Andre could not see or hear anything in the all-consuming darkness that surrounded him. The moment he had entered the portal he had lost sight of the expedition members that were only a few meters away from him.

This situation was already expected. Reality was severely twisted within the portal even when it was stable enough not to immediately tear them apart. It wasn't the portal that caused the loss of senses but the fact that they were currently existing in a transition state between the two worlds It could be argued that they had temporarily stopped existing entirely.

The travel between the two worlds took both an instant and an eternity. The parallel worlds had a one-to-one equivalence in the passage of time, so the group emerged from within the portal the instant they entered it from Earth, but the transition state happened in the in-between a place completely dissociated from the time of either worlds.

Andre felt like hours had passed. He felt disoriented which was an expected effect of portal travel. He was grateful that the transition state also made thoughts fuzzy as he couldn't imagine floating in the void fully conscious for an indeterminate amount of time.

The hours he felt were only the relative experience of his thoughts fading into nothingness and returning back to him. He could only guess what happened in the middle.

The sudden change from complete silence to the deafening roar of the wind as he fell from the sky jolted him back to reality. His eyes were drawn to the massive tear in the night sky from which they had emerged.

Without an established exit portal, they ended up tearing a massive rift through reality. This unavoidable phenomenon was gone over in the plan. They had no way of hiding their arrival. The rift was probably visible for hundreds of kilometers.

The existence of human-like denizens residing around the area was confirmed so it was almost guaranteed that there was a settlement close enough to directly observe the rift.

Hopefully they were friendly or at the very least cautious enough not to attack the newcomers. Andre would not be comfortable killing creatures so human-like even if they did not share any real ancestry with the humans of Earth. But if they prove themselves a threat, he will not hesitate to perform his duty.

He looked around and saw the other members of the expedition still frozen from the portal transition. He moved to wake them before they reached the altitude to open up their parachutes. He had strapped his prosthetic arm to his chest and locked his prosthetic leg in position in preparation for the dive. It was surprisingly manageable to move around the air with only one arm and leg as long as his prosthetics weren't dangling about changing his wind resistance.

He moved around the sky with expertise. Grabbing one frozen member and slapping them until they gave him a thumbs up confirmation that they were awake. He moved from one frozen member to another repeating his actions. After he shook about a dozen or so awake Andre saw Lisa and the other operators sail past him apparently also doing their best to wake up the other members. With multiple people going about waking the others they had succeeded in getting everyone in order with altitude to spare.

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All 83 members of the expedition succeeded in opening their parachutes and navigating their way to the planned landing zone. Lisa led the group with a red led light glowing on her back.

The landing zone was an area with sparse trees on a small hill that had previously been scouted by the reconnaissance drones. A small creek ran at the hills base and the relatively barren hill made it easy to spot any danger that came close.

Their landing went uncontested as the violent opening of the rift had scared off most of the creatures that inhabited the area. They had a few days before the denizens that called this area home started reclaiming their territory.

The reconnaissance drones did not obtain any useful data on which specific creatures resided here as they had similarly been scared by the rift during that time so they had to prepare their camp and start securing the area as quickly as possible.

“Goddammit!” Sergei yelled as he fiddled with the tracker device meant to find the airdrop containers.

The containers were supposed to land in the vicinity but aside from a dozen or so the rest were nowhere to be found.

“I knew those ancient pieces of garbage couldn't be trusted! I told them! I fucking told them!” The expedition leader vented his frustration.

Not an hour into the expedition they were standing on a hill with few supplies. They had opened the few containers that landed close by. Seven of the containers were filled with cement which sounded great but without construction equipment there was little use for them.

Three more had hydroponics equipment and seeds. Two contained lab equipment for the scientists and the last three was the large mana-electric battery and the two portable fission reactors. No food, no beds, and no tents.

The battery and fusion reactors were designed specifically for the expedition, so it wasn't surprising that their airdrop systems actually worked unlike the old containers. More than likely the guidance systems in the containers used a variable that was slightly different here in the otherworld than on earth which caused the mass failure.

Aside from the hydroponics equipment and the battery everything else was basically useless for the current situation. The cement was possibly useful, but the scale of their plans had to shrink dramatically without the heavy equipment. The sensitive lab equipment had to be kept sealed within their containers until they could find a place to house them.

The mana-electric battery was basically filled with mana crystals that are converted to electricity. It was supposed to last them until they set up the portable reactors. So even if none of the actual mana crystal containers were found they could cannibalize its parts to power the few thaumaturgic equipment they had.

The two portable reactors could theoretically produce a terawatt of electricity, but they needed infrastructure and a lot of water to cool them down far more than the little creek could provide. They shouldn't even be called portable; they were more like simple setup reactors. So, until they could build a base the impressive pieces of technology were just chunks of metal with radioactive fuel.

The initial plan was to turn this hill into a fortress and construct a temporary exit portal by next month so that the next opening wouldn't have to tear a massive rift in the sky. There was no way in hell they were meeting that deadline now.

Andre massaged his temples. The missing containers were Sergei's problem, but he had his own. In the next few days, the monsters driven away from their homes would start wandering back in and checking if it was safe to return. He had to make sure none of the members became monster chow while they were out in the open standing on a naked hillside without even a roof on top of their heads.