100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 244

Chapter 244: Chapter 244 – Chaos
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to freeze.

The robed leader’s question still hung in the air.

But Lucien did not flinch.

His heartbeat remained steady. His aura didn’t ripple. Not even a twitch betrayed him.

He did not answer.

Because answering was dangerous.

He didn’t know whether the robed leader could detect lies… or twist truths… or whether the question itself was a trap.

So instead—

Lucien did something no one anticipated.

He broke eye contact.

And walked past the robed group.

The move stunned them more than any spoken reply ever could.

He stepped through their parted ranks, through the patch where the first Revenant Asphodel had already been plucked…

And continued—

Toward another blossom.

A second Revenant Asphodel nestled among Lungmirror Moss, glowing faintly like golden dawn smothered beneath midnight ink.

The robed leader’s eyes tightened. His group stiffened.

Lucien only smiled.

It was a small, subtle curve of his lips. One that carried no arrogance but a quiet message:

‘I fear neither you, nor the garden, nor the laws you believe bind me.’

He crouched.

Extended a gloved hand.

And plucked the Revenant Asphodel…

Softly. Effortlessly.

…with no penalty.

No withering stole his fingers.

No drain hollowed his veins.

No recoil of Stillness lashed against his body.

Nothing.

The sacred flower rested in his palm as peacefully as if it had grown for him alone.

Silence detonated across the garden.

The Scarlet Sect disciples jolted upright.

Their senior sister’s voice cracked in disbelief:

“Th-that’s impossible. The runes warned… to take it is to wither first. You pay in vitality. That rule —no one escapes that rule— but those two…”

Her voice died, choked by shock.

The Sskavyrn prodigies’ tails curled in alarm and their reptilian eyes sharpened.

Even the Celestial seniors of the Verdant Veil stiffened. Their pupils tightened to pinpricks.

Two Revenant Asphodels.

Plucked mere minutes apart.

And neither the robed woman nor Lucien suffered so much as a tremor.

This wasn’t rare fortune.

This was a violation of the garden’s fundamental law.

Lucien rose slowly, the luminous bloom cupped in his hand.

He met the robed leader’s stunned gaze.

Tilted his head.

And smirked.

“Does that answer your question?”

The robed leader faltered.

For the first time… words failed him.

Not because Lucien’s answer was unclear…

But because the answer was impossible.

Humans would wither. Most races would collapse.

Even Celestial Realm experts would tread carefully around the Asphodel’s conceptual toll.

But Lucien—

Lucien did not wither.

Not even a little.

The robed leader’s composure cracked as confusion flickered through his expression hidden behind the mask.

•••

What none of them knew—

Was the truth hidden beneath Lucien’s glove.

Only once he turned away did he relax his fingers.

He stored the Revenant Asphodel in his INVENTORY first.

And in that tiny moment…

His palm rippled.

Slime.

A translucent, viscous gleam pulsed beneath the glove, barely noticeable before regaining a perfect human shape.

Lucien smiled.

His plan had worked.

He had been experimenting for days refining a technique that was both absurd and brilliant back in the Meridian Gate.

Partial Slime Transformation.

Not full Slime Beast Mode.

Not a complete form shift.

Just enough of his essence to change to a race that cannot wither.

Slimes do not age.

Slimes do not rot.

Slimes do not wither.

And in the presence of the Revenant Asphodel, a flower that devours vitality…

Lucien’s slime-transformed hand was untouchable.

A perfect plan.

•••

Behind him, whispers erupted across factions.

“Two people… two… just plucked it like weeds…”

“Is the penalty broken?”

“Maybe? But I’m not insane enough to try copying them.”

“What ARE these people, really…?”

The robed leader finally exhaled.

When he spoke again, his voice held something different.

 

Curiosity. And perhaps…

Recognition.

“You are not as simple as I feared.”

Lucien shrugged lightly.

“I never claimed to be simple.”

The leader’s eyes narrowed.

But there was a sliver of respect now.

And a larger sliver… of caution.

•••

The Verdant Veil hurried to Lucien’s side with their breaths measured against the thickened air.

Even they felt the pressure here. That subtle tug of breath-sleep that clung to the lower terraces.

The robed group parted silently for them.

Marie seized Lucien’s sleeve the instant she reached him.

