100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 311

Chapter 311: Chapter 311 – Changes
A month passed.

Lucien stood within the Obsidian Tower and watched the void ahead of him. Distant light had begun to resolve into structure. A star burned at the edge of perception, with the faint outlines of orbiting bodies forming around it.

A solar system.

The Obsidian Tower was nearing inhabited geometry again.

Lucien did not rush. Instead, he turned his awareness inward.

The new world within his Divine Energy Core no longer resembled the place he had taken from the void.

What had once been a harsh land of jagged mountains and exposed mineral veins had transformed into something vast and alive.

Valleys breathed with mist. Rivers traced luminous paths through emerald plains. Forests spread in layered canopies, their roots threading deep into the planet’s memory.

The change had been swift.

The Alloykin corpses were gone.

Their Astrafer bodies had broken down completely, reduced to elemental richness. Minerals had dissolved into soil. Energies had diffused into air and stone. What had once been instruments of oppression had become nourishment.

Lucien observed the result with astonishment.

Spirit Mountains had begun to rise.

They were not carved or forced into being. They emerged naturally. Mana flowed through them like slow, patient breath.

Lucien frowned faintly.

“This is…” he murmured.

In his original world, Spirit Mountains existed only because he had stolen them. He could anchor them and preserve them, but he could not birth them from nothing… yet.

Here, the planet had done it on its own.

That realization settled heavily.

The Laws governing this world were still active.

More than that, the world itself was alive in a way. Creation here was not being enforced. It was being permitted.

Lucien smiled.

Then his attention shifted to the Lithrens.

They had changed the most.

The mineral plating that once encased them was gone entirely. What remained were beings that seemed closer to living spirits than flesh-bound creatures.

Their forms were slender and luminous. Their skin carried a pale hue as if light passed through them before deciding to stay. Veins glowed faintly beneath the surface, carrying not blood alone but mana refined by the world itself.

Their hair had become shades of living green, ranging from deep forest tones to bright leaf. They flowed like soft foliage stirred by unseen wind. Their eyes reflected the land they were bound to, carrying colors of sky, soil, and water.

They were beautiful.

Not in the fragile sense, but in the way old forests and untouched valleys were beautiful. There was resilience in them. Balance.

The elders had spoken to Lucien earlier.

“This is not how we looked before,” they had said. “But this is how we were meant to.”

Their current forms were optimized. Not for survival under chains but for growth within freedom.

Lucien watched as groups of Lithrens moved across their land.

Some worked in the fields. Others fished along the rivers. Miners descended into deeper strata where rare minerals waited, materials the Alloykins had dismissed as worthless simply because they did not align with Astrafer refinement.

Roles had formed naturally.

Riri stood at the center of it all.

Though still young by Lithren standards, she had become their unquestioned representative. Her decisions were deliberate. No one doubted her, trust had settled around her like gravity.

It had been Riri who first volunteered to train.

The training facilities Lucien had prepared were now active again. Lithrens gathered there daily, shedding their mortal husks step by step. Progress was not explosive, but it was stable. Their foundations were perfect.

They had never lacked talent. Only opportunity.

And Lucien had given them that.

Rurik trained tirelessly. Lucien had shared fragments of knowledge with him, especially regarding Creation. Watching him work, Lucien found himself considering the possibility.

‘The path of Creation suited him.’

Lucien exhaled slowly.

Another matter had resolved itself quietly.

Reproduction.

The elders had been right.

With their new forms, the Lithrens’ ability to reproduce had increased naturally. Life cycles were no longer constrained by survival adaptations. The race would grow again.

A future existed here.

Lucien felt a sense of fulfillment settle in his chest.

Then his gaze turned outward once more, toward the approaching solar system.

“The next step,” he said.

He needed a path back to the Big World.

Somewhere within this solar system, there might be a trace. A way back to the Big World.

And if he encountered another race like the Alloykins—

Lucien’s eyes hardened.

He made no dramatic vow. But the intent settled regardless.

The Obsidian Tower continued its silent approach, cutting through the dark as starlight gathered ahead.

•••

Another month passed.

One by one, Lucien coaxed the Ancient Beings into compliance. He offered them a choice between two humiliations and let pride do the rest.

The first crack had been the Storm Roc.

Lucien occasionally opened his domain just wide enough for the other cages to see it. The Roc remained caged, but the prison no longer tumbled through the void. It rested within a stable region of Lucien’s inner realm.

Comfort, even in chains, was still comfort.

Worse, the Roc had grown arrogant about it.

When Lucien revealed that scene, the Storm Roc dared to smirk through the bars as though it had been elevated to a throne simply by having a floor that did not spin.

“You look like hatchlings,” the Roc said. Its voice dripped with contempt. “Filthy things. Rolling about in the dark, squealing at gravity as if it were an insult.”

The chamber erupted.

Curses filled the containment level. Ancient voices shook the obsidian walls. They raged at the Roc, they raged at Lucien, and, beneath it all, they raged at the fact that the Roc had been seen not suffering.

That was the first method.

The second method was quieter.

Lucien recorded them.

