Empire Building With Infinite Warehouse-Chapter 44: First Wave[3]

Panic threatened to stop Julien’s lungs entirely, but the instinct to survive was far stronger.

He swiped his bruised hand through the dust-filled air, pulling up the glowing gold interface of his Merchant class and ignoring the standard weapons and basic armours, his eyes darting frantically across the expansive Tier 1 item registry.

The golden text scrolled rapidly across his vision until a specific cluster of utility items caught his desperate attention.

[Infinite Warehouse: Tier 1 Utility]

[Enlarge Rope (100 Credits): A magically woven cord capable of extending up to 3 kilometres. Highly durable against physical tension.]

[Feather Potion (150 Credits): Drastically reduces the mass and physical weight of the consumer or targeted object for three minutes.]

The five heavy armoured transport vehicles were hurtling through the air directly toward Chris and Alice, carrying tons of lethal momentum.

A barrier wouldn’t stop them, but if he could completely remove their mass, the violent winds of the shockwave would do the rest.

"System!" Julien shouted over the sound of the storm. "Purchase one Enlarge Rope and one Feather Potion! Deduct the Credits!"

The familiar, warm golden light flared in his hands. A thick, sturdy woven rope and a single glass filled with pale, swirling silver liquid materialised into reality.

He didn’t have a fraction of a second to second-guess his terrifying plan.

Julien rapidly wrapped one end of the Enlarge Rope securely around his waist, tying a brutal, tight knot. He grabbed the Feather Potion, popped the cork with his thumb, and poured the entire vial down his throat.

The physical reaction was instantaneous and entirely disorienting. The heavy, exhausted ache in his muscles simply vanished. His boots lifted a fraction of an inch off the cracked asphalt.

He felt incredibly, dangerously light, as if his entire body had been hollowed out and replaced with helium.

Before he could even brace himself, the raging hurricane of the Red Gate’s exhale caught his weightless form.

The wind ripped Julien right out from behind the safety of the concrete barricade. He was launched into the chaotic red sky at an absolutely terrifying speed, soaring upward like a discarded piece of paper caught in a tornado.

The ruined, devastated streets of District 9 blurred beneath him as he hurtled directly toward the incoming fleet of tumbling transport vehicles.

"Purchase ten more Feather Potions!" Julien screamed into the rushing wind, his eyes watering from the sheer force. "Now!"

Golden light flashed repeatedly around his waist.

Ten silver vials dropped directly into his waiting hands.

Flying completely out of control, Julien braced himself as the massive door of the first tumbling truck loomed directly in his path.

He simply pulled his arm back and hurled the first cluster of glass straight at the reinforced steel.

The pale silver liquid sprayed across the hood of the vehicle, instantly soaking into the heavy metal.

He spun mid-air, carried by the violent currents, and violently smashed the remaining potions against the doors and undercarriages of the other incoming trucks.

The system magic overwrote the laws of gravity.

The five massive, multi-ton armoured vehicles suddenly lost their crushing mass. Stripped of their weight, they instantly became absolute slaves to the violent wind.

Instead of crashing down onto the street below, the hurricane caught the massive trucks and lifted them higher into the atmosphere.

Down on the ground, Chris had curled his massive body over Alice, bracing his injured back for an impact that would surely break his spine. But the impact never came.

A massive shadow passed over them. Chris looked up just in time to see the five transport vehicles floating harmlessly over his head, entirely caught in the slipstream of the shockwave, tumbling away into the distant ruins of the sector like giant, weightless balloons.

Julien had actually done it.

But up in the sky, the young merchant was facing a completely different nightmare.

He was still virtually weightless, and the wind was carrying him away at blinding speed.

"Chris! Catch this!" Julien roared from above, desperately hurling the heavy coil of the Enlarge Rope downward.

The rope unspooled rapidly, the magical fibres extending endlessly as it dropped through the chaotic air toward the street.

Chris heard the shout. The giant immediately pushed himself off the wall, planting his boots firmly onto the ruined road and reached up high into the air with his right hand, his eyes tracking the falling rope.

But his right arm was deeply compromised. The heavy gash he had taken from the flying glass earlier had torn through his muscle, leaving his arm slick with blood and trembling with pain. As his thick fingers clamped down, the smooth, magically woven rope simply slid right through his weakened, bloody grip.

He missed.

High above, Julien’s face went entirely pale. The wind was dragging him further away, toward the collapsing skyscrapers of the inner sector.

Suddenly, a slender pair of hands shot out from behind Chris’s broad shoulder.

Alice, fully physical and gasping for breath, lunged forward. She wasn’t a ghost right now, but she also couldn’t afford to let the merchant die. She held both of her newly solid hands around the trailing end of the Enlarge Rope just before it whipped past them.

The sudden, violent tension of catching a flying human yanked Alice forward. The abrasive rope burned fiercely against her palms, tearing the skin, but she gritted her teeth and absolutely refused to let go.

Her boots scraped harshly against the asphalt as Julien’s momentum tried to drag her into the sky.

"I have it." Alice yelled, her voice straining under the immense physical effort.

Chris instantly stepped in front of her. Knowing his right arm was useless for gripping, he reached out with his massive, uninjured left hand and clamped his fingers tightly over the rope directly in front of Alice.

With a roar of pure exertion, he leaned his entire body weight backwards, planting his boots so hard the ground cracked beneath him.

It took thirty agonising seconds of pulling against the hurricane, but Julien finally slammed down onto the pavement, rolling harshly across the ground.

Chris didn’t wait for the merchant to stand up. He grabbed the remaining slack of the rope and rapidly tied Julien directly to his own broad back, securing the weightless merchant so the wind couldn’t steal him away again until the three-minute timer of the Feather Potion finally wore off.

Julien hung there against the vanguard’s back, his chest heaving as the adrenaline slowly began to recede.

His hands were shaking violently, but he forced himself to focus. He immediately accessed the golden interface one more time.

Two vials of basic restorative health potions materialised in his grip.

"Drink these," Julien commanded, holding one out to Alice and passing the other over his shoulder to Chris.

Chris took the potion with his good hand and downed it instantly. The deep, bleeding wound on his right arm slowly began to knit itself together, the torn muscle repairing under the system’s magic.

Alice, leaning heavily against the brick wall and nursing her rope-burned hands, took hers much more slowly, shivering as the cool liquid soothed her physical injuries.

With his team temporarily stabilised, Julien finally looked around.

The wind was dying down. But as the thick clouds of red dust slowly began to settle, the true horror of their situation was fully revealed.

The chaotic streets of District 9 were simply gone. Entire apartment blocks had been flattened into piles of brick and steel. The roads were ripped apart, exposing the underground sewer lines. Fires burned uncontrollably in the distance, casting long shadows across the wreckage.

And everywhere Julien looked, he saw the unmoving forms of the people who hadn’t been fast enough, or lucky enough, to find cover.

There were multiple casualties scattered across the ruined intersection, trapped beneath the rubble of what used to be their homes and businesses.

Julien stared at the destruction, a cold knot tightening in his stomach as he looked up at the swirling portal still hanging ominously in the sky above them.

That massive, city-levelling blast of pure kinetic destruction hadn’t been an attack.

It was just the first wave.