100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 459 - Growing Unease

The next day, Lucien opened his eyes with the same unease still sitting in his chest.

It had not lessened overnight.

If anything, the night had given it more room to spread.

He stood alone for a long time, looking over Lootwell from the edge of the Stillness Palace, and for the first time since Seran’s warning, a thought came to him that he could not push away.

Maybe he should not stay here.

The idea felt ugly the moment it formed.

But the more he examined it, the harder it became to dismiss.

Lootwell had grown too much.

Too many people lived here now. Too many races. Too many allies. Too many promises.

It had become a place where lives actually continued. Children ran through its roads. Monsters learned to speak. Workers argued over schedules. Healers stayed up late because they cared if someone recovered by morning.

And if inevitability truly led Convergence to him—

Then staying here might make all of that part of the cost.

Lucien closed his eyes.

That was the cruelest part.

He did not doubt the others.

That would have been easier.

If they had hesitated, he could have decided for them. If they had pulled away, he could have accepted the distance.

But they had not.

They had moved toward him.

Toward danger.

Because of him.

That should have comforted him.

Instead, it made the weight heavier.

He was a leader.

That meant, sooner or later, he had to think the thought no one else wanted to say aloud.

If the inevitable meeting came here...

If Convergence or whatever followed him touched Lootwell...

If all of this became a battlefield because he remained at its center...

Then what kind of leader would that make him?

Lucien stared out over the city.

Part of him wanted to leave quietly.

Take the danger with him. Make himself the bait. Let the territory live.

If he faced inevitability alone, then at least the cost might stay contained to him.

It was the logic of someone who had finally built something worth losing sleep over.

He hated the thought.

And because he hated it, he knew it was real.

He exhaled slowly.

Worst-case scenario.

That was what he had to prepare for.

Not survival.

Not victory.

The worst case.

•••

Just then, Eirene found him.

She arrived carrying a smile so faint that another person might not have noticed it at all.

Lucien did.

And strangely—

It eased something in him before she had even spoken.

"You found something?" He asked.

"I did," Eirene replied.

Soon, she told him one of the devices left behind by the Eternal of Stillness had finally responded.

Lucien blinked toward her with renewed focus.

Then, without wasting time, they walked inside the Stillness Palace.

The palace’s inner layers remained as strange as ever. Eirene led him deeper, toward the chamber where the mountains of spirit crystals had once stunned even the boldest explorers.

The altar was still there.

So were the relic fields.

And so were the countless artifacts left untouched during the expedition.

During the expedition, most of the people had failed to form contracts with them. These were not dead tools that accepted the first warm hand that reached for them.

They chose. And when they did not approve, they refused.

Coupled with everything else salvaged from the resource sites, the amount of usable armament left in this place was absurd.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed as he took it in again.

This was an army waiting to wake correctly.

He turned to Eirene.

"Sister, please prepare these artifacts for trusted ones," he said. "Those with enough strength to endure the bond. Enough will to carry something alive without being overwhelmed by it."

Eirene nodded.

Then Lucien handed her several storage rings. The artifacts and weapon gathered from the resource sites were inside.

Eirene accepted them, then said, "The artifacts will still choose their owners."

Lucien was already prepared for that answer.

He handed her one more ring.

Inside were uncommon drops from the corrupted monsters.

Soulbond Thread – Used to reinforce connections between equipment and wielder, increasing compatibility and efficiency.

He said, "Then use this where the gap is narrow. If a match is close but not stable, let’s force the bridge."

Eirene looked at the ring, then at him, and smiled faintly.

Soon, she told him to come farther in.

There was something else.

He followed her into the inner circle of the chamber.

And when he saw what had been activated—

His heart jumped.

"That is..." Lucien said softly.

Before them stood the Eclipse Array.

The same device that had once wiped out monster swarms on a scale too large for ordinary battlefields to even describe properly back during the Millenia War.

It stood in austere silence, all concentric runes, eclipse-rings, and dark-silver channels waiting to be fed enough energy to make a sunless judgment.

Eirene clearly enjoyed the look on his face.

