บท 4: Curiosity killed the cat
A Month Later...
Mathew was finally at the target location; the team had gone through literal hell in this one month. Seven of his men had died so far. Eaten, hunted, and mutilated to pieces while alive.
Mathew wanted to abort the mission but the lives of his comrade's and what did they die for he couldn't answer the question so he gritted his teeth and continued. It was either risking their lives or the lives of fellow citizens if the portal couldn't be secured. If not for the limit on the amount of mass that could pass through the portal, President Silva would have sent an entire platoon to wipe the beasts.
But unfortunately for a naturally formed portal, there was only a certain quantity of mass that could be teleported through it else the portal gate would destabilize.
If not for the portal barely able to sustain the teleportation of 15 people and their necessary equipment, the mission would have been rather easy but things weren't so goody good now, were they.
After some more days of travel and rest, Matthew's team had finally come across their target. A grade 7 beast!
Matthew signaled his team members to surround the Beast silently. The beast looked like a mutated guerrilla. Dark furry skin, his eyelids were closed but one could see a red hue coming from the slits of its eyes implying they were red, the beast was as big as four transport buses despite being curled up in its sleep.
Matthew took a deep breath and finally gave the sign.
The attack commenced!
The beast banged its chest after noticing the ant-like creatures disturbing its peace it then started running towards them swinging its huge arms around.
Although the members were experts in hunting beasts they were exhausted due to the month-long battles. Soon one of them was caught by the guerrilla and torn apart by its mouth.
Mathew's face twitched although the guerrilla was hurt as well at this rate, he knew they would be the ones to die first. With no other option, he decided to equip the special grenade given to him by the President himself.
He clearly remembered the horrifying power of that thing, it neither emitted fire nor ice but it actually sucked out the life force of the host itself weakening the target considerably. This was a device specially made for hunting in portals as too destructive of the device would again disturb the energy balance in the portal threatening to close it.
The grenade had only one drawback, it had to enter the target's insides to start its job and seeing his own member being eaten in front of him Mathew even though his heart quenched at that sight he knew this was the right chance.
He loaded the LS (life Suction) grenade into the grenade launcher and aimed it at the beast's mouth.
Blast!
The Beast didn't pay attention to the grenade. For a beast as big as him an object the size of a small stone even if he swallowed it wouldn't do anything that's what he thought.
Time passed by…
The remaining members were trying there best to dodge the beast's wide swing attacks and do quick bursts of explosive damage.
Another member of the team died but the beast had also suffered many grave injuries, the beast was becoming weaker and weaker noticeably. Mathew and Rocky looked at each other they knew the grenade had done its job so they went all out on the offensive.
Rocky slashed his plasma saber on the beast's shoulders again and again finally cutting it off while Mathew and the other members distracted it with gunfire from time to time.
The beast roared in anger it knew the tables had been turned so it started fleeing from the spot. Mathew and team weren't capable of stopping a beast as big as this so they followed him waiting for the beast to finally run out of its stamina.
The chase went on Mathew finally decided to slow things down as the remaining members were already exhausted, he told Rocky to take command while Mathew alone followed the beast to determine its location.
After a few minutes had passed Mathew came across a humongous tree with aerial roots descending from it. The tree was so big that the Beast looked like a small creature in front of it. Mathew couldn't even see the top of the tree all he could see was darkness in the sky because of its shade.
Portals were nothing more than spacial cracks that connected two spots, in some particular case even more than two.
These spacial cracks were formed when a tremendous amount of energy was concentrated and couldn't dissipate in enough time. This lead to the formation of cracks but usually these would close instantly unless situated near some energy source or natural spots where energy has collected this energy was enough for them to strive and stabilize into what came to be called natural portals.
Artificial portals were a manual upgrade to natural portals wherein the energy to sustain the portals was provided artificially without any drawback of mass/energy transfer.
Matthew suddenly realized that earlier when his team started closing in on the center of the dungeon, they had suddenly entered a dark zone without any light coming from the nearest star to the planet on which the portal was situated. Mathew couldn't conclude the phenomenon at that time but now he understood that the dark region was actually the shadow formed by the tree's top. It was hard to imagine how a tree so big that it almost covered half the planet with its shade existed.
But Mathew's daze didn't last long when he saw the beast climbing up the tree with its remaining one hand courtesy of Robin.
After a long while, the beast came down swinging form the aerial roots supported by its hand. Mathew noticed a huge green crystal it was holding in between its feet.
What was even more terrifying was the tree had started to wither at a visible rate from its roots. Mathew immediately concluded that green crystal must have been the core of the tree. Mathew couldn't fathom what was going to happen next anymore but he still paid attention to the beast.
Mathew could feel an earth-shattering amount of life force from the green crystal. He had no doubt that the beast was going to make use of this to heal again and so Mathew promptly decided to take action.
The beast after noticing Matthew's approach fled inside a cave carved into the tree.
Matthew hesitated a bit before entering the cave. And just as he made up his mind to enter the UI display on his watch started malfunctioning he could only see the blurry sign of Caution, High Density of Energy particles detected! even his helmet interface disrupted.
There were only two possible reasons for this sudden appearance of energy particles that Matthew could think of, the first was the green crystal may be the core of tree after while it was inside the tree the energy it emitted was being absorbed but after it was removed the energy could only go haywire either that or a…Matthew gulped before thinking about the next possibility, another portal had opened up near him just now.
Boom! Sizzle!
The electric explosion of the UI display woke him up from his dazed state. He took a deep breath and decided to go inside the cave murmuring to himself "I guess Curiosity did kill the cat"
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