100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 465 - Deadly Fight

Eight lives remained.

The saving light from the Life-Link Talisman had not even fully faded when Lucien forced himself backward.

He retreated because staying still inside Convergence’s reach was the same thing as volunteering to die again.

His boots tore a long trench across the ground. Dust scattered. His lungs dragged in a sharp breath that still did not feel fully his.

His thoughts moved faster than his heartbeat.

The first strike had already taught him enough to be afraid properly.

His instinct did not work.

That was the most dangerous part.

Lucien’s danger sense had been honed through too many battles, too many near-deaths, and too many impossible situations to simply "fail."

It had not failed here.

It had been made irrelevant.

Convergence did not radiate hostility. There was no murderous intent to seize on, no bloodlust, and no emotional spike that gave the body permission to panic early.

To him, killing Lucien did not seem to count as aggression any more than gravity counted as cruelty when a stone fell.

And because of that—

the death arrived before warning had the right to exist.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed.

There was one more thing.

Convergence could influence him when he was near.

No. Not merely near.

That realization came a breath later.

As though Convergence had heard the thought and approved of it enough to clarify, a magnificent force spread outward from him again.

His domain expanded.

That was worse.

The world inside it seemed to agree to different rules. Cause and effect drew closer together.

Lucien’s face darkened.

That meant his earlier conclusion had been too kind.

As long as he remained inside Convergence’s domain, he was already participating in Convergence’s answer.

Near or far no longer mattered.

This enemy was unlike anything Lucien had ever fought.

Convergence looked at him with open amusement.

"I’ll admit," he said, "I didn’t expect you to be this prepared. Dying and coming back is annoying. Not impossible to solve, though. It just means I have to kill you a few more times."

Then he opened his palm again.

Lucien moved before the hand could close.

"Equip Genesis Set."

The command left him like a snapped wire.

At once, the five-piece set settled around his body.

And then—

Convergence’s fingers closed.

The world answered him.

Lucien felt it immediately.

A conclusion descending.

The domain tried to decide what his body was about to become.

That was when Lucien activated the Crown of Creation’s effect.

He did not try to overpower the domain.

He erased the immediate conceptual pressure touching him.

But... it was harder than he expected.

Resistance flared at once. Convergence’s authority did not vanish cleanly. It fought to remain definition.

Lucien injected more divine energy into the Crown, pushing harder and cutting away the nearest completed outcome.

It worked.

Barely.

Lucien leapt free of the worst of it.

This time, he smiled.

He did not need to beat them all at once.

He only needed to erase the exact part of it trying to finish him.

That was enough to survive the motion.

Convergence did not move.

For the first time, however, his gaze sharpened properly.

He was looking at his equipment.

And at the wrongness of someone inside his domain refusing to conclude correctly.

Then he smiled again, though the amusement in it had thinned.

"I see," he said. "That’s why you feel off."

His eyes narrowed.

"Those things. That Law. No wonder."

A pause followed.

Then his voice flattened.

"But you aren’t him."

Lucien said nothing.

Convergence continued.

"You’re only a pale imitation of a shape that mattered."

Lucien’s expression did not change.

"I’m not anyone’s imitation," he said. "I’m me."

Then his eyes hardened.

"And one day, I’ll kill you."

Convergence laughed.

This time there was less humor in it.

Then the laughter stopped.

The pleasant looseness vanished from his face, and though he still did not take a proper stance, something about him changed.

He was no longer entertaining himself.

Lucien did not waste the moment.

Morphis roared into form and shifted at once, lengthening, widening, and folding into a massive dragon-shaped gun.

Divine energy poured into it.

Then Lucien layered more.

Nihility. Decay. Erosion. Collapse. Venom.

Each one sank into the growing core of the shot. Each law twisted through the next until the whole thing became less a projectile and more a moving argument for why matter should stop trusting itself.

Convergence did not allow him the luxury of charging in peace.

He opened his hand.

The environment answered first.

