100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 354 - East

Lucien hit the Big World like a meteor.

Soil buckled and stone fractured. A crater flowered outward and dust rose in a ring that swallowed sight for a breath.

He lay still, more annoyed than injured. He felt a heavy weight pinning his chest. For a half second, he thought the corridor had collapsed on him.

Then the weight shifted.

A body. Warm. Faintly smelling of smoke and sunlight.

Lucien’s hand slid under the shoulder and he rolled the person off him. He placed her on the ground as the dust thinned.

Kaia.

Her lashes trembled, golden embers still fading along her arms.

Lucien remembered the fall. Midair, Kaia’s golden flame had snapped out like a lasso, coiling around him, binding their trajectories together so they would not scatter farther apart.

Lucien exhaled once, then stood and closed his eyes.

The Concord Pact thread was still there.

He spoke into it.

[Sister. Brother. Where are you two?]

Silence answered first, stretching just long enough to make the air feel sharper.

Then Astraea’s voice arrived.

[Little brother. I knew you would be fine.]

A beat.

[I reached for the children who were arcing toward the Black Mass. If even one of them was swallowed, their potential would become the enemy’s nourishment. I do not permit that.]

Lucien’s jaw tightened.

Before he could reply, a second presence brushed the link.

Vaelcar.

[Listen well, little brother.]

Lucien felt the strain behind Vaelcar’s voice.

[The severance ate my arm. Not flesh alone. But function and meaning. The arm’s right to answer my Law was cut away. Recovery will not be swift.]

A pause.

[I fell in the North Continent. I caught several of the children on the way down. I will bring them to shelter. Then I will visit my kin. There are old medicines and older pacts that may hasten what should take years.]

Lucien let the breath leave him slowly.

So the scattering had truly separated them.

Still, the Concord thread held. That mattered.

[Do you know where I landed?] Lucien asked.

Astraea answered without hesitation.

[If my storm reads the world correctly, you are in the East.]

Lucien flinched.

East.

The opposite end of his intent.

He opened his eyes, reached into his inventory, and drew the Waystone Fragment linked to Eirene. Light shimmered across its face and resolved into direction and distance.

The numbers were ugly.

Lucien stared for a moment, then sighed.

’I have to reach the intercontinental teleportation array first.’

Astraea’s voice returned.

[I will be silent for a time. Monsters have noticed me.]

[Be careful, sister.] Lucien replied.

He did not worry for Astraea’s survival. If she could not win, she could leave. The storm always could.

He worried for the Liberators with her.

Then, he looked down.

Kaia’s eyes opened.

She blinked up at him, then around at the crater.

Lucien folded his arms.

"The Disney princess is finally awake."

Kaia’s brows jumped, but she swallowed the argument as if her pride had bigger problems.

"Where are we?"

Lucien glanced at the horizon, then at the Waystone again.

"East Continent," he said. "We got thrown far."

Kaia pushed herself upright, rubbing the back of her neck. Dust fell off her hair like pale snow.

"Good. I hate when fate throws me somewhere reasonable."

Lucien’s mouth twitched.

Kaia’s gaze sharpened. Her senses stretched outward.

"Someone noticed our fall," she said.

Lucien had already felt it. Distant signatures.

He nodded to her.

Kaia rose.

In the same breath, the two of them burst from their position.

Space folded under their stride and in an instant they were already miles away from where they had stood.

As the distance settled behind them, Kaia spoke.

"Brother, we should go to a branch of our organization."

Lucien turned toward her. "There is one here too?"

Kaia grinned. "There are branches on every continent. That is why I do not worry about the others. Even scattered, we have nets."

Lucien stayed silent. His mind was already weighing the benefits.

Information. Local maps. Updates on how the Big World had changed since he last walked its soil.

The Alloykins had hinted at it. The world was not peaceful. Not anymore.

He nodded once.

"Fine. How do we find it?"

Kaia’s smile grew shameless. "I do not know hehe. The black card reacts when you get close enough."

Lucien sighed.

So it was still on him.

He reached for the Spatial Compass.

This time, it did not stay blind.

Its needle stirred, then snapped into direction with clean confidence.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed.

He willed a request into it.

’Show me the nearest Liberator branch.’

The needle swung.

Lucien pointed. "East."

Kaia leaned in, squinting at the compass.

"Alright," she said. "Your call."

Lucien was about to release his Voidcraft to get there faster when both of them paused.

A smell. Blood. And presences clustered together, dense enough to be a fight.

Kaia’s gaze met Lucien’s.

No words were needed.

They moved quietly, aura compressed and presence folded.

They crested a broken ridge and looked down.

A battlefield.

Two groups.

A large ship lay wrecked below, split along its belly as if something had clawed it out of the sky. Broken hull plates were scattered across the ground. Mana tools spilled like bones.

And in the center of it, one side was being bullied.

Lucien’s eyes widened.

Alloykins. Astrafer-bodied.

Their metallic skin carried that familiar shimmer that dispersed force through resonance, spreading impact across their frame to avoid critical damage.

They were not struggling.

They were hunting.

Several Celestial-Realm auras flared among them.

Lucien’s mind turned.

His gaze shifted to the other party: battered, defensive, and clustered near the ship’s shadow. Thousand Race figures with blood on their clothes and grit in their eyes. Their formation was collapsing. Their movements had the desperate rhythm of people trying to survive long enough for luck to arrive.

And luck really did arrive.

Lucien.

He stepped out.

A blink of space, and he was suddenly between two clashing bodies.

Kaia’s voice snapped behind him, delayed by shock.

"Brother, wait!"

Too late.

An Alloykin swung a heavy arm down.

Lucien raised his palm.

His void attribute gathered.

He struck the Alloykin’s chest with a clean, compact push.

