Empire Building With Infinite Warehouse-Chapter 105: The Green Gate Introduction

Two whole days passed by in boring inventory management and noisy customers.

Julien had basically turned into a permanent fixture inside Camp Five. He managed to secure a really nice wooden stall right near the main walking path, and he spent his time carefully learning the entire layout of the commercial sector.

He memorised guard patrol routes, shift changes, and exactly which alleys were complete blind spots.

He also accidentally made a few very annoying friends.

The neighbouring shop owners were completely obsessed with him.

They were mostly older guys who actually spent years studying real alchemy before the apocalypse happened, so they knew how hard the process was.

Every single time Julien put a new batch of clear, zero-residue potions on his front counter, these guys would literally crowd around his stall like a bunch of excited pigeons looking for breadcrumbs.

"Come on, Julien," a bald merchant named Rick begged for the fifth time that morning, leaning heavily over the wooden counter.

"Just tell us how you filter out the monster blood toxins without ruining the mana stability. I will give you three hundred market credits right now just for a tiny hint."

Julien just smiled his best customer service smile and carefully pushed the guy’s hands off his clean display case.

"I keep telling you, Rick," Julien replied smoothly, acting like a seasoned professional.

"It is a strict business secret. If I just gave away my recipes to every person who asked, I would go completely bankrupt out here."

’The real business secret is that I literally just click a blue button inside my brain,’ Julien thought to himself, watching the disappointed merchant slowly walk back to his own stall.

’If I actually told you the truth, you guys would probably drag me straight back to that creepy doctor and throw me inside an iron cage to be studied.’

It was a pretty exhausting routine, but it kept his cover absolutely solid.

He also managed to meet up with Maya occasionally during those two long days.

It was obviously impossible to talk to her in total privacy without getting noticed by the perimeter guards, but they did not have to hide their interactions anymore.

Since Lena had already seen them talking on the very first day and accepted his lie about Maya being a former customer, the military patrols did not really care if they stood near each other.

They would just casually bump into each other near the crowded food stalls, exchange a few quick whispers about the layout, and then go their separate ways before anyone got suspicious.

Now, Julien was standing behind his wooden counter, slowly wiping a thin layer of dust off his remaining glass bottles with an old rag.

He was honestly starting to get a little impatient with the whole situation since he was making great money selling cheap items, but they were not making any real progress on finding Alice’s missing brother inside the restricted zones.

A shadow suddenly fell over his stall, blocking out the sun.

Julien looked up from his cleaning rag.

A very tall, armoured guard was standing right in front of his shop, who had a huge assault rifle strapped across his chest and a completely deadpan expression on his face.

"The Commander wants to meet with you," the tall guard ordered gruffly, pointing a thick finger down the street.

"Come with me right now."

’Finally,’ Julien thought, feeling a sudden spike of adrenaline hit his chest.

He had been wondering why Lena did not put any extra pressure on him after he passed that crazy lab test two days ago. After he gave them perfectly refined base liquids, they just left him alone in the market to sell his items without any follow-up questions.

But now that she actually knew he was extremely good at his job and his supply line was totally consistent, she was finally making her big move.

"Sure thing, lead the way," Julien said cheerfully, tossing his dirty rag onto the wooden counter.

He turned around and gave Kyle a quick nod.

The mercenary just grunted in response, crossing his massive arms and stepping up to the front of the stall to guard their inventory while Julien was gone.

Julien stepped out from behind his shop and followed the tall guard down the main dirt road.

"So, where exactly are we heading today?" Julien asked casually, trying to get the guard to talk while they walked.

"Are we going back to the research facility for another potion test?"

"Keep quiet and keep walking," the guard replied coldly, not even bothering to look back at him.

They did not head toward the creepy research lab this time.

Instead, the guard led him completely out of Camp Five and walked him straight toward a restricted area marked as Camp Three.

It was Julien’s first time setting foot in this specific sector, and the difference was honestly shocking.

There were hardly any people walking around here at all. There were no civilian tents, no noisy merchants trying to make a sale, and no loud food stalls.

It was just rows of concrete bunkers and groups of elite soldiers standing at strict attention. The security here felt less like a standard military base and way more like a top-secret government vault.

The guard led him down a long paved road until they reached a structure at the very end of the camp.

It was a giant garage.

That building was easily big enough to comfortably fit an entire commercial aeroplane inside, with steel cables and heavy power lines running from loud generators directly into the reinforced walls.

The guard stopped walking, tapped a quick code into a glowing keypad on the wall, and took a step back to give the heavy machinery some room as the doors slowly opened.

Julien stepped inside, and his eyes immediately went wide with shock.

The entire room was bathed in a soft, glowing green light that cast strange shadows across the high ceiling.

Commander Lena was standing right in the middle of the space with her arms crossed over her chest.

And Maya was standing right next to her, looking totally calm but keeping a very careful distance from the paranoid warlord.

But Julien was not looking at either of them right now.

He was staring at the anomaly floating directly behind them.

It was a real Green Gate.

Julien had seen Red Gates before, and those things were basically terrifying black holes that forcefully sucked everything nearby into an active nightmare dungeon.

But this Green Gate was completely different. It was a swirling pool of bright green energy just hovering gently in the air.

It’s not pulling anything inside or causing any dangerous gravitational chaos in the room, but just peacefully swirling in a slow circle, constantly letting out a soft, warm light that reflected off the cold concrete walls.

It was honestly the most beautiful and strange thing he had seen since the apocalypse started.

Commander Lena finally turned her head and looked right at him, her cold gold eyes reflecting the bright green energy perfectly. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"You are here," Lena said, her voice echoing slightly in the massive, quiet garage.

Julien quickly forced his face to go blank, trying his best to hide his surprise.

Maya had come to this military base specifically to find this exact gate, and now they were both just casually standing right in front of it.

"I am here," Julien replied slowly, walking a few steps closer to the glowing anomaly while keeping his eyes locked on the Commander.

"You have a very nice setup in here, Commander. What exactly do you need a humble merchant for in a place like this?"