100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 279

Chapter 279: Chapter 279 – Danger
The moment came without warning.

The Verdant Ark hummed with a low, dissonant vibration that did not belong to the wind.

Marie felt it instantly. Her cheat, Geo-Link, tied her directly into the Ark. The moment the construct detected an anomaly, the sensation rippled straight into her senses.

Marie froze. Her pupils contracted as streams of invisible data flooded her mind.

Without hesitation, she seized control. The Verdant Ark came to a full stop.

Its forward momentum vanished as if the world itself had been paused. The massive construct hung motionless in the air. Its engines idled in perfect, controlled stasis.

The abrupt stillness sent a ripple of unease through everyone aboard.

Lucien stepped forward.

“What is it?”

Marie’s expression had lost all trace of playfulness.

“The Ark is warning us,” she said slowly. “There’s something ahead.”

Silence fell over the deck.

All eyes turned forward.

They had already crossed the desert. Below them stretched a vast, open field. Endless grass rolled gently beneath a pale sky.

“That’s… just land,” someone muttered.

Lucien didn’t answer. Neither did the Celestial-Realm seniors.

One of them narrowed his eyes.

“Look closer.”

They did.

At first, still nothing.

Then—

Subtlety revealed itself.

The air ahead bent.

Not visibly but wrong… like heat haze over stone where no heat should exist. Lines appeared only when the Ark’s shadow passed over them. There are faint distortions like reflections on water that wasn’t there.

Marie inhaled sharply.

“…Formation arrays.”

A chill spread across the deck.

It wasn’t only one. Hundreds. No, thousands.

They were layered horizontally across the field, sunk deep into the land itself and stretching far beyond what the eye could track. Each array lay dormant, perfectly synchronized, and invisible unless observed with intent.

Lucien understood immediately.

“They’re keyed to flight,” he said quietly.

One of the seniors nodded grimly.

“Specifically to large-scale aerial mass with sustained lift.”

The implication hit hard.

If the Verdant Ark had crossed that invisible boundary—

Every formation would have activated at once.

Flight-restricting arrays. Gravity inversion anchors. Pressure-suppression fields.

The Ark would have been forced down. It would be pinned, stripped of momentum, altitude, and advantage in a single breath.

Everyone aboard would have been suppressed before they could even react.

Sahrin clenched her jaw. “We didn’t feel anything.”

“That’s the point,” Lucien replied.

He gestured toward the field.

“These arrays don’t disturb ambient mana. They don’t radiate intent. They don’t even exist as ‘active formations’ until a qualifying target enters.”

Marie’s lips tightened.

“They’re written into the land itself,” she said. Then she glanced down at the Ark beneath her feet.

“…Which means they might have been designed for something like this.”

Silence followed.

Lucien’s gaze swept the horizon.

“So,” he said calmly, “someone predicted our route.”

Marie exhaled slowly.

“Or prepared for whoever would cross this airspace.”

The Verdant Ark pulsed faintly beneath them.

Just then…

Lucien’s eyes snapped wide.

“Marie! Full turn, now!”

There was no explanation.

But Marie reacted at once without asking.

Her hands slammed into the controls. The Verdant Ark screamed as its entire mass twisted. Its engines flared as it attempted a sharp rotational turn in midair.

For a fraction of a second—

It felt like it might work.

Then—

The world vanished.

It was… swallowed by darkness.

Light collapsed inward as though consumed by a vast, invisible maw. Sky, land, horizon… everything folded into a single, suffocating black.

A pressure descended. Every soul aboard felt it at once.

They were no longer in open air.

They were inside something.

“A domain…” one of the Celestial-Realm seniors whispered, voice tight.

The Verdant Ark shuddered violently.

Then it stopped.

Not because Marie commanded it…

…but because something else did.

An unseen force seized the Ark midair, crushing its momentum to nothing. Engines screamed in protest as authority pinned the construct in place.

Lucien reacted instantly.

“Jump! Everyone!”

There was no debate.

The seniors moved first. Lucien and Marie grabbed the nearest members as the group leapt from the Ark in a controlled descent.

A heartbeat later—

“NOOO!” Marie screamed.

The Verdant Ark slammed downward, crashing into the darkened ground below with a thunderous impact.

Silence followed.

Then—

A sound like dry breath dragged across stone.

“Tsk…”

A hiss echoed through the darkness, amused and irritated all at once.

“So you noticed the arrays,” a voice said lazily. “You’ve made this… inconvenient.”

Another voice followed, deeper and colder.

“Let’s be quick. Now that we have shown ourselves, those Celestial Race vermin will soon come.”

The darkness rippled.

Two silhouettes stepped forward as if emerging from the void itself.

And the moment they became visible—

Everyone stiffened. Even the Celestial-Realm senior’s faces were drained of color.

“…Eternals,” one whispered.

Not one but two of them.

The Varkhaal Eternal, wreathed in shadow that bent space around him like a living void.

And beside him—

The Fire Nephralis Eternal, tall and composed, holding a long, ancient brush whose bristles glowed with molten script.

The Celestial-Realm seniors moved at once, stepping forward and bowing deeply but their hands remained close to their artifacts.

“Esteemed Seniors,” one said carefully. “May we know the reason for this confinement? We are insignificant in your eyes. Surely this is a misunderstanding.”

The Eternals did not even glance at them.

Lucien’s mind was already racing.

