Lucien sniffed himself, but there was no obvious scent on him. Nothing he recognized.

Then he remembered Seraphine’s smile before he left, and realization struck at once.

She had definitely done something to him with those strange powers of hers.

He used Structural Insight and immediately saw the problem.

A "scent clause" was clinging to his body.

Lucien nearly cried.

It was the kind of scent only women could detect.

’Shit.’

What followed was not peace.

It was interrogation.

The others turned on him properly.

Not violently.

Just with questions sharp enough to qualify as coordinated assault.

Vivian was first.

Her concern did not come from jealousy. It came from something older and more familiar. Protectiveness.

Lucien could see it in the way she folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at him.

"Lu," she said, "did someone trick you?"

Lucien looked offended at once.

"Why is that your first conclusion?"

Vivian did not even blink.

"Because you attract danger the way lit furnaces attract moths."

That was, unfortunately, difficult to argue with.

Marie was no help either. She had recovered from the initial shock just enough to become nosy.

"Who was she?"

Kaia, arms folded, stood beside her with the expression of someone trying very hard to remain calm and failing in small dignified ways.

Sylra said nothing, but the silence around her had changed. It was not hostile. Just... tight.

Lucien, for his part, evaded beautifully.

He answered without answering. Smiled without confessing. Redirected without technically lying.

By the time he was done, Vivian looked unconvinced, Marie looked offended by the lack of details, Kaia looked more suspicious than before, and Sylra looked like she had decided words were currently beneath her.

Marina did not return.

That part lingered at the edge of the scene like a small emotional storm cloud no one wanted to point at directly.

Then Eirene arrived.

She had likely come for an entirely unrelated reason.

That ended the moment she stepped into range and stopped.

Her expression changed very slightly.

Eirene pressed her lips together.

Lucien looked at her with the full desperation of a man spotting possible salvation in the middle of social ruin.

Eirene saw that look.

Then, to Lucien’s alarm, she looked away.

There was a brief and clearly visible conflict inside her. It moved across her features almost too quickly to catch. Thought. Hesitation. Some inward weighing of consequences no one else there fully understood.

Then she let out a slow breath.

The soft floral motes drifting from her body shifted.

They moved away from her like pollen answering a hidden command and floated toward Lucien. They touched him lightly, dissolved into his clothes, his hair, his skin, and the air nearest him.

A moment later, the foreign scent was gone.

Or rather, not gone.

Rewritten.

Now Lucien carried Eirene’s fragrance instead.

It was unmistakable.

Fresh bloom. Clean green life. Something delicate that had no business feeling so territorial.

Lucien stared at her like she had just pulled him back from execution.

Eirene did not return the look.

That made everything worse.

Because from the outside, it did not look like she had helped him out of mercy.

It looked like she had calmly erased another woman’s trace and marked him with her own.

The silence that followed became so complete that even Lucien, who was by now extremely used to walking into disasters of his own making, found it a little difficult to breathe normally.

Marie’s jaw slowly lowered.

Kaia froze.

Sylra pressed her lips together.

Vivian looked from Lucien to Eirene and then back again with the helpless confusion of someone realizing there was an entire emotional war happening around her without receiving the notes in advance.

Lucien looked at Eirene again.

This time, her gaze met his only briefly.

There was no explanation in it.

Only composure.

Then Lucien laughed.

"All right," he said. "I should mention that the expedition was a success."

That redirected them.

Not fully.

But enough.

Lucien took out the Origin Core fragments.

That won.

At least temporarily.

The emotional mess did not vanish, but it was shoved aside by something stronger.

Vivian recovered first.

"As expected of my Lulu," she said immediately as her face brightened. "With those, can the network cover the West now?"

Lucien glanced at the fragments in his hand and smiled.

"Maybe not all of it yet," he said. "But enough to make the next phase of expansion much easier."

That answer pleased all of them. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Whatever unfamiliar feelings had started buding in their hearts, they were still people of Lootwell first. Builders. Fighters. Co-conspirators in civilization. The thought of seeing their communication network spread farther through the world was too satisfying to ignore.

Marie, in particular, seemed to regain herself through sheer ambition.

Her eyes lit up.

Then, without ceremony, she stepped toward Lucien and held out her own Origin Core fragment.

Lucien blinked.

Marie puffed out her chest a little and grinned.

"If I’m going to be a mastermind behind the scenes, then I have to contribute properly."

