100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 428 - Breakthrough

Days passed.

Lootwell continued to rise.

Steadily.

The Sovereign Circle expanded with every passing sunrise.

New foundations settled. New halls took shape. Formation channels were embedded beneath stone and metal. Roads were measured not for wagons, but for convoys of practitioners, beasts, and war-engines yet to be born.

And while the territory advanced, so did its people.

The Lithrens were the first to show clear progress.

Rurik finally stepped into the Ascendant Realm.

Lucien had expected it but even so, seeing it happen pleased him.

Rurik’s understanding of the Law of Creation had deepened rapidly after studying the Creation Law Book Lucien had given him.

The man had always been gifted. Now he had direction.

The other Lithrens were not far behind.

Their comprehension sharpened with every cycle of study. Some had already reached the edge of breakthrough. Others had stabilized firmly in Transcendence and were pushing upward.

Lucien did not let that progress sit idle.

He gave Rurik a task.

He brought out the stored Alloykin drops, together with refined void materials and gargoyle metal drops, then placed them before him one by one.

(For reference, see Chapter 329 regarding Alloykin drops.)

Rurik’s eyes had already begun glowing before Lucien even spoke.

"I want you to help me create something new," Lucien said.

Rurik looked up immediately.

Lucien continued.

"Not an ordinary automaton. Not a fixed machine. But something that can grow."

Rurik went still.

Lucien let the weight of those words settle before continuing.

"A bio-metal automaton."

For a moment, there was no sound at all.

Then Rurik slowly exhaled and looked back at the materials as if he were seeing the outline of a future only he could recognize.

Lucien explained further.

He referenced the drops and theories they had already begun touching on before, then brought out another book.

A fresh one.

It contained his anatomical findings on the Alloykins, written and organized for practical use. A working biological manual.

Rurik accepted it with both hands.

"This..." he murmured.

Lucien nodded.

The craft feature had no recipe for this kind of automaton. They would have to build the theory themselves.

Lucien could already tell.

Rurik’s creation-instinct had been struck directly.

The idea itself was outrageous.

If they succeeded, they would create something far beyond an ordinary automaton. A construct that could grow, adapt, and evolve with use.

And with Alloykin drops, gargoyle metal, and void materials as a foundation, the result might possess resilience and adaptability that ordinary forged constructs could never approach.

Lucien had already seen part of the answer through the drops.

It was possible.

Difficult, yes.

But possible.

Rurik accepted the challenge without hesitation.

Over the next days, Lucien helped him draft theories, outline structural necessities, and record every unstable point that could cause future failure.

They spoke at length on adaptive shells, living circulation within metal, modular core analogues, and the possibility of using soul-cores to create endless learning capacity.

If they could truly integrate a soul-core into such a body—

Then the result might become something capable of evolving endlessly through combat and pressure.

And if they succeeded in eliminating the cosmic attribute weakness that had plagued the Alloykins...

Then what they created might become a perfect counter to the Void-Walkers.

By the time the initial planning stage ended, Lucien stepped back and left the rest to Rurik.

This was, after all, a path Rurik also needed to walk with his own insight.

And Rurik, for the first time in a very long while, looked like a man whose blood had started burning again.

•••

Project Attribute Architecture also progressed.

For that work, Lucien chose Eirene as his assistant.

She was the obvious choice. Precise and Calm.

He first taught her the inner anatomy of the Mirrorhorn Duants.

Once Eirene understood the basics, testing became much easier.

Several of Lucien’s early integration theories proved imperfect the moment they were applied to living, active vessel networks. A pattern that looked stable in theory could become volatile once it met real blood, real mana, real resistance.

But Eirene’s timing was exceptional.

Whenever instability appeared, she corrected it immediately with healing and by balancing the force within the other twin.

Nothing backfired badly on the twins. Painful moments existed, yes, but no catastrophic failure followed.

And because of that, the work succeeded.

The cosmic attribute was successfully integrated into the Mirrorhorn Duants.

Then the metal attribute followed.

When the process was finished and the twins stabilized again, their gratitude toward Lucien was difficult to hide.

They had once been enslaved by those who possessed the cosmic attribute.

Now they carried it themselves.

If the Void-Walkers saw them now, they would have much to think about.

The twins had also fully consolidated their recovered strength by then. They had resumed training with renewed intensity, now aiming once more toward the Eternal Realm.

And the success did not stop with them.

Luke and Cienna were next.

Lucien integrated the new attributes into both of them as well.

Their reactions were almost the same. Shock first, then joy, then a quiet frustration at their own current limits. They wanted to catch up to Lucien because they genuinely wanted to stand beside him when trouble came.

For now, however, they could only continue getting stronger.

...

Even Eirene received the integration.

Despite being Floran, her body accepted the changes after Lucien adjusted the structure properly and adapted the patterns to her original physiology.

That had pleased him greatly.

What pleased him even more, however, was something else.

Eirene had brought up the plant attribute on her own.

She had done it without prompting, without letting him struggle through that awkward conversation he had been avoiding.

When she first said it, Lucien blinked.

"Brother Luc, you may study my attribute as well. It might help you," she said calmly.

Lucien had looked at her a little too quickly.

Eirene’s lips had curved with the faintest amusement.

She noticed that Lucien wanted to ask but hesitated. Still, she did not say that she knew.

That was enough.

So Lucien observed her body just as he had the others.

She lay upon a platform, calm and unbothered, while he used the same sequence of tools and perception skills to study the flow, structure, and clauses within her plant-aligned vessel system.

Lucien was serious for the entire process.

