100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 302

Chapter 302: Chapter 302 – Fighting for Freedom
The stairwell swallowed the rebels.

Lucien did not follow at their head. He walked behind them.

He watched everything unfold.

He would not allow any of them to die unjustly. These were his future people. Rurik most of all.

And a thought surfaced as he observed the young Lithren’s steady hands and sharper eyes.

Rurik would get along well with Seren.

Transmute and Essence Shift would complement each other. Together, their creations would not just be impressive. They would be revolutionary.

Lucien kept that thought for later.

For now, the mine demanded blood.

The first clash began on the next platform.

Alloykin overseers rushed from guard alcoves. But they were late.

The Lithrens’ weapons flashed.

Rurik’s gauntlet unfolded again and the Slaver Breaker lattice snapped outward, but this time it did not aim to restrain a single target. It formed a wide grid that sealed a corridor mouth, compressing space just enough to deny a charge lane.

A metal spear from an Alloykin drove into the lattice.

It stopped.

The Alloykin pushed harder. Astrafer reinforcement surged in response.

The lattice flexed, breathed, and held.

Living Alloy Essence did not resist with stiffness. It resisted with adaptation. It redistributed pressure like a living muscle.

Rurik turned his wrist.

The grid inverted.

The corridor mouth became a trap.

The Alloykin’s own momentum folded back at him, forcing his footing to fail. A Lithren rebel slammed a hammer into his ribs and the Astrafer shell flared, trying to spread the impact.

Lucien raised two fingers behind them.

Cosmic Anchor.

It was invisible to mortal eyes. It simply changed the reference point that Astrafer used to call “true.”

The Alloykin’s body hesitated.

Synchronization stuttered.

That single pause was enough.

The hammer struck again.

This time, the force did not diffuse cleanly. It concentrated. A fracture line spidered across the Alloykin’s torso and the glow of his Astrafer skin blinked like a dying star.

He tried to use magic but the attempt fizzled into nothing.

The Lithren hammer fell one last time…

The Alloykin collapsed.

The first death did not belong to Lucien.

It belonged to the people who had been forced to mine the metal that now betrayed their oppressor.

Lucien watched their faces change.

Not into joy but into recognition.

They could win.

Behind the rebels, Lucien drew light into his palm and released it like breath.

It spread across the Lithrens in soft, pale layers that clung to their bodies without weight.

Light Magic buffs.

Their timing sharpened. Their reflexes aligned. Their fatigue lifted by a fraction at the exact moment it would have slowed them.

To the Lithrens, it felt like their bodies finally remembered how to move without fear.

To the Alloykins, it felt like the prey had learned the rhythm of the hunt.

The fighting cascaded down the levels.

The mine began to scream with movement, with panic, and with alarms that never should have been needed in a place built on certainty.

Shouts echoed through chambers.

Metal boots rang against stone.

Astrafer bodies flashed as reinforcements poured from deeper platforms, gathering for a decisive engagement.

Lucien did not stop them.

He allowed them to come.

He wanted the Lithrens to see the enemy gather and not fold.

He wanted them to meet pressure and stay standing.

Only then could they stop thinking like slaves.

Only then could they grow.

Rurik led the first rescue with brutal clarity.

He did not chase kills.

He cut toward the breeding facilities.

The sealed chambers were arranged like a series of clean cages. Doors that closed without violence and locks that did not look cruel.

That was the lie.

Rurik’s gauntlet touched the first seal and Living Alloy Essence flowed into the mechanism, rewriting the shape of its lock.

The door released.

Lithrens inside flinched at the light, then froze at the sight of armed kin in front of them.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then one captive Lithren whispered a name like prayer.

“Rurik.”

Their eyes found the bodies of fallen Alloykins in the corridor behind him.

Hope returned with teeth.

A captive Lithren stumbled forward, hands shaking, and picked up a dropped weapon.

Another followed.

Then another.

The facility did not empty like a prison release.

It emptied like a dam breaking.

Behind them, an Alloykin squad arrived, four at once. One raised a blade meant to end the rebellion at its root.

Lucien watched the angle of that strike.

He intervened.

His barrier formed as a thin plane of light that met the blade with no sound at all.

The edge stopped as if it had struck an invisible wall of glass.

The Alloykin’s eyes widened.

He pushed harder.

But… the barrier did not break.

Lucien did not look at him. He only tilted his fingers slightly and let the barrier turn into a slope.

The blade slid aside. The fatal line was denied.

Rurik’s hammer took the Alloykin in the throat.

The rebel beside him finished the second.

The third tried to cast magic.

Lucien lifted a hand.

Procrastinate.

The skill delayed the moment of completion.

