100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 383 - Outside

Lucien decided to accelerate things.

He descended to the battlefield.

Below, Starforge still moved like a machine with a heartbeat.

Lilith continued giving precise commands.

Steel flashed. Alloykins buckled and rose again, stubborn as rusted hinges refusing to break.

Kaia was there too. Her flame crawled along her arms like living scripture.

Lucien watched for one breath and made a decision.

He wanted to refine and perfect his new technique here, on this very battlefield.

Weaker enemies meant less resistance.

Lucien lifted his hand.

Structural Insight activated.

Lucien exhaled.

Then he spent a little of what remained of his divine energy. Not as a blast but as ink.

Thin threads of divine energy shot out and latched onto the exposed strings of multiple Alloykins at once.

Every Alloykin he touched gained the same invisible stain. Divine energy clung to their existence like wet paint on a contract.

The Alloykins felt it late.

Their heads snapped.

Lucien’s fingers curled.

And he changed the nature of what he had attached.

The divine energy shifted its property.

Collapse.

The first Alloykin froze mid-step.

Its knee bent.

Then it folded the wrong way, breaking the agreement that told its body how to stay assembled.

A second Alloykin tried to raise its arm.

The arm lifted, then forgot what "up" meant.

The shoulder joint simply stopped cooperating with reality.

A third Alloykin’s eyes widened, and then its focus went vacant as its targeting clause collapsed. It swung at air like a blind man punching smoke.

Then the chain reaction spread.

Wherever Lucien’s marked divine energy clung, strings buckled.

Balance. Orientation. Timing. The micro-loops that let Astrafer disperse impact cleanly.

Lucien did not need to kill them himself.

He only needed to make them fall.

All across the inner battlefield, Alloykins began dropping as if the floor had learned to hate them.

Metal bodies slammed into stone.

Weapons clattered.

Resonance sputtered and failed to find traction.

For a moment, it looked like luck.

Then it looked like judgement.

Lilith’s eyes widened.

She did not waste even half a breath.

"Now," she snapped. "Execute. Clean and fast. Do not let them recover."

Starforge moved instantly.

They struck downed Alloykins with practiced brutality. Blades and forged halberds cut through weak points.

Kaia blinked beside Lucien, eyes bright despite her exhaustion.

She stared at the collapsing enemies, then at him.

"Brother." Her grin returned. "That is disgusting."

She lifted her thumb anyway.

"Great technique."

Lilith appeared on his other side, still holding her polearm, but her voice slipped for the first time.

"Brother... you grew stronger again."

Then she swallowed and forced herself back into the battlefield mindset.

"By the way... what is the situation outside?"

Lucien’s mouth curved slightly.

He did not answer immediately.

He let his awareness brush the outside world.

His expression softened into something close to relief.

"They are holding," he said. "More than holding. They are doing well."

•••

Inside the inner battlefield, the last Alloykins were finished off.

The final one tried to stand.

It got halfway upright before its balance string collapsed again.

A Starforge veteran took its head cleanly.

Silence came in a rush.

Not peace.

Just a gap where breathing became possible again.

Lucien turned to Lilith.

"Let everyone rest," he said. "Recover. As for us... let’s join the fight outside."

Kaia stretched her shoulders, wincing.

"Great. You killed an Eternal. Maybe I can do it too against those Void-Walkers."

Lucien glanced at her.

"You can try in a decade."

Kaia’s smile died instantly.

"I am not talking to you anymore."

Lilith, who had been silent, suddenly spoke as if her mind finally caught up to reality.

"An Eternal was killed... by Brother Luc?"

Kaia answered before Lucien could.

"I do not even know where to start," she said, voice half amused, half shaken. "Just stay away from him if he looks cold. He was terrifying earlier."

Lucien choked on a laugh he did not want to admit existed.

He pointed at the air like a landlord pointing at a "no smoking" sign.

"Stop talking," he said. "You will pollute my place."

Kaia’s eyes widened. "Your place?"

Lilith stared between them, still processing.

Then she exhaled slowly, as if deciding it was safer to accept the impossible than argue with it.

Lucien opened his palm.

The inner realm’s boundary shifted.

The three of them appeared outside.

•••

Outside, the fight had reached its climax.

