100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 476 - Journey

The group continued reading the notebook.

Lucien had not left them a desperate confession or some final sentimental page written by a dying hand that had already surrendered to fate.

He had left instructions.

How to return to the small world. Which items inside the room were essential. What not to touch carelessly. Who could go. Who absolutely must not.

The more they read, the stranger the room felt.

Every line in the notebook carried the same quiet insult toward death itself. Lucien had not treated his own end as a mystery. He had treated it as a logistical problem.

And by the time they reached the final page of the instructions, the expression in the room had changed.

Their grief remained.

But beneath it, something else had begun standing upright.

Purpose.

Luke closed the notebook only after rereading the last instruction twice. Then he lifted his gaze toward the shelf Lucien had specifically marked.

"There," he said.

They moved together.

On the shelf sat two objects Lucien had left behind for exactly this moment: a translucent black cube and a storage ring.

The ring was easier to understand. When Luke checked it, they found what the notebook had promised.

The cube was stranger.

When they extended their spiritual senses into it, the interior opened like a folded world.

Inside it, they saw the Obsidian Tower.

"That’s our transport," Cienna said softly.

Soon after, they entered the black cube themselves and crossed into the Tower’s lower levels.

That was when they saw the other thing Lucien had left for them.

The five empty vessels.

The same ones Lucien and the elemental women had once used as transitional shells in their breakthrough to the Celestial Realm. Their souls had long since been withdrawn from them. Now they stood dormant in silence, so lifelike that at first glance they almost seemed to be sleeping.

Soon, they climbed through the Obsidian Tower.

The merged Origin Core Fragment Lucien had left seated at the central pedestal on the highest floor.

That fragment powered the whole structure.

Among all of them, Marie understood the control system first.

Because her cheat looked at the Tower...

...and simply decided it made sense.

Within the hour, she was the one guiding the others through the route calibration sequence while the rest watched in equal parts admiration and irritation.

The Tower would work.

That part, at least, was no longer uncertain.

Then came the real problem.

Who could go?

Luke was the first to say it aloud.

"The small worlds have protection on them," he said, looking toward the others. "The Primordial Slime never left them undefended. Anyone above the Ascendant Realm will be rejected."

Seran, who had remained with them until now, nodded slowly.

"Brother and I talked about that before," he said. "It is not just a matter of entry. Small worlds do not tolerate overwhelming law-pressure well. If someone too strong forces their way in, the local laws can destabilize."

A pause.

"And when the laws destabilize, coherence goes with them. A small world is not like the Big World. It does not bend and recover in the same way. If we push too much power into it, we may shatter the place before we ever reach what was there."

Silence followed.

Inside the room, only Luke and Cienna currently fit the requirement naturally.

Both of them were still below Ascendant.

That solved it.

The elemental women, too, solved the problem almost immediately.

Marie turned and looked back at the dormant vessels below.

Then her eyes widened.

"Oh," she said.

Kaia caught it next.

"Right."

Sylra exhaled.

"Of course."

The answer was simple.

Their current true bodies had already crossed into the Celestial Realm and could not safely enter the small world.

But the vessels...

The vessels had no active realm at all.

They were empty.

At the same time, those bodies had already been refined heavily enough through the Abyssal Pool that their raw strength far exceeded what normal empty shells should have possessed.

That meant the elemental women could transfer their consciousness into the vessels and enter the small world without bringing their true Celestial bodies along.

Luke looked at them carefully.

"That would work," he said.

Marina grinned faintly.

"My prince really did prepare for everything."

But then...

Not everyone could go.

Seran could not. The ancient beasts absolutely could not.

And that was when the second half of the room’s emotion surfaced.

Lilith stood very still.

She had understood the answer before anyone turned to look at her.

She could not go.

For one terrible instant, the thought that came to her was violent enough to almost become action:

Break the Celestial body. Fall back to Ascendant. Go anyway.

It was a serious thought.

Then another thought answered it.

And when he returns?

Would she protect him better by arriving weaker?

Would she make herself smaller in the name of reaching him faster, only to stand beside him later with less power than before?

Lilith’s jaw tightened.

Her face darkened.

Eirene saw the change in her immediately.

So did Luke.

No one spoke for several breaths.

Then Seran sighed once and smiled with tired understanding.

He stepped away from the group.

"This much is enough for me," he said. "Knowing he planned beyond death is already more mercy than I expected."

Kaia looked up.

"Leader, you’re not coming?"

Seran shook his head.

