“I still don’t think this is a good idea.”

The only woman within a group of four muttered as she stared into the intense orange aura oozing out of the hypnotically spinning lines of light.

This crack in space was unlike anything any of them witnessed, despite a more than just stellar track record of clearing all the gates that the government and its military lapdogs missed.

Or maybe it was a bunch of corpses of said military that littered the entire area?

“It’s not like we can turn back now,” Marco, the leader of the group, rolled his eyes as he spoke. “It’s one thing to sneak around under their noses, but going out of our way to snatch one of the two higher-level portals from the city?”

The middle-aged man shook his head before raising his left arm and using his sleeve to wipe the blood dripping down from his cheek into his mouth.

Up until now, their group refrained from openly opposing the city’s mayor. What’s more, according to their sources at the city hall, the officials even came to call them saviors, for their seemingly charitable act of going around and clearing all the portals that they could!

But today, this farce was coming to an end. And the two dozens of dead soldiers sealed the deal.

The real deal.

“I know this isn’t how any of you imagined this moment to be like,” Marco turned around and faced his companions, the selected few who not only had great innate skills but were also among those the most dedicated to the cause. “But dreams are inherently naive. This corrupted government… No, this corrupted system…”

Marco shook his head, only to raise it back up with a steeled resolve brimming in his eyes.

“This whole mess was never going to go down just like that, not even with how those portals changed all the rules of the game.”

Grandpa, the man who never disclosed his age yet always claimed to be the oldest member of the greater group, smiled.

“No matter the details, the change always comes with a certain prize. And no changes were ever implemented without someone spilling blood,” the old man spoke, acting as if this wasn’t the first time he ended up in a situation like this.

And, if one were to believe the rumors pertaining to the man’s age, it likely was actually the case.

With their group’s tradition and legacy reaching as far back as over three hundred years into the past, to when the early modern era set the stage for what evolved to be the oppressive social system of today, one didn’t need to look hard to find all sorts of instances of their involvement in the crucial events that shaped the world of the present.

And now, as chaotic and unexpected as this change in the world might be, wasn’t going to be any different.

Ring!

The lone woman of the group looked down at her wrist, or to be more precise, a simple smartwatch of a certain, popular company that branded itself with the image of a bitten fruit.

“The scapegoats are coming,” she muttered right as two streaks of light cut through the darkness down the street, only to grow more and more intense all the way to the point where their source revealed itself from behind the buildings on the street’s corner.

A simple, white van with the logo of a non-existent public-service company was painted all over its sides. A vehicle that an average man would recognize at a glance from its numerous acting gigs in heist and thriller movies and TV series. And in all honesty, one of the poorest choices for an actual tactical vehicle once one considers its actual specs.

But it didn’t matter.

The fight for the portal was long over before the van arrived at the scene. And rather than serving its movie-like role of moving men to the hot zone, it was to be used in its more practical role of an actor… or a stage prop for the scene Marcos was trying to paint for when the city’s reinforcements would arrive.

The Van came as close to the portal as it could without risking the vehicle or its passengers getting sucked inside, before its side door swung open, revealing a small group of seven armed and masked men along with a small pile of mangled bodies stacked at the van’s floor.

“I see you are all done here,” following the troopers, a man jumped out from the driver’s seat.

He was in the typical, casual attire of just the random person who came out for an early-morning stroll. Between his trekking shoes, sweatpants, and tracksuit, the only element of his outfit that appeared off… was a huge, steel rod with a machine-sharpened end.

“Boss,” Marco lowered his head in a small bow, the rest of his team quickly following suit.

“Are you all done with perking everyone up?” the so-called boss asked while throwing a quick glance at the surroundings. Then, with just a single wave of his hand, he unleashed a total chaos upon the scene.

The troopers from the Van hurried to carry out the bodies they brought before scattering them all over the place, turning the site of a one-sided massacre into a scene of a hard-fought, even battle.

Following the corpses, they poured over two boxes of empty casings all over the street, before stuffing all of the spare pieces and equipment into the car Marco used to arrive on the scene and then driving off.

“Yeah,” Marco nodded his head once he saw the boss looking at him again. “We are all ready to go.”

The boss of the group didn’t drop his casual attitude even for a moment… Save for when he turned to the leader of the troopers who were to stay behind and act as the scapegoats for the massacre Marco and his companions committed.

“It’s been an honor to serve with you,” he said in a dignified manner while raising his fist to the side of his head.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“We live and die for the common good,” the remaining five troopers all saluted back to the boss before scattering all over the scene and taking positions they would realistically take if they actually committed the acts they were soon to be accused of.

“I will make sure your sacrifice won’t be in vain, I swear,” the boss said before turning around and facing the portal once again. “If you are ready, then let’s go.”

No one in the group of now five stood on ceremony or acted as if entering the orange portal, something they were likely to be the very first humans in the world to be doing. They just… gathered up, pulled whatever weapons they fancied for themselves over the course of their recent portal raiding, and stepped inside, allowing the pull of the portal to exile them from the world they knew and pull them toward the unknown.

The space around them turned weird, no longer making any sense. The former up became down… but also left at the same time, while the former down now pointed right and up.

If one were to think too hard about what they witnessed during the portal transfer, they would only be getting themselves one hell of a headache as the human brain was simply ill-suited to process the information that fell outside of its standard, four-dimensional scope of perception.

Thankfully, the transit process wasn’t any longer in the orange portal than it was in any of the green portals the group visited, quickly spitting them back out into a reality they could properly recognize and understand.

It was a reality none of them expected, though.

‘Where are all the monsters?’ Marco thought, his eyes dashing all over the place in search of a threat worthy of an orange portal.

