1 Breach opened

Elliot was sitting on the couch with his little brother on his right and his elderly dad on his left, the two adults were looking closely at the TV with wide eyes while the still very young brother looked curiously at them and alternated to look at the TV from time to time trying to understand why they looked so surprised.

"As everybody knows the Breach has been open for now 4 years, yesterday the Australian government decided to open it to not only soldiers but also willing adventurers, this announcement was made at the United Nations.

Although the place is dangerous and Australia lost more than 10 000 of their 80 000 soldiers during these four years, no need to pinpoint that these people were trained and armed. The reason the government took this decision is that although the dangers are huge, that world is also full of treasures.

The announcement made by the government is as follows : "The breach to another world that has opened 4 years ago has been barely explored until now, since our forces aren't enough we decided to let anyone who's willing to risk their lives go through it.

We are well aware that some adventurous souls will rush here in no time, we would like to make this clear : the Australian government won't guaranty your safety and won't equip you either, please come prepared."

At the end of the announcement the government's spokesperson also said that whoever bring a treasure from the breach will have the choice between keeping it or selling it, he only insisted that the Australian government would give the best price to whoever is willing to sell."

The journalist sitting around a big round table with a few other people said, Elliot who was starting to swallow the news had a newborn glint in his eyes but suddenly his left arm was grabbed by a weak hand.

"Don't even think about it !"

He turned his head to look at his dad, his father's name was Henry. He had been through a lot during his life which made him look a lot older than he actually was, his body was weak and his face wrinkled even though he was only 60 years old !

"You heard it right ? 10 000 out of 80 000 trained soldiers died in there ! What's a good for nothing like you going to do there ?!"

'Was it too obvious on my face...? I can't back down now tho!'

"Dad! This is a golden opportunity! When will I ever get another chance like this ?!"

His dad stood up and started shooting, he knew what his son was thinking and he was persuaded that if he tried it he would die there!

"Your mom wouldn't want you to risk your life for her!"

"I don't care. I will do it anyway, last year the Australian government bought back that armor that sold for 88 million dollars ! This is the only way to get that much money for a "good for nothing"."

The dad looked at his son's eyes and realized his mistake, he had called him a good for nothing to discourage him but it was useless, his spirit had actually been ignited even more.

"Sigh... do whatever you wish, how am I going to explain to your mom that her son suddenly disappeared?"

"You won't have to, I don't plan on dying there."

Tim, Elliot's younger brother looked at them with scary eyes, it was the first time he had seen his brother and dad getting into an argument.

"Big bro are you leaving ?"

Tim said with a timid voice, he was scared that his angry brother might scold him but Elliott just brushed his hair gently, smiled and said

"Timmy, I'll be back in no time! You take good care of dad and mom for me okay ?"

"Yes !"

Tim smiled wide and hugged his brother, he felt like he had been assigned an important mission and he didn't plan on disappointing his brother.

"When will you be leaving ?"

Henry was already sitting back on the couch but his skin had paled a bit, he couldn't help but imagine losing his son in that unknown world.

"They said the gate will be opened to civilians on Saturday so I'll pack things and leave now, the flight to Australia will take around 24 hours with a stop, I'll barely make it in time for the opening."

Without saying anymore Elliot walked to his room, picked an old backpack and started putting only the necessary stuff inside it : underwear, t shirts, a hoodie just in case, a pair of jeans, hiking boots, a long knife, a lighter, a rope and a few other useful things. He guessed the early days would probably be the hardest to go through, so what he was thinking about now weals only to survive the early days.

/

5 hours later Elliot was sitting in a packed plane, most people were young men. A few of them looked determined, other were trembling and a very small portion looked relaxed, eating, playing games or laughing with their neighbors.

'I guess most people who are going to take planes on a rush today have the same goal as me, there will be a lot of concurrents...'

Elliott was part of the determined people, men are greedy creatures and he knew that a big portion of the adventurers going to the other world with him will be going in hope of becoming rich overnight, at the same time he knew that greedy people would do anything for money and already started getting wary of the relaxed people. He believed that the scared looking people had a deeper objective than money, just like himself.

"You're also going?"

A voice came from his right side and stopped his thought process. The voice was rather deep and the English sounded rather broken with a deep accent.

"Yes, you are ?"

Elliot didn't plan on making new friends but still looked at his neighbor and answered politely, although having a party would be helpful at times it might also bring his downfall for lots of reasons such as deadweights, betrayal... so he decided to avoid becoming close with anyone yet.

Why yet ? Because after four years the treasures that had came out of the breach although low in number were all priceless and after reading stories left anonymously by Australian soldiers on the net he knew what kind of hardships he would have to go through to get his hands on them.

'The weakest people will die in the survival stage, having such people with me will only be detrimental. I'll wait until we're out of the survival stage before thinking about it.'

"I'm Dan. You ?"

Dan was a guy towering over two meters, although Elliot didn't see him standing he could guess that even when the guy was sitting, he had a short beard and no hair, instead of hair he had huge tattoos on the top he the head. By looking at him Elliot couldn't tell for sure where he was from but judging by his accent and looks he guessed he came from somewhere around Central America such as Mexico, Honduras or something like that.

"I'm Elliot, sorry but I'll take a nap now. I gotta be ready when we land."

"Of course no need to apologize!"

The man smiled and put on his earphones, Elliot smiled too and also put his headphones over his ears, the plane was really loud with all the chatting and he wanted to go in the breach at his peak performance. The stories about what the soldiers had seen behind the wall were all coming back to him one by one and he got more scared as the seconds went by.

[duke777 : That day was unlike anything I ever thought I'd go through, after going through the breach we split into groups of 10. Each team had a medic and 9 regular soldiers, amongst us was an elite soldier with huge experience in battlefields. The first few days were calm until one night we heard the guy doing the night watch screaming, we all hurriedly ran out and the scene in front of us was indescribable, horrifying ? That's a small word to describe that it...

The thing looked a lot like a lion, it was at least 10 meters high and it's mane was made of blue flames, even from something like 100 meters away we could feel our skin starting to burn, we didn't think twice : we left all of our stuff on the place and boarded the armored car right away, in a few seconds at full speed we were 500 meters away from the monster and felt safe. What we didn't expect was that this monster was pulled straight out of an anime or some kind of shit, as I was looking at it through the back window I saw it open it's maw wide and a ball of blue flame appeared and grew at an alarming rate. Then I wanted to yell at my teammate to do something but the eyes of the beast were locked onto me and I couldn't even speak. Luckily my other teammate saw the light, turned around to check and yelled to the driver to dodge, I believe we would have died without him. That day we left the breach and later other teams came back with similar stories, other teams never came back.]

Thinking about it Elliot couldn't hold back a shudder.