100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 422 - Progress

Before his tenth life in the Mural World, Lucien had once lived among builders.

He had watched the first great eras of cooperation bloom, back when multiracial nations, rising sects, and unstable alliances were still learning how to become civilizations instead of armed crowds with banners.

He had seen towers whose foundations were laid by giants and carved by beastfolk. He had seen cities planned by scholars and stabilized by rune-smiths.

So Lucien knew what true construction looked like.

And that was precisely why he could appreciate how advanced the Starforge method had become.

Their forging was no longer just labor.

It was architecture sharpened into doctrine.

A week had barely passed, yet the Sovereign Circle was already taking shape.

And because the place being built was so large, the scale became easier to understand only when something actually rose from it.

From above, the center of Lootwell already resembled the skeleton of a future capital.

From the ground, it felt like walking through the first breaths of an empire.

•••

Of course, Lucien had not spent that week merely watching.

He made progress too.

His own cultivation had advanced to the peak of Ascendant Realm. The door to the Celestial Realm was already open before him now.

His Laws had improved as well.

He had forced time out of his schedule to raise his comprehension of each newly learned Law to at least forty percent.

And Lucien had not kept that progress for himself.

He had already completed the continuation of the Law Books.

With forty percent of understanding, one could at least cultivate safely up to the peak of Transcendence, one step before Ascendance.

Morveth’s people also began to show progress. The influence of the Law Books was immediate.

Many had reached Transcendence.

Morveth had brought many of them outside into Lucien’s new territory as well.

His reasoning had been simple.

"As long as they do not die, the contract remains," he had said. "They need not remain inside me to belong to me."

Lucien had agreed with that.

A new environment changed people.

It widened them.

So now many of Morveth’s contracted people were helping in the building process.

And unsurprisingly, Lilith had proven excellent at leading them.

She did not shout.

She did not waste words.

She simply looked at unfinished work, gave a few commands, and somehow entire teams moved better afterward.

The pace of development had become frighteningly efficient.

Most of those helping were excited too.

They wanted to see the end result.

They wanted to say, one day, that they had built this place with their own hands.

•••

Luke and Cienna also broke through during that same week.

They had reached Transcendence.

That part alone was enough to satisfy Lucien.

What stunned him was the Laws they had chosen.

Luke had integrated with the Law of Skills.

Cienna had integrated with the Law of Magic.

Lucien had stared at them for a long moment after hearing it.

The scope of both Laws was absurdly broad.

Too broad.

They sounded less like normal Laws and more like someone had stood in front of reality and demanded concepts so unreasonable that the world had been forced to shrug and say, "Fine."

For a brief moment, Lucien had even suspected that the two of them had somehow invented those Laws on the spot through sheer audacity.

Still, broad did not mean wrong.

It only meant difficult to practice.

But those paths were theirs.

And from the brightness in their faces, neither Luke nor Cienna regretted it.

Perhaps it was better this way.

Both of them had always possessed unusual talents that did not fit neatly into narrower paths.

If they were going to become monsters of specialization, then perhaps they first needed a Law broad enough to hold all the strange things they could do.

For now, both were still consolidating their strength.

Lucien left them to it.

•••

The ancient beasts had also been brought out.

When Astraea first saw Condoriano, Saber, and Kira standing in Lucien’s territory, her brows rose in immediate amusement.

Then she looked at them with a smirk that said very clearly, ’So you ended up here too.’

Condoriano dismissed it with a laugh.

Saber gave a low irritated growl.

Kira simply looked away with all the dignity of someone refusing to acknowledge the point.

In any case, all three had become useful to the building process.

That was one way to describe it.

Another would have been to say that using ancient beasts and Eternals as construction support was mildly insane.

Astraea, of course, saw no issue.

"You should bond with the other beasts," she told Lucien one afternoon while watching several massive structural beams settle into place under impossible force. "The territory would be finished much faster."

Lucien nearly choked.

Treating Eternals like laborers.

That was not a sentence he had ever expected to hear said with such sincerity.

He looked at her.