His task was only made easier by the lay of the land where he appeared. It was a huge, open plain that he couldn’t see the end of, regardless of what direction he looked at.

Thankfully, none of the members of his group of five appeared to be missing, with all three of his subordinates and the boss appearing at the exact same spot as he expected them to.

‘At least it didn’t interfere with our formation,’ Marco thought, limiting the scope of his vigilance to just a fifth of the circle around them, leaving the rest of the area for his companions to survey.

Yet, no matter how hard he looked… There was absolutely nothing of importance anywhere near them.

They stood in the middle of a seemingly endless, open, and perfectly flat grassland, with only some occasional trees and bushes poking out from the short and strangely even grass.

‘It’s like someone moved it all down…’ Marco thought, his entire body tensing up.

There were no monsters anywhere near them… And yet, he just couldn’t help but feel like there was something absolutely wrong with this place.

It was way too calm, too peaceful… too nice!

‘What if this isn’t a higher-grade portal?’ Marco thought, not daring to voice his thoughts out loud when they were nothing but random guesses with no substantial backing… Or, in fact, the backing of a reason or evidence in any way or form. ‘Maybe this is a place for civilians to take a refugee at?’

If such were the case, then this entire stunt, the act of going against the city… It would be all for nothing.

Or rather, it would mean that spreading the word and evacuating as many civilians as possible into this place would become a priority of a level high enough for all five of them to offer their heads just to spread the news around and stop the city upper brass from monopolizing this space for themselves.

But still, this unsettling feeling, the caveman instinct, the animalistic drive hidden deep at the bottom of every man and woman alive… Continued to ring in Marco’s brain, as if trying to warn him about a danger he simply couldn’t see.

“Over there!”

Kathia, the one woman in their group, suddenly whispered while pointing her hand out toward a small bush growing atop a huge boulder…

Only, it wasn’t a bush.

And by the time Marco looked over, the bush moved… And crossed the roughly three hundred paces that separated their group from the bolder it formerly grew out of.

“You are not him,” the bush… Or rather, a man with hair and beard overgrown to a point where he looked no different from just a random bush, spoke while staring right into the boss’s face.

Then, taking a single step to the side, he looked right at the petrified face of the grandpa.

“You are not him either.”

This strange being was well within the reach of their hands, well within the range of their weapons. But out of the five of them, no one dared to as much as move a muscle.

From their raids of the past, it became clear that the fewer monsters that came to attack them within a portal’s space, the stronger they would be. It was as if there was a limit of what power within the portal divided between all those who dwell inside of it.

And now, standing in an orange portal that had orders of magnitude greater aura than any of the green portals the group conquered before, there was just a single being, seemingly a man… Or rather, a hermit of some sort that looked as if he spent the last century doing nothing but growing his hair while perched on the boulder nearby.

“Not him, not him, not him…”

The overlord of the portal inspected each and every member of Marco’s group, with Marco himself just happening to be the last to be approached and looked at. And with that said, he was the closest to this strange being when a hint of displeasure… No, annoyance appeared in its deep, perfectly dark eyes.

“I guess it’s still too early,” the being said and followed up with a sigh before turning around… and walking away, clearly intent on getting back to the boulder it was sitting at just a moment ago.

Seconds passed… but nobody moved. Even with its back turned, without the tiniest shred of interest in the group… this being’s mere presence was enough to suppress all five of them.

It was only when the portals’ apparent lone resident reached the footstep of the boulder that the group’s boss finally managed to twitch.

And then, at the very next moment, the force that restrained all five of them vanished, turning the whole place back to the calm yet eerie field of grass they had taken it for before.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, guys,” the boss muttered, his hand gripping so hard at his pointy steel rod that the white of his knuckle bone showed through the man’s skin.

The determination reignited in the boss’ eyes, revealing the man’s true, battle-junkie face.

Despite being ranked lower than Marco in the organization, this man was a beast. His lone source of respect and authority was his personal power and unhinged ways of fighting.

And now, his bloodshot eyes were zeroed in on the back of the being that ignited the desire for challenge in his spirit.

“You are right,” Marco, as much as he wanted to just turn tail and run away from this cursed place as soon as he could, gritted his teeth and agreed. “If anything, we can’t let this thing get outside or the whole city…”

“Oh, you are still here?”

The blob of overgrown hair twisted, the half-awake face of the strange being flashing as it apparently turned over to look at the group. Then, a hand emerged from the ball of hair.

A perfectly human hand adorned with five, perfectly human fingers. The two of them came together and snapped.

The space of the portal froze… before a few dozen tears appeared all over the plain. Some tears quickly grew green, others grew orange… while some turned to bronze, red, and even dark. And contrary to the portals that appeared back on Earth, there was nothing stopping the creatures within those portals from emerging.

“Since this should be his home, should I pay it a visit?” the portal’s overlord muttered, already sitting down on his boulder while hordes upon hordes of disfigured monsters rushed out of the portals it summoned and swarmed the group of the uninvited visitors.

“Nah,” the being shook its head while the hordes of fiends tore into the flesh of the invaders. “I’ve waited all this time, so I can wait for just a little bit longer.”

The being’s hand emerged from its overgrown hair again and repeated the same snap from before.

The grassland vanished, along with all the monsters, portals, and shredded corpses of the guests the being never invited… along with the boulder and the ball of hair perched atop it. In its place, the space of the portal turned into a lovely, sunny beach, with a small swarm of drowned patrolling the golden sands.

“Just a little longer.”

The voice echoed through the changed space as the orange entrance to this world hypnotically spun in place, awaiting the new batch of guests.