The Astrafer body tried to do what it always did.

Redistribute and spread the impact.

But void did not behave like normal force.

The resonance hesitated.

The Astrafer did not know how to spread something that refused to be "spread."

The Alloykin’s eyes widened.

Lucien did not pause.

He cast a void-binding. Gravity without mass. A pull that treated the Alloykin as a location that must be corrected.

The Alloykin lurched forward, dragged by invisible hands.

Lucien compressed the space around.

Not enough to crack armor. But enough to make the inside of its existence argue with itself.

Then the argument ended.

The Alloykin died like a candle pinched out.

Silence slammed down.

Dust drifted.

All eyes turned to Lucien.

The bullied party stared like they had just watched a stranger snap a chain with two fingers.

The remaining Alloykins stared like predators who had suddenly met something that hunted predators.

Kaia reappeared beside Lucien in a flicker of golden flame and stared at the corpse.

Then at Lucien.

"Why did you hit first?" she hissed. "You did not even confirm who was wrong."

Lucien’s mouth opened, then shut.

He let out a small, resigned breath.

"Old habit."

Kaia’s eyes narrowed.

Then one of the Alloykins moved.

Their target shifted.

The bully’s attention locked onto Lucien and Kaia.

A killing intent, sharp and eager.

Lucien’s expression smoothed into mild satisfaction.

"I guess I was not wrong."

Kaia’s face twisted. "Yeah. Now I am sure."

The Alloykin lunged at her.

Kaia’s golden flame burst out.

It struck, and as expected, the body dispersed the damage across itself. The burn spread thin and weak, refusing to become a real wound.

The Alloykin laughed.

"Flame?" it sneered. "Flame is for children."

Kaia’s smile vanished.

In its place came something colder.

"Oh," Kaia said softly. "So you think you are safe because you can spread pain."

She raised two fingers.

A black flame formed between them.

A needle of darkness.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed in recognition.

That black flame did not burn like heat.

It erased like judgment.

Kaia flicked her fingers.

The needle crossed the battlefield in a blink and kissed the Alloykin’s chest.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

The Alloykin laughed louder.

"Is that it?"

Kaia’s eyes glittered.

Then the black flame reignited at the point of contact.

It expanded like a verdict.

It bloomed outward over the Alloykin’s entire body in a single hungry surge, covering every inch at once.

Redistribution failed.

There was nowhere for the damage to go when the whole body was the wound.

The Alloykin screamed.

Its Astreafer skin blackened. Its aura shrieked. It fell, flailing, as the black flame ate not only flesh and metal but the concept that those things were allowed to remain intact.

Lucien whistled under his breath.

"Whole-body saturation," he murmured. "So dispersion is pointless."

Kaia glanced at him, still furious. "Do not narrate my genius like you helped."

Lucien smiled anyway.

That was a clean solution. But it required either overwhelming force or a power that could propagate instantly across the frame.

The remaining Alloykins stumbled back with shock cracking their swagger.

One of them shouted, voice tight with disbelief.

"How?"

Another snarled, scanning Kaia’s flame as if trying to measure it.

"Fire is an inferior Law. It should not scar Astrafer!"

Lucien froze at the phrase.

Inferior Law.

His mind tried to reject it on principle.

A Law was a Law. Strength was understanding, application, creativity, and compatibility.

Ranks for Laws sounded like ignorance dressed as doctrine.

But he did not have time to unravel the implication.

Kaia did.

Her expression sharpened into offended violence.

"Inferior?" she repeated.

Her black flame rose again, and the air around it warped as if reality wanted to step away.

Lucien moved too.

The bullied party behind them hesitated, then one of them shouted, hoarse.

"Benefactors... thank you for helping us!"

A woman with blood on her cheek lifted a broken spear and pointed at the Alloykins. "They raided us. They tried to take survivors."

Kaia’s eyes went cold.

Lucien’s smile faded.

The Alloykins heard it too, and their surprise hardened into anger.

One stepped forward.

"Surrender now and we might spare you. You have no idea who you are crossing. This region will soon fall under our dominion. We are—"

Lucien blinked.

He appeared in front of it.

"Quiet," Lucien said.

Then void answered.

The battlefield exploded into motion.

Alloykins surged like living metal storms. Kaia moved like wrath wearing sunlight and night. Lucien moved like space itself had decided to become hostile.

The Alloykins tried to coordinate, but each time they thought they had momentum, their formation broke on an invisible edge. They were used to being invulnerable at points.

But Lucien did not strike points.

He struck rules.

And Kaia did not burn parts.

She burned all.

Some of the Alloykins attempted to retreat.

Lucien folded space and returned one of them to its original position, as if the concept of retreat had never existed.

Kaia’s golden flames lashed out, coiling around another fleeing figure and dragging it back into the battlefield.

There was no retreat beneath their feet.

The bullied party finally moved, joining with sudden ferocity now that the invincible had begun to die.

They dragged Alloykins into Kaia’s spreading flame so the burn could swallow them whole.

An Alloykin staggered, and roared at Lucien with hate.

"Who are you?"

Lucien’s gaze flicked over it with bored precision.

"Someone who dislikes bullies," he said.

Then he palmed it again.

Void kissed its chest.

Resonance failed.

The Alloykin folded inward, dying like a collapsed star.

Silence arrived in pieces.

One last Alloykin crawled, black flame eating its legs.

It looked up at Kaia with terror and rage.

"Inferior thing," it rasped.

Kaia leaned down, eyes bright with cruel amusement.

"If this is inferior," she said softly, "then your superior Law is doing a terrible job keeping you alive."

She snapped her fingers.

The black flame surged once more, and the Alloykin became ash that did not know what metal had once meant.

When it was done, the battlefield held only smoke, wreckage, and survivors breathing like they had forgotten how.