A short drive through the crete aal juhat is the uy we reached our destination. Upon our arrival, roup unloaded out of the car with Alid I climbing out of the back seats st, and walked through the parking lot in the dire of a rge crete aal structure located a short distance away.

  When the bunch of us ehe real estate building, the front desk immediately greeted us and directed us to sit down and wait for the agent that my family preferred to do business with due to previous dealings, Mr. Birch.

  We sat there waiting for around a minute or so before an entleman showed up from the nearby elevator dressed in a dark blue suit. Following a shreeting and a bit of small talk, he brought us away first to the elevator and then to his office the elevator reached the fifth floor.

  Directly after entering Mr. Birch's office, he inquired as to the reason for our visit. "So what brings you all here to today?"

  Grandpa Henry pced his hand on my left shoulder and answered. "My grandson over here wants a rge industrial building that he use for researd manufacturing, preferably iween the manufacturing and mining districts."

  The sed he learned of what we want, he set into motion and began rapidly pulling up and showing us the numerous properties avaible with his desktop. That should meet my requirements.

  I looked through a number of them and ended up seleg three of them that fit my needs in terms of space as well as location. With my choices made we headed back to the lobby with Mr. Birow apanying us and since my dad's car didn't have enough space for all of us Mr. Birch got the pany to send a rge passenger van to take us to go look at the properties I was ied in seeing.

  roup waited until the van showed up, and so with our transportation here, we collectively boarded the vehicle and began our trip to nearly the other side of the uy. On our long-ish drive to the other side and with not much to do on the ride there, I passed the time by looking out the window at the many things taking pd going on iy with Alice again attached to my side.

  As the van tiraveling to the first property, I watched the many cars that reminded me of the different models from my previous world mashed together with an assortment of futuristic elements and styling pass us by, going wherever their destinations lied.

  Besides watg the many cars passing by, the numerous uy residents going about their lives in the distance kept me eained enough for the several minutes before my mind started wandering and a thought occurred to me.

  It's holy impressive how much this pce has grown sinuclear annihition fucked everything up two turies ago…

  While the car tinued on its way, I kept myself occupied with the going ons of the city as well as my thoughts. After spending my time like that for however many minutes, we finally arrived at our first destination.

  "We've reached the property yrandson was ied in seeing and from what I tell, it should fit your requirements rather well." Mr. Birch said moments after the car came to a stop.

  "Let's go check it out and see if it fits what you're looking frandson." My grandpa Henry said before we started exiting the vehicle.

  Ohe bunch of us left the vehicle excluding the driver who would remain with the van, we began walking in the dire of a rge nondescript industrial building that appeared to be around 30 feet or so tall and covered at least several thousand square feet in area. When we reached the main door of the building, Mr. Birch walked up to a keypad located o the door and keyed in a code, unlog the door.

  With the door open, we headed inside, followed by Mr. Birch, who held the door open for us. And right as he rejoined us, he began listing the notable features of this property, such as it being the closest oo my home. Which would cut down on travel time for me, although not signifitly. Adding to the reduced travel time, the building had plenty of space to house the various things I would be needing it for.

  The st big be of this property was that the inal owner used to run a on manufacturing pany out of here and had yet to move and sell off the many pieces of heavy maery here. So I could pay a bit extra on top of the purchase price of the property to get them included.

  It wouldn't be too bad of an idea, si would reduce the amount of maery I would o buy after whatever pce I decide to go with. That said, I have pns of building more versatile manufacturing equipment so many of the pieces here will be useless to me so it may not be that worthwhile to acquire them… There is also the option of modifying and refiguring, and if I don't go with that I could just dissemble them for parts and whatnot.

  …

  Expl the factory in its ey, Mr. Birch said. "I believe that's it for this property. Does anyone have questiarding the property?"

  Waiting for a few seds to see if any of my family had any inquiries, they didn't, thus I did. "Doesn't look like it."

  "Alright, let's tinue on to the one." Mr. Birch responded while leading the way back to the vehicle.

  As soon as we loaded back up into the van, the driver drove off deeper iween the manufacturing and mining areas of the uy. Following a short ride, we arrived at the location, this one being a somewhat rger warehouse-looking structure.

  Upon reag our destination, we swiftly left the van behind ahrough a simir sequence of events. After going through our look through the property, I discovered this one retty g in the bes department. The only real o provided was its pletely bnk ste that I could do just about anything I wanted with to make it my own.

