100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 478 - Reunion

The portal dropped them straight into one of the largest interior chambers of the Obsidian Tower already rooted inside the small world.

The moment they arrived, all of them felt it.

A soaked, festering pressure that clung to the black walls like rot given breath. The entire chamber exuded miasma and Black Mass influence so thick that even the empty vessels seemed to recoil from it.

Marie grimaced first.

"Disgusting."

Kaia’s expression hardened.

"This whole tower feels infected."

The structure itself was almost identical to the Obsidian Tower they had brought with them.

At the highest level of the chamber, a Monster Lord was already there, seated before a control pedestal, feeding miasma into the Tower’s anchoring system with grim satisfaction.

It noticed them immediately.

Its head snapped toward the newcomers, jaws parting to shout some warning.

It never got the chance.

By the time its instinct understood danger, Luke was already behind it.

The blade fell once.

The Monster Lord died without even understanding that the battle had begun.

Its body slumped over the pedestal.

Luke shook the blood from his sword.

"Let’s move."

And they moved.

They descended through the lower levels of the tower, destroyed the remaining internal control nodes, tore out the prepared miasma relays, and came out into the world beyond.

The sight that greeted them was exactly as Lucien had once described.

A smaller Black Mass.

It hung over part of the land like a lowered sky, swallowing light, corrupting distance, and making even the horizon look diseased.

Beneath it, the world had not died yet... but it had already begun losing the argument.

Luke stared at it for one hard breath.

Then said, "Purge."

No one needed to hear it twice.

The battle that followed was not heroic.

It was corrective.

The group moved like surgeons cutting rot from a body before it could spread.

Everything under that false sky died.

Weak monsters died. Strong monsters died. The ones hiding in fouled dungeons died. The ones trying to regroup died. The ones that thought their miasma-soaked territory would protect them died hardest of all.

•••

Hours passed.

It’s not because the monsters were difficult.

But because there were many.

The Black Mass had already spent time here. It had grown roots. It had seeded foul chambers, tampered dungeons, and hidden pockets of rot all through the affected zone.

So the group destroyed everything the corruption had touched.

At last Luke extended his senses with skill-enhanced precision and searched the entire region again.

Nothing.

He lowered his hand.

"It’s finishe."

Only then did they move to the final step.

The four women raised their respective Origin Core Fragments.

The fragments glowed together, answering one another like scattered stars being reminded of a single sky.

The miasmic pressure around the rooted Obsidian Tower immediately weakened.

The Black Mass dome trembled.

Luke and Cienna stepped forward together, placed their hands upon the tower’s corrupted base, and began uprooting it from the world.

It did not come easily.

The tower resisted like a parasite fighting to keep its fangs buried in flesh.

But Luke and Cienna stopped treating it with care.

The rooted Obsidian Tower tore free.

The whole land shuddered once as if exhaling something foul.

Then Luke stored it inside the translucent black cube.

Now there were two Obsidian Towers inside.

As soon as the rooted tower was taken, the smaller Black Mass began to recede.

It peeled back.

Like a wound giving up its right to stay open.

The four women used that chance immediately, turning their fragments and elemental affinities toward the lingering miasma and burning, cleansing, dissolving, and washing away every scrap of residue they could reach before it had time to sink deeper into the world again.

By the time the Black Mass dome vanished completely, the land beyond it finally became visible again.

And that was when they saw them.

Forces.

Waiting.

At every outer edge where the dome had once stood, troops and warriors had already formed defensive lines.

They had gathered around the corruption and prepared to kill whatever came out of it.

For a moment, no one on either side moved.

The defenders of the small world stared in disbelief at the now-cleansed land. They had prepared themselves for another desperate clash, another costly campaign, and another wave of monsters.

Instead—

the dome had vanished.

And standing where corruption had ruled a short while earlier were figures they did not expect to see.

King Midas noticed the presence first.

Or more accurately—

he noticed familiar ones.

His expression changed before reason could catch up to it. He left the outer line almost at once and moved toward the presences.

Then he saw them clearly.

Luke. Cienna. And others he did not know.

Midas stopped so abruptly that dust rose around his feet.

His eyes widened.

"It can’t be," he muttered.

He blinked once, hard, as if he thought the world had finally decided to mock him with mercy.

