100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 245

Chapter 245: Chapter 245 – Protective Mechanism
Silence fell.

Not peace… but a brittle, razor-thin silence stretched so tight it felt like the sky itself might tear.

The Celestial proxies stood frozen. Their expressions were carved from shock and disbelief.

For the first time since the expedition began… they had failed to stop something.

And the Eternal Ruin of Stillness… was reacting.

The frozen desert that was once still as a corpse… shuddered.

A low groan rippled across the dunes, followed by another… deeper… older… angrier.

Then—

WHOOOOSH—!!

A storm rose.

A swirling maelstrom threaded with fragments of Law. It was raw and uncontrolled.

The Celestial proxies instantly moved. Sigils bloomed like star-fire around their hands.

They spread their domains as they shielded the crowd.

“Stay behind us—do NOT approach the altar!” one barked.

Their voices were steady, but their eyes…

Their eyes betrayed the truth.

The Ruin was slipping out of control.

And just then—

A laugh.

Cruelly amused.

It peeled out of the shadows like a second void ripping open.

The Varkhaal Sect stepped forward. Their robes fluttered like wings of night.

They walked with the unhurried calm of beings who had already accepted madness as destiny.

Their leader lifted a jet-black charm, a shard of obsidian shaped into a hollow, watching eye.

Another ancient relic.

And not a minor one.

The Celestial proxy’s breath hitched.

“DON’T—!”

The Varkhaal leader ignored him entirely.

“If the Red Dragon’s remnant can be stirred,” he murmured, voice low with fanatic certainty, “then our ancestor, the Black Shade, will not remain silent.”

“STOP—!” the proxy commanded. Their sigils burned brighter, “THE ALTAR IS UNSTABLE—!”

But instability was exactly what the Varkhaal wanted.

One disciple drew a thin ritual dagger—

SHK—

—and cut their palm open.

Dark blood dripped onto the altar.

Not normal blood.

Blood threaded with shadow sigils, the ancestral markers of a being that didn’t merely die… but refused to.

FWOOOOOOM—!!

Darkness punched upward like a spear.

The altar’s silver glow died all at once.

A void gate blossomed—

Not flaming like the Nephralis one, but perfectly still.

A circle of absolute absence, swallowing even light that touched its edge.

Its gravity deepened.

The air turned thick.

Shadows bent toward it like loyal servants.

The Varkhaal did not resist.

One by one, they stepped into the void, dissolving into the darkness like whispers sucked into a tomb.

“Our ancestor rises,” the leader intoned.

“Our path is inevitable.”

Then—

they vanished.

•••

For a heartbeat, everyone froze.

Two ancient bloodlines had forced entry.

Two ancestors had answered.

And now the altar… glowed with violent, unstable pulses.

Those who had failed earlier panicked.

“The altar is open—GO, GO, GO!”

“Use anything—offer anything—NOW!”

Desperation burned away reason.

Several disciples lunged at the stands. They stole some slime plushies they had previously mocked… and shoved them onto the altar.

The Celestial proxy shouted:

“STOP—DO NOT TOUCH THE ALT—!”

But it was too late.

A plushie hit the altar.

Then another.

Then ten more.

And the destabilized altar that was already cracked by draconic flame and shadowed blood… reacted with fury.

VVVVRRRRRMMMMMM—!!!

A jagged, malformed void gate ripped open.

But this one did not close.

It… expanded.

Wider.

Hungrier.

It’s not a portal anymore.

A mouth.

A rift of raw Stillness Law, behaving like a wounded beast driven into rage.

Sand whipped into the air.

Practitioners stumbled, screaming.

Barriers shattered like glass.

The Celestial proxies were slammed backward by invisible pressure. Their domains crumbled.

Their shocked voices cut through the gale.

“We cannot stabilize it—!”

“The Ruin is no longer accepting offerings!”

“No—NO—THE RUIN IS RETALIATING—!!”

The frozen desert beneath them moved.

Tremors pulsed outward.

The sky twisted.

The storm turned violent.

And then—

SHUUUUM—!!!

The unstable void gate SNAPPED wide open…

and the entire platform… the entire crowd… every faction outside…

…was pulled toward the ruin with unstoppable force.

Screams erupted.

Banners tore.

Weapons flew from hands.

Even the Celestial proxies were dragged. Their bodies skidded helplessly across the sand.

The Ruin, had stopped choosing.

It was now taking.

All were swallowed.

The world blurred into spiraling darkness.

And the Eternal Ruin… claimed everyone.

