100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 281

Chapter 281: Chapter 281 – Clash
The world did not settle after Lucien vanished.

Marie’s scream tore through the darkness like a fracture in reality itself.

The ground beneath her feet answered with a deep, thunderous groan.

The Varkhaal Eternal remained.

“That thing,” he hissed, “cannot be allowed to mature.”

Marie turned slowly.

Her fury turned wild. The air around her shimmered as if the world itself had agreed to move when she did.

The Varkhaal Eternal narrowed his eyes.

He could see it now.

Her strength had exploded far beyond her original realm. In raw output alone, she was brushing the threshold of the Celestial Realm.

But that wasn’t what unsettled him.

It was this—

His Law of Darkness can not bind her.

It slid. Every shadow spear he launched twisted away at the last instant. Domains meant to suppress instead dispersed, dissolving as they neared her presence.

He stepped closer.

And felt it.

His Law… was being rejected.

“…This is wrong,” he growled.

Marie moved.

She crossed the distance in a blink. Not by speed but by terrain bending beneath her will. The ground rose, folded, and thrust her forward like a living tide.

The Varkhaal reacted instantly.

Darkness erupted upward, condensing into a blade wide enough to split mountains.

Marie did not dodge.

She struck.

Her fist collided with the blade and the earth around her arm surged, reinforcing bone, muscle, and intent by a vast margin. The impact detonated outward, shattering shadow into a thousand screaming fragments.

The Varkhaal Eternal was forced back.

One step.

His eyes widened.

“She wields a domain,” he said slowly. “No… not a formed one.”

He watched the terrain ripple beneath her feet.

“…The earth itself answers her.”

Marie did not pause to speak.

She advanced again.

Plates of stone tore free from the ground, orbiting her like a crown of execution. They reshaped mid-motion as blades, spikes, any compressed masses of hardened intent.

She fought like a beast…

…but not a mindless one.

Every strike was placed. Every movement was economized. She did not waste motion. She did not retreat unless it created advantage.

A veteran’s rhythm.

The Varkhaal Eternal countered with fury.

Darkness thickened, forming layers within layers. Folded law stacked like armor. His strikes were no longer probing. They were lethal, each one was capable of erasing a city.

Marie was hit.

Once.

Her shoulder shattered as a shadow lance pierced through, ripping flesh and bone apart.

She did not scream.

She grabbed the lance with her other hand and pulled.

The earth surged upward, knitting her broken form together with brutal efficiency. Bone reforged. Muscle reattached. Pain screamed through her nerves—

She ignored it.

Her eyes burned gold.

She slammed the Varkhaal into the ground.

The impact cratered the terrain for kilometers.

Still—

The Varkhaal Eternal rose. Its form distorted as the shadows knitted back together.

“You cannot kill an Eternal,” he snarled. “Not with weak attacks like this.”

Marie knew that.

But she did not stop. She wanted him dead anyway.

What none of them fully understood—

Was what stood behind her.

The Will of the World was not a simple blessing.

The Primordial Slime had once existed as the absolute medium of creation itself.

It used its own essence to give rise to countless small worlds. A sliver of that essence lingered in every reality it touched.

And that sliver…

…was the Will of the World.

As an entity that had once wielded all known Laws, even a sliver of its authority ranked above the Laws of the Big World. Inferior laws could not bind it. They could only yield.

That was why the Varkhaal Eternal’s suffocating darkness slid past her presence instead of striking true.

Now, Marie was borrowing strength that was never meant to be wielded directly.

What it gave her was not just raw power—

—but priority.

The earth moved for her first.

Laws with weaker conceptual weight bent around her presence.

Her cheats were now magnified into instincts, executing calculations before conscious thought could catch up.

She did not cast skills.

She acted—

And the world complied.

But the strain was monstrous.

Every movement burned her from the inside out. Her body was tearing itself apart and being rebuilt faster than it could stabilize.

Blood streamed from her nose. Cracks spider-webbed across her skin, sealed only because the ground refused to let her fall.

She was not Ascendant, not even a Celestial.

She was merely a Transcendent borrowing something that could erase her if she lingered too long.

The Varkhaal Eternal saw it.

“…You are burning yourself,” he said coldly. “Good.”

He attacked again.

This time, not with force—

—but with distance.

The darkness retreated, stretching the domain outward, pulling space itself apart to isolate her. Gravity inverted. Terrain fractured into impossible angles.

Marie staggered.

For the first time—

She slowed.

The Varkhaal raised his hand.

“Enough,” he intoned. “You have proven your worth as prey.”

Shadows gathered for the final strike.

Marie stood bleeding, shaking, and furious—

And laughed.

It was raw, broken, and defiant.

“You think I’ll stop just because I can’t kill you now?”

Her gaze locked onto him.

“I don’t need to win today.”

The ground beneath them pulsed.

“I just need you to remember me.”

She lifted her gaze.

“To remember someone who will kill you one day.”

