*

  Gates are dimensional portals that give Aggressors access to our world and we access to theirs - though that is a vast oversimplification of what it truly is.

  Gates spawn in different shapes and sizes, appearing literally anywhere without any warning or sign. No, Gates grow.

  They emerge like tumours from the bones of the earth – twisting roots that rises from nowhere, covered in all manner of strange cryptic markings. Some shimmer with an odd sense of true beauty, while others makes the skin of one’s heart crawl.

  In the distant past, when humans attempted to destroy these Gates using methods that have been faithful to humanity for years – That was the beginning of their folly.

  The more you try to destroy them, the more they grow.

  Basically eluding of understanding of life and realism – burn them, blast them, spray toxics on them, tear at them – They remember, return and birth more dreadful horrors.

  It took decades of sacrifice, alien knowledge, rituals and the greatest of all – Grace for Scientists figured a way to gently close them, though fragile in its foundation, precise yet not completely understood.

  Even with all that, it isn’t a 100% guarantee, unlike the narrative those in power have spun for the desperate masses.

  Gates are not meant to be closed. They are meant to be taken

  *

  The Gate I am looking at is about nine meters in height and the same in width.

  Its entrance surrounded with reinforced steel fence form a metal cube barrier, with an automated chain-link metal gate as the only means of entering or exiting the Gate.

  Few meters away from the Gate, are a couple of M-ATV and LAV-25 Light armoured vehicles pointing their mounted arcane-guns entrance of the chain-link Gate.

  There were few soldier positioned there, with their own camo painted armoured vehicles amongst the Viper Guards’ and that’s the only place I’ve seen the military boys since I’ve been looking around.

  Most times I’ve been to Gates like this, the military are always there with whatever Tower is securing the Gate. The soldiers aren’t usually that much, but it seems they have to be with the Guards securing the Gates for some reason.

  We walked a minute, till I notice we were heading towards what looks like a command tent at the right wing of the compound.

  The Guard gestured at us to halt and said we should all wait here, then just left.

  So we did, standing there and waiting for the Guard come back.

  A couple of minutes later, another Guard approached us, holding his head gear with his right hand and a wooden crate with his left.

  The only thing that stood out from this particular Guard, were his eyes; his pupil and iris glowed – Deep Blue. Meaning he has superpowers

  Every Evolve here, like me could ‘feel’ that he is D-Grade and I personally ‘felt’ he’s stronger than my father.

  When he got close enough, he placed the crate on the ground in front of us and stool on it.

  Guess this is where we will know what the fuck they want us to do.

  “Good morning… (or is it Good afternoon?). I’m the Team Leader assigned to head your little merry band” The Guard said very loud.

  “My name is not important, only my position and most importantly the mission at hand is, so you will address me as Sergeant” He continued.

  “…The objective to advance into that Gate and terminate the last of the horde of the Aggressors…” He said point to the same Gate Daigo pointed to earlier.

  He continued.

  “Firstly, This Gate is not a Fort, but the natives inhabiting here are still very dangerous… I am sure you have all encountered a Zipper-spine or what most of you people like to call them - “Rotten dogs”.

  Some of us nodded, most just stared at him to continue this pointless speech. Why don’t they just point us to a Gate, we kill anything that moves and get our coins? Why waste all this fuckin' time?!

  “I don’t see the need to go into more details, do I?”

  Seeing that no one responded, he continued “The other Aggressors in there are the Flea-gloats. They aren’t as popular as the Zipper-spines, so some of you might not know this one…” He paused, to clear his throat before continuing.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “They are Aggressors that look like giant flea, with a hairy head that is twisted sideways.

  They don’t have claws or pincers like most insect-looking Aggressors but they do have a long pointy injection-like mouth that can pierce through 4-inch-thick concrete brick, which will make most of you people… even with your… protective gears look like cotton; so, don’t get cocky” He warned.

  “There will be Large Machine Gunners and Snipers mounted at the rear the company that will soon enter the Gate; which you are part of.

  This platoon will be stationed as the frontline oppression; tasked with pushing the Aggressors’ advancement while the another platoon will be stationed behind ours; to give us as much support as possible”

  “We are to make sure the Aggressors don’t breach your line and like you know, deserter will be killed on the spot. Any questions?” He finally ended his speech.

  One guy wearing a scruffy scaly-armoured vest raised up his hand and asked “How do you pay us… Elixir or coins?”

  “Elixir? Oh… you mean arcane-cores. You gutter people and your slangs” he mocked, after being confused for a second.

  “Well, you will get paid in cash but it will be based on how many Aggressors you take down and know this not all Zipper-spine arcane-core can be extracted. So, the going rate for a Zipper-spine corpse is 90 Yen and a Flea-gloat is 120 Yen” The Guard answered plainly.

  Some of us audibly grumbled but didn’t voice out anything particularly, I and Daigo just looked at each other and looked back to the Guard.

  “Is that all?” He asked, but was met with no response at all.

  “If that is all, we will go in 10 minutes, so get yourselves prepared” he finished, before jumping down from the crate and leaving us by ourselves.

  Immediately he left, some of us started pulled out their weapons and started warming up with it, while others just sat on the floor and relaxed.

  I and Daigo were part of the latter; we just sat on the bare ground and tried to gather our thought before descending into the Gate.

  10 minutes elapsed, and our team leader ordered us to get our stuffs and follow him.