•••

Deep within the Stillness Ruin, the shift came like a blade cleaving through the world.

A tremor rippled across every stone, every hall, and every chamber.

The Garden Where Breath Sleeps responded too.

Breath-motes shuddered. Vines curled tight. The silver soil hissed as if exhaling in pain.

Marie grabbed her chest, eyes widening.

“W-Why does it suddenly feel like something is… angry?”

She wasn’t imagining it.

A low, resonant groan rolled through the entire ruin. It was a soundless vibration like the ancient walls had inhaled sharply in outrage.

Eirene’s pupils shrank.

“…This is— the ruin’s protective mechanism! It has awakened!”

Everyone tensed immediately.

A suffocating pressure descended. It was slow at first, then it became brutally decisive like an invisible palm pressing down on the entire world.

And then it struck.

A cold wave swept through every corridor, every path, and every hidden chamber—

Suppressing them. Sealing them. Silencing them.

Lucien felt his Transcendent Realm collapse inward with a controlled snap.

His Realm was crushed and folded into a perfectly contained seal that he could not break.

Marie cried out as her own realm plunged. Her vitality shrunk back into the limits of a Mortal.

Even the Verdant Veil’s Celestial-realm seniors staggered, gripping their chests as their mana constricted.

Everyone’s realm was forcibly reduced to Mortal Realm.

Their Laws remained but it was faint, like stars behind fog.

Eirene steadied herself.

“This is the Eternal’s defensive art. When the ruin detects invasive power, foreign bloodlines, or violent entries… Stillness silences the intruders.”

Lucien rubbed his temple.

“So the Solar Concordium wasn’t exaggerating. The trials he made was accurate. We’re all mortals now, trapped inside a ruin that woke up angry. Perfect.”

Verdant Veil disciples exchanged pale looks.

That was when the second shift came…

The lake of condensed breath began to churn.

Softly at first.

Then violently.

The liquid breath twisted upward and formed shapes.

Humanoid silhouettes of drifting mist. Beasts made of inhalations and memories. Serpentine coils of vapor sliding across the air.

Every form radiated conceptual danger.

A Verdant Veil practitioner panicked and swung reflexively.

“Don’t—!” Eirene began—

But too late.

His arm passed through a breath-creature.

And instantly—

His lungs shut.

Not damaged. Not injured.

Simply… turned off.

His mouth opened, but no breath came.

His throat locked.

His diaphragm froze mid-motion.

Terror flooded his eyes.

He collapsed like a puppet cut from its strings.

Lucien’s reaction came in the same heartbeat.

He caught the disciple by the collar and dragged him out of the monster’s radius.

But restoring the man’s breath was the real challenge.

Lucien… summoned oxygen directly from his divine energy core. But he did not shove oxygen into the lungs. It was too dangerous and too crude.

Instead—

Lucien invoked Perfect Calculation and he controlled the practitioner’s internal energies to force the diaphragm and intercostal muscles to expand and contract… the natural mechanism of breathing.

He “jump-started” the body.

A pulse of controlled energy triggered the paralyzed muscles into motion.

The man’s chest spasmed—

Then—

GASP—!!

He inhaled oxygen.

His breath returned. Color returned. Life returned.

The practitioner trembled violently.

“T-That… thing—s-stole my breath—! Thank you, Wolf-brother… thank you—!”

Around them, Verdant Veil members stared at Lucien with stunned relief.

Marie clutched her head.

“We’re stuck at Mortal Realm… and those things turn off your breathing!? How are we supposed to fight THAT?!”

Lucien opened his mouth to reply—

But movement cut through the chaos.

Three robed women leapt down like falling shadows.

Their robes brushed the breath-monsters.

And the monsters shivered around them.

They walked through the conceptual creatures like phantoms.

Marie’s jaw hit the floor.

“WHAT—!? Why aren’t THEY suffocating!?”

Lucien’s eyes narrowed.

He studied them carefully.

Then he realized something.

There are no exhales that drifted from their lips…

Not even the tiny wisp of breath that every living thing released in this garden.

They weren’t breathing.

At all.

A quiet shiver crawled up Lucien’s spine.

‘They’re not being recognized as “alive”… They are either puppets… Or constructs. Or something worse.’

The robed women herded the breath monsters aside, diverting them with effortless, invisible authority.

One of the roved women, with the leader, began calmly harvesting the plants peacefully.

The group stuttered.

“S-So they’re immune to EVERYTHING in here?! What are these people!?”

Lucien didn’t answer.

Because he didn’t know.

And the truth felt unsettling.