100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 285

Chapter 285: Chapter 285 – Seed
Lucien did not rush.

He spent days perfecting the facility meant for his monsters.

The diluted blood had gone much farther than he expected.

Where once he had a single, oppressive pool of ancestral essence, he now had many. There are dozens of basins. Each was carefully reinforced and each was tuned to a different concentration.

The blood no longer carried the crushing immediacy of the original bath, but it had gained something else in return. Stability, consistency, and control.

Lucien adjusted the ratios with obsessive care. He observed how density affected absorption, how exposure time altered structural reinforcement, and how certain monsters reacted violently to concentrations that others barely noticed.

Hard-bodied creatures received denser baths. Chitinous monsters were assigned thinner dilutions but longer immersion. Flesh-based beasts were restricted to brief contact, followed by extended recovery periods.

When he was satisfied, Lucien summoned the monster leaders.

He issued instructions.

Which pool. How long. When to retreat. How long to recover before returning.

“Do not force it,” he told them calmly. “Saturation comes before collapse. If your instincts tell you to withdraw, you withdraw.”

The leaders listened.

And then—

They moved.

One by one, flocks were guided forward. Monsters stepped into their assigned pools. Some trembled. Some roared. Some sank silently beneath the surface as their bodies endured pressure that would have shattered them days earlier.

Lucien watched it all.

The system worked.

The effects were slower than the pure blood bath but the mortality rate dropped to zero. Progress was steady.

For the first time since being cast into the void, Lucien felt something loosen in his chest.

This was it.

When he returned to the Big World, he would not come back alone. He would come back with a force that did not rely on fragile alliances or borrowed authority.

A force that could endure.

For a brief, dangerous moment, a thought crossed his mind.

‘At that point… who could stop me?’

Lucien caught himself and exhaled.

Power bred complacency faster than it bred strength. He had died enough times to know that.

So he kept watching.

Then he sighed, unable to ignore it any longer.

The slimes were absent.

Lucien shifted his attention toward them.

They were gathered far from the blood pools, keeping a deliberate distance. When he tried guiding them closer, their gelatinous bodies compressed slightly. Their surfaces would ripple in unmistakable aversion as if the blood itself offended them.

“…They don’t like it,” Lucien murmured.

After all, slimes were not flesh. Not bone. Not even proper matter in the conventional sense. Their growth had never relied on bloodlines or physical inheritance.

They were an enigma.

Shortcuts like ancestral blood meant nothing to them.

Lucien sighed softly.

“Figures.”

Cultivating slimes had always been different. They could not be forced down the same path as other monsters.

But then—

He felt it.

A shift.

Lucien’s breath caught as his perception sharpened.

The slimes’ presence had changed.

As if something unseen had been quietly pressing upon them… and instead of being crushed, they were adapting.

Lucien followed the sensation.

His gaze turned toward the Abyssal monster below the slimes.

The Abyssal One remained where it always had. It did not stir. It did not acknowledge the slimes at all.

And yet—

The slimes hovered near it, close enough that faint threads of interaction formed. There are subtle exchanges of pressure, resonance, and existence itself.

Lucien’s mind raced.

“…Symbiotic Fusion.”

It was one of the methods by which slimes grew stronger.

Slimes did not conquer environments. They bonded with them.

A slime fused with moss could draw sustenance from sunlight and soil. A slime merged with crystal could refine mana through lattice resonance. A slime bound to metal could harden and store force.

They did not steal. They adapted.

And now—

They were doing the same.

They bonded to another enigma.

The slimes were anchoring themselves to its existence. Learning how to persist near something that should erase them.

Lucien felt a chill run through him.

“…It accepted them,” he whispered.

The Abyssal One had not rejected the fusion.

Time would do the rest. There would be no sudden breakthrough. Just gradual, inevitable growth.

He could picture it.

Slimes that could exist in the abyss. Slimes that learned endurance not from blood, but from proximity to the impossible.

Lucien straightened slowly.

His earlier excitement returned but tempered now by awe.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Take your time.”

