100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 385 - Devoured

The Extinction-grade Void-Walker turned mid-parry.

One tentacle of the Abyss-Eyed Devourer came down like a guillotine made of hunger.

Anti-Meridian flared.

He redirected the strike.

His pattern shifted so subtly that the sky did not notice at first. A slight rotation of geometry across his shoulders.

To everyone else, it looked like normal defense.

But Lucien’s eyes narrowed.

Perfect Calculation snapped.

And then he understood.

The Extinction-grade was not retreating.

He was guiding the Devourer’s tentacles toward Saber.

He was leading the calamity like a leashless beast, turning each refused "route" into a forced "angle," making the Devourer’s swings drift closer and closer toward the Moonfang Smilodon below.

The next tentacle would not strike the Void-Walker.

It would strike Saber’s concentration.

Seconds.

Lucien’s mind ran the numbers, the arcs, the delays in Continuance, and the rhythm of Anti-Meridian’s denials.

The result was immediate.

If the tentacle landed squarely, Saber’s concentration would falter. If that happened, the world would not be forced to accept the devouring. If the world did not accept it, the healer Sovereign would survive.

Lucien inhaled once.

"I do not know if this will work," he thought coldly. "But it has to."

He moved.

He blinked toward Saber.

The chewing domain hung in the air like a closed mouth grinding down a star. Saber’s Moonfang Smilodon form sat beneath it, eyes shut, as if his body were only a throne for hunger to sit on.

Lucien’s hand dipped into his inventory.

A robe appeared.

Veil of Fractured Reality — A robe that lets the wearer phase between dimensions for short durations, allowing attacks and spells to pass through harmlessly.

Lucien did not drape it carefully.

He threw it over Saber’s body like a battlefield shroud, then backed away hard.

His instincts screamed.

He shouted, voice cracking through the chaos with command rather than volume.

"Pour mana into the robe from a safe distance now. Do not stop until I tell you."

He did not wait to see if they obeyed.

He blinked away again, retreating before the incoming tentacle could reduce him to a smear.

For half a breath, the battlefield hesitated.

Then Lilith moved.

She did not ask why. She did not question the logic.

"Do it," she snapped, and the word hit Starforge like a whip. "Channel. Maintain distance. No gaps."

Kaia was already raising her hands, flame hissing around her wrists as she forced raw mana into the robe.

The Celestial experts followed instantly.

A dozen streams became ten, then twenty, then more, a braided river of power aimed at a single point.

The robe shifted.

It distorted.

The fabric turned thin in the eye, as if you could see a second sky behind it. The edges of Saber’s body began to flicker between "here" and "elsewhere," not moving, but refusing to be only one location.

Then the tentacle arrived.

A vast limb of void slammed down, heavy as inevitability. The air shrieked as it crossed.

Everyone hissed.

No one stopped channeling.

And then—

The tentacle hit.

Or it should have.

It passed through Saber’s body as if Saber was a ghost and the world was lying about solidity.

The chewing domain did not shudder.

Saber’s posture did not break.

Lucien’s eyes did not soften.

"Stop," he commanded immediately. "Hold your reserves. Channel again only if I say."

The streams cut off.

Breathing returned for half a heartbeat.

Lucien’s Perfect Calculation flared again.

A second tentacle was already coming, dragged by Continuance, thrown wide by the Extinction-grade’s manipulation.

Lucien’s voice snapped like a blade.

"Again."

Mana surged again.

The robe flickered again.

The tentacle struck again.

And again it slid through, harmless.

Kaia’s eyes widened.

Lilith’s mouth tightened.

The Celestial experts glanced at one another as if trying to decide whether they had just witnessed brilliance or blasphemy.

Lucien’s expression stayed wary.

They could protect Saber’s body.

But the domain was not cloth.

If a tentacle clipped the chewing mouth itself, no robe in the world would keep the world’s acknowledgment intact.

Lucien’s gaze darted to the sky.

The Extinction-grade was still guiding the Devourer. Still angling the battlefield.

Still trying to make "stray" become "fatal."

And then Condoriano’s laughter cut through the war like thunder.

He had understood.

They could veil the predator.

But not the teeth.

Condoriano’s eyes narrowed.

He moved.

A horizon snapped open.

Not to close distance this time.

But to change where the fight was allowed to be.

Space exchanged.

In one ruthless fold, Condoriano relocated himself, Anvil-Horn, and the two Void Sovereigns.

They vanished from their positions and reappeared directly above Saber’s chewing domain.

The sudden shift made the sky lurch.

The Void Sovereigns snapped their heads around, startled by the relocation, and then their surprise curdled into fury when they realized what Condoriano had done.

He had turned them into a shield.

If the Extinction-grade kept dragging the Devourer’s tentacles down toward the chewing domain now, he would be striking his own.

Lucien felt the logic click into place.

It was smart and brutal.

Condoriano’s voice echoed into his mind, threaded through pain and laughter.

