100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 387 - Aftermath

Lucien moved.

He reached into his inventory and summoned a Cryogenic Chamber.

The device unfolded with a soft hiss.

Condoriano’s Sky Condor body barely fit.

Lucien guided him in anyway, then sealed the chamber.

Condoriano’s chest still rose.

The chamber stopped the blood from becoming a river.

Lucien sat cross-legged beside it, and closed his eyes.

He meditated.

Divine energy returned in thin, stubborn trickles.

Soon, footsteps approached.

Anvil-Horn arrived first. His large frame casted a long shadow across fractured streets. He stood still and looked at Starforge.

His face softened. Melancholy passed through him like a wind across old scars.

Then he looked at the survivors gathering behind him. The veterans. The wounded who were still breathing.

His expression steadied.

A slow smile formed.

"Stone can be reforged," Anvil-Horn said quietly. "Breath cannot."

His gaze shifted to Lucien.

Gratitude sat there, unspoken but heavy. The approval of a leader who understood what had been saved.

Without Lucien, there would have been nothing left to rebuild.

Anvil-Horn’s eyes moved again.

Lilith stood a few paces away, staring at Lucien as if trying to memorize him. Then she looked at the ruins. Then back at Lucien again.

Anvil-Horn followed that loop with a single glance.

He sighed and shook his head once, as if a realization had finally settled into place.

He did not say it.

But his eyes said enough.

’So this is how the forge will continue.’

•••

Saber approached the Cryogenic Chamber next.

He circled it once, nostrils flaring, pupils sharp.

Saber’s brow lifted.

"This thing stops bleeding," he murmured. "It stops heat-loss. It even slows the tremor of dying."

Then his expression tightened again.

He transformed into human form. His shoulders were loose like a predator pretending to be relaxed.

His fangs flashed in a thin grin.

"Stop pretending to be asleep," Saber said to the chamber. "If you do not open your filthy eyes, I will pry it open and roast you."

Condoriano’s eyes snapped open immediately.

His voice came out hoarse, offended, and very alive.

"Curse you, cat," Condoriano rasped. "You already ate a Void Sovereign and you still hunger for me? Let me lie in peace."

Then his gaze slid greedily across the chamber.

"This device is pleasant," he added, sounding almost dreamy. "I want it for my collection."

Just then Lucien opened his eyes.

His tone was calm.

"Brother, you can keep this one."

Condoriano stared at him.

Then he burst into loud, booming laughter.

"Gahahaha! As expected of you, little brother. You know me too well."

Saber’s mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

He stared at Lucien with mixed expression.

Then he growled at Condoriano, annoyed at how obvious he was being.

Condoriano only laughed harder.

Lucien rose.

"Brother," he said, walking to the chamber, "come out first. Let me fix your wing."

Condoriano followed without argument.

He stepped out carefully. One of his wings was hanging wrong. A grand beast suddenly made clumsy by injury.

Lucien lifted his hand.

Genesis Command.

Just then—

The torn wing did not simply heal. It rewrote its own condition. Feathers reseated themselves like soldiers returning to formation. Bone mended cleanly. Tendons drew tight. The shape became whole again as if the break had been a rumor.

Condoriano flexed once.

Then again.

His eyes widened.

And then his laughter exploded across the ruins like thunder.

"Gahahaa!" he roared. "I swear, making a pact with you is the best decision I have made in this era."

Saber clicked his tongue, but there was a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth that could have been approval.

Anvil-Horn’s smile deepened.

Kaia, standing nearby with soot on her cheek and exhaustion in her posture, gave Lucien a long look that was half admiration and half disbelief.

Lilith stood behind her, still quiet, still staring.

•••

One by one, the others approached Lucien to speak.

Some offered thanks in awkward, fierce voices.

Some offered silent nods, because they did not trust their mouths not to break.

Anvil-Horn stepped closer.

"Little friend, you saved my people," Anvil-Horn said with a huge smile.

Lucien inclined his head once.

"Uncle, hold your gratitude," Lucien replied. "Use it to rebuild Starforge."

Anvil-Horn’s eyes warmed.

"Spoken like a man who has already decided he will not stop at surviving."

Before Kaia and Lilith could step closer, the crowd thickened. The veterans surged in.

Kaia and Lilith were pushed back, forced into the second ring.

Soon, Lucien lifted his hand and released his hold.

The people he had stored inside his divine energy core returned to the real world in a rush of light and breath, appearing in clusters across the shattered streets.

For a heartbeat, they stood stunned.

Then their eyes lifted.

Starforge was ruined.

The forge-towers were broken. The streets were split. The barrier’s scars still glowed faintly, as if the sky itself had been carved.

Then they saw who was alive.

They saw Anvil-Horn standing.

They saw Lilith.

They saw the Celestial experts who had vanished earlier and returned now with blood on their armor and exhaustion in their posture.

And that was enough.

A shout burst out.

Then another.

Then a cry that turned into laughter, then into sobbing.

People ran into each other’s arms.

A man with one sleeve burned off grabbed his friend and shook him as if to confirm he was real.

A woman dropped to her knees and pressed her forehead to the stone and whispered something that sounded like prayer.

Victory did not look clean.

It looked messy.

It looked alive.

Then the spaces where people should have been became obvious. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

A name called once did not get an answer.

A second name did not get an answer either.

The cheers faltered.

A few people stepped back, looking around, and their faces changed as they counted.

Absences.

Someone began to cry quietly.

Then another.

The sound spread like fire through dry grass.

In a battle this massive, some deaths could not be prevented.

Lucien watched it.

This was the part he hated most.

The aftermath, when survival demanded gratitude and grief at the same time.

His jaw tightened.

He still lacked the power to make sacrifice unnecessary.

He still did not have the strength to save everyone.

He turned his gaze away before anyone could read too much on his face.

•••

The survivors began to move again.

Healers shifted into motion, hands glowing.

Wounded were carried to safer ground.

Weapons were collected.

Rubble was cleared where it could be cleared.

And the barrier.

Lucien stepped toward it without being asked.

He moved to repair the barrier first. Lucien studied its mechanism carefully, committing every detail to memory before mending it in his own way.

Lucien did not know what Fate had prepared next.

He only knew he wanted Starforge standing when it arrived.

When the barrier was mended enough to breathe again, Lucien withdrew.

He glanced once at the sky.

The scar where the rift had been was gone, but the memory of it still made the air feel wrong.

Then he returned inward.

He stepped back into his divine energy core, because he needed one thing the outside could not give him.

Silence.

•••

Messages had been tugging at the edge of his awareness since earlier.

Morveth, Aerolith, and Kira had all sent word through their shared connection.

They had not been idle while he fought.

They had their own trouble.

Lucien closed his eyes and shifted his presence, letting his main awareness slide toward the split body anchored in Morveth’s side of reality.

The transition was instant.

And what Lucien saw shocked him.

His eyes widened.

He stood within Morveth’s shell.

His split body rested at the heart of a vast city built upon the inner curve of an Astral Testudon’s carapace.

What had once been quiet stone was now alive.

It was no longer empty.

People filled the avenues.

Humans.