100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 464 - Face Off

At the sight of Alanthuriel, Convergence let out a low whistle.

"Well," he said, eyeing the newly emerged presence with frank interest, "that’s it."

His smile widened as he looked back at Lucien.

"You’re tied in way deeper than I thought. That’s exactly why you can’t be left alone. Someone like you was never going to switch sides just because I asked nicely. Better to cut off future problems before they learn how to bloom."

Lucien’s eyes narrowed.

He did not answer.

There was no point wasting words on that line.

Not now.

Because the air itself had changed.

Alanthuriel and the formless thing from the Abyss now faced one another directly, and the world around them seemed to understand, on some mute and instinctive level, that two old disasters had finally found each other again.

Alanthuriel’s voice emerged first.

It did not need to rise.

It spread.

"The Abyss," he said. "Why are you still so determined to sink your hands into the affairs of this world? And why lower yourself to stand beside a Primordial vermin?"

Convergence reacted immediately.

"Hey," he said, offended in a very human way. "Who exactly are you calling vermin?"

Alanthuriel turned only slightly and gave him one look.

That was enough.

Convergence lifted both hands and leaned back half a step, still smiling but visibly choosing, for once, not to continue.

Lucien noticed that.

Convergence did not fear Alanthuriel.

Yet he clearly respected the weight in front of him enough not to interrupt it carelessly.

Then Oblivion spoke.

Its voice did not come from a mouth. It arrived as if the world had momentarily remembered how to sound empty.

"I do not stand beside anyone. I move for necessity. Return the Key to the Abyss."

Alanthuriel’s presence sharpened.

"Necessity," he repeated. "Is that what you call it now? Is that what the Abyss names it when it erases entire timelines and calls the wound medicine?"

Oblivion flickered.

Subtly.

Enough to show that the words had landed.

Lucien felt his heartbeat change.

Even Convergence’s expression altered. The easy amusement did not vanish, but his eyes narrowed in a way that made it obvious this was the first time he had heard that particular truth spoken plainly.

For a few breaths, no one moved.

Then Lucien finally found his voice.

"Senior," he said, still staring between them, "what do you mean by erasing timelines?"

Alanthuriel did not look at him fully. Only part of his attention shifted.

"This is not a matter that should be spoken lightly," he said. "I have already given you my true name. If your strength rises enough to bear the weight of it, you will see what I mean by yourself."

Lucien went silent.

That answer was infuriating.

And worse than infuriating, it was convincing.

Because the way Alanthuriel said it made it clear that the truth was not hidden for drama. It was hidden because understanding it improperly might itself become another kind of damage.

Convergence made a face.

"That," he said dryly, "is the worst kind of answer."

Lucien almost agreed with him.

Then Oblivion laughed.

The sound was dreadful.

It was the laugh of a thing that found endings more reliable than beginnings.

Its blackness thickened. Its formless mass expanded, rising outward until it matched Alanthuriel’s scale in the space that was not really space around them.

Two vast presences now stood facing each other, and the ground beneath Lucien’s feet seemed less like earth and more like the temporary floor of a conversation that should never have touched the world below.

Oblivion spoke again.

"You talk as though you still do not understand why the Abyss acts," it said. "Or perhaps you do understand, and you simply refuse to surrender that small and stubborn belief of yours."

A pause followed.

Then Oblivion’s attention shifted to Lucien.

The sensation of being regarded by it was unbearable.

Not because it was heavy.

Because it was subtractive.

Lucien felt, for one instant, as though his outline had become optional.

"Is this the one," Oblivion asked, "in whom you place your wager?"

Its voice deepened.

"Then hear this, bearer of that fading hope. There is no future in which he endure. Because of what you’ve done, because of what you’ve chosen, and because of what you’ve taken, every line ahead of him ends in death."

Lucien’s heart hammered.

Oblivion continued.

"This man will die. And with him, the narrow faith that things here can still be turned."

Alanthuriel said nothing.

That silence hit Lucien harder than the words had.

Because if Alanthuriel had laughed it off, argued, or immediately denied it, then Lucien could have treated it as one more threat from an enemy who wanted to break his composure.

But Alanthuriel did not deny it.

He simply stood there, vast and still.

And that silence was loud enough to make Lucien’s thoughts stumble.

Convergence smiled at Lucien then. Not kindly. Not cruelly, either. It was the look of someone watching another finally understand the shape of the board.

"You heard him," Convergence said.

Lucien’s mind accelerated.

Perfect Calculation moved. Perfect Loop stirred. Possibilities flashed and shattered and reformed.

His face darkened.

Then his thoughts narrowed into one simple answer.