[Little brother. You can see it before it happens. Tell me where the strike will land. I will focus on fighting. I will leave my back to you.]

Lucien’s mouth curved.

Even exhausted, the old beast was a strategist.

[Left wing. Two breaths from now. Do not rise, drift.]

Condoriano obeyed without question, shifting as if his body had been designed to follow predictions.

A Void Sovereign tried to capitalize on the movement and lunge toward Saber’s position anyway.

Anvil-Horn’s Law of Forging slammed down like a smith’s hammer.

The air thickened.

A contract formed in the space between them.

Advance cost more than it should.

The Sovereign’s momentum slowed as if he were pushing through cooling metal.

Saber’s chewing domain continued.

Above, the Extinction-grade’s geometric face altered again.

Lines on his cheek sharpened. The angles around his eyes changed in a pattern that suggested thought becoming irritation.

He stared at Condoriano’s relocated shield.

Then his gaze slid, inevitably, to Lucien.

The human standing amid ruin, giving direction like a conductor directing thunder.

For the first time, the Extinction-grade’s wariness shifted into something uglier.

He had been trying to solve the battlefield.

Now he realized the battlefield was being solved by someone else.

Lucien’s Perfect Calculation snapped again.

The Extinction-grade’s next attempt would not be a tentacle drift.

It would be a "mistake."

A stray condensed spell.

Something plausible.

Something that could be excused as collateral.

Something designed to remove the variable.

Lucien’s pupils tightened.

It came.

A cosmic attribute spell condensed to an impossible density, a black-white sphere with starlight folded into its core. It spun once and dropped like a verdict aimed at the Devourer.

Then, mid-fall, the Extinction-grade shifted one microscopic angle.

The sphere’s trajectory adjusted.

Not toward the Devourer.

Toward Lucien.

Lucien’s instincts screamed.

If he dodged, the blast would take Kaia. Or Lilith. Or a cluster of Celestials still near Saber’s domain.

So he did not dodge.

He stepped into the path.

Every eye turned.

Kaia shouted his name, voice raw with panic, and started forward.

Lilith lunged too, polearm rising, ready to die buying him half a breath.

Lucien’s voice cut them both off.

"Back."

It was not loud.

It was absolute.

Kaia stopped as if her bones had been commanded.

Lilith froze, jaw clenched, eyes furious.

Lucien watched the sphere descend.

He timed it.

Then he activated his skill.

Scam the System.

The sphere hit him and detonated.

Light swallowed him.

Sound vanished.

The shockwave punched the air outward and flattened rubble into dust.

For a heartbeat, Lucien was gone inside the blast.

Then the light peeled back.

And he was still standing.

No blood.

No torn flesh.

Not even a singed sleeve.

The cosmic void around him trembled, offended.

Lucien smiled, faint and cold.

Kaia stared at him as if he had just rewritten the definition of mortality.

Lilith’s breath shook.

Condoriano’s laughter echoed through their shared connection, stunned and delighted.

[What did you do to cheat the world? Even I cannot take a direct hit from that void toy.]

Lucien’s reply was smooth.

[Just a small trick.]

Condoriano shook his head mid-parry, grinning even as he bled.

[Small, he says. As if theft from the heavens is a hobby.]

The Extinction-grade Void-Walker did not laugh.

His eyes locked onto Lucien and did not leave.

His face shifted again. The geometric angles tightened into a pattern of decision.

Everything had been meant to be simple. Pests die. Scripture wins. The world stays obedient.

Instead, a human had produced a Devourer, corrected the Codex, killed an Eternal, and just endured a strike that should have erased him.

The Extinction-grade’s thoughts did not need words to be heard.

This was the threat.

This was the cause of deviation.

This was the variable.

He raised one hand slightly, as if to test whether reality still listened to him more than it listened to Lucien.

And then something changed.

Below them, Saber’s chewing domain accelerated.

The jaw that had been grinding patiently suddenly bit down harder, faster, as if the predator had sensed the moment and decided it was time to finish the meal before the world objected.

The howling inside faded.

Not because the healer Sovereign surrendered.

Because there was less of him left to howl.

The chewing became wet.

Then quiet.

Then final.

The domain shuddered once like a throat swallowing.

A sound escaped it.

A low, obscene satisfaction, half burp and half sigh, as if the sky itself had just digested something it was never meant to digest.

Saber opened his eyes.

They were calm.

And content.

He let his domain unravel like a jaw relaxing after a kill.

Inside was nothing.

No body.

And at the center of that absence, a cube drop floated.

Lucien’s smile returned.

The world had been forced to accept it.

The healer Void Sovereign was gone.

For the first time since the Void-Walkers arrived, something irreplaceable had been taken from them.

Saber’s voice came.

"Food," he said simply. "Was."

Above, the two remaining Sovereigns went still.

Their faces did not show arrogance now.

They showed the first honest emotion they had offered this battlefield.

Fear.