The place was bustling with people making preparations for the portal opening. There were already thousands of people within the cavernous room during the morning. Now the number had easily doubled if not tripled.
With a glance, Andre estimated that there were around twenty thousand people working within the cavernous chamber but even then, it still looked mostly empty, a testament to its sheer size.
The majority of the new workers were busy moving around airdrop shipping containers. Andre had seen these before but had never actually seen any of them in use.
The shipping containers were fitted with a parachute and rudimentary guidance systems to make sure they do not land too far from the target. They were created just in case a sizable group of soldiers found themselves cut off from standard means of resupply.
Unlike the normal airdropped pallets, the containers were designed to be dropped much higher up at the transport's cruising altitude. A welcome capability as most flying monsters cannot reach such heights and the few that do make themselves easy targets.
But due to the exorbitant cost and the robust supply routes born from decades of war. The airdrop containers have rarely if ever seen use. The TRI had managed to convince the armies to give them their stock or more likely the armies were ecstatic at finally getting rid of the useless junk that had taken up far more space in their warehouses than they were worth.
Andre had a closer look at the ceiling after watching the workers move the containers around via an expansive indoor crane system that ran off thousands of rails attached to the cavern's roof. The setup explained why the lights looked so haphazard as they were simply installed in places that didn't interfere with the crane system.
He watched as another container was hung high above the portal platform. If even one of them gets dropped, he could only imagine the cost. There were already a few hundred containers hanging from the ceiling. If all goes to plan there would be slightly above a thousand of them before the portal opens each carrying supplies for the expedition.
Most of the containers were full of construction supplies as the first mission of the expedition was to set up a base of operations near the original portal's location.
Mana had a complex relationship with repetitive events. On one hand, mana was chaotic; its influence had a transformative effect on all things. But mana was always extremely influenced by the order of things.
The more a phenomenon occurs the easier it is for the mana of the area to recreate. This concept also had an inverse in that the more unusual a phenomenon was, the harder it is to achieve with magic.
This property of mana called disposition was tied to the locations of these phenomena. Mana could easily recreate familiar aspects of its environment while being resistant to things unfamiliar.
This naturally leads to mages specializing in a select few abilities so that the mana within their bodies becomes predisposed and much more efficient. This also meant that places of thaumaturgy are largely separated from each based on how similar the phenomena they are trying to recreate.
The strangeness begins when the chaotic transformative property of mana interacts with its disposition property. As mana becomes predisposed it starts to enhance the phenomena adding to it and as such transforming it which then leads to the mana losing disposition with the phenomenon as its nature was changed.
These two antagonistic properties cause the disposition of mana in an area to fluctuate. The planned portal openings every month were not just for sending additional supplies. They were also meant to increase the disposition of the area's mana to otherworldly portals. This process would reach max efficiency in about two years which is why the next major portal opening meant to send the second expedition was scheduled around that time.
Even if the disposition of mana degrades after it reaches its zenith it will still be far more efficient than an area that had never been subjected to the repeated phenomena. This just meant that the greatest magic that benefited most from the efficiency increase needed to be scheduled in between lesser uses.
The initial portal opening was the most expensive by far and was done exactly a month ago. The portal was open for only an hour, but the TRI had successfully sent and retrieved automated reconnaissance drones to scout the area which would become their main base of operations for the foreseeable future.
The cost of the second portal was barely cheaper than the first given that they will stabilize it enough to be safe for human transport. The mana disposition of the area probably hasn't changed much given only a single portal had been opened so far. The mana savings was mostly due to the fact that the otherworld’s dimensional wall hasn't healed yet from the previous portal, so they were basically opening up an unhealed wound rather than making a new one.
In theory, as long as they continue opening portals the rift would become semi-permanent as it heals with the opening intact. Which when paired with the increased efficiency of mana disposition would make opening the portal between the two worlds cost almost nothing in the future.
The cheap portal was the reason this entire project was greenlit. After all, if the portals always cost this much mana no amount of resources from the otherworld would make it worth it.
Andre made it to the meeting area of the expedition team. It seemed he was the last to arrive. With a quick look, he counted all 82 other members of the expedition. Among the group, the squad of twelve soldiers was familiar to him.
They were the guards that frequently patrolled around his disconnected building. He had known they were not regular security forces the moment he first saw them. Every member of the squad was a prime example of the thaumaturgy-enhanced super soldiers of the primary operators.
They were veteran soldiers that underwent magical enhancement turning them into superhumans. They were far from being as strong as him even if he was crippled. But that wasn't exactly a fair comparison. He was a natural mage, someone that was born with an innate affinity to his magic.
A mage was one in a thousand while naturals were one in a million and fewer still had innate abilities that were useful in combat. Natural mages were born with an innate understanding of their own personal form of magic. The downside was that they were barely capable of using their mana for anything else as their mana was naturally predisposed.
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Regular mages had to align the mana in their bodies themselves theoretically allowing them to specialize in anything. But due to the fact that mana has only existed on Earth for five decades and most of that time humanity has spent fighting for survival. Thaumaturgy is still in its infancy, in fact, most of humanity's magic was copied from intelligent monsters, a secret the TRI hides with shame.
The primitiveness of Earth's magic made natural mages stand head and shoulders above the rest. With their inborn abilities eclipsing any known magical formulas in both power and efficiency.
