"If we can't move the goods above ground without breaking protocol, we go below."
Marcus Zhang's eyes gleamed with a predatory wisdom, his voice dropping into a gravelly bass. "When we broke ground on Astra Base, we hollowed out a redundant transport artery—a line buried three hundred meters beneath the crust."
"It's a direct shot to a black-site transit station fifteen kilometers away, powered by a fully automated mag-lev conveyor system." Marcus paused, his gaze boring into Ethan with a mix of anxiety and desperate hope. "But Ethan... how does it work? Do you need a Gateway to pull things from the Astra Dimension? Or..."
He swallowed hard, his voice thick with anticipation. "If we stand in that terminal right now, can you simply... conjure the resources? Can you put them directly onto the belts?"
This was the lynchpin. If Ethan was tethered to the main Portal, they would have to re-engineer the entire base's logistics. But if he was the portal himself...
Ethan saw the tension in Marcus's shoulders and offered a relaxed, confident smile. He tapped his temple. "Uncle Marcus, did you forget the gold block in the briefing room? That world isn't just a place I visit. It's an extension of my mind. It's a part of me."
"As long as I can visualize the space, I can bridge the matter. Anywhere. Anytime."
To drive the point home, Ethan flicked his wrist.
CLATTER.
A perfect, one-meter cube of solid Gold, shimmering with a warm, heavy luster, materialized on the reinforced floor. It hit the deck with a thud that vibrated through their boots.
Marcus stared at the block, his pupils dilating. Then, he let out a sudden, bark-like laugh that he couldn't suppress. "Good! Hell, that's better than good!"
He slapped his thigh with enough force to bruise. "Let's move. We're going to the Arterial Line. Today, we're going to load Silas Chen's trucks until the axles snap and the tires burst!"
Marcus took point, leading Ethan through a series of high-security bulkheads. They passed dual-iris scanners and genetic-sequence locks before arriving at a massive, featureless alloy elevator. It was large enough to hold a platoon of tanks. There were no buttons—only a palm-print sensor glowing with a soft blue light.
Marcus pressed his hand to the glass.
"Authorization Confirmed. General Marcus Zhang. Destination: Sub-Level 3, The Nexus Terminal."
RUMBLE.
The elevator didn't just drop; it plummeted. Ethan felt the familiar tug of high-speed descent, the pressure popping his ears as they dove deeper into the earth than he had ever imagined. After a full minute of silent, vibrating motion, the car jolted and hissed to a halt.
DING.
The heavy doors slid back. Ethan stepped out and immediately stopped, his breath hitching.
Before him lay a subterranean cavern of impossible proportions. High-output industrial floods illuminated the space as brightly as high noon, their light reflecting off a dizzying web of steel tracks and automated sorters. It was a cathedral of industry.
Five-meter-wide Titan Conveyor Arrays snaked through the darkness like interwoven steel pythons, converging from a dozen different tunnels into this central heart. The air hummed with the relentless roar of machinery. Robotic arms danced with surgical precision, sorting crates of medical supplies and munitions destined for the base. It was a silent, unmanned empire of steel.
"Is this how you get everything in?" Ethan asked, his voice hushed.
"This is the esophagus of Astra Base," Marcus said, pride swelling in his chest. "Supplies arrive at the secret station fifteen kilometers out, they're stripped of tracking and repackaged, then sent down the 'Arterial Line'. It's completely autonomous. Total concealment."
Marcus grinned, pointing to the belts that were currently feeding the base. "But as of this second, the esophagus is going to vomit in reverse. And what it's about to spit out is a miracle that will rewrite the industrial destiny of the Federation—and the world."
Ethan stepped forward, moving into the center of the vast alloy plaza—a space large enough to hold three football stadiums. He didn't say a word. He simply raised his right hand and made a sweeping gesture toward the empty floor.
In that instant, the air itself seemed to fracture.
Space distorted, warping like heat haze over asphalt. An indescribable pressure, the weight of an entire dimension, descended into the cavern. Marcus's eyes went wide.
BOOM.
With a dull, earth-shaking thud, the spatial rift expanded.
Dazzling golden light, mixed with the matte grey of refined iron and the obsidian black of high-grade coal, erupted from the void like a breached dam.
In a single second, a mountain appeared.
Thousands of one-cubic-meter blocks—Gold, Iron, and Coal—materialized in perfect, stacked rows. The resource mountain surged upward, covering thousands of square meters in a heartbeat. The golden glow was so intense it seemed to dye the very air of the terminal yellow.
Marcus looked up at the summit of the pile, his jaw hanging open. He had led armies and seen the might of nations, but this... this was something else.
Then, with a series of heavy, metallic thuds, a dozen silhouettes appeared at the base of the mountain.
Nearly three meters tall, hulking and broad-shouldered, the Iron Golems stood like silent sentinels. The few guards monitoring the perimeter jumped, their hands flying to their sidearms.
"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Marcus roared, his voice echoing off the cavern walls. "They're with us!"
The Iron Golems turned their massive, stone-carved heads. Seeing Ethan and Marcus, they moved with a synchronized, heavy precision that made the floor tremble.