Chapter 127: My Personal Sanctuary
The transition through the portal felt like falling down a long flight of stairs in the dark, but with significantly more lights and a terrible feeling of nausea.
Julien tumbled through a swirling mess of broken static and hit a smooth concrete floor.
He groaned out loud and rolled onto his back, rubbing his bruised shoulder while trying to figure out which way was actually up.
The giant bat-hound let out a high-pitched, terrified whimper that did not match its scary face at all, and it immediately scrambled right behind Julien’s legs to hide from the lights.
Maya did not waste a second recovering from the confusing fall.
She rolled perfectly to her feet the moment her boots touched the ground, her dual daggers already drawn and pointing at the shadows surrounding them.
Kyle landed a bit heavier with a loud grunt, quickly throwing his large, muscular body in front of Aiden to shield the injured sniper from whatever fresh nightmare they just dropped into.
But no angry vampires were waiting to ambush them here, and Commander Lena’s crazy soldiers were nowhere to be seen.
Julien blinked the dizzy spots out of his eyes and slowly looked around, feeling his jaw practically unhinge as he finally processed their brand new environment.
They were sitting right in the middle of an impossibly huge building that stretched out much further than his human eyes could actually see.
It was an endless, clean warehouse filled with storage shelves reaching all the way up into a vaulted ceiling.
Every single shelf was packed to the brim with floating magical orbs, highly advanced weapon crates, stacks of glowing monster cores, and weird alien artefacts that he could not even begin to identify.
A cheerful blue screen popped up right in front of Julien’s face, blocking his view of a crate full of glowing red swords.
[Dimensional Transit Successful.]
[Notice: You have entered an unlisted sanctuary space.
[Standard dimensional shipping taxes are currently suspended.]
’I really hope my future self is not a jerk, because he clearly has way better real estate than I do,’ Julien thought to himself, staring at the endless rows of expensive inventory with a burning sense of pure jealousy.
’I am literally living out of a backpack right now, while this guy owns the magical equivalent of a wholesale superstore.’
"Put the steel sword away before you accidentally knock over that Ming dynasty vase sitting on the bottom shelf, Kyle," a sarcastic voice echoed across the quiet warehouse.
"That vase cost me about two million system credits, and I will deduct the entire cost from your future paychecks if you break it."
The older version of Julien casually walked out from behind a modern desk and tossed his starlight coat over a comfortable rolling chair.
He looked relaxed for a guy who just pulled four people out of an exploding warzone, and he was even wearing a pair of comfortable slippers.
Aiden peeked out from behind Kyle’s broad shoulders and pointed a shaking finger at the older merchant.
"Are we officially dead right now, or did we just get kidnapped by a system administrator who likes to collect weird people?" Aiden asked nervously, looking around the giant room like he fully expected a trap door to open up under his boots at any second.
"You guys are trouble," the older Julien said calmly, leaning against his desk and crossing his arms.
"You are all alive, and this is my personal sanctuary space. It is an infinite warehouse I built from scratch specifically to hide from the system’s constant surveillance and to avoid paying their ridiculous shipping taxes."
Julien pushed himself off the floor and dusted off his ruined merchant coat.
He stared at his older counterpart, feeling a very strange mix of total confusion and deep respect for the guy’s obvious business success.
"How is this even possible without breaking the universe?" Julien asked, gesturing wildly between the two of them.
"I am pretty sure you cannot just have two identical people standing in the same room without causing some kind of massive time paradox. I conjecture that reality is going to implode if we stay here too long."
The older Julien just shrugged his shoulders and turned around to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee from a machine sitting on his desk.
He took his time, acting like they were just having a casual business meeting instead of a timeline-breaking crisis.
"Here is the thing about time travel and system mechanics," the older Julien explained, taking a slow sip from his white mug.
"When Commander Lena forced that green portal open using magic back in the city, she shattered the local dimensional barrier. It created a blind spot in the system’s tracking network."
Maya lowered her daggers slightly, but she kept a very suspicious glare fixed directly on the older merchant.
"So you just used that temporary blind spot to sneak in and grab us while the system was looking the other way?" Maya asked, crossing her arms defensively.
"Exactly," the older Julien nodded with a proud smile.
"If you guys had stayed in that gothic town for even one more minute, the system’s automatic cleanup protocol would have deleted the entire city and everyone inside it just to fix the error Lena created. I basically swooped in and saved your lives at the very last second, so a simple thank you would be nice."
Right as he finished bragging about his daring rescue mission, a red warning screen popped up right between the two Juliens, blaring an annoying digital alarm that made the bat-hound whine and cover its large ears with its leathery wings.
[Warning: Temporal Anomaly Detected.]
[Notice: Two identical soul signatures are currently occupying the same local space.]
[Please resolve this error immediately to prevent account deletion.]
’Well, it looks like the universe is finally catching up to my luck,’ Julien thought to himself, watching the red screen flash.
’I cannot even enjoy meeting my rich future self without the system threatening to delete my entire account.’
"But there is something else we should focus right now," the older Julien said, putting his coffee mug down and pointing a scarred finger directly at his younger self.
"The system is actively hunting for our energy signatures right now because we are breaking a lot of fundamental laws just by standing next to each other.
You cannot stay in my infinite warehouse forever, because the system administrators will eventually scan this sector and wipe us both out."
The older Julien quickly reached under his desk, opened a premium locking crate, and tossed a heavy, glowing compass right at Julien.
Julien caught the magical device awkwardly against his chest and looked down at the spinning blue dial. It did not point north, but instead, it pointed toward a swirling cluster of digital numbers.
"What am I supposed to do with this expensive toy?" Julien asked, tapping the glass face of the compass.
"You need to jump to a highly competitive commercial sector and get significantly stronger before you do anything else," the older Julien ordered, walking over to a large control panel mounted on the warehouse wall.
"You need to build a monopoly from the ground up and secure enough capital to actually survive the next phase of the apocalypse. The system does not care about heroes, because it only cares about people who can control the economy."
’I finally get a sneak peek at my wealthy future, and I am apparently still stuck doing stressful inventory management just to stay alive,’ Julien thought to himself, gripping the compass tightly in his hand.
’I guess some things never really change, no matter how much money you have sitting in your bank account.’
The older Julien flipped a series of switches on the wall panel, and a brand new, perfectly stable blue portal hummed to life in the centre of the warehouse.
It looked completely different from the glitching green mess they just escaped, radiating a calm, inviting light.
"Get moving and start building your own empire, because the multiverse is about to get a lot more crowded and very expensive," the older Julien said, shooing them toward the blue light like they were annoying customers loitering in his store right before closing time.
