100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 390 - Pathless

Around Lucien, mana still streamed inward like invisible rain.

Anvil-Horn was the first to open his eyes.

The Solhorn’s pupils focused, then steadied. He said nothing at first.

Lucien met his gaze.

"Uncle," Lucien said quietly, "I will leave for a while. But I do not trust the silence after a calamity. Another attack might come for Starforge. Will you come with me? All of you."

Anvil-Horn paused. The muscles along his jaw tightened as he looked past Lucien, through shattered streets, toward the ruins that still smelled like hot metal and grief.

Then he looked back.

"Is it like earlier?" Anvil-Horn asked. "When my people vanished and returned as if the world blinked?"

Lucien answered without offering too much.

"Yes," he said. "My domain is... unusual."

That was enough.

Anvil-Horn’s hesitation broke cleanly.

"Good," he said. "That is best. Even my horn agrees. Gahahaha."

He laughed, loud and booming, but the truth sat behind it.

He was an Eternal, and still he had felt it today. The way Fate pressed. The way extinction arrived without apology. The way survival could become a coin you only earned once.

And he had people to protect.

Lucien had allies who met calamity like equals, and methods that made the impossible look like procedure.

If Fate wanted Starforge erased, then Anvil-Horn preferred to stand beside the one man who had already forced Fate to pay for every inch.

"Prepare them," Lucien said.

Anvil-Horn rose at once.

He did not argue that Starforge was home. He did not pretend pride was worth funerals.

He went to gather his people.

To move the living.

To carry the dead.

To leave the forge behind before the forge was turned into a grave.

•••

Soon, the others opened their eyes as well.

Kaia moved near Lucien. She rubbed her brow and squinted at him like she was reading his intent.

"Brother," she said, "what is the next plan?"

"We rescue humans."

Kaia’s grin returned immediately, sharp and pleased.

"Good," she said. "That is more like you."

Lilith approached a heartbeat later.

"I will come," she said. "The more of us there are, the better the chance we bring them back alive."

Lucien inclined his head once.

He accepted her as a certainty.

•••

Saber arrived with Condoriano not long after.

Condoriano’s wings were whole again, but he still carried the scent of nearly dying. He wore it like a badge he planned to brag about later.

Saber’s eyes were too calm.

Lucien told them what his split body had witnessed.

Morveth retreating. Aerolith injured. Kira holding five Eternals. A guarded camp with dozens more.

Their expressions changed.

Not into panic but into intent.

Saber’s pupils narrowed as if his hunger had just been given a name.

Condoriano’s gaze sharpened with interest that had nothing to do with curiosity and everything to do with war.

Lucien added, "I can appear where they are. Instantly. But it will require a vast amount of energy."

Condoriano clicked his tongue.

"I could try something similar," he admitted. "Horizon can fold distance. I can steal near from far and make it regret existing."

He lifted a wing slightly, as if measuring the air.

"But it would be crude over that scale. Horizon reaches the horizon. Beyond that, it becomes shouting at a world that is not listening. The attempt would leak. Any watcher with half a Law would feel the distortion, and if the enemies are already hunting for authority, they will notice a Sky Condor ripping at distance."

His eyes flicked to Lucien.

"If you are using something that behaves like Anti-Meridian, then your method is cleaner. It denies the need for a route instead of forcing a route to exist. Less noise."

Lucien did not correct him. He did not explain the drop.

He simply nodded.

"That is the idea."

Condoriano laughed, low and pleased.

"Then let’s do it," he said. "I would rather step into a fight than chase one."

Saber’s mouth curled.

"Bring me to prey," he said as if that was all the strategy he ever required.

•••

Anvil-Horn returned.

Behind him came Starforge.

Some carried wounded friends. Some carried nothing but shaking hands and stubborn eyes.

And the dead were not left behind.

Caskets moved through the rubble, held by loved ones with faces set into hard conviction. No theatrics. Only the quiet refusal to abandon their own.

Lucien stood and watched them approach.

When the last group reached the circle, Lucien’s gaze met Anvil-Horn’s.

Anvil-Horn gave him a single nod.

Lucien expanded his domain.

Starforge’s people vanished into Lucien’s inner world in a clean sweep.

At the same time, Lucien sent a message through the connection.

[Uncle Morveth. It is time. Hold position. We are coming.]

