100% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? - Chapter 322

Chapter 322: Chapter 322 – Madness
The goblin kings moved suddenly.

Together.

They regrouped with the efficiency of creatures who had hunted in packs long before the war taught them politics.

Lucien felt it immediately. Their footwork changed. Their spacing tightened. Their lines of sight overlapped.

His allies felt it too. Because for the first time, all five of them glanced toward him at once.

They had felt the invisible hand that had been keeping them safe. The subtle stillness that saved a weapon from breaking. The angle that turned a near-miss into a strike. The split-second ruin of an enemy’s footing.

Even the Serpentile woman who had bristled at him earlier, shifted her stance without being told. She slid into the spacing he had been shaping all along.

Lucien’s voice cut through the noise.

“Do not let them regroup. Break their rhythm. Keep one per target.”

The human woman nodded once and drove a flaming knuckle into her opponent’s jaw.

The goblin’s head snapped sideways.

But the other goblins did not rush to punish her opening.

They rotated.

A swordsman peeled away and stepped into her blind side. The polearm user slid to cover the mage. The crystal-clawed goblin shifted to harass the Serpentile woman. The serrated-blade goblin feinted twice to draw the second human fire wielder out of position.

Then the mage moved.

Further. Always further.

He remained the spine of the pack, the one whose eyes never left the whole field.

The Serpentile man who tried to pressure him found nothing to hit. Every time he closed distance, the path became wrong. The air thickened. A line appeared where there had not been a line.

The mage did not need to run.

He simply made “near” stop meaning anything.

The goblins completed their regrouping.

And the fight turned into a teamfight.

It happened in a blink.

Chaos flared like a splashed jar of ink. Corrosion followed, seeping into every opening. Blood magic hissed along steel, making blades behave like hungry throats.

Two goblins pressed one target, then peeled away before a counter could land. One goblin would take a hit and laugh, because another would strike from the angle the victim had been forced to expose.

The goblin kings were strong alone.

Together, they were suffocating.

Lucien’s mind moved faster.

Perfect Calculation ran like a second pulse. He read their rotations. He read the timing of their Edicts. He read the pattern of their cruelty.

“Fire sister, do not chase. Hit and return. Spearman, tighten the left flank. Molting, bait corrosion and shed it. Venom, anchor your judgment on the crystal claws. And you brother, turn his catalyst before he feeds it.”

They obeyed.

The battlefield steadied.

Then the goblin mage finished what he had been building.

He did not shout. He simply lifted his staff and let the formation breathe.

Runes rose from the ground like drowned words surfacing.

A lattice of magic circles unfolded across the field, almost invisible.

It looked harmless.

Lucien did not feel anything at first.

Then it spread and… hit him.

His vision sharpened too far. His heartbeat turned into a drum. His skin tightened as if the world had become prey.

And inside his skull, something opened its eyes.

Madness.

Not his. But the imprint inside him.

The residue of the Emperor-template he had stolen.

The formation did not affect his allies at all.

It only reached for the crack that already existed in Lucien and pried.

Lucien’s breath caught.

His fingers trembled.

Voices rose in his mind. Not as sound, but as command.

“Kill.”

“Fight.”

“Dominate.”

His aura surged uncontrollably. Violent pressure rippled outward. His allies flinched from the sudden change in him. The air around Lucien gained the sharp taste of blood.

Across the field, the goblin mage’s mouth curled into a satisfied smile.

He did not need to say it.

Lucien felt the message anyway.

‘I know your weakness.’

The goblins attacked immediately because a strategist never wastes the moment an enemy fractures.

Blades and corruption crashed toward Lucien’s team in a coordinated wave.

The allies had no time to worry for him.

The human woman stepped forward and did what fighters did when commanders fell.

She took command.

Her voice snapped like a whip.

“Hold. Do not let them split you. If you fall, you fall forward.”

She drove her knuckles into the ground and issued an Edict that made the field answer.

“Scorched Rise.”