He sent the Gargoyle Drone into the containment chamber and let its glassy eye capture everything. The slow spinning, the helpless collisions, and the furious thrashing that achieved nothing. Then he showed the footage to them.

It was not the drifting that broke them. It was watching themselves drift.

The moment an Ancient Being saw its own body rolling end over end while its “eternal dignity” became a farce, something inside it snapped.

Some roared. Some went cold. One simply shut its eyes as if it could bury the image by refusing to witness it.

Lucien made a small concession after each collection.

He handed them the drone.

“You can destroy it if you comply,” he said.

That, at least, pleased them.

They would never admit gratitude but the way their claws snapped the drones apart carried a satisfaction that was almost ceremonial.

By the end of the month, most of the cages were gone from the containment level.

Only a few remained, still tumbling in the chamber like stubborn debris.

The Behemoth was one of them. The Titan was another.

They did not negotiate. They did not bargain. They did not even pretend to consider comfort.

Their hatred had hardened into something like religion.

Lucien did not bother persuading them.

He simply walked past.

If he could not gain stability from them, then he would gain silence by starving them of attention.

Let them drift. Let them rot inside their pride.

It did not affect his plan.

He now possessed thousands of liters of their blood.

The existing blood pools were beginning to lose their potency after prolonged use. With this fresh supply, Lucien could reinforce the old pools and create new ones, restoring their efficacy and expanding their utility.

Inside the Divine Energy Core, the atmosphere had changed.

The Ancient Beings were still prisoners, but they were no longer howling like beasts trapped in a storm.

They spoke. Civilly. For the first time.

They understood a basic truth.

He was not prey.

The prisoners watched the world around them with a strange, reluctant stillness.

Then one of them spoke.

“We misjudged you before, human.”

Lucien turned his head slightly.

Another voice followed.

“When we saw the Tower, we assumed you were of the Black Mass. It reeks of their wounds.”

Lucien did not correct them. He let the accusation sit until it became a question.

The first speaker continued.

“But you carry no devotion to their miasma. Your will is clean. Humans were like this in the war.”

A third voice joined.

“Your kind resisted most fiercely. Not because you were the strongest, but because you refused to kneel.”

Lucien listened.

They spoke of humans as if remembering a battlefield that had never truly ended.

Some even praised his growth, though the praise sounded like a verdict.

“Your rise is unnatural.”

“And your domain,” another murmured. “It is not merely a space. Even we cannot see its bottom.”

That last line carried something close to caution.

Then Lucien mentioned the Obsidian Tower.

He did not brag. He stated it plainly, the way one stated the color of the sky.

“The Tower. I took it from the Black Mass Monsters.”

The cages went quiet.

Even the unruly ones stilled.

For the first time since their capture, Lucien watched their emotions turn into something almost unified.

Satisfaction.

A low, bitter pleasure.

“To wound them,” one whispered as if tasting the idea. “To tear a bone from their throat and wear it as shelter.”

“It is… good,” another admitted. “That our mortal enemy has suffered.”

Lucien’s gaze remained calm.

Talking to them for the first time without constant screaming made another truth obvious.

Not all of them were evil in the simple sense.

Some were simply built for conflict.

They did not crave cruelty as much as they craved movement. They were beings born from eras where survival meant dominance, where peace was merely a pause between hunts.

They wanted to prove themselves. They wanted to clash. To test their Laws against other Laws until one broke.

To them, peace was a sickness.

It dulled the edge.

Lucien understood that much.

But… It did not change his decision.

He would not release them. Not until he held the strength to suppress them even if they turned their hunger outward.

While their conversation reached its sharpest point, a sound rang through Lucien’s mind.

[Ting.]

He froze.

A panel unfolded before his eyes.

[Update Finished.]

The next line appeared.

[It has been a long time, Host.]

Lucien swallowed.

For a moment, he almost forgot the prisoners.

Then he remembered where he was.

He turned to the cages and offered a polite nod as if leaving a meeting.

“Seniors,” Lucien said, “I have a matter to attend to. I will collect rent again next month.”

Before any of them could respond, he vanished.

He left them staring at empty air.

Silence held for a breath.

Then outrage returned but it sounded different now, less wild and more offended.

“That human… not bad,” one muttered with his voice thick with disbelief. “Yet more ruthless than we are.”

“To treat eternity as a resource,” another said. “He milks us as farmers milk beasts.”

A third voice rumbled with old resentment.

“Humans were not like this in the war.”

The complaint carried an unintended respect.

…

Lucien returned to the Obsidian Tower.

Excitement sharpened his eyes.

The Will of the World had settled into the system. The system had spoken.

Just when he was about to test what had changed in the system…

He froze.

A deep dread poured through him so suddenly that even his Ascendant composure faltered.

Lucien turned slowly toward the tower’s entrance.

His senses reached outward.

At first there was nothing.

Then he saw it.

A faint trace along the edge of perception like smoke that did not belong to any fire.

Miasma.

Lucien’s jaw tightened.

Something from the Black Mass was outside the Obsidian Tower.

And it had found him.