100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 296

Chapter 296: Chapter 296 – Astrafer
Lucien stepped into the light.

The reaction was immediate.

Stone scraped against stone as the Lithrens turned as one. Tools were raised. Bodies shifted into defensive stances born of long habit rather than training. Mineral plates thickened instinctively along arms and shoulders.

Fear hardened into vigilance.

Rurik moved first.

Grief had not dulled him. It had sharpened him.

“…run,” he said.

The others hesitated only a heartbeat before pulling back, retreating toward the deeper tunnels. Rurik did not follow them.

He stepped forward instead.

His hand closed around one of the constructs at his feet. It was compact, angular, and worn smooth by use. He pressed a recessed trigger without hesitation.

Light screamed.

A beam of compressed energy tore through the chamber. The air distorted violently along its path. The force behind it was not crude. It was focused and refined. The kind of power that did not waste itself.

Lucien did not flinch.

He raised one hand.

The beam… struck his palm.

“…”

The impact was silent.

Energy folded inward, arrested as if the space between Lucien’s fingers had become absolute. The light compressed, twisted, and then dispersed harmlessly into the air like mist.

The chamber went still.

Lucien’s eyes flicked briefly to his hand.

Surprise crossed his expression.

‘That would have killed a Metamorphosis realm practitioner,’ he noted.

His gaze returned to Rurik.

“…These… not crude weapons…” Lucien said calmly.

The words were not in the common tongue.

They were in theirs.

It was imperfect and rough around the edges. The cadence was wrong and the inflections were uneven.

But the meaning landed.

Rurik stared.

The other Lithrens returned to the chamber with weapons in hand, but what they saw made them freeze mid-step.

Before anyone could move again, Lucien released his aura.

The pressure flowed outward in a controlled wave, pinning limbs in place and locking joints without pain. The Lithrens found themselves unable to move. Their bodies held in a state of enforced stillness.

Lucien did not advance.

He did not raise his voice.

“…I am not enemy…” He said, carefully shaping each word. “…am not Alloykin…”

A ripple of tension passed through the group.

“…not Alloykin,” one of them echoed quietly. The words were uncertain but hopeful.

Lucien inclined his head slightly.

“…I came alone,” he continued. “…I came from the sky…”

He gestured upward, then toward the distant crater beyond the mountain.

“…I am the one who fell…”

Murmurs broke out, fractured and disbelieving.

“…the crater…”

“…him…”

“…alone…”

Rurik’s eyes did not leave Lucien.

His jaw tightened.

“…then you bring danger,” he said. The words were rough but clear enough. “…where you walk… they follow.”

The other Lithren stiffened at that. Fear rippled through the chamber again, sharper this time.

“…Alloykin notice skyfall…”

“…they search…”

Rurik’s grip on the weapon trembled.

“…we hide,” he continued. “…we survive because unseen.”

He took a step forward, placing himself between Lucien and the others.

“One person,” he said harshly. “Even strong. Even from sky.”

He shook his head once.

“One cannot change this.”

Only then did Lucien speak again.

“…I did not come… to hide,” he said. “…and not… to bring them.”

He tapped his chest lightly with two fingers.

“…I came because I saw you.”

The Lithren faltered.

Lucien went on, choosing each word with care.

“…Your world… being eaten. Your people… breaking. This… wrong.”

A murmur passed through the chamber.

“…he says wrong…”

“…outsider says wrong…”

Lucien met Rurik’s gaze.

“…you say… one cannot change,” he said. “…maybe true.”

He lifted his hand slightly, palm open. There was no threat in the gesture.

“…but I am not… one of you.”

Silence fell.

He gestured toward the shattered constructs scattered across the floor.

“…your creations… strong,” he said honestly. “…that is not small.”

Rurik’s eyes widened despite himself.

Lucien leaned forward just slightly.

“…you built weapons,” he continued. “…without world’s help. That is… not failure.”

The young Lithren’s breath caught.

Lucien straightened.

“…I stopped your attack,” he said. “…but I did not strike back.”

He paused.

“…I showed myself… instead of leaving.”

He let the words settle.

“…that is why… I speak now.”

Rurik stared at him, conflict plain on his face.

“…then what do you want?” he demanded. “…pity?”

Lucien shook his head once.

“…I want truth,” he said. “…everything. Then… we decide.”

The chamber held its breath.

Slowly, Rurik lowered the weapon in his hand.

Just a little.

“…if you lie,” he said quietly, voice rough with warning, “…we will know.”

Lucien inclined his head.

“…That is fair.”

And for the first time since the sky had fallen, the Lithren began to speak not in fear…

…but in answer.

•••

Lucien listened without interruption.

