100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 313

Chapter 313: Chapter 313 – Gargoyle
Shapes slid in through the maw of the tower, dragging miasma with them.

Gargoyles.

Lucien’s blood-red eyes narrowed.

For a heartbeat, he thought it was his mind grasping for patterns in fear.

But the figures that entered were indeed Gargoyles.

Not the common spawn. Their presence carried structure.

Most of them were Monster Kings. Their auras pressed against the chamber like invisible stonework, the kind of pressure that matched Celestial Realm practitioners.

And behind the lead gargoyle, half a step back, stood a Gargoyle Monster Lord.

That alone was wrong.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened further.

The leader moved forward into the chamber’s dim light, and Lucien’s thoughts went cold.

He recognized it.

The massive profile. The posture like a fortress leaning forward. The way its claws held themselves as if the air were something to be crushed.

The colossal gargoyle he had once faced at the Coalheart Dungeon, the same oppressive hand that had breached the depths like a decree made physical.

Lucien had only seen fragments back then. A limb.

Now he saw its face. Now he felt its aura.

It matched what he had witnessed in the Mural World. The same signature.

And it had grown stronger. It stood as a Monster King now.

Lucien’s stone talons tightened against his knees.

Inside his mind, a question cracked open like a fault line.

‘How many threads had been arranged for this moment?’

His replicated body did not betray him. The gargoyle emperor’s face remained still, merciless, and unreadable.

But Lucien’s spirit was no longer calm.

‘This could not be coincidence.’

The gargoyles entered fully and the moment the leader’s eyes found the figure seated at the chamber’s center, its composure shattered.

Its wings stiffened. Its breath halted. It took one step, then stopped as if the space between them had become sacred ground.

Its voice came out as stone dragged across stone.

“Ancestor.”

The word was spoken in Gargoyle tongue, heavy with reverence and fear.

Then the Monster King dropped to one knee.

The others followed immediately. A chain of kneeling bodies as synchronized as falling pillars.

“Ancestor.”

“Ancestor.”

“Ancestor.”

Each repetition carried a different texture. Some trembled with awe, some edged with desperation. All of them were bound by hierarchy older than this tower.

Lucien did not respond.

He let silence do its work.

Inwardly, he reached into his inventory with a thought and triggered a small ring he had taken long ago.

A Gargoyle Ring. A crude translator keyed to gargoyle resonance. It warmed against his intent, feeding meaning into sound.

Lucien’s gaze drifted across them slowly.

He did not ask a question.

He simply looked at them as if the universe itself had asked one.

Under that stare, the lead Monster King lowered its head further.

“Ancestor, we… we have transgressed,” it said. “We did not know.”

One of the other kings spoke quickly, eager to offer an explanation before fear curdled into punishment.

“We believed we had found the offender who stole from us. But we found something greater.”

Another added, voice tight with excitement it could not suppress.

“To behold you again is a blessing carved into our fate. Our Monster Emperor. Returned after long absence.”

Lucien’s eyes flicked toward the tower’s walls.

‘So they did not know.’

They did not know their emperor had been bound and locked into a dungeon by the Primordial Slime.

That ignorance was convenient.

It meant this lie still had room to breathe.

Lucien continued to listen without comment. Their hierarchy filled the silence for him.

Gargoyles were not creatures of equal conversation. They offered information the way supplicants offered tribute. One after another, they tried to be the one whose usefulness was remembered.

Apologies layered onto compliments. Compliments slid into reverent speculation.

None of them dared lift their head.

Lucien waited until their own momentum began to falter.

He had already analyzed their language. With the Gargoyle Ring translating intent and meaning, mastering their tongue became effortless.

Then he spoke.

His voice was not Lucien’s. It came out deep, stony, and ancient… as if each word had to be carved through bedrock before it was allowed to exist.

“What brings you into my stillness,” Lucien said, “and what madness convinced you to tear open the mouth of this tower?”

His killing intent rolled outward in slow waves as if the chamber were being compressed into a tighter and tighter box.

He let his eyes burn brighter. Then he invoked a skill.

Stony Gaze.

For a single heartbeat, the air thickened.

The kneeling gargoyles stiffened as if invisible chains had snapped around their joints. A faint petrification crawled along their shoulders and throats, not enough to harm them, but enough to remind them what it meant to be beneath an emperor.

