Empire Building With Infinite Warehouse-Chapter 115: Garage Standoff

Julien pushed himself up from the cold floor and tried to brush the dust off his ruined coat.

The air inside the sprawling garage was completely different from the dirty maintenance room they just escaped from.

It hummed with a strange vibration that rattled his teeth and made the hair on his arms stand straight up.

He looked past the broken yellow doors and saw the giant Green Gate swirling brightly in the centre of the room, casting a sickening green glow over the polished military vehicles parked along the walls.

He thought they had finally caught a lucky break and found a clear path to escape, but that hopeful idea vanished the second he turned his head toward the centre of the room.

Commander Lena was already standing right in front of the swirling anomaly with her arms crossed confidently over her chest.

She was not alone either, because her entire personal death squad was lined up perfectly in a half-circle around the portal.

These were not the standard guards; they fought in the hallway, but high-level system users wearing tactical gear and holding weapons that glowed with dangerous magical energy.

They had their high-grade rifles aimed directly at the broken doorway before the dust even had a chance to settle on the floor, proving their terrifying reaction time.

Julien felt his stomach drop right into his boots.

He slowly raised his empty hands in the air and gave the paranoid warlord a very nervous, strained smile.

"Well, this is definitely a very awkward situation for a humble salesman," Julien said out loud, trying to keep his voice from shaking while Kyle and the others stepped through the rubble to stand right behind him.

Lena did not laugh at his weak joke at all.

She just stared at him with cold eyes, looking exactly like a predator cornering its prey in a dead-end trap.

Her gaze drifted past Julien and landed on Aiden, taking in the freshly healed prisoner and the stolen rifle he was clutching tightly in his hands.

"I hired you to brew a specific potion in the commercial sector, Julien," Lena said smoothly, her voice echoing loudly across the spacious room and carrying a terrifying weight.

"I did not hire you to break into my secure research facility, destroy my reinforced doors, and steal my most valuable test subject."

Kyle shifted his weight and brought his giant black sword up to a defensive guard position, putting himself directly between the Commander’s elite soldiers and the rest of the rescue group.

Maya kept her daggers drawn and stayed close to the wall, probably calculating the exact distance between her blades and the glowing guns pointed right at them.

But Julien knew another physical fight was totally impossible right now.

Kyle was already breathing heavily from the previous gunfight, and the rest of them were completely outmatched by the high-level soldiers waiting by the portal.

’I am literally out of cheap tricks and smoke bombs,’ Julien thought to himself, feeling a cold sweat break out on his forehead as he frantically searched his empty system inventory for a miracle.

’If I do not talk our way out of this room right now, we are all going to die standing in this garage.’

"There is something you need to know about our arrangement, Commander," Julien started, forcing himself to take a confident step forward and dropping his hands into his pockets to look completely relaxed.

"I am a very dedicated worker, so I actually went ahead and finished the formula for your portal stabilisation problem a lot earlier than you expected."

Lena raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised by his bold claim.

"You finished the entire batch already? Then why are you sneaking around my prison block instead of delivering the product to my office?"

"Because your crazy scientists are completely untrustworthy," Julien lied smoothly, weaving a complicated story on the spot.

"I figured out the perfect recipe to keep a person’s internal mana flow completely stable for ten minutes, but then I realised your people would probably just torture the formula out of me instead of paying me fairly. So I came down here to find some insurance to guarantee my safe exit from your military base."

Aiden shot Julien a very confused look, clearly not appreciating being treated like a bargaining chip, but he kept his mouth shut and played along with the desperate merchant act.

"Where are the potions, Julien?" Lena demanded, taking a slow step away from the glowing green pool of energy.

"Hand them over right now, and I might actually let your little friends walk out of this camp alive."

This was the exact moment where the bluff had to be perfect.

Julien looked right into the Commander’s cold eyes and put on his best greedy smile.

"There are no physical potions to hand over because I drank the only successful prototype right before I walked into this bunker," Julien stated proudly, tapping the side of his head with a finger.

"I memorised the complicated formula, and I am the only person in this place who knows how to brew it properly. If you shoot me, your grand plan to raid another world dies right here with me."

It was a huge gamble.

He was betting everything on Lena’s insane obsession with the multiverse competition.

He hoped she would rather take him prisoner and force him to work than risk losing her only ticket through the Green Gate.

The garage went completely silent for a few agonising seconds as elite guards kept their weapons perfectly still, waiting for their leader to give the final order.

Lena just stared at Julien, tilting her head slightly as she analysed his confident posture and his greedy smile. Then a slow, cruel smirk spread across her face.

"You are a very terrible liar, merchant," Lena said quietly, shaking her head in genuine amusement.

"But even if you are telling the truth, my research team does not need you alive to get the formula. We can just drain your blood and reverse engineer the magical residue from your dead body."

Julien felt his entire plan crumble into dust.

He had completely underestimated how ruthless and crazy the military scientists actually were.

Lena raised her hand and pointed a single finger right at Julien’s chest.

"Kill all of them," the Commander ordered her death squad without a single ounce of hesitation.

"But try not to shoot the merchant in the head so the brain stays somewhat intact for the lab."