The Lithrens spoke in turns. Some voices were steady. Others cracked under the weight of memory. Their language was still rough in his ears, but meaning no longer escaped him.

When they finished, silence settled heavily in the chamber.

Lucien did not speak at once.

His suspicions had been correct.

The Alloykin had been mining this world for more than a millennium.

They arrived first as traders. Then as overseers. Then as owners.

Contracts were written in bloodless terms that masked chains as obligation. Entire bloodlines were bound to quotas they could never meet, and families were kept in place by threat rather than force.

The Lithren endured because they could not leave.

They were mortals, but they were not short lived.

Their bond to the planet slowed their aging. As long as the world endured, so did they. That longevity became a curse. Generations were born into the same tunnels, raised beneath the same mountains, and taught that survival meant obedience.

Escape had been attempted countless times.

It had always failed.

What changed was not desperation.

It was preparation.

The elders had never stopped planning. Century after century, they refined maps, studied patrol cycles, and tested paths through the deep strata where Alloykin bodies could not safely pass.

Knowledge was passed down quietly, hidden in ritual, encoded in songs and work patterns that looked meaningless to outsiders.

The plan was not meant for them.

It was meant for their descendants.

And the leader had been one of those descendants.

She was young by Lithren standards, but strong in a way that surprised even the elders. Where others saw exhaustion, she saw ownership. Where others accepted the mountains as cages, she spoke of them as inheritance.

This world was not a resource.

It was home.

She was the first to say it aloud.

She was the first to insist that obedience was not survival.

And she was the first to believe in Rurik.

Lucien’s gaze drifted briefly toward the shattered constructs in the chamber.

The leader had encouraged him when others dismissed his work as impossible. She had seen purpose where others saw childish defiance. When Rurik brought back his first functioning device, crude but effective, she had laughed and praised him openly.

Not because it was perfect.

But because it was theirs.

That belief had spread. Slowly. Quietly. Irreversibly.

Then Lucien learned what had truly drawn the Alloykin here.

The mineral.

It was called Astrafer.

A crystalline metal born from the slow collapse of stellar residue trapped beneath the planet’s crust when the world was still forming. It existed at the boundary between matter and energy, stable only under specific planetary resonance.

Astrafer could not be found in the Big World.

There, the mana density was too high. The energy flow was too turbulent. The metal destabilized before it could fully form.

Here, in this thinner world, it matured.

And when refined into an Alloykin body, it produced effects unseen elsewhere.

Astrafer did not simply strengthen flesh.

It aligned existence.

Alloykin who successfully integrated Astrafer gained bodies that responded directly to intent. Thought, motion, and transformation occurred as a single unified process. There was no internal resistance and no structural delay. Hardening and reshaping happened instantly, without stress or recoil.

Their metallic bodies no longer fractured under extreme strain. Energy circulated without loss. Density, speed, and strength increased together instead of competing with one another.

It was a refinement without tradeoff.

That alone justified centuries of exploitation.

Lucien understood immediately why the mining had never stopped.

And why only the Lithren could extract it.

Astrafer veins were not inert.

They were alive in a way stone was not.

The metal reacted violently to foreign resonance. Alloykin bodies, steeped in external refinement, destabilized the moment they attempted direct extraction. Tools failed. Constructs corroded. Entire tunnels collapsed when improper resonance disrupted the vein.

The Lithren were different.

Their bodies resonated with the planet itself.

They did not force the mineral to yield. They adapted to it. Their physiology shifted subtly during extraction, matching the vein’s resonance rather than disrupting it. The metal recognized them as part of the world instead of an intrusion.

Only the Lithren could touch Astrafer safely.

Only the Lithren could remove it intact.

And that made them indispensable.

Lucien exhaled slowly.

So this was the truth.

A world shaped into a mine.

A people shaped into tools.

A resource too valuable to abandon and too dangerous to harvest without its natives.

The Alloykin did not need to exterminate the Lithren.

They needed them alive.

The chamber felt smaller after that.

Lucien remained silent for a long moment, letting the weight of it settle.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.

“…you were not wrong… to resist,” he said.

Several Lithren looked up, startled by the certainty in his tone.

“…this world… is yours,” Lucien continued. “…and they know it.”

Rurik clenched his hands.

“…knowing… does not change,” he said bitterly. “…they return… always.”

Lucien met his gaze.

“…knowing… is the first step,” he replied. “…after that… choices appear.”

The Lithren exchanged uncertain glances.

Hope did not rise yet.

But despair loosened its grip.

Lucien looked once more at the constructs, at the veins of glowing stone in the walls, and at the people who had survived centuries by enduring what should never have been endured.

This was not a battle yet.

But it was no longer ignorance.

And that alone changed everything.