Perfect Loop activated on its own. Paths unfolded. Calculations stacked. Futures branched.

Every single one ended the same way.

Death.

The seniors continued, voices steady but urgent.

“The Celestial Race will not ignore this,” the other said. “If there is grievance, we can—”

“Silence,” the Fire Nephralis said mildly.

He lifted his brush.

“The world is approaching a turning,” he said. “Trivial disputes no longer concern us.”

The Varkhaal Eternal stepped forward. Shadows thickened around his form.

“Imagine,” he said softly, “bearing Eternal strength… yet being forbidden to act.”

A faint, bitter amusement colored his voice.

“We are not alone in this sentiment.”

The Nephralis nodded.

“Our ancestor has returned. The balance is already broken. It will not return to what it was.”

Then he paused.

“…But not yet.”

He tilted his head slightly as if remembering something.

“We must first retrieve the other Ancestors.”

His gaze swept across the gathered group.

Then—

It stopped.

Locked… on Lucien.

The warmth vanished from the Nephralis’s eyes, replaced by something cruel and curious.

“…Ah.”

The brush lifted.

Ancient symbols ignited along its length.

“There you are.”

He made a single, casual stroke through the air.

The world answered.

Magic circles bloomed instantly forming and overlapping faster than thought itself. They were not drawn. They were declared.

The arrays surged outward in a violent wave.

The force passed through everyone…

…and something broke.

Lucien felt it first.

A sharp, nauseating lurch as a layer of reality peeled away.

Marie gasped beside him.

Their disguises… woven from the Law of Reflection… shattered like glass.

In a blink—

They were exposed.

Humans.

Unmistakably so.

A collective gasp rippled through the Verdant Veil. But no one had time to dwell on it.

The Nephralis Eternal laughed, rich and unrestrained.

“Hahahaha—! So that’s it,” he said with delight. “No wonder the Ancestor is wary.”

The Varkhaal Eternal’s voice followed, cold as a grave.

“Humans.”

He stepped closer, shadow stretching.

“Do not worry. You two will not perish easily.”

Then his gaze shifted, dismissive.

“As for the rest…”

“Do not concern yourselves with tomorrow.”

Lucien clenched his fists.

Every calculation failed.

There is… no escape.

The Varkhaal Eternal moved.

He did not speak a command. His intent was enough.

The domain obeyed.

Darkness deepened, folding inward like a closing fist. The ground itself seemed to remember gravity and enforced it with malice.

Everyone was driven down.

Knees slammed into the earth. Spines bent. Breath was crushed from lungs as an invisible weight pressed them flat. It was not force in the conventional sense… it was permission withdrawn. The right to stand simply ceased to exist.

Cries were swallowed before they could form.

Everyone—

Except one.

Lucien remained standing. His Aura of the Unyielding Sovereign surged.

The darkness crawled around his feet, climbed his legs, pressed against his chest… and stopped. As if meeting something it could not quite grasp.

The Fire Nephralis Eternal tilted his head.

“…Curious,” he murmured. “To resist domain authority while being weak.”

The Varkhaal Eternal let out a low, rasping hiss.

“So the Ancestor spoke true,” he said. “A human who walks unmeasured. He is one who shelters what should not be hidden.”

Shadows coiled tighter around the domain.

“We will unmake you slowly,” Varkhaal continued. “Piece by piece. I would know how you cage Ancestors… and why our own turns its gaze from you.”

The Nephralis Eternal’s brush glowed brighter.

“Do not belittle him,” he said calmly. “Even vermin may carry poison. And this one reeks of fate.”

He raised the brush. The world inhaled.

And just as he moved—

Something broke.

The Celestial-Realm seniors met each other’s eyes.

No words were exchanged.

They nodded.

And burned…

Their essence ignited within them. Their auras flared white-gold, sharp and compressed, folded tightly around their own forms.

Suppression cracked.

For a heartbeat, they stood free.

Each senior seized control of a fragment of their own domain. Not expanded but compressed. They wrapped it around their bodies like armor made of law itself, dense enough to resist being swallowed by the greater darkness.

One of them moved instantly.

He surged backward, scooping the pinned members of the Verdant Veil into his domain’s edge, dragging them along like cargo caught in a collapsing tide.

The other did not retreat.

He advanced.

Toward the Fire Nephralis Eternal.

The senior’s weapon ignited, blazing with condensed authority as he crossed the distance in a single, desperate leap.

The strike carried everything he had left…

Life, future, name.

The Eternals did not step back.

The shadows moved.

They rose like spears from the ground, folding space as they struck. The senior twisted midair, barely avoiding the first impact, but the second coiled around his arm, crushing his domain and bone together.

He was flung aside.

But even that was mercy.

Because the shadows were not done.

They flowed past him.

Intercepting the retreat.

The gathered group had not even taken ten steps when the darkness surged upward again.

It wrapped around limbs. Around throats. Around movement itself.

They were pinned. Frozen.

The rescuing senior screamed as his compressed domain cracked under the pressure.

The other senior struggled to rise.

Failed.

The Varkhaal Eternal stepped forward once more, shadows tightening like chains.

“…Inadequate,” he said softly. “Noble. But insufficient.”

The Fire Nephralis Eternal sighed, lowering his brush.

“A waste of resolve,” he said. “But instructive.”

Lucien stood alone.

Surrounded by fallen allies. By a domain that denied everything except his continued existence.