100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 369 - Future
The next day, Lucien had just finished a cycle of comprehension when a knock sounded at the door.
He finally stood up an opened the door.
The Anvil-Horn Eternal stood there with Lilith beside him, both looking far too awake for how early the day felt.
Lucien glanced past them instinctively.
No Kaia.
Lilith noticed.
Her mouth twitched. "She is still chewing on your ’scaffold.’ I heard her arguing with a page."
Lucien nodded once. That sounded accurate.
The Anvil-Horn Eternal finally spoke.
"Benefactor," he said, "that Codex you recreated... it is obscene."
He paused.
"The original discipline the Void-walkers practice is different."
He tapped his chest once, then his horn.
"Yours fits. It fits the Big World. It breathes with our rules."
Lucien smiled.
Lilith rolled her eyes. "He has been praising it since dawn. I think he even tried to praise it in his meditation."
The Anvil-Horn Eternal ignored her with dignity.
"I came for the second matter," he said. "The inspection. I would like to begin today, if you are willing."
Lucien nodded.
•••
They did not go far.
Just outside Starforge’s deeper wing was an open yard.
And waiting in that yard—
A line of people, men and women standing straight.
As he stepped closer, he recognized several faces.
The same group from the ruin exploration, the ones Lilith had trusted enough to move with her.
They offered him nods and faint smiles.
Lilith leaned closer and spoke quietly.
"I told them you are Wolf Brother," she said. "So no one decides to misunderstand you later."
Lucien gave her a brief nod.
He then turned to the line.
No one moved.
Lucien’s Divine Sense unfurled. Then Inspect followed.
One by one, Lucien walked along the line.
Each time, he saw the same thing.
Clear color. Clean resonance. No hidden hook that tasted unpleasant.
A few had scars in their foundations, but they were honest scars, the kind earned by surviving rather than cheating.
Lucien’s expression stayed neutral, but inside he felt something close to surprise.
These were the kind of people who would stay standing when their world tilted.
He reached the end of the line and stopped.
The Anvil-Horn Eternal watched him with an intensity that suggested this mattered more than pride.
Lucien turned.
"They are all acceptable," he said. "They can learn the Codex without issues."
The yard breathed.
Some of the line loosened by a fraction. A few looked openly relieved.
The Anvil-Horn Eternal threw his head back and laughed once, loud and satisfied.
"Great," he said. "These are mine."
Lilith lifted a brow. "He means ’trusted.’ He does not actually own them."
The Solhorn waved a hand.
Lucien’s mouth twitched.
Soon, the line dispersed with quiet efficiency, and the yard cleared like a tide pulling back.
Lilith was already turning, ready to return to her own training.
But Lucien lifted a hand.
"One more thing."
The Anvil-Horn Eternal and Lilith paused.
Lucien reached out.
A pea-sized Lucien appeared in his palm.
He held the split body out toward the Solhorn.
"Is it alright if this one stays with you for a while?"
The Anvil-Horn Eternal blinked once.
Then he nodded without hesitation.
"That’s all?" he said, then laughed thunderously. "Of course. If the little one can withstand my weight, let it stay with me as long as it wishes. GAHAHA."
Lucien actually paused at how easy that was.
"You did not ask why?" Lucien said.
The Solhorn’s eyes gleamed faintly. "If it is useful to you, it is useful to Starforge. That is enough."
Lucien smiled.
The split body hopped onto the Solhorn’s wrist like it belonged there.
The Anvil-Horn Eternal regarded it as if it were a strange insect, then spoke quietly.
"Do not break in my veins," he told it.
The split body looked up and nodded solemnly. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
•••
Lucien produced several more split bodies.
They hovered in the air around him.
Then he turned to Lilith.
"Sister," Lucien said, "can you bring these to your sites with concentrated Laws?"
Lilith stared at the tiny Luciens like she was evaluating a batch of rare materials.
Her eyes narrowed.
"What are you planning?"
"Learning," Lucien answered.
That was all.
Lilith held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.
"Fine." Her tone said she had already decided the moment she saw his face.
She reached out and scooped the split bodies into her palm.
And then, for the first time, she made an expression that looked... almost amused.
She poked one of the pea-sized Luciens with a finger.
The tiny Lucien flailed dramatically, as if struck by a cosmic calamity.
Lilith’s mouth curved into a real smile.
Lucien felt the poke through the thin edge of the connection.
His spine stiffened.
He coughed once, hard, like a man choking on his own dignity.
Lilith looked at him innocently. "What?"
"Nothing," Lucien said quickly. "Carry on."
Lilith poked another one.
The second split body glared up at her with offended authority.
Lilith’s smile widened by a fraction.
Lucien decided he had seen enough and turned away.