Or at least, he tried to be.

It should have been straightforward.

But Eirene, for reasons, decided to stare at him the whole time.

Lucien ignored it at first and focused on the work.

Then once, while adjusting a flow-model near her lower vessels, he looked up and met her eyes directly.

He immediately coughed.

Eirene smiled sweetly.

Lucien decided conversation might reduce the awkwardness.

It did not.

He spoke a few times during the process. Eirene answered every question with calm little replies.

"Mm."

"Yes."

"I see."

And each time, her eyes remained on him.

When he finally finished, Lucien stepped back with a quiet exhale.

Eirene looked at him for another heartbeat.

Then, strangely, seemed a little disappointed.

Lucien didn’t notice.

Instead, his attention returned to the result.

Another attribute had been properly mapped.

Another success.

The Mirrorhorn Duants, Luke, and Cienna all received plant integration afterward as well, and once again the process held.

Still, another problem remained.

Lucien himself has no mana vessels.

Integrating attributes into others was now possible.

Integrating them into himself remained an entirely different problem.

He would need more adjustments.

••• 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Meanwhile, the elemental women came to find him.

Marina was the one who brought the surprise.

One day, she arrived carrying four large eggs with all the seriousness of someone delivering sacred relics.

Lucien took one look and immediately understood what he was seeing.

His expression changed.

"These..."

The guardian beasts.

Marina then told him the story.

Lucien fell silent.

It was the same as before.

The same thing that had happened in his small world.

The Phoenix had rebelled.

It had influenced or controlled the other guardian beasts and driven them into ruin.

In Marina’s world, she had eventually killed them all. After death, they had reverted to eggs.

On the other hand, Sylra did not know their current fate in her own world. She, too, had slain the guardian beasts there, but she had not cared enough to learn what had become of them.

Kaia offered her own piece of the puzzle next.

"The phoenixes in ours are imprisoned," she said. "At the Liberator headquarters. All phoenixes rebelled too."

Then came Marie’s answer, and somehow it was the worst.

"In my world, the guardian beasts were killed by the people themselves," she said. "Their essences were harvested and used. They never revived."

Lucien’s eyes dimmed slightly.

Marie’s world had been ruled by a breed of human supremacists. In a place like that, even beings worshipped elsewhere as gods could become nothing more than resources once fear and greed won.

Still...

The Phoenix had become an anomaly in all those worlds.

And the cause...

Lucien remembered what the Primordial Slime said.

It had hesitated over its own creation.

That hesitation, had created a flaw.

And the phoenix had become the expression of that flaw in every small world.

Lucien looked at the four eggs for a long moment.

And sighed.

•••

Eventually, Lucien told Marie his chosen method for reaching the Celestial Realm.

She agreed immediately without waiting for the explanation.

Lucien stared at her.

"You did not even hear what it was."

Marie crossed her arms.

"I trust you."

Lucien did not know whether that was flattering or concerning.

Then Kaia spoke.

"I want to do it too."

That made Lucien look at her.

Kaia continued.

"With the new constitution, I can control my body much better than before. I can destroy my current Celestial body and reforge it into something better. The backlash won’t trap me for long."

Lucien understood at once.

Her current Celestial body was from before her elemental resonance transformation.

If she reforged now, using her new constitution and improved law comprehension, she could rebuild something far stronger and then rapidly reclaim the realm she had already reached once.

It was reckless.

It was also sound.

And Kaia was not finished.

"It would be best if the four of us stayed close in strength," she said. "We cultivate faster together."

That part was true.

They had all noticed it by then.

The closer their realms and elemental resonance stood to one another, the faster their cultivation progressed.

Lucien exhaled slowly.

That complicated his schedule.

Naturally, Kaia took that as permission.

Soon enough, she dragged him along to train with them.

When she explained to the others that their growth accelerated even further when Lucien sat among them, they all agreed immediately.

Marina, especially, looked delighted.

Sylra hesitated at first. But when she realized it would be Lucien, she gave in.

Lucien, seated in the middle of their growing conspiracy, raised a brow.

"Do I have any say in this?"

Marie smirked at once.

"You’re surrounded by beautiful girls and you still want to complain. Are you perhaps—"

She did not finish.

Lucien slapped a hand over her mouth before the sentence could commit a crime.

Marie laughed into his palm.

Soon enough, he sat in the middle.

The four women arranged themselves around him.

Then they began.

The moment cultivation started, the effect was obvious.

The elemental resonance sharpened. The sapling within Lucien’s inner world responded as well, and its influence spread through the space like a quiet blessing.

Energy became denser. The laws aligned more cleanly. The atmosphere itself encouraged growth.

The women were thrilled.

•••

Days passed.

Then the breakthroughs came.

Sylra broke through first.

Marina followed.

Both entered the Ascendant Realm successfully, condensing their Domain Seeds with shocking speed and stability.

Even Lucien was surprised.

It was too fast.

And more importantly—

they were not slowing down.

Their strength continued climbing.

At this rate, if Marie used the Abyssal Pool method and successfully stepped into Celestial, Lucien could almost believe she would leap multiple stages almost immediately.

The system had truly given these women an absurd blessing.

Or perhaps it had given them back something that should have been theirs from the beginning.

Either way, Lucien looked around at the strange, growing, dangerous group that kept gathering around him and let out a slow breath.

Lootwell was rising.

The people were advancing.

New paths were opening.

And somehow, in the middle of all that, he had ended up as the center of an elemental cultivation circle full of unreasonable women.

He was not entirely sure whether that was fate, strategy, or punishment.