  So with this one being kind of a dud with little to nothing to make it stand out from its petition than it being a bnk vas. We went on our way to the third and st property that was on the edge of the two zones, bag up to the rough bedrock walls of the uy that had yet to be excavated for further expansion.

  A few minutes of travel ter, the st of the three properties came into view and not long after that, we begaing the van once again into a parking lot of a very wide five-story crete building that y a bit of distance away.

  As we were making our way to the double doors of the structure, Mr. Birch started speaking on the way there. "I'm almost certain you'll love this one, Dom, because it's the rgest out of the three and has plenty of equipment, with it inally being a foundry that processed metal the inal owracted from the attached mine."

  "An attached mine, you say. Noould someone want to get rid of a property?" I replied, skeptical about why someone would want to get rid of such a valuable property.

  "That's quite odd. I would also like to hear the reasoning behind why they wish to sell it off." My grandfather, Henry added.

  "Well, I'm ly sure of all the details, but apparently it has something to do with the attached mine. Unfortunately, that's all I know." Mr. Birswered with what he knew.

  "Ohh, and because of that, the owner is anxious to get rid of the property. So the property is disted quite a bit pared to what one would normally pay for a property such as this." Mr. Birch added further.

  If that's the only problem with the property I don't really have much of an issue with that since I don't necessarily he attached mih there being publies, although I'll have to pay tax for what I mine from those and deal with the many procedures that o be followed over there. With all that said, whatever issue the mine has, I'm sure I resolve it so I freely mine my own resources.

  "That's fine. I mainly he space so I experiment, research, and manufacture different things." I responded, keeping a good portion of what I was going to be up to hidden as roup begaering the facility.

  After entering the pce, we walked through what I would call a reception area before we passed by a male and female bathroom as we went through another set of double doors onto the main work floor. What stood before us retty barren space that only had twe arc furnaces for processing whatever ore they extracted and some other miseous equipment that was required for the rest of the processes.

  Guess they didn't have time to fully stock this pce before they ran into issues, not that's a problem for me. I actually see that as a positive in my case since if I end up going with this pce, I won't have to remove a bunch of unnecessary equipment and manufacturing maes.

  From there, we explored and ied the rest of the ground floor before moving to the basement that housed half a dozen small fusion power pnts. Following the geor room, we checked out the ste area in the basement, which was basically a miniature warehouse that was ected to the floor above with a cargo elevator.

  That covered the basemeirely, thus we walked back upstairs to the sed floor, which would be the fourth floor for most normal buildings. However, because this one is a foundry, the first floor is 30 feet tall to house rge industrial equipment. What we saw on that floor was basically just airely empty floor with a couple of offices built, likely for ma or the owner.

  I would probably use this floor for researd for produg the various drugs and medies I'll be needing, 't really have it on the main floor with the amount of manufacturing that will be going on down there.

  Now that that floor was covered, my group and I headed for the lead by Mr. Birch. The situation on that floor was the same story as the floor we had just e from and the floor after as well, thus we quickly tinued on to the st and final of the upper levels. ing upon that floor, we saw it was entirely posed of ventition equipment and other hardware. So with that floor also seen, we proceeded to the very st location, the attached mine.

  When we made it to the mine's entrance, roup found a longish-lit tunnel about 150 feet ih that had been artificially colpsed at the end. As everyone was looking around and chatting with each other, I walked closer to the colpsed se to see if I could discover what exactly was s with the mihat it would make the owner so eager to offload this gem.

  I haven't seen or found any issues with this mihus far and I've seen more than a hefty amount of iron and other ores embedded all over the tunnel's walls, so it's not like it doesn't have any resources to extract.

  As I began pting about what the fuck was wrong with this pce, I neared closer and closer to the colpsed rock. At a certain point, I detected something rather odd and out of pce within my perception field, that being several humaons stripped of absolutely all of their flesh. My i peaked by my find, I tinued ing closer and closer. As soon as I was just a few feet away from the rubble, I sensed something, a creature or creatures, in this case.

  … Oh, that could be the reason why the owner is so gung ho about getting rid of the property. Let's see exactly what kind of creatures I'm dealing with here.

  With the likely reason in sight, I crept a bit closer, further extending the range of my perception field over the creatures.