He intended to form a Symbiotic Fusion with nature itself, to learn the Laws of Nature at their source.
•••
Lucien returned to his room.
He was about to enter his room and continue training when—
A sudden dread washed through him like cold water poured down the spine.
He froze.
The air was normal.
The corridor was empty.
Lucien turned and looked outward across Starforge.
But there was nothing wrong.
He extended his senses toward his inner realm.
Nothing again.
That was the problem.
A warning without a source was worse than a visible blade.
Lucien swallowed.
His instincts whispered.
And that whisper was enough to make his whole being feel unsettled, as if reality itself was tapping him on the shoulder and refusing to say why.
Lucien stepped into his room and closed the door.
He sat down.
He regulated his breath, his energy, and his mind.
Nothing was wrong.
And yet the dread remained.
Lucien stared at his hands.
"Could it be..."
He did not want to do this.
He had avoided using this skill for a reason.
But a warning that refused to explain itself was the kind that killed people.
Lucien closed his eyes.
He activated the skill he had copied from Elunara when her loyalty reached one hundred percent.
Fate’s Debt.
A lifespan traded for a glimpse.
Lucien felt it take something from him immediately. A subtle sense that a page had been torn from the book of his future.
His vision shifted.
The world fell away.
•••
He saw Starforge.
Not as it was now.
As it would be.
The sky was not sky.
It was metal-lit smoke.
Formations shattered like glass under a hammer. The defensive arrays that were supposed to overlap into safety screamed once, then went silent as if their throats had been cut.
The first impact looked like a storm deciding it hated a city.
Alloykins.
They came like a falling mine.
Bodies of Astrafer shimmered in resonance, dispersing attacks, spreading damage, laughing at direct force.
They struck the walls and the walls buckled.
They struck the people and the people broke.
Lucien saw Starforge members fighting in lines.
He saw someone trying to rally others and getting cut in half before the words could finish leaving their mouth.
He saw a healer kneel over a wounded friend... then a metal fist punch through both of them at once.
The scene was fast and brutal, and it did not pause to honor courage.
Then the vision tightened.
The Anvil-Horn Eternal.
He stood in the center like a mountain that refused to fall.
His horn blazed with authority. His aura roared.
He protected Lilith.
He kept her behind him like a secret the world was not allowed to steal.
Lilith fought anyway.
She threw metals like comets, bent them into blades, turned the air into a furnace that screamed with molten violence.
Kaia was there too.
She moved like wildfire given a body.
Her flames hunted.
Even her Testament Flame burned in pale clarity, judging everything it touched.
The Anvil-Horn Eternal’s breath turned heavy.
He was losing ground.
Because he was one mountain against a landslide.
The Solhorn looked at Lilith, and his eyes softened with something that tore through all his iron.
Then he did something final.
He burned his life.
His aura ignited into a white-hot blaze that ate into his own existence.
Power surged, and for an instant the Alloykins recoiled.
A crater formed where his will struck the world.
Lilith’s scream tore the air.
She reached for him.
Too late.
He looked at her one last time, and the expression on his face was not fear.
It was apology.
Then he vanished into his own light.
And Lilith—
Her eyes turned into something terrifying.
Rage like a vow.
A promise so heavy it could bend nations.
She grabbed Kaia by the shoulder and dragged her back through smoke and ruin.
Kaia stumbled, still fighting.
Lilith’s voice cracked like steel.
"Live."
Kaia’s teeth bared.
The two of them fled through the collapsing halls, through dead formations, through the echo of a city dying.
Lilith looked back once.
In the kind of quiet fury that does not burn out.
It only waits.
The vision ended on Starforge’s broken skyline.
And the taste of iron.
•••
Lucien gasped and opened his eyes.
His room was still his room.
His breath came fast, then slowed under control.
His hands tightened into fists.
"This is..."
He did not see himself in the vision.
Two possibilities surfaced in his mind.
The first was his title. The Unwritten One did not exist in fate’s script.
But that explanation felt incomplete.
If it were only his title at work, then the discrepancies did not make sense. He had the ancient beasts with him. Together, they should have been enough to turn the tide.
Which left the second possibility.
By the time the vision unfolded, he was not here.
For whatever reason, Lucien was absent from this place.
Yet Kaia still appeared in the vision.
That meant one thing. He had not left for the West Continent yet. After all, he had planned to visit the Liberator branch with her first, before making the return.
The most frustrating part of the skill was time. Fate’s Debt never stamped a date on its cruelty.
But even without one, this vision was not useless.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
He did not know if the attack came in a week, a month, or a year.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
It was coming.
Lucien stood.
The air around him steadied as his will returned to its usual sharpness.
He looked toward the door, toward Starforge, toward his inner realm, toward all the lives now tied to his choices.
"Peaceful days in Starforge are over."