If death was coming no matter what, then he would meet it moving.

Trying.

Oblivion rose slightly higher.

"Enough delay," it said. "If you will not return the Key, then I will take it forcibly."

At last Alanthuriel answered.

"Do you really believe Oblivion can touch Nihility and remain unchanged?"

Oblivion’s darkness rippled again with something that felt dangerously close to amusement.

"Do you think I would come here without an answer to that question?"

That was enough.

No one in that place needed the exchange explained to understand what it meant.

There would be no avoiding this.

No further bargaining.

No clever side-step.

And yet, neither of the two Abyssal beings rushed.

That was what made them worse than ordinary monsters.

They were patient.

They did not scramble. They did not throw themselves forward just because violence had become inevitable.

They let inevitability arrive properly.

Lucien understood then that both of them knew the same thing.

If they fought in full here, the Big World would pay for it.

Alanthuriel knew that if he refused Oblivion now, then Oblivion would continue striking through the world until its target was dragged out or the damage became unforgivable.

Oblivion knew that if the world could be spared unnecessary ruin while still reaching its aim, then there was no value in waste for waste’s sake.

So it had waited.

Patiently.

Like winter at the edge of a field, certain that the harvest would fail eventually.

Just then, Alanthuriel turned to Lucien.

For the first time since emerging, all of his attention settled on him at once.

Then part of his vast form loosened, peeled away, and spiraled downward in a thread of dark radiance too dense to be called light and too whole to be called shadow.

It entered Lucien through the forehead.

Lucien’s eyes widened.

The sensation was not force.

It was certainty.

An answer without words.

Alanthuriel spoke.

"I believe in you."

Lucien froze.

"Trust your judgment," Alanthuriel continued. "Nihility is with you."

Before Lucien could answer, before he could even fully understand what had just been entrusted to him, Alanthuriel and Oblivion vanished.

They were simply no longer there.

Gone to settle a matter too large for the world beneath to witness.

For one breath, Lucien stood in stunned silence.

Then his eyes brightened.

Alanthuriel had not spoken to him like a man giving last comfort to someone already condemned.

He had spoken like one who had made a choice.

A guarantee had just been placed in his hands.

Lucien smiled.

And to his own surprise, the fear that had been sitting in his chest loosened.

Not because the danger was gone.

Because his answer to it had finally become clear.

He turned back.

Convergence was still there.

Still smiling.

Only now there was no one else between them.

Lucien’s voice came out steady.

"I guess," he said, "it’s just you and me now."

Convergence’s smile deepened.

At last, for the first time since they met, he looked pleased in a way that had nothing to do with convenience.

"That," he said softly, "sounds a lot more interesting."

He lifted one hand and made a small, almost lazy gesture.

A simple invitation.

Come.

"Since you’re going to die anyway," Convergence said, "I’ll let you enjoy this part. Go ahead. Take the first strike."

Lucien did not get angry.

He smiled.

"Don’t regret it," Lucien said.

Convergence’s eyes curved slightly.

"I won’t."

He stood there, hands behind his back.

No stance. No guard. No preparation.

Then without warning—

Lucien moved.

He vanished from where he stood.

The ground cracked a fraction of a second later as the force he left behind caught up to the world.

Afterimages scattered.

They were misdirections layered through space itself, each one carrying just enough presence to confuse perception and disrupt prediction.

Lucien did not approach in a straight line.

He folded angles, shifted vectors, and cut across blind spots that did not exist until he created them.

Then—

He was suddenly behind Convergence.

Lucien’s arm moved.

A full-bodied swing.

Nothing was in his hand...

Until the final instant.

Morphis appeared.

A weapon born at the exact point where intention turned into action.

The blade tore through the air, heavy with everything Lucien had.

And for that one fraction of a moment—

It looked perfect.

But then—

Convergence moved.

He... simply stepped.

A single stomp.

And the ground answered.

A shard of rock erupted upward at an impossible angle, rising exactly into the path of Morphis at the exact moment where Lucien’s momentum could no longer be redirected.

It collided with precision.

The swing broke.

Lucien’s entire motion unraveled mid-execution. The force he had committed had nowhere to go, and for a split second, his balance collapsed with it.

He almost fell.

Lucien twisted mid-air, forcing a somersault that dragged his body back into alignment.

That was when it happened.

Convergence raised his hand.

Open palm, facing Lucien.

Then—

He closed it with a simple, decisive motion.

And the world followed.

Lucien felt it before he could understand it.

For a single, incomprehensible instant, Lucien understood what it meant to be caught not by strength, but by inevitability.

Then—

He died.