Far away, beyond oceans and guarded routes, Morveth’s answer returned like the rumble of stone.

[Held.]

Lucien breathed once.

Then he reached into his inventory.

The void disc manifested in his palm.

Covenant of Pathless Sovereignty.

It looked simple until you stared too long.

Lucien split a thread of awareness to his split body near Morveth.

He felt Morveth move Aerolith and the split body into a distant pocket and layer it with Continuance, thickening reality into something harder to tear.

Then Morveth went to join Kira.

Lucien’s split body drifted farther out into open space.

A clean reference point.

Back in Starforge, Lucien lifted the disc.

"Everyone," he said evenly, "channel mana into this."

He did not ask. His voice made it procedure.

Kaia raised her hands.

Lilith followed.

Condoriano’s wings spread and drew power.

Saber’s gaze stayed forward, but his presence pressed mana out of the air.

Anvil-Horn added his own weight, and the circle itself began to hum.

The disc reacted.

At first, it only rotated faster.

Then the rotation stopped feeling like motion and began to feel like a verdict.

Space around the disc bent subtly as if "here" and "there" had become suggestions.

The single line on the disc blurred from refusing to be a single line.

It became a ring of impossible continuity, an orbit around nothing that insisted nothing was a center worth respecting.

The absent center deepened.

An absence formed.

A place where the idea of "path" could not take hold.

Lucien’s breath remained steady.

His eyes locked onto his reference point.

The energy pouring into the disc climbed and climbed, and then, abruptly, the world seemed to inhale.

The absent center pulled.

The space beneath their feet loosened.

The air around them thinned into something that felt like the edge of a thought.

The disc’s center opened wider.

It swallowed them.

One moment they stood in the ruins of Starforge.

The next moment Starforge was gone, and the air tasted different, and the sky carried the tension of pursuit.

•••

They reappeared where Lucien’s split body was.

The transition was smooth.

It was as if they had always been here, and the universe had only now noticed.

The disc slowed.

Its rotation returned to a calm, endless orbit.

Lucien stored it immediately.

The situation snapped into focus.

Aerolith lay under Continuance layers, still unconscious.

Lucien moved to her at once.

Kaia and Lilith followed.

Meanwhile, the three Eternals did what Eternals did when battle called.

They moved toward the clash.

Condoriano rose first, wings spreading.

Saber vanished into the air like a thought turning predatory.

Anvil-Horn stepped forward, horn glowing faintly.

Now it was five against five.

Morveth.

Kira.

Condoriano.

Saber.

Anvil-Horn.

Five Eternals standing together in open air.

The enemy Eternals reacted late.

Because there had been no warning.

No detectable fluctuation.

Their heads snapped as if the world itself had betrayed them.

One of them took a half-step backward, then stopped, offended by the instinct.

Morveth’s gaze flicked toward Lucien, and his voice rumbled with something close to awe.

"The little shelf-maker’s methods remain... unnatural."

Kira did not stop moving even when reinforcements arrived.

She twisted mid-retreat, scythe-limbs flashing, and landed with the controlled impatience of someone who had been forced to work harder than necessary.

Condoriano’s laughter boomed across the battlefield.

"Mantis," he called, "it is rare to see you strained."

Kira’s eyes narrowed.

"I can manage," she said coldly. "I held five without being injured. Unlike you."

Condoriano blinked.

Lucien could almost see the moment Kira’s words found the bruise.

Kira added, without mercy, "I heard you nearly died today."

Condoriano opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Then, with dignity shredded, he snapped, "Try facing an extinction if you dare."

Kira snorted.

"And yet you are alive," she said. "So perhaps I should thank the little brother instead."

Condoriano growled something that sounded suspiciously like agreement and then surged toward the nearest enemy Eternal with offended enthusiasm.

The five enemy Eternals readjusted their formations.

They had expected prey.

They had not expected a second pack to drop from nowhere.

And somewhere behind those cold eyes, calculation began again.

Lucien felt the brand in his spirit pulse faintly, as if something far away had just remembered his name.

He lifted his gaze.

Kira had bought them time.

Now he intended to spend it.

"Everyone," Lucien said, "do not let them disengage."

The enemy Eternals, finally recognizing the shape of the threat, began to move in earnest.

The second battle was about to start.

And this time, Lucien had arrived on time.