Then he stepped forward again.

"Thousand Skills Luke..." he said slowly. "And the magical prodigy Cienna?"

His voice nearly failed him.

"You two are alive?"

Before either could answer, another figure arrived.

Pope Augustus.

He looked thinner than memory allowed. Paler. As though time had finally begun speaking too loudly inside his body. Yet the frailty in him did nothing to weaken the force of his shock.

When his gaze landed on Luke and Cienna, he genuinely looked like a man seeing the dead rise in front of him.

He covered his mouth with one hand.

Then lowered it again because disbelief was no longer enough to hold him upright.

"You two are alive," he said again, this time not as a question but as wonder given voice.

And then something brighter entered his face.

Hope.

Not only because they had returned.

But because if Lucien had found a way to return them—

then perhaps impossibilities were not done being challenged yet.

King Midas and Pope Augustus quickly crossed the remaining distance and met them properly.

For a brief while, questions came all at once.

How? When? What had happened? Why were they here now?

Luke and Cienna answered what little they could without unraveling everything at the wrong place and in front of too many watching ears.

Then Cienna’s eyes shifted.

She was looking for someone.

She did not need to wait long.

Cielius came next.

And Sebas was with him.

The moment their gazes met, all restraint broke. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Cielius moved first.

Fast. Far too fast for an old man who had already suffered too much.

"My daughter..."

His voice cracked before the words finished.

When he reached Cienna, he did not stop himself from embracing her with both arms, and the tears that had waited too long finally came free.

"You’re alive," he said, and his whole body shook with the force of it. "You are truly alive."

Cienna held her father just as tightly.

For all her brilliance, all her magic, all her control—

at that moment she was only a daughter returned too late and somehow still in time.

Tears slipped down her face as she whispered, "I’m here... father"

Behind them, Sebas had already gone toward Luke with such open emotion that Luke immediately felt danger of a completely different sort.

Sebas looked half ready to collapse and half ready to throw himself into Luke’s arms like a child who had found his family again after a long war.

Luke took one look at that expression and instantly put a palm against Sebas’s forehead, stopping him before the full collision happened.

"Hold it," Luke said. "You’re a grown man. Don’t make this weird."

Sebas laughed and cried at the same time.

He could not help it.

Seeing Luke who had once treated him like family when he had almost nothing—

His eyes turned red.

Luke saw it and, for once, let the humor soften.

He lowered his hand from Sebas’s forehead and smiled.

"I’m back."

That was enough.

Sebas wiped at his face with no success at all.

It took a little while for the first shock to settle.

By the time it did, the joy around the reunion had already begun colliding with another absence.

Sebas was the one who finally gave it voice.

He looked around.

His relief thinned. His smile faltered. Then he asked, in a voice suddenly much smaller than before:

"Where is the young master?"

The whole group fell silent.

The air itself seemed to tighten.

Midas noticed it. Augustus noticed it too.

They had been too overwhelmed by the return of Luke and Cienna, too focused on the impossible, to look properly at the expressions of those who had come with them.

Now they did.

And what they saw there was not triumph.

It was grief carrying purpose.

Midas looked around first, confirming with one final sweep that the threat had indeed been erased completely. Then he inhaled slowly and made the decision a king ought to make.

"Let us return first," he said.

No one interrupted him.

His voice remained calm, but there was iron beneath it now.

"Our guests have crossed paths, fought a battle, and arrived carrying matters too grave to discuss standing at the edge of a dead battlefield. We will speak inside."

Pope Augustus nodded immediately.

"That is right."

He turned to the gathered defenders and raised his voice just enough to carry through the waiting lines.

"The Black Mass has been purged. Maintain formation. Tend the wounded. None are to pursue beyond assigned range. Await further orders."

Soon after, Midas sent word to the other leadership present.

Leo. Elunara’s father.

They would come too.

Elunara’s father, Supreme Chief of the Wildlands Federation, gave his own orders without delay.

The local chiefs would remain behind, secure the line, account for the soldiers, and stabilize the region. No force would move recklessly. No report would spread beyond permitted channels until they understood what this event truly meant.

Only after that was done did the leaders finally turn together.

And with the returning dead, the grieving companions, and the questions none of them were yet ready to answer—

they began moving toward Lootwell.