100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 344 - Bound

Cautiously, Vaelcar layered more seals across the Basalt Regent’s vast form until even the idea of motion could not find purchase. Pale scripture crawled over and a final sigil closed over Kharzun’s throat, then his jaw, then the hollows behind his eyes.

Kharzun’s mountain-body lay limp in the ruined earth.

Only then did the battlefield finally remember breathing.

Under the Stygian Shell, the five Liberators stirred like men waking from a drowning dream.

They stepped out carefully.

They walked toward the two ancient beings.

Astraea gave them a single nod. The Tempest Crown above her brow pulsed once, then dimmed to a steady glow.

Her gaze moved past them.

"Where is the little brother," Astraea asked.

Vaelcar’s face shifted into something complicated.

He lifted his Oathbound Monolith. Scripture rotated across its face, and a seam opened beside it like a door in the air.

From that sealed pocket, he drew Lucien forth.

Lucien was wrapped in layered pale seals like a cocoon.

Vaelcar held him as carefully.

"He is the reason we still possess breath," Vaelcar said. "He struck the bell inside petrified time. The Concord Pact answered, and my Law learned rhythm again. Without that rhythm, I would have remained a statue until the Emperor finished his scripture."

His gaze flicked briefly toward Kharzun’s sealed body.

"Even if a dozen Eternals stood here," Vaelcar continued, "they would have been slain while frozen. The Basalt Regent did not merely stop bodies. He sought to finish souls. Our little brother bought us the only currency that matters against a window. Seconds."

Astraea’s expression tightened.

"His fate is not common," she murmured. "Those who carry relics from the elder ages seldom live ordinary lives. He makes me recall someone I would rather not remember." Her eyes softened by a fraction. "Still. He lives. That is fortune enough."

She turned.

"Junior flame-bearer. Offer him your flame."

Kaia did not hesitate. She stepped forward.

Vaelcar unraveled a portion of the seals, peeling them back until Lucien lay revealed in stasis.

His body was gaunt, drained to the bone. Wounds webbed his skin like a map drawn by cruelty. His shoulders and ribs showed bruises where petrified law had hit him like a hammer.

Yet inside him, a familiar pulse kept tugging at ruin. The Origin Core fragment.

It worked stubbornly rebuilding what could be rebuilt, knitting flesh and mending organs with the patience of ancient light.

Kaia inhaled.

Her golden flame unfurled around Lucien. It sank into the skin, kissed the wounds, and began to close them with visible certainty. Where flesh had torn, the tear tightened. Where blood had dried, it softened and vanished. Where bruises had pooled, the color drained away.

Her own Origin Core fragment resonated with the one inside him and the healing quickened.

Seconds passed.

Lucien’s body returned toward something that could be called whole.

But then the flame met the deeper damage and hesitated.

Inside, the spirit fractures remained like cracks in a crystal that had been struck too many times.

Kaia’s flame could mend what was living. But it could not rewrite what had been torn at the level of law.

Kaia swallowed, trying again.

The body improved.

The spirit did not.

Vaelcar watched.

"This is not flesh alone," he said quietly. "His spirit has been stretched beyond its intended grammar."

Astraea’s eyes narrowed.

"He forced transformations that were not yet his to wear," she said. "It is not bravery. It is sacrilege against his own limits."

Kaia’s flame dimmed. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

She stepped back, frustrated.

At least the body could endure.

At least he would wake.

Lucien’s eyelids fluttered.

Then opened.

Seven faces hovered over him.

Lucien stiffened instantly, then regretted it because his muscles protested.

His throat worked. He coughed once, and it was a dry sound that still carried the memory of blood.

"Did everything go well?" he asked.

The question was simple. The relief it caused was not.

Rhazek exhaled so hard it looked like his lungs had been holding their breath since the gray descended. Seryth’s shoulders sagged. Velun’s mouth twisted into a grin that failed because his hands were still trembling. Darian’s expression loosened like a knot finally cut. Kaia let herself smile, small and bright.

Astraea’s lips curved with something close to warmth.

"Because of you," Astraea said, "we endured."

She pointed.

There, Kharzun lay like a defeated mountain. Seals hung over him like a net woven from verdicts.

Lucien pushed himself upright, then finally managed a grin that looked almost boyish.

It was the joy of a man who had gambled his life and watched the coin land the right way.

Vaelcar’s voice followed.

"We can end him," he said. "He is sealed. We could crush him now and scatter his authority. Yet we chose to ask your will first."

Lucien’s grin faded.

He stared at Kharzun’s bound body, and something quiet moved behind his eyes.

He thought for a moment.

Then he looked up at Vaelcar.

"Brother," Lucien said, "please help me bring him somewhere."

Astraea lifted an eyebrow.

Vaelcar watched him.