"With this," she said, "we do not need to fear ordinary invasion."

Lucien stepped closer.

He could already feel the restrained hunger inside the device.

Eirene continued, "Its energy cost is absurd. Even in this state, a single full discharge would drink a region dry if prepared badly. But if properly supplied..."

She let the sentence hang for a moment.

Then finished it.

"...one burst of eclipse can erase millions."

Lucien finally smiled.

That was useful.

Very useful.

Not enough for inevitability.

But enough to make an army think twice before pretending Lootwell was easy prey.

His gaze drifted.

Nearby, other devices remained dormant or broken.

There was the Chronal Anchor and the Soul Resonance Loom. (See Chapter 267 for reference)

Then his eyes settled on the remains of something larger.

A Dimensional Gate.

Or what had once been one.

Even broken, it carried a presence that made the space around it feel subtly wrong.

Lucien stared at it longer than the others.

Then he asked quietly, "Sister Eirene... where do you think that gate used to lead?"

Eirene followed his gaze.

Her brows drew together.

When she answered, her voice was lower.

"To the Abyss."

Lucien turned sharply to her.

"A direct access gate," she said. "Or something close enough to one that the difference would matter only to fools. It is broken now. I cannot restore it... yet."

Lucien swallowed.

The Eternal of Stillness had been even more dangerous than he thought.

Who built a direct gate to the Abyss and left it inside her palace as one device among many?

Lucien shook his head slowly and forced himself away from the thought.

Broken or not, the gate was not a present answer.

Eirene, seeing where his thoughts had almost gone, redirected him back to the Eclipse Array and began explaining its actual operating logic.

That was when the conversation became fun in a different way.

Because it turned out the array was less "big beam that kills everything" and more "a mathematically cruel act of celestial fraud."

Lucien listened with growing fascination, and for a brief while, despite everything else looming over him, he actually found himself entertained.

The Eternal of Stillness was insane.

But magnificently insane.

"This is evil," Lucien said after one part of the explanation.

Eirene did not even pretend to deny it. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Yes," she said. "That is why it works."

Lucien laughed once under his breath.

’Good.’

They needed more evil things on their side.

•••

Later, back in his room, the unease returned.

Of course it did.

Useful discoveries did not erase inevitability.

They only gave it more things to test itself against.

Lucien sat in silence and let the thought run where it wanted.

How would he meet Convergence?

That was the question beneath all the others.

Not whether.

But how.

Would Convergence be drawn to Lootwell because the preparations themselves created too much weight in fate?

Would the spreading cure force movement across the West until their paths crossed in some city that neither of them had originally chosen?

Would some ally be targeted, dragging Lucien into a rescue that "just happened" to intersect with the Primordial Incarnation’s own route?

Would the Abyssal trail tighten around Alanthuriel until Lucien had no choice but to follow it?

Would a bait settlement appear somewhere impossible, one he could not morally ignore?

Would a fake weakness, a false collapse, or a staged opening be used to make him step where he otherwise would not?

All of those felt possible.

That was the worst part.

Convergence did not need one clean method.

Any coincidence, any narrowing path, any pressure point could become the place where inevitability matured into encounter.

Lucien understood something then that he had not wanted to fully admit before.

The meeting would not feel dramatic when it began.

It would feel reasonable.

That was why it was dangerous.

By the time it looked like a trap, it might already be one.

He sat with that thought for a while.

Then rose.

There was nothing to gain from staring at inevitability and hoping it grew embarrassed enough to turn away.

Whatever the road was... wherever the meeting happened... however Convergence chose to step into it—

Lucien would only have one answer worth respecting.

Prepare until preparation itself became defiance.

So he returned to his work.

He refined techniques. Rebuilt sequencing. Adjusted equipment pairings. Repeated simulations.

He trained again.

And though helplessness sat with him now more openly than before, it no longer paralyzed him.

He could not stop the threads from moving. He could not unmake the notice already given. He could not return to the comfort of ignorance.

So he did the only thing left to him.

He prepared for the inevitable—

With both hands open and teeth clenched—

Until the future had to fight for every step it took toward him.