The earth beneath them heaved, cracking upward into jagged ridges. Flame licked through the seams like veins, turning the terrain into a fortress of heat and broken footing.

It bought them a breath.

It bought Lucien a breath.

Lucien dropped to one knee.

His head felt like it was being crushed from the inside by a hand that did not care what he wanted.

The Origin Core fragment flooded him with power, trying to stabilize his state.

It helped his body.

It did nothing to silence the commands.

“Kill.”

“Fight.”

“Dominate.”

Lucien clenched his jaw so hard he tasted iron.

Resisting hurt more than any wound.

The madness did not want to be denied. It wanted to be obeyed.

Lucien’s eyes lifted slowly, blood-red and gleaming.

He stared at the goblin mage through the chaos of battle.

Then he smiled.

A thin, sharp curve that belonged to something predatory.

“You thought this would stop me,” Lucien said. His voice was steady despite the storm in his skull. “Goblin, you have simply shown me where to aim.”

His allies heard the steadiness return to his words and exhaled in relief without realizing it.

The goblins did not look relieved.

They looked amused.

After all, he was only an Ascendant.

A lesser realm.

Lucien made his choice.

He stopped resisting.

He let the urge flood his limbs, then wrapped it in calculation like chains around a beast’s throat.

If madness demanded motion, he would give it motion.

If instinct demanded violence, he would give it violence.

But on his terms.

‘Dragon Beast Mode.’

His body answered.

His frame expanded. His spine lengthened. A draconic pressure rolled out of him like a breath from a sleeping catastrophe.

His aura thickened until even his allies felt their lungs tighten.

Killing intent collected above the field like stormclouds.

The madness remained in his eyes.

The calculation remained behind them.

‘Equip Genesis Set.’ Lucien commanded the system.

The air tore with quiet authority.

The fivefold armament locked into place and for a heartbeat… Lucien looked less like a man and more like something that had stepped out of a myth.

His allies stared.

Even the goblins hesitated.

Lucien’s voice cut through it.

“Do not break formation,” he said. “I am with you now.”

Then he moved.

One step.

The distance between him and the goblin mage became irrelevant.

The mage’s eyes widened, and for the first time his grin looked uncertain.

He was faster than most.

So he retreated instantly, sliding backward on a ripple of rune-force.

Lucien followed with raw predatory pursuit.

Morphis flowed into his hand like obedient darkness.

Morphis transformed, lengthening into a massive blade whose spine resembled a dragon’s back.

The voices in Lucien’s head surged again, thrilled by the chase.

Fight. Kill. Dominate.

The moment he obeyed, the pain eased.

The madness stopped punishing him.

It rewarded him.

Lucien exhaled a laugh through clenched teeth.

His allies felt the shift.

They moved with him.

The synchronization snapped into place as if they had been waiting for a conductor to finally join the orchestra.

Lucien spoke in their minds while he fought.

“Fire sister, keep the swordsman busy. Force him to bleed if he feeds his blade. Venom, anchor your judgment on the crystal claws and keep it rotting. Constriction, choke the polearm’s angles. Molting, bait corrosion and shed it into the ground. Fire brother, assist them.”

He did not have to repeat himself.

They obeyed instantly.

The goblin kings did not laugh now.

They snarled, because every movement they made seemed to meet a counter that arrived too early to be coincidence.

Lucien swung Morphis.

The strike carved intent.

A draconic force slammed forward, heavy enough to make the world flinch.

The goblin mage threw up a layered circle. It held but Lucien’s attack made him skid back as if dragged by an invisible chain.

Lucien’s mouth twisted.

Morphis melted mid-swing.

It became a dragon’s mouth with jaws open.

A beam of condensed destructive breath erupted. A brutal line of force that screamed like something being erased.

The mage screamed an Edict and bent the beam sideways, but it still grazed him.

His robe burned. The flesh beneath blackened for an instant before runes sealed the damage.

The goblin mage’s face tightened.

He had expected a broken Ascendant.

But then…

He had awakened a predator.

The field became catastrophe.

