100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 246

Chapter 246: Chapter 246 – Key of Slumber
As the breath-creatures rose from the lake, the entire basin reacted like a living lung exhaling its deepest layer.

The lake’s surface sank in slow, glasslike ripples folding inward as if the world itself were bowing.

And beneath the retreating breath…

A shimmer.

At first, it was faint like a reflection pretending to be real.

Then the light sharpened into a clear outline.

A flower-shaped structure slowly revealed itself from the lakebed. The petals were arranged in perfect symmetry. It looked less like a crafted item and more like a thought the Eternal once held, crystallized into matter.

Its petals were white, yet not white. A tone between frost and moonlight. A hue that felt like the silence before a dream.

A pulse of Stillness radiated from its core.

Eirene inhaled sharply.

“So that’s where it was hiding…” she whispered.

All the group stiffened.

“A treasure… in the middle of the lake?” someone breathed.

Lucien narrowed his eyes.

‘Coincidence?… The breath-creatures displaced the lake and lowered the water level. If the ruin hadn’t awakened its protective mechanism, we’d never know something was hidden there. And retrieving it would’ve been nearly impossible…’

Below the blooming artifact, runes sparked to life across the lakebed.

They assembled into a phrase:

[ The Key of Slumber ]

Eirene’s eyes gleamed.

Lucien noticed.

‘She recognizes these keys… The Key of Silence in the Silent Heart Chamber… and now this one.’

He didn’t know what the keys unlocked. He didn’t know why they existed.

But one thing was clear now.

Whatever the Eternal left behind… Eirene understood its significance far deeper than she let on.

Marie whispered with a trembling voice…

“It’s… beautiful. And terrifying. Like a flower that wants us dead.”

Lucien agreed silently.

Because no matter how peaceful it looked…

The Key rested atop the most lethal point of the entire garden.

A lake of condensed breath capable of instant respiratory collapse.

Right now, with everyone suppressed to Mortal Realm…

One touch meant death.

Not metaphorical death.

Literal.

Breath stolen. Heart stilled. Consciousness extinguished.

Even the Celestial-realm seniors couldn’t endure it in their current state.

Below them, the breath-creatures continued to gather.

The three black-robed women intercepted them. Or rather, walked through them.

Where others would have suffocated, the robed women passed unharmed. Their silhouettes distorted the breath-forms but never breaking them.

When struck, the creatures dispersed like mist… then reformed again moments later.

And suddenly, their movements changed.

The breath-creatures reorganized, drifting into position like silent sentinels. They formed a ring around the edge of the lake.

It seemed like they were protecting the key.

A Verdant Veil practitioner whispered hoarsely…

“H-How do we even reach that? We can’t step on the lake. We can’t fight those monsters. We can’t even touch the air above it—”

“Well,” another muttered bleakly, “you’ll stop breathing before you can finish the sentence.”

Eirene stepped forward.

Her hand lifted. Her gaze sharpened, calculating every ripple and every pulse of Stillness threading through the basin.

She was going to attempt it.

But before she could even make her move—

A shadow fell across the lake.

The robed leader lifted his hand.

His voice was soft, but it cut through the chaos like a line drawn in fate.

“This key belongs to one who can withstand Stillness without resistance.”

He pointed towards every group in the garden.

“Your bodies fight the lake.

Your breath protests it.

Your life rejects Stillness by instinct.”

His tone remained calm.

“Your groups… cannot reach it safely.”

For a breathless moment, no one moved.

The robed leader’s words settled over the basin like frost.

But Lucien stepped forward anyway.

The robed leader’s masked gaze shifted toward him.

Lucien spoke first. His voice was calm but carrying an edge beneath it.

“And who decides that? You?”

Behind the leader, the three robed women tilted their heads in eerie unison, reacting like finely tuned instruments registering a disturbance.

The fourth continued harvesting plants without pause, as though the unfolding confrontation were a trivial background event.

Yet the leader remained perfectly composed.

“The lake decides,” he replied. “Stillness decides. Not I.”

Lucien’s lip curled.

“Then Stillness has terrible taste.”

A ripple went across the breath-creatures like their attention shifted at the very vibration of defiance.

Lucien and the robed leader locked gazes.

Two wills collided. There’s a silent pressure between them.

The atmosphere thickened.

Lucien took a single step forward, refusing to bow.

But then…

The leader’s stance tightened.

Eirene inhaled sharply.

“Brother Luc—”

Too late.

The robed leader moved. A suppressive strike.

His motion was clean, devoid of hostility yet full of intent.

Lucien met him halfway.

Their bodies collided in a blur.

Not fast. Not slow. Just perfectly efficient.

