrick nodded their heads in agreement and even clicked their tongues in anger. The beast tamer continued with his story and said,

“That being said, harvesting those flowers meant that we could sell them in the Lagash Market for a high price.”

“But where did you get the seeds from?” Ygritte asked in curiosity. The beast tamer smiled and replied,

“From Gunura.”