CRONOS I—EQUATOR
The ship carrying Apophis's team finally came to a halt above the huge crack in the planet's equator.
The place was extremely hot, over 50 degrees Celsius in the shade. Because of this, there was little life in the zone. It was a scorching desert that separated the planet's northern and southern hemispheres. Even the Geoils couldn't reliably survive in this area.
If Apophis and Zareil hadn't been Ascensionists, they would long ago had to give up the mission! The area was so hostile that, despite the savage skirmishes all over the planet, this area had been completely spared from the war.
This was, undoubtedly, one of the main reasons Regnier had entrenched himself here with his armies. He could conduct any operation without being disturbed, unlike the Federation bunker.
The transport ships landed a few kilometers from the crack, so as not to be spotted. Their objective was to take advantage of the sandstorm to infiltrate the enemy camp and, hopefully, eliminate the enemy with minimal risk.
The team disembarked and trudged through the deadly conditions of the desert. Eventually, they approached the huge crack in the ground, which proved to be several kilometers wide.
Inside the fissure, the party could see hundreds of light warships, mostly Orc fighters and corvettes!
But strangely, the ships were all that was visible of the enemy forces. There was no trace of either the ships' crews or their camp. It was, in fact, as if the whole crew had disappeared.
As the group had received no intelligence warning them of this, everyone was puzzled.
The team descended into the fissure to conduct a thorough search, but found nothing.
That is, until Aurora, an Esper from Apophis's team, called everyone to see something interesting!
What the group found was astonishing.
A huge purple portal, very similar to a dungeon portal, loomed before them!
What was such a thing doing here?! This kind of interdimensional portal was anything but natural. When they weren't the entrances to dungeons, Apophis knew from his first life that they were often attached to a star god. S-Rank players had often used them in his former life.
Apophis pulled up his player menu to check if this was the entrance to a dungeon or a raid, but that was clearly not the case.
No, this was truly an interdimensional portal which led to a totally unknown place!
Colonel Zareil was also quite surprised to see something like the portal in the crack. He said, "The mystery grows stronger. I hope it doesn't prove to be too serious… Apophis! I'll enter first. You'll follow me closely with your team."
Apophis nodded in approval, though he felt that there was nothing normal about this situation.
Colonel Zareil stepped forward and through the portal…
But Apophis didn't immediately follow, much to his guild members' surprise!
Instead, he waited for ten long seconds.
At the end of this count, the portal had not disappeared.
That meant that Zareil was still alive, that this portal didn't, say, lead into a star or black hole, which was common when it came to teleportation trap portals.
But Apophis was still apprehensive. Even if Zareil was alive, this still looked like a trap.
Finally, though, Apophis ordered his team to follow him through, and he stepped after Zareil into the portal.