Then he nodded once.

Lucien inhaled.

His domain expanded.

The world lurched.

The battlefield vanished, replaced by the interior of Lucien’s divine energy core.

Lucien lifted a hand, and buried structures groaned as if waking.

The buried dungeons rose.

A familiar mouth yawned open before them.

The Gargoyle Dungeon.

Kaia’s eyes widened. Darian muttered something that sounded like a prayer and a curse at the same time.

Lucien started walking.

They followed.

Behind them, Vaelcar raised his Monolith, and a seal blossomed over Kharzun’s vast body.

Compression.

Kharzun’s mountain-form folded inward as if reality had decided he was meant to fit through mortal doors. His mass remained, but his shape obeyed.

A boulder turned into a carried burden.

Vaelcar guided him forward like a prisoner dragged by invisible chains.

They entered the dungeon.

The air changed immediately.

They climbed.

Then they reached the top.

And silence became absolute.

Because they saw it.

The Primarch of Stone. The Gargoyle Ancestor.

Chained.

The same chains that had once bound Astraea and Vaelcar were wrapped around that colossal being like the world’s cruel embrace. The Primarch’s head hung low.

Astraea stared at the chains, then at Lucien, and for the first time her storm faltered, as if wind itself had been forced to reconsider what it knew.

Vaelcar’s gaze sharpened into something that resembled disbelief.

Lucien did not speak.

Astraea finally broke the silence.

"Little brother," she said with amusement, "no wonder your mimicry carried true bone and not mere paint. You did not imagine a Primarch. You kept one."

She tilted her head,

"What else have you hidden under your ribs?"

Vaelcar’s tone was quieter.

"You brought us here," he said. "Does that mean you intend to chain the Basalt Regent beside his ancestor?"

Lucien’s smile returned.

He knelt, gathered remnants of the chain dust and broken fragments he had saved from when he freed the Eternals, and poured them before him.

Then he invoked Cram Session.

He copied Rurik’s Transmute skill.

Lucien pressed his hands together.

The chain dust shuddered.

Transmutation did not create from nothing. It reassigned meaning.

The fragments stretched, grew, braided, and thickened until a new chain formed. It was vast and brutal.

Lucien stood.

"Killing him is wasteful," he said. "An Emperor is not a foe we simply throw away."

He glanced at the chained Primarch.

"This one feeds the dungeon. Its essence births gargoyles. It turns stone into an industry."

He looked back toward Kharzun.

"You saw the gargoyles below. I can have infinite numbers of them if I want. Infinite raw materials."

The Liberators swallowed.

Lucien continued, unbothered by their unease.

"I have other dungeons too. Some need more essence than a Primarch can provide. I will extract what I can from Kharzun."

He paused, then added...

"After that, we can decide whether death is still worth the cost."

Astraea and Vaelcar shared a glance.

There was no shock there.

Only recognition.

They had lived long enough to know that survival often birthed a colder intelligence.

Astraea’s lips curved.

"Cruel," she said, almost approving. "You think like a war-maker."

Vaelcar’s voice was slow.

"It is dangerous," he warned. "A chained Emperor is still an Emperor. Even bound, he will seek angles."

Lucien nodded once.

He stepped forward and began to write.

Runes carved themselves into the chain links. He had studied the records from the Eternal of Stillness. He had memorized the patterns.

The material was rare. The chain that can bound an Emperor demanded a substance that the world itself hated touching.

Abyss metal.

When the final rune locked into place, the chain’s glow dimmed to a hungry, permanent darkness.

Lucien lifted his hand.

The chain surged forward like a serpent made of iron and verdicts.

It wrapped Kharzun.

Once. Twice. Ten times.

It latched to the pillars and bit into the dungeon’s foundations.

Kharzun did not roar.

He could not.

Vaelcar still held the seals in place.

But even through the silence, Kharzun’s fury pressed against the world.

When everything was secured, Vaelcar finally peeled the sealing scripture away.

Kharzun’s senses returned first.

Then his awareness.

And then he saw where he was.

He saw the Primarch of Stone chained in the same chamber.

He saw the abyss-chains.

He saw the pillars.

He saw with horrifying clarity... the truth.

The Gargoyle Ancestor had never vanished.

It had never escaped.

It had been caged here all along.

Realization struck him so hard that for several heartbeats he did not move.

His eyes widened in outrage at being outplayed.

His fury surged but before any sound could be born, Vaelcar’s seals snapped shut over his mouth again.

Silence returned.

Lucien dusted his hands off as if he had finished a mundane task.

"Let us leave," Lucien said. "I will exploit him later. For now, I want to see what this world offers."

Astraea watched him for a long moment.

Then she laughed softly.

"Very well," she said.

And so they departed the chamber, leaving behind two chained legends of stone.