Clutching his rifle close to his chest, Thomel looked around in dismay at the other hunters.

Each one of them only had a simple automatic rifle and a pistol, a couple had grenades but that was the extent of their firepower. Their bullets weren’t even that powerful, sure they’d do fine in terms of punching through basic metal armour and scales but if anything tougher came at them they were dead.

In terms of armour, they were equipped even more poorly, with almost everyone wearing just basic clothing with a Narlin vest that would barely stop a small calibre bullet.

It would work against most ranged weaponry they were expected to go up against but Thomel doubted it would be much help against magic.

In comparison, the horde of PMCs gathered around were wearing proper combat armour and equipped with heavy weaponry like machine guns and rocket launchers.

Naturally, the PMCs were going to be sent into more hostile and dangerous locations but that still didn’t mean that Thomel and his team were going to be sent somewhere comparatively safer. One of the PMCs had even said so much to his buddy before getting told to shut up.

“Team charle enter the rift.” One of the masked guards called out calmy and a group of twenty PMCs rushed into the portal.

After a few minutes to let the scientists recalibrate the rift, they yelled. “Team delta enter the rift.”

Walking forward alongside the rest of his unit, Thomel entered the gateway.

Reality wrapped and burst, the glittery wind transporting them into the middle of a devastated forest.

Trees with dozens of holes punched into them, leaned precariously to the side, only barely staying upright.

Everything smelt of sulphur and decaying matter. The plant sap and blood had mixed together to create an unholy smell of death.

Thomel stamped his foot down and the squelching of mud greeted him. Covering his white boots in a layer of filth.

With disgust, Thomel noticed a hand half submerged in the muck, its non-human fingers reaching for the sky, as if to grasp the pale sun.

Casting his gaze out a little further he could spot a blackened corpse leaning against a battered tree, he couldn’t even tell what species it was because of how badly burned it was.

Looking over to his right he saw a score of bodies, most of them were blue kobolds but a couple looked to be either PMCs or well equipped and uniform hunters.

He’d only quickly looked around and he’d already spotted nearly two dozen corpses. How many hunters like him had already been thrown into this bloodly meatgrinder?

“Well this is a lot different from the brochure.” Volly muttered beside him.

“Yeah no kidding.” One of the other hunters replied.

“Might be a bit different but the pay’s still the same, let’s spread out and get ready for the counterattack.” The bulky hunter who’d been designated as team leader instructed.

“Aye aye captain.” And other affirmations sounded out as everyone began to get into position to deal with the incoming attack.

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Thomel found his slice of cover in between two dropping trees, their branches interlocked, forming a natural barricade. Stepping on a few of those branches he was able to get a good vantage point, though it wasn’t as good a firing point. So he had to spend some time snapping a few twigs and twisting some branches to make it more acceptable.

The sickly scent of decay was even stronger on his perch than when he’d been down on the ground and he didn’t know how.

No birdsong rang out in this husk of a forest, all he could hear was the squelching sound as his cohort walked through spots of mud and the rustling of dead leaves as they got into cover.

Aiming down the ion sights at the brown leaves rustling in the faint wind, Thomel scanned ahead of himself for any signs of unnatural movement.

He didn’t have to put much effort into it as very soon he spotted a flash of blue darting towards them.

Before he could call out a warning or pull the trigger, the kobold disappeared and a boom rang out from a series of dead,scrapped-together bushes.

Either someone had used a boon or they’d brought a heavy-duty sniper rifle he hadn’t seen because there simply wasn’t any kobold anymore, just a blue mist where it’d once been.

But where there was one, there were more and a second later he saw three dozen kobolds materializing out of thin air.

None of them were well armed, equipped just with simple spears and wearing nothing more than some warpaint coloured to blend in with their scales.

Still, they charged forward fearlessly, even as the front rank got completely obliterated by automatic fire and smashed down onto the ground missing limbs and having gaping holes blown out of them, the middle rank kobolds leapt over their comrade's corpses and kept going.

They didn’t bother trying to duck behind the dead trees or staggering themselves so a single burst of fire didn’t kill more than one of them. They just ran in a straight and predictable line.

As he looked closely at one of the kobolds, he noticed froth spilling out of its toothy mouth. Its eye wide and directionless, how it failed to fall over any roots of deceased remains was beyond him. Then it stumbled back and fell to the ground, missing a large chunk of its right side.

The war paint on it seemed to grow bright and illuminate itself against the dead creature's scales for a brief second but when he blinked it was back to normal.

Obviously they were expendable but what he had to do was figure out why, how come they were just being thrown to their deaths like that and why did it make him feel a sense of deja vu.

Looking over to his left, he carefully watched as one of his fellow hunters opened fire, helping mow down the kobold advance.

Scanning the area behind and around the hunter, Thomel expected to see a small sliver of unnatural plant movement. Like a bush that was was rustling northward while the brown patches of grass and withered branches were blowing gently toward the south.

Instead, he saw nothing, but that wasn’t the case for the hunter he was observing who suddenly jerked around and sprayed the air with a volley of bullets.

Most of them thudded into tree trunks and butchered the few remaining leaves some of the plants still had but a handful impacted invisible kobolds and a trickle of blue began running down invisible chests.

Bringing his gun around, Thomel was about to open fire when some newly transplanted instinct stopped him, guided by gifted intuition, he paused and decided to hold fire.

The flanking attack came in full force, with nearly a hundred invisible kobolds charging them from behind, the only reason it failed was thanks to the plentiful tracking-type boons the hunters had.

Thomel could have used his own Tracking boon to help get the experience needed to level up but he opted to remain an observed and very soon he was glad he chose that option.

Despite the situations they’d all been in, every Hunter here was still just that, a hunter. Some of them may have served in widely different industries but ever since they’d arrived, they’d been unprofessionally sent out to kill and bring back various entities.

This was why despite the fact that they’d been warned about the almost guaranteed trickery the kobolds would pull, almost everyone had turned around to shoot and fire at this new threat.

Not expecting a long-range attack from the front, giant balls of cloudy light had slammed into their loose line formation with deadly accuracy.

Everyone who’d stayed in one location and shot more than one magazine’s worth was dead, obliterated entirely by the kobolds magical prowess.