Scorched ridges shattered. Corrosion ate trenches through earth. Chaos detonated into bursts of wrongness that made distance lie.

Lucien did not care about the terrain.

A corrosion wave came toward him.

The Crown of Creation flared.

Lucien erased the wave as if wiping ink off parchment.

A blade strike aimed for his throat.

The Boots of Reflection activated.

The strike bent back toward the attacker, and the goblin swordsman was forced to twist aside to avoid being cut by his own intent.

The goblins began to understand the truth.

They were sealed in here with him.

And the space seal had been their idea.

•••

The first goblin king to die was the crystal-clawed one.

It had to fight close. That was its strength, and that was its doom.

It lunged at the Serpentile woman with its claws dripping corrosion.

She moved like a curse wearing grace. Venom followed her steps like a verdict written into the air.

The goblin snarled and tried to overwhelm her rot with chaos.

Lucien appeared beside it.

His fist drove into its ribs with draconic weight.

Bones cracked like dry wood.

The goblin king wheezed, eyes wide.

It tried to retreat.

Constriction tightened.

Its limbs slowed.

Molting Serpentile struck, shedding a layer of corrupted imprint into the goblin’s face like thrown skin that carried poison-stain.

The human woman’s knuckles detonated three brands at once.

The goblin king screamed.

Lucien finished it.

Morphis shrank into a short blade, and Lucien drove it cleanly into the wound his allies had torn open, then twisted.

The body shuddered.

Then went still.

Lucien did not look away.

He reached into the collapsing corpse. He extracted what mattered, storing it without gesture or announcement.

Organ Storage.

His allies did not see.

They were still fighting.

The polearm goblin was next.

It tried to keep distance, hooking enemies, dragging them into angles where corrosion could work.

Lucien met it head-on.

The polearm slammed into his scales and failed to pierce, scraping sparks across draconic plating.

The goblin king snarled, then issued an Edict that tried to fray Lucien’s structure from within.

Lucien laughed and answered with a tool that did not care about pride.

Breathbound Ivy. Another plant form the Ruin of Stillness.

Pale vines surged. They wrapped the goblin king’s chest and throat with gentle inevitability.

The goblin’s eyes widened.

It tried to inhale.

It could not.

The ivy did not crush.

It simply declared that breath would not arrive.

The goblin mage reacted instantly, flinging a burning rune that scorched the ivy.

But the moment it burned was the moment it loosened.

That was all Lucien needed.

“Now,” Lucien barked.

Fire struck from both humans, one from the front, one from the side, crossing into a brutal X of heat.

Constriction tightened the goblin’s limbs until movement became expensive.

Venom sank in, rotting the goblin’s defense at the concept-level.

Molting Serpentile cast off a corrupted layer and slammed the discarded imprint into the goblin’s face like a curse.

The goblin king staggered.

Lucien stepped in.

He stabbed.

Morphis pierced through the softened structural point Venom had created, and Lucien poured draconic force into the wound until the goblin’s beast core cracked.

The goblin king died with a sound it could not complete.

Lucien tore free what he wanted.

Again, quietly.

The remaining goblins finally understood what they had done.

Their eyes flicked toward the sealed lattice the mage had built.

Escape was impossible.

And the creature they had tried to break was now smiling like a man who had just been handed permission to be monstrous.

Lucien looked at them.

His eyes were still blood-red.

His grin was not human.

The goblin kings’ first instinct became the most honest one.

Run. But they could not.

Their mage had slammed the doors himself.

Lucien’s voice was gentle.

“Continue,” he told his allies. “One at a time. Do not give them room to breathe.”

The goblin mage snarled.

“You are not supposed to be this,” he hissed in an ancient cadence. “You are a borrowed thing. A false throne.”

Lucien took a step forward.

His aura rolled outward, a calculated madness that felt like doom.

“You should have kept my leash in your own hands,” Lucien replied. “Instead, you tied it to my throat and yanked.”

He lifted Morphis.

The dragon-shaped blade drank the light.

The battlefield trembled.