  As we got to the entrance, he told us to halt and we could see small trucks exiting the automated gate. We looked at the back of the trunks and it was loaded with blood-stained human-size body-bags; a lot of them.

  I squeezed my fist tightly to steel my nerves and it worked, the other including Daigo seemed to be more mentally prepared than me, since they hardly flinched.

  After about 3 trucks carrying dead bodies passed, with 4 other trucks loaded with what looks like a tank container, concealed with a big brown tarp.

  “Those ones are probably holdin’ the elixirs them got from the Gate… Fuck, imagine all those elixirs disappear to my crib” Daigo whispered to me as the trucks carrying the containers passed us by.

  “One of those trucks is bigger than your crib, how the hell would you pull that fuckin' stunt?” I whispered back to him.

  “That is why I say, ‘fuckin' Imagine’…” He giggled as he responded.

  After all the trucks were all done, our team leader instructed us to follow him inside the gate, as the automated gate is still open,

  Like always one gets different kind of weird vibes when entering Gates. The vibes I’ve got from all the Gates I entered are either feeling being hazy for a second, chilly even when it’s not Cold inside or outside the gate or I suddenly find it hard to remember anything for like 5 seconds.

  The first time I went through all that were truly scary, because it’s one thing to hear that ‘Gates gives Evolves weird vibes’ from the streets, it’s another thing to actually experience it.

  This Gate gave the ‘chilly vibe’ immediately I crossed the boundary between my world and whatever world is beyond the Gate.

  The ground in the Gate was had those interlocking metal mats laid down, I can’t pronounce the word I’ve heard the soldiers and Guards call it but I know they used to help their vehicles move better in soft or uneven terrain.

  Inside the Gate (like the others I’ve been in) is almost completely covered with vines and roots with the same creepy markings as the vines outside, just thinner and smaller in size. So it makes the ground an uneven terrain in here and like any other Gate, the mystical markings of the world-invading vines glows.

  This one vines glowed too, but it is very dim. Too dim to relied on, I guess that’s why rows of large light bulbs were hanged of the right side of the inner wall of the Gate.

  The width and height of the inner belly of the Gate shrank and expanded in this uneven-ass manner, making the terrain hell to scale — especially for vehicles. Heavy metal ramps lay ahead of us, probably set there to help trucks climb and descend this rough-as-shit terrain.

  Ahead, two black cargo trucks without tarps were parked on the right-hand side of the cave.

  The Team Leader told all of us to hop in the back. He stood there until everyone settled, then walked off to the front of the truck I was in. He got into the passenger seat, and almost immediately, the engines of both trucks roared to life. They revved a bit, then rolled forward — taking us deeper into the Gate.

  Didn’t take long before we pulled up to a small camp. Didn’t see any soldiers around, just Viper Guards doing all sorts of shit. Sometimes you see them in Gates, sometimes you don’t.

  The truck rolled into the camp and stopped.

  The Team Leader got out, walked to the back of the trucks that were now parked beside each other.

  “Get down and… follow me,” he said. Didn’t even wait for us to fully get off before he started walking away.

  We rushed to catch up with the stupid cunt. When I finally caught up, I glanced around, trying to locate the source of that awful stench that hit us the moment we entered camp.

  My brain already clocked it — dead flesh.

  I quickly noticed blood and chunks of meat scattered everywhere. Most of it didn’t look like it came from human bodies, but it still reeked like it.

  Then we started hearing loud screams and painful-ass grunts from a section a bit outside the main camp.

  There it was — a big-ass open tent where some Guards were being tended to by medics and Evolves with healing powers.

  Seeing all that shit brought back that creeping fear, always worming around at the back of my mind. Like, if real-deal Guards are getting bodied like this... how fucked am I?

  I forced my head to face forward, fighting my mind to kill that fear and steel myself for whatever's coming.

  We passed through the right wing of the camp. A couple minutes later, we ended up at the edge of a cliff.

  Our Team Leader halted, walked closer to the edge.

  He lowered his face, then slowly lifted it back to normal — eyes staring off into the wind. Looked like he was seeing something far, or maybe just zoned out.

  Then he snapped out of it and told us to continue.

  We followed a narrow pathway down the cliff, and the closer we got, I started seeing a bunch of Guards below — maybe a hundred or a little less.

  Some were gripping heavy machine guns mounted on armored vehicles, others were just sitting on the ground checking their rifles, and a few were walking around like they were on patrol.

  Every single one of their weapons had glowing white markings around the muzzles and bodies — even the big-ass machine guns.

  I figured those were the Guards the Team Leader was eyeing earlier.

  When we reached them, the Team Leader told us to wait. Again. That shit was getting fuckin’ annoying.

  Then he walked up to one Guard in particular. The dude was huge but chubby as hell. Just looked fat to me.

  They started talking — mouths moving like a couple of crickets on fire. But looking closer, I could tell the other guy was probably his superior. Our Leader was acting all bitchy while the big dude wasn’t having any of it.

  Something felt off the moment I saw that disappointed, pissed-off look on his face...

  Then I started catching whispers from the other Guards. The rest weren’t even trying to hide their disapproval — all of them were throwing glances our way.

  Daigo, who stood beside me, leaned in and muttered, “Seems them fuckers were expectin’ bigger guns.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back.

  I knew something was off, but didn’t think of that. Leave it to Daigo to read the fuckin' room.

  After a while, the Team Leader came back to us.

  “Let’s go to the front.”