The Alloykin’s spell hung in his throat like a word that would not leave the tongue. His eyes bulged with confusion.

A Lithren spear punched through his chest before the spell could be born.

The fourth turned to flee.

The automaton intercepted him.

It was one of Lucien’s blueprints, but Rurik had made it his own. Its frame was compact and angular with joints lined in Living Alloy Essence. It moved without mechanical stiffness. It moved like something that learned.

The automaton pivoted, planted a foot, and let its arm unfold into a hooked blade.

It hooked the Alloykin’s ankle and yanked. The Alloykin fell hard, and the automaton’s head tilted as if it was evaluating the fall.

Then it brought its other arm down like a guillotine.

The Astrafer body flared. The cosmic debuff Lucien had applied earlier made the flare uneven.

The cut found purchase.

The Alloykin died.

Rurik did not cheer yet.

He turned to the freed Lithrens.

“Pick up what you can carry. Stay behind the shield line. If you can fight, you fight. If you cannot, you move with the group.”

They obeyed. Not because he was their master… but because he sounded like someone who finally believed they could live.

As more Lithrens joined, the rebellion grew like fire finding oil.

The mine became a battlefield.

Alloykins began to feel something they had never tasted here.

Despair.

They had ruled this world because it was controlled. Because fear prevented coordination. Because the Lithrens had never been allowed to gather in numbers with weapons and purpose.

Now the tunnels were full of footsteps that were not running away.

Alloykins rallied for a team fight on the widest platform, a chamber shaped like an underground arena. More poured in from adjacent corridors.

They struck as one.

A synchronized wave, meant to erase a mortal uprising with a single clean motion.

But then…

Lucien shifted the field.

Cosmic Anchor pulsed in three points along the platform.

Their Astrafer synchronization shuddered.

The Lithrens met them.

Rurik’s Slaver Breaker lattice expanded across the platform’s edge, controlling lanes and isolating threats. Rebels with heavy weapons targeted joints and neck lines.

Alloykins tried to kill with fatal precision.

Lucien watched every line of death.

When a blade would have pierced a heart, a barrier appeared.

When a spear would have severed a spine, a mirrored step from Lucien’s Boots of Reflection placed him between the strike and the rebel for a fraction of a second, then he was gone again.

He was not fighting.

He was timing.

He was the hand that prevented tragedy from becoming a lesson.

The Alloykins noticed too late.

They began to panic because they could not secure a single clean kill.

A battle becomes hopeless when every victory is denied. An oppressive army breaks when it cannot make an example.

Lucien kept his face calm as he supported.

He had already killed thousands. He did not need more drops.

His future subjects needed proof.

They needed to see their own hands reshape history.

They needed to feel the mine change from cage to inheritance.

And as the fight raged, as freed Lithrens flooded upward with weapons in shaking hands, the sound that echoed through the aurora-lit halls was not the clang of metal.

It was the sound of a people realizing they were no longer trapped.

Lucien stood at the edge of the chaos.

He let them take back what was theirs.

He only ensured they lived long enough to keep it.

…

The advance slowed.

Then it stopped.

They reached a place that could no longer be mistaken for a mine.

Rows of vertical chambers lined the walls. Transparent barriers shimmered faintly, each one holding a broken figure inside. Tubes fed liquids into bodies that could no longer stand on their own. Restraints pierced flesh and metal alike, pinning victims in positions meant to keep them alive, not whole.

It was a prison.

The Lithrens who reached the threshold froze.

Some dropped their weapons.

Others staggered forward. Their hands trembled, eyes wide as recognition struck again and again.

These were not strangers.

They were kin.

Scarred. Emaciated. Burned. Some missing eyes. Some missing voices. Many missing the will to scream.

A weak voice drifted from one of the chambers.

“…run…”

Another whispered a name and then fell silent.

The rebellion cracked.

Not from fear. From grief.

Then Rurik stopped breathing.

He stood utterly still, staring into a chamber near the center of the hall.

Inside was a Lithren woman suspended by restraints that had replaced her limbs entirely. Where arms should have been were blunt seals of metal and flesh fused together. Her legs were gone. Her torso bore marks of repeated experimentation. Her head was bowed and her hair was matted with dried blood.

She lifted it slowly.

Her eyes found Rurik.

Recognition flickered.

Then shame.

Rurik’s weapon slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.

Their leader.

The one who had first taught them to resist quietly. The one who had smuggled children out of work shifts. The one who had been captured so the others could escape.

Reduced to this.

Rurik’s eyes dimmed.

Not with tears. But with something far worse.

Behind him, Lucien stepped forward.

And the mine seemed to hold its breath.