The Earth Online

20 The Sirens of Mount Nergal

Since they were still a couple of meters away from the river, they still had a bit of time to think of a defensive strategy.

“Kedrick, try fighting the siren head on! Haya, you need to sneak up on its back while it’s distracted from Kedrick’s attack. I’ll try targeting its eyes. Spread out!” Thaleos quickly ordered as soon as the siren was at the edges of the water.

Haya and Kedrick immediately got to action and started fiercely attacking the water creature. They tried their best to swing their swords against the monster, but it seemed to be ten times faster than their usual opponents.

Thaleos immediately got to work in putting some of the fire sprite ashes on some of his steel arrows, as soon as he got some on it, he swiftly drew his arrow and aimed it at the fierce-looking siren.

As soon as it hit one of its eyes, it loudly shrieked in pain and started thrashing around. Its steel-like claws and sharp-tail gills swung around like blades and left a couple of cuts on the pair.

The two men jumped as far away as possible from the shrieking siren. After a couple of seconds more, the writhing siren started to get weaker.

The beast tamer released a deep sigh of relief seeing the siren slowly losing strength, but after a few moments, the beast glowed a faint yellow and quickly recovered its strength.

“It’s healing itself!” Kedrick shouted in dismay and started charging at the siren who was already attempting to kill Haya.

“Seems like it didn’t work! This siren seems to be an elite beast.” Haya shouted from the other side as it tried warding off the siren’s sharp claws.

“We need to use our specialized skills,” Thaleos responded as he hid his bows and arrows, and rapidly moved towards their direction.

As if understanding the bearded man’s command, the siren gradually opened its mouth and started singing this enchanting but unbearable tune.

It sounded like birds whistling and demons chirping at the same time. It had this smooth but rusty sound that just scratched at their ears.

The three men were forced to kneel on their knees in agony as the sound seemed to be taking their strength away.

Thaleos could see his two friends being drained of their energy, so he decided to tap into his duel space and brought out one of the wolf eagles.

As if getting out of a void-like cage, the large beast immediately started barking and assumed a defensive position. It started barking as loudly as it can, just to ward off the sound waves that the siren was making.

This gave the three men the ability to get back on their own two feet and activate their skills.

The beast tamer spared a couple of seconds just focusing on tapping his Anger Strike skill. He felt the power surging through him.

His wolf eagle didn’t stop barking and just continued gradually approaching the siren that was trying to out sing the floating beast.

As soon as Kedrick activated his Healing Sphere skill and Haya with his Berserker Fury skill, another siren went outside the hollow cave and joined the battle.

Thaleos had to act quick as they were surrounded by two powerful elite beasts, since the skills took a couple of seconds to activate, he gruffly shouted,

“I’ll release another wolf eagle, I need you to get your asses here!” The beast tamer deeply concentrated and released another wolf-eagle. Haya and Kedrick were shocked since Thaleos told them before that beast tamers usually need to reach level 6 before they could release two or more beasts.

As soon as they saw the beast tamer breaking out in cold sweat, they quickly ran to their friend’s location.

The wolf eagles were doing their best in defeating the sirens, but they could only hold off up to a certain extent.

“Kedrick, I need you to activate your skill immediately, we’re quickly losing our health points.” The beast tamer huffed out. The umber man tightly closed his eyes in concentration.

And a white spherical light started surrounding them. The feeling made them feel completely lighter and they could feel their strengths coming back.

While they were being healed, Thaleos looked Haya directly in the eye and muttered, “Haya, we’re gonna go in there and try to fight those sirens off. You need to turn on your Berserker Fury and at least cut off one of the siren’s gills. Once I give you the signal to get out of the water, you need to head straight to Kedrick.”

Haya had a hard time keeping up with Thaleos’ words since the bearded man was talking a mile a minute. The berserker took a deep breath and gave a stern nod.

One of Thaleos’ wolf eagle suddenly howled in pain, catching their attention. The pair abruptly ran to the beast’s aid and slashed off the powerful water beasts.