“You— You— You reckless, glorious, lunatic man—HOW—?!”

Lucien tapped her forehead with one finger.

“Trade secret.”

Eirene’s gaze, however, lingered on Lucien for a long moment.

Her eyes held certainty.

She had trusted him from the moment he stepped forward.

She did not ask questions.

She only offered him a serene nod.

Lucien returned it.

His gaze lowered to the bloom resting in his INVENTORY…

…and his heart tightened.

At what it represented.

At what it could restore.

At what he had lost.

And what he would reclaim.

He drew in a heavy breath…

then exhaled it toward the silver soil.

The wisp drifted down, glowing faintly…

He never forgot his promise.

•••

At the altar where hundreds of factions had gathered in rigid lines, chaos simmered beneath the surface.

Those who failed to buy the slime plushies scrambled like desperate gamblers.

Beast-mana cores. Rare metals. Spirit fruits. Monster tendons infused with law traces.

One by one, offerings were laid upon the obsidian slab.

And one by one…

Nothing.

The altar did not glow. It did not pulse. It did not hum.

It simply refused to react.

A suffocating frustration swept across the platform.

The Celestial proxies stood at the platform’s edge with their hands clasped behind their backs in ceremonial stillness.

Their expressions remained impassive but subtle tension betrayed their confusion.

Whispers cracked through the crowd like breaking ice.

“Why isn’t anything working?!”

“Our treasures are worth entire cities!”

“Is the ruin broken?!”

“Does it only accept a certain type of offering—?!”

“No,” a senior cultivator muttered grimly. “Look carefully…”

The realization spread slowly…

The altar wasn’t ignoring the items. It was ignoring the people.

It was… rejecting them.

The Eternal Ruin was not merely choosing offerings.

It was choosing who deserved to enter.

And most… despite their pride, their resources, their status… were deemed unworthy.

On a closer observation, the pattern became painfully clear.

The ones whose offerings failed… all shared the same, unmistakable trait.

They were the very same people Lucien had refused to sell slime plushies to.

Those with bleak colors in their auras. Those whose intentions felt crooked.

And now the ruin itself confirmed it.

A ripple of despair ran through these factions.

Some trembled. Some cursed. Some bowed their heads.

But none dared to step back…

After all, this is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

•••

When the Nephralis Sect stepped forward, heat rolled with them like a living tide.

They are proud descendants of the dragons. They carried their offering with unshakable certainty.

Crystallized volcanic essences, gemstones formed from the dying breath of a living volcano.

They placed it onto the altar.

The frozen desert cracked faintly under the wave of heat.

One second…

Two…

Three…

Nothing.

The female Celestial proxy inhaled to speak.

“Your offering does not—”

SHK—!!

A Nephralis disciple sliced his own palm before she finished.

Blood splattered across the altar in a molten arc.

But this blood… was not ordinary.

It shimmered with fragments of old draconic sigils… patterns shaped like coiled dragons, symbols of an ancestry that should have faded from the world long ago.

And hanging from the disciple’s belt was a fractured scale the size of a coin.

Barely noticeable but it was humming with the dying echo of a dragon’s will.

An ancestral relic.

The moment blood and relic resonated—

ROOOOOOOOOOAR—

The world trembled.

The desert itself shook as if something colossal exhaled beneath it.

Cracks of molten red light spidered across the altar, writhing like veins awakening after millennia of sleep.

The Nephralis disciples’ eyes widened with fanatical triumph.

“We were right!”

“The Red Dragon’s resonance—it’s here!”

“Our ancestor breathes within this ruin!”

“Our Ancestor who clashed with the Eternal—HE STILL LINGERS!”

The Celestial proxy lunged forward.

“STOP—! PUT DOWN YOUR—”

Too late.

CRRRRRAACK—!!

The altar split.

Not gently.

But violently… as if something inside punched its way out.

A void gate surged upward… blood-red, molten, spiraling with volcanic fury.

Its pull wasn’t an invitation.

It was a command.

A predator dragging its kin back home.

The Nephralis Sect toppled forward, not resisting.

They laughed as they were seized by the crimson vortex.

“EXALT IN FLAME—!!”

“THE ANCESTOR CALLS US—!!”

And then—

They vanished.

Sucked into the blood-red gate, swallowed whole by the ruin’s answer to their lineage.