The robed leader’s palm sliced through the air in a minimalist arc. There’s no wasted movement. It wasn’t aimed at Lucien’s life. It was aimed at his balance, his breath, and his foundation.

Lucien rotated his torso, catching the palm on his forearm and redirecting the force rather than resisting it. A counter-elbow snapped toward the leader’s ribs.

tchkk—

A tiny, crystalline crack of impact.

But the shockwave that blasted out was anything but tiny.

The breath-creatures shuddered violently. Their silhouettes warped like reflections struck by stones. The lake rippled out of sync. Even the terraces trembled under the clash of two perfectly controlled bodies.

A wave of agitation passed through the breath-creatures.

They began drifting… Stalking… Homing—

toward everyone.

“Careful!” someone hissed.

But then…

The three robed women moved instantly and wordlessly.

They struck… and the breath-creatures recoiled as if meeting a natural predator. The creatures distorted upon contact… only to reform again but the robed women kept them diverted, shepherding the tide away from the groups with inhuman calm.

Meanwhile, Lucien steadied himself from the clash and slid a single step backward.

The robed leader did the same.

Matched again.

Lucien narrowed his eyes.

He saw it…

A minute recoil in the man’s joints, a faint stiffness at the shoulder, and a tremor carefully hidden under perfect poise.

“I knew you’re suppressed too,” Lucien murmured. “Just like the rest of us.”

The leader tilted his head slightly.

“I never claimed otherwise.”

Lucien flexed his fingers, feeling the aftershock of the exchange.

He’d fought one of the robed women before. Her body felt like forged steel, almost artificial. But the leader…

When their limbs met, Lucien felt flesh and bone.

A heartbeat behind the impact.

‘A living man,’ Lucien confirmed inwardly.

But the women behind him?

No breath. No heartbeat. No vitality signatures.

His earlier suspicion sharpened.

The robed women were not alive. Only this leader was.

A dangerous distinction.

The robed man sighed.

Then he lifted one hand.

“Enough.”

His single word pressed through the basin like a tide.

Everyone froze instinctively.

Lucien did not lower his stance.

He held his ground.

But the leader’s posture eased and with it, the tension between them shifted.

“I am not your enemy,” the leader said quietly. “You misunderstand my intent. Recklessness will kill you faster than any breath-creature. I intervened to stop you from acting on impulse.”

A murmur rippled through their combined factions.

Lucien exhaled slowly.

The clash had told him enough, there was no malice behind the leader’s movements.

If anything…

Every strike he threw had been restrained.

Not pulling back from fear but from the desire to avoid escalation.

Lucien loosened his arms and relaxed his stance.

The robed leader inclined his head slightly as if returning the gesture.

Eirene released a slow breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

Marie sagged in relief.

Meanwhile, the breath-creatures hissed in agitation as they were struck and reformed again under the robed women’s interference.

All around the lake, their shapes lengthened and sharpened, watching every motion with silent predatory hunger.

The moment of confrontation passed.

But tension still coiled through the basin like a waiting storm.

Lucien glanced at the creatures forming that ring around the lake, then at the Key of Slumber glowing faintly in the center.

This wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

He stepped back toward Eirene and Marie.

He had formed a plan earlier but the robed leader’s intervention stalled him.

And annoyingly…

…the man had a point.

So Lucien forced himself to wait.

To observe more.

The longer he watched, the more the pattern sharpened.

Whenever someone inhaled too sharply…

….the breath-creatures snapped toward them instantly, drawn like predators to a wounded heartbeat.

Whenever someone exhaled in a sudden burst…

…the creatures distorted with their forms tightening with aggression.

But when the three black-robed women passed through them…

Nothing.

Lucien narrowed his eyes and focused on one of the women.

He watched every movement with surgical attention.

And there it was again—

When the woman simply stood still, unmoving…

…the creatures drifted past her as though she didn’t exist.

But the moment she attacked—

the breath-creatures reacted, struck, dispersed, and reformed around her.

Lucien’s mind clicked like a lock opening.

“They’re not hunting bodies,” he murmured to Eirene. “They’re hunting the trace of breath. The signature of respiration. That’s what they latch onto.”

Eirene’s eyes widened, understanding blooming instantly.

“I have suspected as much. Just that… those robed women made me think twice.”

Lucien nodded.

“They have no respiratory signature. The lake doesn’t register them as living.”

Marie’s face twisted in uncertainty.

“So they’re like… undead?”

Lucien shook his head slowly.

“Who knows what they are…”

He glanced toward the robed women again…

“…but whatever they are,” he whispered, “the lake doesn’t consider them ‘alive.'”