He looked over his domain once more.

Monsters refined themselves in blood pools of ancient authority. Slimes grew heavier beside a being that defied definition.

Lucien allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.

The void outside remained silent.

But inside—

Something was being built.

And when it was ready, the universe would feel it.

•••

The work did not end with monsters.

The system was stable now. That meant he could move on.

Lucien closed his eyes for a brief moment. Reviving Luke and Cienna would come next.

Reviving them had always been on his list but it was never something to rush. Resurrection was not a spell. It was a negotiation with causality, memory, and the soul’s right to return.

But before any of that—

He needed a garden.

There was only one Revenant Asphodel. And that meant, he only had one chance. Failure was not an option but it still had to be planned for.

Lucien selected a wide stretch of land within his Divine Energy Core.

He did not rush the construction.

First came the soil. Silverslumber Loam spilled from his inventory in measured quantities, spreading across the ground like pale ash mixed with faint starlight. The soil settled unnaturally smoothly. Each grain aligned itself as if listening for something that was not yet there.

Silverslumber Loam was reactive. It absorbed moonlight essences, stored them, and released them slowly into root systems. It did not force growth. It encouraged it.

Lucien pressed his palm to the ground and felt the feedback.

“…Good,” he said quietly.

Next came water.

No breath.

He shaped a shallow basin at the garden’s center and released the Moonbreath Reservoir. The liquid essence poured like mist given weight, coiling into the fountain and circulating on its own.

Lucien had recreated the conditions of the Garden Where Breath Sleeps. It was not perfect but close enough to sustain what mattered.

Only then did he move to the plants themselves.

Lucien did not reach for everything at once. He chose the most important first.

The Revenant Asphodel.

The moment it appeared in his hand, the surrounding space quieted. Even the moonbreath fountain slowed, as if aware of what had entered its presence.

“This thing…” Lucien murmured, “…was never meant to be harvested carelessly.”

Revenant Asphodel did not propagate like ordinary flowers. But it did propagate.

The flower stored the seeds inward.

At the heart of the Asphodel, beneath the layered petals and the soul-reactive veins, existed a condensed reproductive node. It’s a crystallized structure formed only after the flower completed a full resonance cycle between life, death, and return.

Lucien exhaled slowly.

The flower was whole. Its outer petals were black as ink, the inner petals glowed soft gold.

Life restrained. Death remembered.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened.

“The petals are what I need for the revival process,” he murmured. “Not the body.”

That distinction mattered.

The black petals carried death imprint… records of cessation, rejection, and refusal.

The golden petals carried return imprint… memory of reconstruction, reattachment, and acceptance.

Those two together formed the catalyst for revival.

Lucien raised his hand and carefully separated the flower at its core.

He even used the Law of Creation to define Separation Without Loss. It’s a concept refined until the Asphodel accepted it as a continuation of its own cycle.

The petals loosened.

At the very center of the flower, something small and dense revealed itself.

A seed.

No larger than a grain of rice.

Clear at first glance, but layered internally with folded patterns like concentric rings. Each one was a record of a completed life-death threshold.

Lucien’s breath caught.

“…So that’s how you do it.”

The flower was not consumed by harvesting. The petals would regenerate after the seed matured.

And the seed…

…was enough to begin again.

Lucien immediately sealed the remaining flower and returned it to stasis.

Then he turned to the prepared garden.

He did not treat the Asphodel seed like a normal seed. It was not meant to germinate through nutrients or sunlight.

It required threshold simulation.

Lucien shaped the bed carefully.

Silverslumber Loam formed the base. The soil was layered shallowly, no more than necessary to cradle the seed.

Above the bed, Lucien adjusted the Moonbreath Reservoir.

The fountain exhaled.

Lucien placed the seed gently into the soil.

He aligned it.

For a long moment—

Nothing happened.

Then the soil darkened slightly with acceptance.

Lucien felt it clearly.

The seed was not growing yet. It was remembering how to grow.

“…Good,” he whispered.