Then, after a moment, nodded thoughtfully.

"That’s a good idea, sister."

Astraea approved at once.

Lucien sighed inwardly.

He would, perhaps, need to think carefully about how to convince the ancient beasts to cooperate.

But now that he had interacted with them, he at least understood one thing.

They all had weaknesses.

And quite a few were already growing impatient because he had not visited them in some time.

He made a note to exploit that later.

Respectfully.

Probably.

•••

As for the elemental women—

Finally, on the next day, Lucien felt a disturbance inside his divine energy core.

He entered immediately.

The four of them were still seated where he had left them.

But their state had changed.

Their auras were no longer merely resonating.

They were surging.

The Laws of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water had begun affecting the inner world around them in visible ways.

Lucien’s eyes sharpened.

It was not just that their comprehension had deepened.

The Laws themselves were becoming denser in his core.

As if the presence of the four women together was refining the very foundational concepts those elements represented.

They were, after all, among the oldest building pieces of natural existence.

Earth. Fire. Air. Water.

When those four entered true resonance, nature answered.

The effect spread in a radius around them.

Grass sprouted faster.

Flowers bloomed in places that had been bare.

The air turned clean and bright.

Moisture balanced with heat.

Soil darkened with health.

Even the ambient pressure of the place began feeling... alive.

Lucien watched carefully.

Then all four women opened their eyes at once.

But their eyes were hollow.

As if something older than thought had stepped into them for one brief moment.

Without speaking, they moved.

Each raised both hands and formed the same seal.

Then the space between them trembled.

Their Laws gathered there.

Earth condensed first, not as stone, but as weight. Fire came next, then Air, then Water, each feeding into the center without colliding.

They coagulated into a single floating object suspended between them.

Lucien leaned forward.

It was small and dense.

A strange knot of elemental intent, still unfinished and still deciding what it wanted to become.

Then suddenly it divided into four.

The pieces shot outward.

One into Marie’s forehead. One into Kaia’s. One into Sylra’s. One into Marina’s.

All four women froze.

The hollow look vanished.

And then, just as abruptly, they woke.

The strange presence was gone.

Only the four of them remained.

Lucien stood there in silence.

He had no idea what had just happened.

When he looked at them, he saw confusion on all four faces.

But something else too.

Clarity.

He asked the only reasonable question.

"What happened?"

Marie rubbed her head first.

"The system," she said. "It gifted us something."

Kaia looked down at her own hands.

"And our comprehension accelerated," she said. "If I sit down and meditate now, I’m pretty sure I can break through easily."

Sylra touched her chest.

"It feels like something inside me has changed."

Marina, of course, spoke last and with the worst timing possible.

"My Prince," she said brightly, "the system also told us about a location. I feel that if I go there, I’ll understand myself better. But I’ll only go if I’m with you, hehe."

The other three immediately turned and looked at her.

Not kindly.

Marina froze on the spot.

Lucien smiled despite himself and activated Inspect.

Then he froze.

Before this, none of them had possessed any constitution.

But now they did.

Marie: Sovereign Earth Constitution

A body naturally aligned with stability, foundation, endurance, and the deep memory of stone.

Kaia: Sovereign Flame Constitution

A body naturally aligned with combustion, transformation, intensity, and sovereign fire.

Sylra: Sovereign Wind Constitution

A body naturally aligned with wind, movement, freedom, and the invisible currents between all things.

Marina: Sovereign Tide Constitution

A body naturally aligned with water, flow, adaptation, and the endless memory carried by depth.

Lucien stared.

Then slowly lowered the interface.

’These crazy women,’ he thought, ’have turned even crazier.’

And what surprised him more was not even the constitutions.

It was the location Marina mentioned.

Was it related to their origins?

To the Primordial Slime?

To some ancient elemental seat hidden somewhere in the Big World?

Lucien did not know.

And that uncertainty made him more interested, not less.

Because one thing was clear.

The Primordial Slime had not gathered these women carelessly.

It had plans for them.

And Lucien had just watched the first proof of that unfold in front of him.