We are standing in front of the shimmering, still blocked doorway. I am correcting the circle. Tentacula is assisting by strewing lesser core dust where I am telling him. I ought to feel nervous having two of the Network’s field officers standing right behind me. Yet I operate in professional calm. My assistant announces the obvious: „We are ready to put the consumables where they belong.“. The lower ranking of the two carefully positions silver cups with the prepackaged consumables into the exactly right places. „How many extras?“ he asked. We have been working for almost 50 minutes. „Four category 1 in each corner of the secondary pentagram.“ He shows a bit of incredulity, checks the colors himself and then puts the coins again exactly where they belong.

Tentacula has a talent to state the obvious. „You have witnessed this often.“ Not that I disagree or am not prone to state the obvious. I just have my mouth full chanting the incantation. The gateway opens and his statement remains without a response.

The commander repeats his instructions once more:

„Reinhard and I will enter first. If none of us are back within ten minutes, call HQ, declare an emergency and wait for orders. Once we’ll have given the OK, the strike teams, then 1 minute later the military men, after 5 minutes the ritualists and their guardians.“

He hands a bag to the boss of our base, nods and leaves this world. My nerves return. I do not like waiting for danger.

--

With a knife on my left hip, a first aid kit strapped to my left leg, a magical pistol in a shoulder holster, a G3 on my back and a machine pistol in my right hand I feel like a classical bandido from old movies as I take my first step to other spheres.

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Cars won’t fit through, so we are infantry now. So much for being a civillian conscript. A group of unfortunates tasked with toting an M2 has reached the crest of the small hill behind us. The rest of the soldiers are busy emplacing devices and digging holes. We wizards are ourselves transporting a stack of euro-pallets respectively bags of salt, a bucket full of water and a rucksack with miscellaneous equipment.

The teams in advance of us has been busy. We are facing a pile with quite close to a dozen perforated or crushed rodents and a dead bird.

Besides the hill directly behind us, the terrain is fairly flat. Unfortunately we are denied the full benefits of that, as the air is dusty enough to impair long range vision. The ground is unremarkably covered with shrubs and gras. Quite beautiful actually with hundreds of small wildflowers in the vincinity.

„Sergeant, get some men in a place to watch over the nearest gullies. Schmidt, check the radio to the machine gunners. One more lookout up that hill. Leutenant, do not put all your men onto a perimeter. Some need to look inwards lest we get burrowers.“

The Network has left us one fighter who shows no reluctance to give orders.

For the duration of this operation with multiple wizards operating together we have been assigned a chain of command. It is by lot number in ascending orders. I have no idea whether our base commander knew that that would put me in charge. In case he knew what he was doing, I better look competent:

» Prepare a circle for looting of lesser monsters around those … pseudo-rats, but don’t set it off yet.

I checked my phone

» We can wait for half an hour just in case we get more. We can afford to take our time to get it right and doing this in batch mode by species is most efficient.

I do not want anybody to handle dead monsters more than necessary. You never know. Half an hour is enough time to get a circle around them going. I myself arrange pallets next to each other and cover them with nicely stretched plastic to get a big level surface should we get a bigger monster to loot. The soldiers had strapped a wheelbarrow to their vehicle. I think I have figured out why.

A shot rings out. One more monster gopher for the pile. I am in another dimension under threat of monster gophers. I shake my head. And check that my machine pistol is easy to draw.