The Varkhaal Eternal laughed softly. A sound like shadows scraping against bone.

“You will not live long enough to earn such a future,” he replied. “Your defiance is impressive. Your end is inevitable.”

He raised his hand.

The darkness answered.

His final strike… surged forth. This was annihilation given direction. Darkness itself collapsed inward, sharpening into a singular line of extinction that cut through space with absolute authority.

Marie did not move.

Instead—

She smiled.

At the last possible moment, her fingers brushed the obsidian necklace at her throat.

The fragment within it answered.

The Origin Core Fragment stirred with recognition. And the Will of the World whispered.

Marie’s perception expanded. She did not seize power. She rearranged priority.

Reality folded.

The moment the strike reached her—

The world exchanged positions.

The earth beneath Marie inverted with the space behind the Varkhaal Eternal.

It was not teleportation or displacement. But substitution.

The strike landed…

On its creator.

The Varkhaal Eternal was slammed by his own annihilation. Darkness detonated inward as his domain tore through itself. Space screamed. Shadow collapsed. The impact was catastrophic…

…but brief.

The Eternal staggered.

“…Clever,” he hissed.

Still… the damage was minimal. An Eternal’s body was not so easily destroyed.

But Marie was not finished.

The obsidian necklace burned cold against her skin.

The Origin Core Fragment siphoned. Not mana, not energy… but authority.

The darkness domain began to shrink.

No. It was being eaten.

The fragment did not overpower the domain. It invalidated its ownership.

The Will of the World granted Marie insight into how to wield the fragment she carried.

And the world obeyed.

The Varkhaal Eternal recoiled violently as its own domain was torn apart.

“What—”

For the first time, his domain did not answer him instantly.

A gap appeared.

And Marie moved.

The earth surged as a law-bearing matter. This was no longer ordinary terrain. The Origin Core had rewritten its conceptual weight.

The ground folded upward, forming a colossal prison around the Varkhaal Eternal.

But this earth did not bind by force. It bound by precedence.

The laws embedded within it were superior.

The Eternal roared as shadows tore outward, colliding with the containment. Cracks spread. Mountains collapsed. The land screamed as both authorities clashed.

Marie’s body shook violently.

Blood streamed freely now. Her vision blurred.

But she smiled anyway.

She could feel it.

Presences. Far away. Approaching.

She didn’t need to win.

She only needed time.

The Varkhaal Eternal felt it too.

His gaze snapped skyward.

“…The Celestial Race mutts,” he snarled. “So they come.”

The earth closed tighter.

Marie leaned forward, breath ragged and eyes blazing.

“Well,” she said hoarsely, “you’re doomed.”

Her voice hardened.

“I want to kill you myself, but—”

She failed to finish the sentence as the Varkhaal Eternal laughed.

“Then survive long enough to try.”

He paused.

He burned his essence.

A chunk of his soul ignited, shattering the earth-prison in a violent implosion. Shadows exploded outward as he tore himself free.

His gaze locked onto Marie.

“You have succeeded,” he said slowly. “I will remember you.”

Marie met his eyes, unflinching.

Then, his form destabilized and he retreated into darkness.

Gone.

The world fell silent.

Marie dropped to her knees.

Her body finally failed.

Cracks spread across her skin like broken porcelain. Bones screamed. Organs failed. She choked, coughing blood.

“So even with that…” she whispered as tears spilled freely now. “…I still couldn’t contain him.”

The golden radiance faded from her body.

She returned to normal.

And then…

Her strength vanished.

She collapsed fully. But she did not die.

The Origin Core Fragment pulsed faintly. Again. And again.

It fed her. Slowly.

Her body repaired itself, piece by piece. Damage too severe for normal regeneration was patched, stabilized just enough to keep her alive.

…

Beneath the battlefield—

The Verdant Veil emerged.

No one knew when it had happened. Mid-battle, Marie had moved them all beneath the earth, wrapped them in a cocoon of pure Law of Earth, sealed and isolated from annihilation.

Now, that cocoon crumbled.

Sahrin was the first to break through.

“Sister Marie!”

The others followed, panic in their eyes.

They reached her side just as the sky cracked open.

Dozens of Celestial Race figures descended. Wings of light unfurled as reality stabilized around their presence.

The devastation left them silent.

Two among them moved instantly.

Eternal Realm Celestial experts.

They reached Marie in a blink. Golden arrays formed as they assessed her condition.

“…Human,” one murmured, stunned.

“Broken but alive,” the other said sharply.

They did not ask questions.

They acted.

Domains layered. Laws intertwined. Authority surged as Marie was stabilized, then the others. Wounds sealed and suppression lifted.

One Celestial turned and bowed to them deeply.

“Master Virel. Master Aniel,” he said. “The Varkhaal Eternal has escaped.”

The two Eternal Celestials’ expressions darkened.

The sky itself seemed to tense.

Fate shifted.

Somewhere far beyond the world—

Lucien moved through the void.

And the universe remembered what had just happened.