They seemed to have successfully cut off the wolf eagle’s wings and planned to devour the wingless beast. Thaleos transported the animal back to his duel space and commanded the remaining wolf eagle in his mind.

He telepathically told it to fly upwards and start scratching at the siren’s back. Within two seconds, the beast was deeply grating at the siren’s back as it started howling at its ear.

As the other siren tried helping to pry away the wolf eagle, Haya activated his Berserker Fury skill and swiftly attacked the first siren. The berserker could feel the rage swirling around his body as he felt this deep need to decapitate someone or something.

Feeling the bloodlust controlling his system, his attacks suddenly started getting faster and stronger. He successfully cut off one of the siren’s long gill-like hair, which resulted in it losing its voice.

Haya remembered James writing about the weird anatomy of sirens and how their voice boxes were located at their upper gills. Regardless of not having a voice, the siren seemed to be incredibly strong as it directly slashed at Haya.

While the berserker and siren fiercely faced off, Thaleos was already slashing away at the siren that was attempting to kill his wolf eagle.

The bearded man quickly took out some of the fire sprite ashes in his pocket and quickly poked one of its eyes using the powder.

It immediately keeled in pain as it was desperately trying to heal itself. Thaleos gave it no time to recover as he activated his Anger Strike skill, although he knew that he only had a 20% chance of triggering the shockwave effect, he still went for it.

As the siren was glowing in a faint yellow, Thaleos was covered in a teal-colored smolder. Knowing that he was successful in activating the shockwave effect, he imagined collecting lightning from his mana skill tree.

Kedrick saw Thaleos’ body slowly being covered in teal lightning sparks. As the bearded man concentrated in centering the force of the shockwave effect in his dagger, the siren was ready to strike at his neck.

“Get out of here, Haya!” Thaleos barked out which prompted Haya to immediately jump out of the water, and following the beast tamer’s mental instructions, the wolf eagle flew away at a safe distance.

The blue electricity ball inside the beast tamer’s body suddenly blew up, triggering thousands of electric bolts to escape his body and coating the whole river with the powerful electrical energy.

The electricity disturbed the water’s peace as it created ripples and currents throughout the fluid.

With having nowhere to go, the two sirens were forcibly electrocuted inside the body of water. They convulsed in excruciating agony and were basically fried after the electric current left Thaleos’ body.

It only took a couple of seconds for the elite beasts to die as their body still shook from the leftover electric currents. Once the shockwave effect finally blew over, Thaleos could feel fatigue washing over his body.

Once the water settled down and no electric current was on sight, Haya and Kedrick immediately ran to his side. The priest activated his skill and healed all of Thaleos’ pain.

“Damn, that was f*****g crazy. How the hell did we survive?” The umber man asked as he saw his crew basically battered from just two elite creatures alone.

“How could they be stronger than the chickens that you fought?” Haya asked the beast tamer who was still recovering his strength.

The bearded man breathed out, “Elite beasts have levels, and sirens are in the lower mid-tier. Chickens are at the bottom of the elite beast category.”

As soon as they were all strong enough to go back to the base, they first looted everything they could from the sirens—including their blood souls, pitch-black eyes, scales, mana centers, and gills. 

~ ~ ~

The trio spent the next couple of days strategically hunting down lower level elite beasts and collecting all their blood souls. By the end of the week, they had about thousands of blood souls, they managed to find a colony of elite ant beasts.

Since they grew as big as kittens, they had to fight for their territories against other ants, which resulted in constant fights and level-ups. At the end of the colony wars, only the strongest colony survived.

They almost lost their lives twice, but they managed to obliterate the ant colony. After storing all the blood souls in the Akkadian cube, they went to the Lagash market.

Just like what James stated in his journal, the red balls of energy were priced at ten thousand shekels each since over a thousand species were fighting for the blood souls.

“Great doing business with you. Enjoy your ten million shekels!” Ganuru said as he received the Akkadian cube that automatically counted its stored items.

As soon as Thaleos took the free Akkadian cube that came with the shekels, someone kicked Ganuru’s store door, rudely marched inside, and barked out,

“Remember me, Thaleos?”