They shuddered, choking back instinctive resistance.

No one resisted.

The lead Monster King forced out breath.

“Ancestor,” it said with a strained but respectful voice. “Please hear us. We act beneath the Black Mass’s decree.”

Lucien’s mind sharpened.

The gargoyle continued, speaking carefully as if quoting scripture.

“In the ages after the war, the Black Mass learned to speak. It whispered to our dominions.”

The king’s claws tightened against the floor.

“It said the seals wane, and the cycle begins anew.”

Lucien’s thoughts collided with an old memory.

The Memory Orb. The Magus Goblin. The voice in the miasma that had noticed him looking.

A warning. A sentence that had felt too directed to be instinct.

It had not been a hallucination.

It had been a message.

Lucien kept his face unreadable.

But his spirit went cold.

The Monster King continued.

“It spoke of an intruder. One who peered into the Black Mass without being swallowed. One who touched memory that should not be touched.”

Lucien stared at it as if he were judging the truth of the universe itself.

Then the king lowered its head even further.

“We were told the intruder came from a small world crafted by the Damned Slime. We were told he carried theft upon him. We were told he moved through this region of stars.”

A second gargoyle added quickly, desperate to show usefulness.

“The goblins were struck. Something was taken. A relic, a vessel, a tower of obsidian. We believed earlier this structure was the proof.”

Lucien felt the answer settle into place with sick certainty.

They had not stumbled onto him…

They had been guided.

He remained silent.

Silence, in the presence of strong monsters, was never empty. It was pressure. It was threat. It was permission for them to fill it with more truth.

Another gargoyle spoke.

“The goblins follow behind us. And there are others as well. Desperate people of the Thousand Races who clung to the goblins like barnacles to a corpse. They will come.”

Lucien exhaled.

That single breath carried dread through the chamber like fog. The kneeling gargoyles flinched, mistaking his breath for anger.

Then Lucien’s gaze shifted.

It settled on the figure behind the lead Monster King.

The Monster Lord.

The one who did not kneel as smoothly as the others. The one whose presence smelled wrong even through miasma’s veil.

Lucien’s voice dropped lower.

“And why,” he asked, “does one who is not of our stone stand among you?”

The lead Monster King did not hesitate.

“As expected of the Ancestor,” it said. “Your sight pierces origin.”

Its wings trembled faintly.

“This is a craft born of goblin ingenuity. The reshaping of flesh. The conversion of a human into another kind.”

Lucien’s jaw tightened.

He had seen those chambers inside this very tower. He had destroyed what he could during the war, but the tower had sealed itself away when the goblin lords died, locking deeper systems behind doors he could not yet command.

Hearing the technology spoken aloud made the tower feel more hostile like a corpse that still remembered how to bite.

The king continued.

“He was human once. From the same small world as our offender. We brought him because he has seen the intruder’s face.”

Just then… the Monster Lord stepped forward, heavy and ugly, shaped wrong even for a gargoyle. His stone was bloated and his proportions warped as though the conversion had been rushed or botched.

He bowed deeply as if trying to bury his shame in obedience.

His voice carried the rasp of someone who had swallowed hatred until it became religion.

“Ancestor,” he said. “In flesh, I am yours.”

He lifted his head just enough for Lucien to see his eyes.

They were not gargoyle eyes. Not truly. There was something human still trapped behind them, something sick and vindictive.

The name that followed hit Lucien like a blade drawn across bone.

“I am called Harold Coalheart,” the Monster Lord said. “I will remain true. Grant me my vengeance, and I will offer anything.”

Lucien’s talons curled.

Inside him, the gargoyle instincts roared for dominance. His mind tightened into something colder than rage.

Harold Coalheart was alive.

Worse, he had found a way to crawl back into the story.

Lucien’s aura surged, and the chamber’s air bent under it. The kneeling gargoyles pressed their foreheads harder to the floor, mistaking the shift for their emperor’s wrath.

Lucien did not move. Not yet.

He simply stared at Harold as if deciding whether a mistake deserved to be erased.

And in that stare, a new kind of suspense settled into the tower.

Lucien’s eyes glinted.

He had wanted time.

Now time had arrived wearing familiar faces