Empire Building With Infinite Warehouse-Chapter 42: First wave

The sheer force of the Gate’s exhale made air itself into a weapon.

At the centre, closest to the swirling red portal, the underground and ground-level slums known as the Hover took the absolute brunt of the impact.

The tightly packed market stalls and flimsy canvas tents didn’t even have a chance to bend before they were entirely erased from existence.

A long row of unlicensed potion merchants took the powerful hit directly. Hundreds of unstable, unverified potions burst open simultaneously on their wooden shelves.

The conflicting magical liquids mixed violently in the air, creating a horrific chain reaction of loud explosions that tore right through the narrow, crowded alleys.

Blasts of green and red fire swallowed entire city blocks. Right next to them, the black market weapon sellers watched in utter horror as their heavy display racks broke apart like a dry branch.

The shockwave picked up iron swords, heavy spears, and rusted daggers, turning them into a massive, uncontrolled storm of flying blades that dashed into the fleeing crowd, stabbing into people without any mercy.

The wave didn’t stop there. It rolled outward, gaining a terrifying momentum as it crashed into the mid-district where the Eternal Rest Apothecary stood.

Every single glass window on the street burst inward at the same time. A horrific shower of shards rained down onto the sidewalks, tearing into the people who hadn’t managed to find solid cover.

The sound of thousands of windows breaking all at once was heartbreaking, completely drowning out the emergency sirens.

Down the street from Julien’s shop, a large group of locals had tried to take shelter inside a three-story brick apartment building. It was a fatal mistake.

The old architecture groaned under the sudden, massive pressure of the anomaly. The support beams snapped loudly, and the entire ceiling broke open, collapsing inward and falling directly onto the terrified people trapped inside. Dust and cement sucked into the red sky as the building flattened into rubble.

Those caught out in the open intersection felt the air turn incredibly hot. The wave carried a raw, burning magical friction that burned anything it touched. People were lifted completely off their feet, their skin burning from the sheer velocity, before they were thrown violently against brick walls, abandoned cars, and sharp street signs.

High above the carnage, a backup drone belonging to the District 9 streamer managed to stabilise just enough to broadcast the destruction to the rest of the world. The streamer himself was hiding in a subway stairwell, staring at his tablet screen in absolute shock as he watched his home get levelled.

[Live Chat: 214,000 Viewers]

[GamerGod99]: Bro, what the hell is happening?!

[Sector4_Rat]: This shit is brutal. They are getting completely wiped out.

[Hunter_Fanatic]: I thought Red Gates just spawned monsters. Why is the city exploding?!

[Red_Pill]: That’s the ambient mana wave. The pressure inside the gate is equalising with the outside world.

[Awakened_01]: Where is the military?! They need barriers up NOW!

Down on the cracked road of the main intersection, the wave finally reached Julien, Chris, and Alice.

Julien had managed to drag them behind a thick concrete traffic barrier just a second before the impact. But as the kinetic wall crashed over their cover, Julien realised something was terribly wrong.

His Tier 1 Iron Skin potion had literally stopped an armour-piercing bullet from an S-Rank Hunter’s gun without leaving a single bruise on Kiara. He thought they were completely safe.

But this was entirely different. A bullet was a focused point of physical impact, something the hexagonal shield could easily deflect. This wave was a smudge, a heavy ocean of raw, violent energy.

Even with the defensive layer glowing brightly across their skin, the sheer blunt force of the wave hit them incredibly badly. The concrete barrier they were hiding behind groaned and cracked under the intense pressure, shifting backwards and scraping harshly against the road.

Julien gripped the edge of the barricade, his knuckles turning red as he tried to keep his body anchored to the ground. Debris was flying everywhere above their heads in a blinding storm of dust and ruin.

A chunk of broken stone roughly the size of a baseball whipped through the air and slammed directly into his exposed hand.

The potion’s shield flared blue, preventing his bones from snapping into pieces, but the blunt impact was still devastating. His fingers went completely numb, sending a sharp jolt of pain up his forearm.

He lost his grip on the concrete edge, his body instantly sliding backwards across the rough asphalt as the wind tried to carry him away, but still gritted his teeth, letting out a strained grunt as he clamped his other hand down on the barrier, holding completely still against the hurricane of magic.

Next to him, Alice was struggling in a completely different, terrifying way.

As a ghost, she usually didn’t have to worry about physical debris.

She was actively focusing her energy, making the flying bricks, shattered glass, and twisted metal phase right through her translucent body.

But the wave itself was heavily laced with thick, aggressive red mana. It was actively disrupting her connection to the physical world, making her spectral form flicker wildly like a broken lightbulb.

She had to concentrate incredibly hard to keep the Iron Skin potion’s effects active while remaining intangible to the debris. It was a delicate balancing act, and the sheer chaos of the environment was breaking her focus.

While trying to phase a massive piece of flying concrete through her chest, her concentration slipped for just a fraction of a second. As she moved to adjust her position behind the cover, her left hand phased straight through the solid concrete wall of the traffic barrier.

She couldn’t pull it back in time.

With her physical anchor exposed completely beyond their shelter, the red wave came rushing down the ruined street.

It carried the heavy, burning heat of the destruction, and it hit her exposed hand with full force, making her form disappear.