Empire Building With Infinite Warehouse-Chapter 102: Trial and Error

Stepping through the steel barricades felt like crossing over into a completely different dimension.

The outside camp was just a chaotic mess of desperate people trying to survive another day in the ruins.

But Camp Seven was a highly organised, terrifying madhouse.

Heavily armed soldiers in patched-up uniforms were running intense physical training drills in the dirt, shouting weird, synchronised chants that sounded a whole lot like the creepy prayers from the front gate.

Julien kept his eyes straight ahead, pulling the heavy wooden cart alongside Kyle.

They walked past rows of identical grey canvas tents and massive piles of military supplies.

Over on a makeshift dirt training ground, two guys were currently beating the life out of each other.

They were not wearing any protective armour and were just using their bare fists to do maximum damage.

Blood was actively pooling around their heavy boots, staining the dry dirt dark red, but neither of them stopped swinging.

The surrounding soldiers were just watching them with total deadpan expressions, completely unfazed by the brutal fight happening right in front of their faces.

Kyle let out a low whistle, his heavy boots crunching loudly against the gravel path.

"Man, this place is really a mess, huh?" the giant mercenary muttered quietly, keeping a firm grip on the cart handles.

Coming from a guy who literally carried a black sword the size of a surfboard and lived for a good brawl, that was really saying something.

Even a certified fight maniac like Kyle was getting seriously weirded out by the aggression and disregard for human life floating in the air.

They were just walking down the main path, trying to keep a low profile, when a very out-of-place figure suddenly stepped directly in front of them.

It was a woman with short blonde hair and glasses.

She was wearing a shockingly clean, professional accountant dress that looked like it belonged in a pre-apocalypse corporate office building who was clutching a digital writing pad tightly to her chest and looking right at them.

"Mr Julien?" she asked, her voice completely flat and totally devoid of any real emotion.

"Yes, that is me," Julien replied quickly, putting his friendly merchant smile back to work while holding his hands up in a non-threatening gesture.

"Please leave your cart and your bodyguard right here and come with me," she instructed, tapping her pen against the digital pad without actually looking up.

"We need to properly test your entire batch of potions before officially admitting you to the inner camp markets."

Julien nodded slowly, processing the sudden change of plans. He turned around and gave Kyle a quick hand signal to stay put and guard their main inventory.

Then he walked to the back of the cart, reached into his deep jacket pockets, and pulled out the twenty specific garbage potions he had carefully selected the night before.

He placed them into a small canvas bag, took a deep breath, and followed the blonde woman away from the noisy training grounds.

He really hoped these low-tier items were enough to pass their tests without making him look like some kind of irreplaceable genius. Julien also glanced around the busy camp while walking, silently wondering exactly where Maya was hiding in this massive cult compound.

Getting into the camp was supposed to be the easy part, but this place was already turning into a total nightmare.

She led him toward a massive, square building that had clearly been heavily reinforced with steel plating and extra guard posts.

A faded sign painted above the heavy double doors simply read ’Research Facility’.

While they were walking up the cracked concrete steps, the blonde woman suddenly looked back over her shoulder.

"Commander Lena mentioned that you are highly well-versed in complex alchemy, Mr Julien," she stated plainly, adjusting her thick glasses.

’Oh shit,’ Julien thought to himself, feeling a sudden spike of panic hit his chest.

Back in his old life, he had actually failed his high school chemistry class because he kept falling asleep in the back row.

He did not know the first actual thing about real alchemy or brewing potions and literally just pulled magical items out of a glowing blue system screen.

But he obviously could not just admit that right now while standing inside a military cult fortress surrounded by armed guards.

"Yeah, well, I mostly just made these through a lot of trial and error," Julien lied smoothly, chuckling a little bit to sell the humble travelling merchant routine.

"Once you actually get the base formula down right, then everything else is pretty easy to figure out from there."

The woman just nodded her head like that made perfect logical sense and pushed open the heavy double doors.

The inside of the research facility was freezing.

It looked like a terrible mix between a high-end hospital and a dirty slaughterhouse. White-coated scientists were rushing around long tables filled with bubbling beakers and strange glowing liquids.

The smell of chemicals and blood hung heavily in the cold air. But the worst part was sitting right against the far back wall of the massive room.

There were large iron cages lined up in a neat row.

And they were not holding wild monsters or aggressive beasts from the dimensional gates.

They were holding humans.

At least a dozen young people were sitting inside the dark enclosures, probably ranging anywhere from eighteen to twenty-two years old, who were all wearing thin grey hospital gowns and staring blankly at the floor.

"What the fuck?" Julien accidentally blurted out loud, completely dropping his polite customer service facade in an instant.

His brain just short-circuited trying to process the casual human rights violations happening right in front of him.

He stopped walking and just stared at the people sitting behind the iron bars.

The blonde woman did not even bother to turn around or slow her walking pace.

"Please do not worry about them, Mr Julien," she replied, her tone still completely flat and strictly professional.

"They all happily volunteered themselves for this important work."

Before Julien could even begin to question what kind of insane person would actually volunteer to sit in an iron cage in a laboratory, one of the scientists walked over and unlocked the nearest cell door.

The guy in the white coat pulled a young, skinny kid out by his arm and guided him over to a cold metal operating table sitting right in the middle of the busy room.

He forced the kid to lie down flat on his back under the bright surgical lights.

"Will it hurt, doctor?" the skinny kid asked, his voice slurring heavily as the scientist injected a quick dose of clear liquid right into his neck to make him dizzy and completely compliant.

"Of course not," the doctor smiled warmly, patting the kid gently on the shoulder like a proud father comforting his son.

Then the scientist casually reached down under the metal table and pulled out a heavy, gas-powered chainsaw.