100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 384 - Devour

Lucien did not stare at the ruined city again.

He drew Kaia and Lilith close, just long enough for words to be weapons.

"We cut the healer," Lucien pointed. "He is weaker in direct combat, but he is the reason their wounds do not stay wounds."

Lilith’s grip tightened on her polearm. She followed his gaze and saw it immediately, the rhythm of the Void-Walkers. The tiny pauses where their patterns mended.

"Agreed," Lilith said. "If he lives, this never ends."

Kaia rolled her shoulders, also in agreement.

Lucien’s tone remained calm.

"Sisters, join brother Sky Condor. The Celestial experts will keep their formation, but you are the spear. Pressure him until he is forced into a mistake. I will wait for the opening."

Kaia’s eyes narrowed. "You are not coming?"

"I am low on divine energy," Lucien said. "If I spend once, I will do it at the right moment."

Lilith nodded once.

Then the two women rose.

And Condoriano, battered but laughing, tilted his vast wings and met them halfway in the air.

Lucien had already relayed the plan to him through their shared connection.

•••

The healer Void Sovereign saw them coming.

He did not flinch. He did not panic.

He simply stopped pretending he was a scholar behind stronger kin.

Cosmic light bled from his skin in thin streams, like an alien bloodstream exposed to open air. His face was geometric, angles too clean for any human sculptor, and his eyes carried the cold patience of something born where survival meant calculation.

He did not use the Starlit Codex.

He had already learned.

The scripture did not bite these enemies.

So he used what the void had given him instead.

Strength.

His frame expanded subtly in density. The air around him tightened as if it had become harder to exist near him.

Kaia’s fire hit first.

The healer’s palm snapped up, and cosmic force met flame with a brutal simplicity. The collision did not explode. It compressed.

Kaia’s fire skidded sideways in the sky, leaving a burn-line across the air like a scar.

Lilith arrived an instant later.

Her polearm carved a line through space, and forged light snapped into place, turning an empty corridor of sky into a barrier that refused to be crossed cleanly.

The healer’s eyes sharpened.

He tried to shift around it.

Condoriano snapped his wings.

Horizon folded.

Distance rearranged.

The healer Sovereign’s reposition became meaningless. He arrived into a different "near" than he intended, clipped by the edge of Condoriano’s territory like a fish hitting a net it did not see.

Condoriano’s voice rolled across the sky, amused. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"You are quick," he rumbled. "But you are quick inside a map. I have eaten maps."

The healer’s jaw tightened.

His pattern shifted again.

Two thin rings of cosmic light formed behind him like rotating seals. They were raw void craft, a brute geometry that tore at momentum and converted it into healing output.

He was turning pressure into recovery.

Kaia attacked again. Her flame spiraled, re-writing its path mid-flight. She struck once, twice, three times, each hit aimed at the same place, forcing the healer to either move or spend.

Lilith timed her thrust between those hits like a nail driven into a doorframe. Every time the healer tried to slip away, forged light snapped into place to deny that route.

And below them, the Celestial-realm experts rose in formation.

Interrupts. Anchors. Pressure points.

A net made of timing.

The healer Void Sovereign’s expression finally changed.

"These pests are trained," he said as if he hated admitting it.

Kaia’s fire flared brighter. "We are not pests," she replied. "We are the reason your day is getting worse."

•••

Lucien watched from the edge of ruin.

He stared at the healer’s rhythm.

At the smallest pauses. The micro-breaths between one repair and the next. The moment where the void craft rings had to realign.

He waited until Condoriano forced the healer into a narrow corridor of "near," pinned between horizon edges and forged denial.

Then Lucien moved.

He drew on his version of the Starlit Codex and chose a technique that did not require an expensive output.

Astral Articulation.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened.

From the center of his forehead, a thin beam of conceptual force lanced outward and hit the healer Sovereign’s spirit directly.

There was no explosion.

Just a sudden, sharp stumble in the healer’s posture, as if a pillar inside him had been struck with a hammer.

His conviction wavered.

His hands paused.

His healing rings stuttered half a rotation.

Lucien smiled faintly.

The Sovereign’s spirit was strong, but it was built on incomplete scripture. The Starlit Codex in Lucien’s possession had been refined and corrected.

An incomplete foundation could endure.

But it could be shaken.

And in war, a half-breath was an eternity.

Kaia saw it immediately.

Her fire clipped the healer’s side, and the Testament Flame bit into him with pale, unforgiving judgment.

Lilith’s polearm followed, stabbing into the same moment of weakness.

The healer Void Sovereign’s eyes widened.

He tried to reassert.

He tried to surge backward.

Condoriano laughed.

Then the horizon moved.

•••

Condoriano snapped his Law of Horizon into a lock.

A prison of edges.

He laid invisible borders around the healer Sovereign like a folded box of distance, where every attempt to "leave" returned you to the same page.

The healer Sovereign struck outward with raw cosmic force.

The blow hit an edge and slid along it, dispersing into empty space.

Condoriano’s eyes gleamed.

He did not waste time on another attack.