That was such a Marie answer that Lucien almost laughed again.

He took the fragment carefully.

Before he could say much, Kaia stepped forward too.

So did Sylra.

Kaia extended hers without hesitation.

"We already decided this a while ago," she said.

Sylra placed hers beside it.

"We want to help too."

Lucien looked from one to the other, then at the fragments, then back at their faces.

He understood immediately that refusing would only insult the sincerity of it.

Then the floor near them moved.

A puddle of water slid forward with tragic determination.

From its center, another Origin Core fragment rose and settled gently into Lucien’s waiting hand.

The puddle quivered.

Then, without reforming into a person, it moved away again down the hall, emitting a sound that was somehow both watery and unmistakably full of heartbreak.

Lucien lost it.

He laughed.

The entire thing was too absurd.

...

Soon after, he began merging the fragments.

The merged fragment he carried before. Marie’s pair. Kaia’s. Sylra’s. Marina’s tragic offering. The ones from Tavian, Mirelle, and Auren. Seraphine’s. The set Seran had given him.

One after another, the fragments answered his will and fused into the growing whole.

By the time the process settled, the Origin Core fragment in Lucien’s hands had become something far larger than before.

Twenty merged fragments.

It pulsed with a pressure that made the air around it feel slightly reorganized.

Lucien stared at it with genuine satisfaction.

He still did not know how many fragments existed in total, but twenty was already enormous by any practical standard.

The Primordial Slime had once implied that the completed Origin Core could even peer toward Earth, another universe entirely.

That meant the full whole would be monstrous beyond ordinary civilizational language.

This, then, was only a portion.

And yet even this portion already felt absurd.

The change was immediate.

Everyone near him could feel it.

The communication range would no longer merely strain toward distant regions. It might genuinely be able to cover the entire West Continent once properly integrated and tested.

Not only that, the merged fragment had become an even more terrifying energy source. So long as ambient mana existed in the environment, Lootwell’s infrastructure could siphon, convert, and sustain itself on a scale that would make ordinary powers weep with envy.

The thought alone excited Lucien.

He closed his fingers around the enlarged fragment and turned toward the others.

"All right," he said. "Stabilize everything first. I want testing done in layers, not chaos. Sis, take charge again."

Vivian nodded immediately.

Marie straightened as if given command of a glorious conspiracy. Kaia already looked halfway into implementation. Sylra gave a quiet nod. Even Eirene, who had until now remained almost suspiciously quiet after her little intervention, simply accepted the shift and turned her mind toward work.

And somewhere farther away, the puddle that was Marina probably cried harder.

Lucien left them to it and returned to his private quarters.

Once inside, the quiet settled.

He sat down.

Then he let his thoughts turn inward.

Marina had been right.

"Experiencing creation" had in fact changed something.

Because experience had shown him something theory could not.

Lucien closed his eyes and entered meditation.

He began organizing the realization carefully.

Creation was not only the act of bringing something into existence.

It was also invitation, allowance, and response.

The making of a thing was never solitary for long. Real creation, living creation, required reception.

A world accepted seeds. A body accepted life. A bond accepted another presence. Even ideas required a mind willing to hold them.

That was what the night with Seraphine had given him that theory never could.

He had not merely acted.

He had been answered.

Creation was not domination imposed on emptiness.

It was mutuality.

It was a beginning welcomed by something other than the self.

That was why the act had felt different from every theoretical frame and every structural analogy he had built in his mind. Because life was not made by command alone. It was made through resonance, trust, vulnerability, and the willingness of one existence to make room for another.

He breathed in slowly.

Creation also required risk.

That was another piece he had missed.

To create was to permit uncertainty, to begin without full control, and to allow something not yet finished to enter the world and trust growth to carry it farther than certainty could.

Worlds. Lives. Relationships. Civilizations.

All of them began before perfection.

Lucien smiled slowly in the silence.

The Law within him responded.

A deeper harmony entered his spirit.

His Divine Energy Core brightened. His law marks sharpened. The comprehension that had resisted him suddenly folded into place.

Lucien opened his eyes.

"Fifth Stage," he murmured.

The words came with a smile already forming.

He stood and flexed one hand.

He had changed again.

And this time the change felt right in a way that made him want to laugh at how stubbornly he had tried to solve it through theory alone.

Outside, Lootwell was still moving. Still preparing to become something the world would not be ready for.

Lucien looked toward the door.

It was time to push everything forward again.