100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 284

Chapter 284: Chapter 284 – Blood
Lucien returned to the Obsidian Tower.

He went deeper, toward the area where he had placed the caged ancient beasts.

Then—

The cages roared. Curses poured out from the monsters contained inside.

“Defiler—”

“Release us and we will flay your soul—”

“You dare look upon us again—!”

The ancient beasts strained against their bindings. Chains rattled as titanic bodies shifted.

Lucien stopped.

He simply stood there and listened.

Their hatred was absolute.

Lucien exhaled slowly.

“…That settles it.”

There would be no cooperation here. And he was not foolish enough to force it.

These beings were sealed, not broken. Even bound, they were still Eternals. He did not know what contingencies still slept within them or what reflexive laws might awaken if their blood was taken by force.

And right now—

He was not at full strength.

Even with restorative drops, his divine energy recovery was sluggish. Painfully so. There was nothing here to siphon from. No ambient mana. No world energy. Only vacuum and distance.

Lucien’s gaze drifted at his Obsidian Necklace.

His Origin Core fragment pulsed faintly. Too faintly.

“…I see,” he murmured.

The realization settled heavily.

The Origin Core was not just a source of power, it was a node. A fragment torn from the Big World’s heart, designed to circulate and resonate with its planetary framework.

Its own energy recovery depended on proximity to the world’s living systems. Ley flows, conceptual gravity, accumulated causality.

Out here, in open space—

There was nothing to answer it.

There was no life-web to draw from, no world-cycle to resonate with, and no grand system to replenish it.

The fragment was still powerful but it was starving.

Lucien clenched his fist once.

“So brute force is off the table,” he said quietly.

He turned away from the cages, ignoring the renewed torrent of hatred that followed him. The ancient beings raged until distance swallowed their voices.

This path was closed. For now.

Lucien retreated inward, back into his Divine Energy Core.

The Castle-Themed Gargoyle Dungeon rose before him.

Lucien ascended without pause. Soon, the third floor awaited.

And there it was.

The Gargoyle Monster Emperor.

Even in slumber, its presence crushed the space around it. A titan of stone and shadow. Its wings were folded like cathedral arches. Time itself seemed reluctant to move near it.

Chains bound its limbs. The same chains to the ones sealing the ancient beasts.

A thought surfaced unbidden.

“…Primordial Slime,” Lucien muttered.

He paused.

“Are you the mastermind behind this grand design? Even though the world has forgotten you, your traces have not completely vanished…”

There was no answer.

Lucien stepped forward.

He knew ordinary weapons were useless here. Physical force would not breach a being whose body was half concept, half monument.

So he did not try.

Instead—

Lucien intended to use the same method he had once employed to breach the Obsidian Tower.

He raised his hand.

Creation answered. Lucien invoked the Law of Creation, to define a concept.

Sharpness.

He layered it. Once. Twice. Again.

Each invocation refined the definition, compressing it until the concept grew dense enough to resist dispersion. When the idea could no longer remain abstract, it solidified.

A thin, invisible edge formed in his grasp.

Lucien moved carefully.

He knelt near one massive joint where stone met stone, where motion would demand lubrication, circulation, and internal flow.

He pressed the conceptual edge down.

There was resistance.

Then—

Yield.

A sound like grinding earth echoed softly as the cut formed.

And from within—

Something seeped out.

The gargoyle’s vital fluid flowed like wet sand drenched in liquid black. Each grain carried weight far beyond its size, shimmering faintly with embedded authority.

Lucien’s breath stilled.

“…So it does bleed,” he murmured.

He worked quickly.

Buckets appeared. Then more.

He guided the flow, careful not to widen the wound. The fluid poured steadily, filling containers one by one. Each bucket radiated faint pressure, the air around them thickened as if reluctant to exist beside such substance.

This was not blood meant to nourish. It was blood meant to endure.

Lucien gathered more than he expected.

Dozens. Then hundreds.

The gargoyle did not stir but Lucien did not test his luck.

He sealed the wound. The flow slowed… then stopped.

Lucien stepped back.

“…Enough.”

He looked at the amassed buckets. Awe flickered briefly in his eyes.

‘Such vitality and density. A being like this could have fueled an entire monster race.’

A trace of regret surfaced.

“I should’ve taken the blood from the Red Dragon back in the ruins,” he sighed.

But regret changed nothing.

Lucien exhaled, steadying himself.

‘This would suffice.’

He had his resource.

Now—

He could begin.

But before anything else, he needed a proper medium.