Naturals were also the only way Earth had been able to create new magic formulas. The mana structures within a natural’s body are unique to them but there are parts that could be copied for general use. By comparing the mana structures of naturals with similar abilities they were able to isolate recurring structures which form the basis of Earth's original magic.
In fact, the physical enhancement serums that were used on the primary operators were based on Andre’s own mana structures along with a couple of other naturals. The simplicity of physical enhancement made it the safest choice as the soldiers being non-mages couldn't exactly control the magic embedded into their bodies.
“So, it's you guys.” Andre spoke as he walked over to them.
The soldiers stood up straight and saluted him. He currently didn't hold any official military rank but as all battlemages and primary operators answer directly to the high council and not the military, They were all technically paramilitary. They were also direct subordinates of Kasimira which placed them within the same clique, so it wasn't exactly surprising that they chose to salute him. It was politics, it's always politics.
“Sir Andre, we will be in your care.” said Lisa, their squad leader who walked forward to meet him while reaching out for a handshake.
He appreciated that she reached out with her left-hand sparing both of them the awkwardness of shaking a prosthetic. The thirteen of them were the combatants assigned to the expedition. Even if every adult on Earth had gone through basic training the others would be little help against actual threats.
He felt reassured that they will have his back in ensuring the safety of the expedition. Even if he was still fairly confident that he could tear apart anything he could catch. He was now immobile in comparison to the past. If he tried to get anywhere close to his previous speed his prosthetic leg would disintegrate. Same with his prosthetic arm it was great for helping him in his daily life but there was no way he could punch with it.
“If you guys are coming with the expedition, who would take charge of the security of TRI security?” Andre asked the soldiers.
Squad leader Lisa walked closer to him and kept her voice down as she answered.
“He hasn't announced it yet, but we were informed that Grand General Raja is planning to announce his retirement from the front and joining the TRI as a co-director.”
This was news to Andre as Kasimira didn't mention any of it during their long conversation. Probably because it didn't matter to him as he was going to spend the next two years far away from all this.
This news would disrupt the balance of power within Earth's elite. The Grand General had always been a passive character in the world's politics, choosing to spend his days hunting down the worst creatures that had come from the rifts as the strongest individual on Earth rather than vying for political power.
The close relationship between Kasimira and Raja was well known after all they are the last surviving generation zero mages. They had lived in the world before the cataclysm and fought monsters before most people currently alive were even born.
Kasimira’s seniority and power already made her a heavyweight amongst the members of the council. The Grand General moving into the TRI was as obvious of an alliance as it could be.
The Grand General would still deal with major threats, so his retirement was more symbolic than anything. But it was a sign that he believed that eventual victory was guaranteed. The powers that be were preparing for the start of a new era.
The expedition team spent the next few hours getting to know each other and coordinating the plan for the first few hours after they entered the portal. Andre chose to simply listen to their conversations. The others had obviously been preparing for this expedition for far longer than him given he only found out about it a few hours ago. Kasimira had informed him of the general plan and the expedition's goals but there was no way to explain everything about a two-year mission in a few hours.
Doctor Sergei Egorova a senior researcher of the TRI would be the de facto leader of the expedition in charge of actually getting the work done. Lisa as the squad leader of the primary operators was in charge of day-to-day security. While He as the expeditions only battlemage automatically takes the responsibility of a protector, The highest authority when it comes to dealing with magical threats.
The portal would be opened high into the sky of the otherworld to avoid physical obstacles. The last thing anyone wanted was to teleport directly into a mountain or a tree. It also wasn't safe to be anywhere near the mana-charged outer rim of the platform. So, the entire group had to skydive into the portal which was why the airdrop containers were hanging on the roof of the cavern. Soon they would also be hoisted up into the ceiling.
Exactly as the clock struck two in the afternoon the kilometer-wide platform roared to life. The mana circuit lines that ran along its sides glowed with a blinding array of colors. Soon a tiny black dot started to form in the middle of the platform, a nascent portal to the otherworld.
Slowly over the course of an hour, the nascent portal grew until it was more than half the diameter of the platform. The nascent portal was a dark cloudy hemisphere. It would slowly turn darker until it was pitch black signaling that the portal had been completed.
Andre along with the rest of the expedition team was strapped into a metal frame that was lifted high into the ceiling. They all wore their skydiving gear all they had to do now was wait until the portal stabilized.
After about half an hour a pitch-black portal covered most of the platform bending the space around it like a singularity. The portal was a perfect black so dark that Andre couldn't even tell that it was a hemisphere anymore; it simply looked like a circle of pure darkness.
With a signal, a thousand airdrop containers were released into the portal. The noise of thousands of metal hooks and chains suddenly let loose should have been deafening but as the portal loomed large in the middle of the chamber all sound seemed to have been sucked away.
A thousand containers fell into the void as if they were nothing. After a few more minutes to make sure the containers would have cleared the area of the exit portal, it was their turn.
A 60-second countdown started on a large screen on the side of the cavern. It was already expected that sound would be heavily affected by the portal with even the bright numbers being slightly deformed. The timer continued to count down. Andre observed some members of the expedition shake as the absurdity of skydiving into another world had finally dawned on them.
Hopefully, they all remember their skydiving training. He thought to himself. Needing to save a panicked expedition member right at the beginning was not something he wanted to deal with.
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The frame holding them released its hold letting them fall into the void. Andre took a last look at the massive portal room. the thousands of lights in its ceiling looked like stars as the darkness of the portal surrounded him.