He used a collector’s trick.

A swap.

Not with an item this time.

But with a predator.

Condoriano’s feathers bristled once, and his Law moved like a needle through cloth.

Space exchanged.

Saber appeared where Condoriano had been.

Condoriano appeared farther away, already repositioning to keep the box intact.

Saber did not look confused.

He looked satisfied.

It was as if they had reached an understanding without ever speaking of plans.

His Moonfang Smilodon form hovered in the air, and his eyes held a calm cruelty that belonged to older wars.

He spoke softly, as if addressing prey that had finally wandered close enough to deserve attention.

"You smell like someone who has never been eaten," Saber said.

The healer Sovereign’s expression twisted. He tried to lift a hand.

Saber’s domain opened.

Not from himself.

From the healer.

The space around the healer Sovereign became teeth.

A predator’s jaw manifested as a conceptual geometry, a closing story written in hunger and inevitability.

The jaw shut.

Then...

It chewed.

Once.

Twice.

Each bite was not flesh on flesh.

It was Law on structure.

Meaning being crushed into smaller meaning.

Something inside the domain began to howl.

The healer Sovereign’s cosmic light flared violently, struggling to re-form, trying to mend itself faster than the jaw could destroy it.

Saber sat in the air like a king on an invisible throne.

He closed his eyes.

He concentrated.

His Law of Predation surged.

He was not fighting.

He was feeding.

•••

Every face turned.

Even mid-battle, even mid-survival, attention pulled toward that chewing domain the way eyes pull toward a blade descending.

The two remaining Sovereigns reacted instantly.

They broke their current engagements and surged toward Saber. Their stances were no longer arrogant.

Now they were cautious.

Now they were angry.

Now they were afraid of what would happen if one of their kind was devoured in full view of the world.

They drove forward with raw strength and void craft, abandoning scripture entirely.

For a breath, they succeeded.

They tore through gaps, forced angles, and closed the distance.

Anvil-Horn’s denial resisted.

But the Sovereigns pushed like beasts cornered.

They were almost there.

Then—

Lucien struck again.

Astral Articulation snapped outward, cutting into the Sovereigns’ spirits mid-charge.

Their bodies staggered.

Their conviction stumbled.

It was not enough to stop them forever.

It was enough to ruin their timing.

Condoriano laughed, delighted and hoarse, and moved his Law.

Horizon folded.

The Sovereigns’ "near" became "far."

They were pushed backward in a single rearrangement of distance. Their momentum arrived into an empty corridor where Saber was no longer reachable.

Condoriano’s voice rolled across the sky.

"You may refuse roads," he rumbled, "but you will still obey distance when I hold it by the throat."

The Sovereigns snarled.

Their faces hardened into geometric hatred.

And they turned their violence outward again, forced to fight the enemies in front of them because the prey behind them had been denied.

Saber’s chewing domain continued.

Slow and patient.

•••

Lucien watched the domain, then spoke into the connection, careful not to waste breath.

[Brother... Can what Brother Moonfang is doing kill Eternals and Void Sovereigns?]

Condoriano’s reply came delayed, threaded between horizon shifts and repositioning.

[This is one way to kill immortals, little brother.]

A pause, as if Condoriano was choosing words from an older tongue.

[Devour them through your Law. Make the world accept that they were eaten, not merely wounded. But the world does not grant such permission easily. Moonfang will take it regardless. His Law has always been... peculiar. Though, not quite as peculiar as he is.]

Lucien’s eyes narrowed slightly.

He absorbed it.

It would be hard for him right now. His Laws were not yet at that tier of comprehension. Even if he could imitate the principle, the world’s permission was another beast entirely.

Condoriano’s thoughts returned, heavier this time.

[Another thing. The monster you released is the purest example.]

Lucien’s gaze flicked upward, where the Abyss-Eyed Devourer still hammered the Extinction-grade Void-Walker with Continuance, refusing to let denial finalize.

Condoriano continued.

[That Devourer is feared because it kills Eternals without asking permission. Devourer, as its name suggests, is not a metaphor. If it decides you are food, you become food. The world is not consulted. The world is forced to watch.]

Lucien’s stomach tightened for a fraction of a breath.

He had edited the creature’s strings.

But if the Devourer’s nature was that absolute...

Then the leash was only as good as the moment it held.

Lucien forced the thought down.

Right now, Saber was chewing a Sovereign.

The allies had to hold.

The world had to be made to accept what Saber was doing before it could be interrupted.

Lucien lifted his gaze toward the chewing domain.

His voice was quiet.

"Hold," he said, but with a weight that made nearby Starforge veterans straighten unconsciously. "Do not let them reach him."

Kaia’s flame flared again, despite her exhaustion.

Lilith’s polearm lifted.

Condoriano’s wings spread wider.

Anvil-Horn’s horn glowed like a forge about to birth a weapon.

And above them, calamity continued to collide with calamity, as tentacles and cosmic light ripped meaning out of the sky.

Starforge was ruined.

But for the first time since the Void-Walkers arrived, the enemies looked pressured.