"No. I should not intrude on a road meant for those who belong at the next gate."

His smile turned slightly crooked.

"And if Brother Luc truly planned this without saying a word to me, then I suppose I deserve to sit out the part he chose not to entrust to my hands."

He said it lightly.

But the truth of it lingered.

Eirene, meanwhile, had her own answer.

Without a word, she reached into her hair and plucked a living petal.

The petal dropped into her palm.

Then it unfolded.

A tiny fairy no larger than a hand rose from it, bearing Eirene’s face in miniature, winged in pale green light and soft moon-flower shimmer.

The little being hovered in the air and bowed its head obediently.

"It will act at my will," Eirene said. "It is not me in full, but it is enough to observe, think, and assist. If the laws of the small world measure presence rather than origin, this should pass."

Luke studied the familiar carefully, then nodded.

"It should."

That left Lilith standing in the same place with no answer of her own.

Eirene glanced at her.

"Do you want to come too?"

Lilith did not answer immediately.

When she finally spoke, her answer was not the one Eirene had asked for.

"I’m leaving for a while," she said.

Several of them turned toward her.

Lilith’s voice remained steady. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"What he feared for my safety, he already killed. The one thing that kept me from going there recklessly has been erased by his hand."

She paused once.

Then continued, quieter and sharper at the same time.

"I’m going to Starforge’s conquered world. When I return, I’ll be someone who can protect him."

That silenced the room more effectively than grief had.

Because there was no hesitation in her.

Just cold determination shaped by loss.

Eirene watched her for a long moment.

Then turned her gaze forward again, lips curving in the faintest suggestion of approval.

"Then be careful, horned mammal."

Lilith’s eyes narrowed.

"Cut it, flower bitch."

The tiny fairy blinked.

Marie looked from one to the other and whispered, "Are they fighting or comforting each other?"

Kaia replied without opening her eyes, "Yes."

Even in the middle of grief, that managed to earn the smallest breath of laughter from the room.

And that, somehow, made the moment hurt less.

They agreed to leave the next day.

There were things to prepare.

•••

The next morning, the Obsidian Tower stood in one of the cleared corners of Lootwell.

They still did not reveal the whole truth to everyone.

Not yet.

They did not speak openly of Lucien’s Echo Bloom, or of the small world, or of how close hope currently stood to collapse.

They said only this:

"When we return, we will bring good news."

And that was enough.

Lucien’s body was placed inside a cryogenic chamber taken from the storage ring Lucien had left for them.

Before the departure, everyone gathered once more.

This time, the conversation was practical.

The ancient beasts, Shadow, and Seran would continue the western cure campaign. Seran had already decided that if he had come all this way and if Lucien’s hope truly still lived, then standing idle would be the greatest insult he could offer to the dead.

The West still needed stabilizing.

The subjects of Lootwell still looked stricken, but movement had returned to them. Construction would continue. Preparations would continue. The territory would not freeze itself into reverence.

Even dead, Lucien remained their leader.

And to many among the Desert Folk, the matter was simpler still.

Sarin stood with Khasari and the others.

To them, Lucien was already not merely lord.

He was sacred.

A desert deity could disappear. A desert deity could sleep. A desert deity could withdraw into silence.

But such a being did not simply end.

All they had to do was wait for his return.

At last, Luke and Cienna walked toward the Obsidian Tower.

Beside them stood the empty vessels.

Marie, Kaia, Sylra, and Marina had already transferred their consciousness into them. Their true bodies now rested nearby, pale and still, attended carefully by others.

The process of splitting and relocating soul-fragments had left them weak, and the backlash from the second activation of the Eclipse Array still had not fully left them.

Their vessel-bodies now opened their eyes one by one.

The fifth vessel were stored safely.

Eirene’s flower-fairy hovered near the group instead.

From farther back, Eirene stood with the others who had come to see them off.

Lilith was beside her.

Her face was composed now, but her eyes had sharpened into something dangerous and bright.

Most of Lootwell had gathered at a distance to watch.

Luke looked back one final time.

At the people. At the city. At the cryogenic chamber. At the place Lucien and the others had built and now left behind in another way.

Then Luke and Cienna stepped into the Obsidian Tower.

The vessels entered after them. The little flower-fairy darted in last.

The black structure hummed once.

Then the air around it distorted.

And before the watching eyes of Lootwell—

The Obsidian Tower vanished from the city and slipped into the adjacent planes.

The journey back to Lucien’s small world had begun.

And with it—

the first true steps toward bringing him home.