The first thing Lucien saw when he emerged was the city.

Starforge... It was ruined.

Forged towers cracked like broken teeth. Streets were split open, metal melted into rivers that had cooled mid-flow. Whole districts were flattened into hammered plate by stray impacts that did not care what a home was.

The barrier was scarred and flickering.

Above the ruins, legends fought.

Anvil-Horn stood like a moving fortress. His horn glowed with the Law of Forging. Each time a Void Sovereign tried to shift position, the air itself resisted, as if the sky had been turned into stubborn iron that refused to bend.

The Sovereign’s cosmic light flared, trying to force a path.

The path refused.

Saber moved through that refusal like a predator through tall grass.

His Law of Predation did not simply weaken enemies.

It changed the story.

For a heartbeat, a Void Sovereign would feel it.

The sensation of being hunted.

The Void Sovereign snarled and hurled Starlit Codex spears.

They shattered against them.

The Sovereign’s face twisted.

Their trump card was gone. Their scripture could not overwrite Starforge anymore.

Not while Lucien’s refined version lived in allied spirits.

To the side, the healer Void Sovereign was being smothered by formation warfare.

Dozens of Celestial experts moved as one body.

They did not chase kills.

They denied options.

Every time the healer tried to slip away and regroup with the Extinction-grade, someone was already there, cutting off the route.

And then Condoriano joined.

The Sky Condor rose again, battered but laughing wildly.

His wings spread and the horizon itself responded.

Condoriano used Horizon creatively, laying "edges" across the battlefield like invisible walls. Any attempt to reposition too cleanly found itself arriving into a horizon seam that did not accept it.

A Void Sovereign tried to vanish.

It reappeared half a body-length off, clipped by an invisible line of distance, and Saber was already there to punish the stumble.

Condoriano’s voice rolled, amused.

"You may refuse roads," he called to them, "but the sky still has borders. And I am the creature that remembers where they are."

The Sovereigns were being pressed.

Every attempt to converge on their leader was denied.

Every attempt to retreat was cut short.

And above them all, higher than law and pride, extinction fought extinction.

The Abyss-Eyed Devourer and the Extinction-grade Void-Walker collided like calamities slamming together.

Tentacles struck.

Anti-Meridian tried to unlink adjacency, tried to deny contact, and tried to make the universe forget that "hit" was even a concept.

Continuance answered with savage insistence.

A tentacle slammed down.

The sky dimmed for a blink.

A shockwave rolled outward and flattened what remained of a district below, turning buildings into dust and metal into warped sheets.

The Extinction-grade slid back again.

His expression was finally tight.

The Devourer surged with hateful intelligence that was not intelligence at all, only instinct sharpened into certainty.

More tentacles struck.

One caught the Extinction-grade’s shoulder.

For a breath, cosmic light bled out like spilled starlight.

Then Anti-Meridian flared and the wound tried to deny itself.

Continuance refused to let the denial finalize.

The injury remained.

Small.

But real.

That alone was enough to make the entire battlefield feel wrong.

Lucien arrived on the edge of ruin with Kaia and Lilith.

Kaia stared upward, eyes bright and jaw tight.

Lilith stared at the broken city, then at the sky, then at Lucien.

Her voice came out carefully.

"Brother... what do we do now?"

Lucien’s gaze tracked the Sovereigns, the formations, the Devourer’s advantage, the Extinction-grade’s tension.

He measured the deadlock.

He measured the cracks.

Then he spoke quietly, as if not wanting the world to overhear.

"We keep them separated," Lucien said. "We do not let them regroup. And we do not let the Extinction-grade Void-walker breathe."

Kaia swallowed, then smiled anyway, because she could not help herself.

"That last part sounds difficult."

Lucien looked at her.

"It is," he said. "That is why we will be careful."

Above them, the Devourer howled again.

And the Extinction-grade Void-Walker, pressed back by inevitability, snapped his eyes toward the place Lucien had appeared.

But then the Devourer struck again, forcing him to stop staring and start surviving.

But the look had already been given.

And Lucien, standing in the ruins of Starforge, felt the cold truth settle.

The allies were winning.

Yes.

But something worse than losing had already begun. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

He was noticed.

And Lucien recalled the Abyssal One’s warning once more.