Lucien stepped outside and blinked to a chosen location.

He directed the buckets into a shallow depression he carved into the ground. He shaped the pool with care, reinforcing its boundaries to prevent leakage or contamination.

One bucket after another was poured in.

The black vital fluid spread slowly as if gravity itself clung tighter to it. Grain-like particles swirled within.

Lucien counted.

Just over a hundred buckets. It amounted to a little more than two thousand liters, enough to form a pool roughly two meters across and nearly a meter deep.

It was good that the Gargoyle Monster Emperor possessed such an immense volume of blood.

Still, the pool was not vast but it was dense. Unnaturally dense. The surface barely rippled, absorbing motion instead of reflecting it.

A blood pool. No, a law bath.

Lucien studied it for a long moment.

“This should be enough for initial trials,” he murmured.

Then he made his decision.

“The gargoyles first.”

It was the optimal choice.

The blood had come from their own ancestral source. Their bodies were already aligned to stone, monument, and endurance. More importantly, they were his pets.

Through their connection, Lucien would receive direct feedback and precise data. Physical stress. Mental strain. Soul response.

He had no need for trial and error, nor for unnecessary losses.

Lucien extended his will.

The gargoyle pets stirred.

Stone wings scraped softly as several of them lumbered forward.

They hesitated at the edge of the pool.

The blood did not steam. It did not glow. It simply waited.

Lucien sent a single command.

Enter.

The first gargoyle stepped in.

The moment its claws touched the surface—

The blood surged upward. Not violently but insistently, climbing the stone limb like a living weight. The gargoyle’s body shuddered as black fluid seeped into microfractures within its stone flesh.

Lucien’s vision sharpened.

He could feel everything the gargoyles were undergoing. The structural strain, the internal cohesion shifting, the stir of ancestral resonance.

The gargoyle let out a low, grinding roar.

Cracks spiderwebbed across its body. Controlled fractures, like stone being intentionally stressed to its limits. The blood pressed inward, filling those cracks, reinforcing them from within rather than widening them.

Lucien felt it clearly.

The blood was not eroding the gargoyle. It was replacing weakness with memory.

The second gargoyle entered.

Then the third.

As more bodies submerged, the pool darkened further, thickening as if reacting to familiar forms. The gargoyles sank until the fluid reached their chests.

Their movements slowed.

Their minds, usually simple, began to surge with alien impressions.

Lucien winced as the feedback intensified.

The gargoyles convulsed.

Stone plates shifted. Limbs thickened. Their wings folded tighter, reshaping. Their cores burned with unfamiliar pressure as fragments of ancient instinct were forced into alignment.

They were not learning techniques.

They were being reconditioned.

Lucien’s breath steadied.

“So that’s how it works…”

The blood carried more than vitality.

It carried compressed law residue. It’s not enough to grant authority, but enough to impose standards.

The body learned how to exist under higher pressure. The mind learned to function while drowning in concepts it could not articulate. The soul learned proximity to power without disintegrating.

All three… body, mind, and soul… were being tempered simultaneously.

Not sequentially, like humans. But together.

The gargoyles howled.

Then—

They stabilized.

Lucien felt the shift instantly.

They were still mortals.

But they were closer.

Very close.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed as he studied them.

“…The blood is too strong.”

Even the gargoyles were approaching their limits. If they had been flesh-based monsters, they would have liquefied within seconds.

And if they had been humans…

He didn’t finish the thought.

Humans cultivated gradually for a reason. Their minds relied on cognition, not instinct. Their souls demanded coherence, not brute tolerance. This method would not refine them, it would shatter them.

Monsters were different.

They adapted through survival, not comprehension.

They endured first. They understood later.

“This wouldn’t work on people,” Lucien murmured. “They’d try to understand the pressure… instead of surviving it.”

The gargoyles were already withdrawing instinctively, crawling out of the pool as their bodies reached saturation.

Lucien willed the blood to still.

The pool obeyed.

He studied the gargoyles carefully.

They were exhausted. Cracked. Smoldering faintly with black-gold veins beneath their stone hides.

But they were alive, stronger and marter.

Their presence felt heavier.

Lucien exhaled slowly.

“I’ll need dilution for the others,” he said. “Pure blood is only viable for direct descendants.”

Still—

His lips curved upward.

“This works.”

He had data now.

And with that, he could build a system.

Lucien turned his gaze back to the pool, already calculating ratios, exposure time, and compatibility matrices.

The monster cultivation plan had begun.

And this time—

It was not theory.