The ground rose behind Lucien in a sudden mountain wall to complete a line of pressure through his blind angle. The wind reversed. Dust converged inward. Even loose pebbles and broken debris spun into new trajectories. All of them aligned toward the same interruption.

Lucien crushed a Spatial Tear Crystal.

Space snapped.

He vanished sideways and reappeared at a different angle, still charging Morphis.

The redirected debris arrived where he had been a moment too late.

Convergence’s eyes tracked.

His fingers moved.

The next interference came from above, then below, then from the space between his own steps, as though the world had begun trying to finish Lucien’s mistakes before he could make them.

Lucien crushed another Spatial Tear Crystal.

And another.

Each time, he reappeared somewhere impossible but each reappearance was already being narrowed by Convergence. He was not escaping the net. He was moving through gaps before they finished closing.

A stone spear formed from the ground at his landing point. Lucien bent backward in midair, let it graze past his throat, and continued charging.

A collapsed ridge folded toward him from the side. He tore through it with Burden, changing its angle just enough to let it miss.

A pressure line converged on his chest. He burned away its nearest meaning with the Crown and lost a chunk of divine energy he could not comfortably afford.

Then—

The shot was ready.

Without hesitation, Lucien pulled the trigger.

The beam erupted.

It did not fly so much as declare forward.

A dragon-shaped discharge of divine force and dissolving law tore across Convergence’s domain, shredding the air behind it into ragged fault-lines. It was fast enough that the ground beneath it split a moment later, too late to matter.

But the recoil was brutal.

Even prepared for it, Lucien’s body shifted half a heartbeat wider than he intended.

That was enough.

Convergence’s domain finished the mistake for him.

Something completed at Lucien’s side.

His body was suddenly in the wrong place relative to a consequence that had already arrived.

"..."

Lucien died again.

Light tore him back.

Another talisman shattered. His knees almost buckled when he reappeared farther back.

Seven lives remained.

He looked up at once.

The beam was still moving.

Convergence had not blocked it.

He had bent it.

The wind had changed direction at the exact right point. The terrain had shifted. Invisible pressure lines had converged around the beam’s path until the shot that should have hit him instead passed through a gap so narrow it looked like mockery.

It missed him.

But it did not stop.

It slammed into the far edge of the domain instead.

Convergence acted then, layering mountains, condensed mineral walls, and convergent mass in its way. The beam slowed.

But it kept going.

Lucien’s lips curled.

He had expected that part.

He opened his palm.

Then closed it.

The beam detonated.

All the hidden laws within it burst apart at once and spread violently through the far edge of the domain, turning the place into a storm of rot, collapse, venom, and erasure. The blast licked across the domain’s structure and made the whole boundary shudder.

For the first time, Convergence’s territory looked dented.

Convergence watched it happen.

Then smiled.

"Good attack," he said. "But not enough."

And this time—

He became frightening.

His domain tightened without shrinking. The world inside it grew cleaner, simpler, and more decided.

Lucien felt it at once. Fewer variables remained loose. Fewer accidents were available to exploit. Convergence was no longer merely letting outcomes gather.

He was pruning.

Lucien moved first, because standing still now would have been surrender.

He attacked from three angles at once, using split afterimages, Stillness, and Horizon to create simultaneous false approach-lines while his real body entered from beneath one of them.

Convergence did not even look at the fakes.

He pointed once.

The three approach-lines crossed.

That was all.

Lucien felt the trap a moment too late.

Crossing vectors inside Convergence’s tightened domain did not create confusion.

It created agreement.

All three lines, false and real, were forced to resolve into one point.

His own misdirection betrayed him.

A pressure knot formed where all three routes met.

Lucien erased part of it with the Crown.

But that’s not enough.

His body folded inward at the center of converging motion.

He died again.

Six lives remained.

This time the light of the talisman dragged him back harder, as though the system itself disapproved of the lesson.

Lucien reappeared on one knee, breathing through gritted teeth.

He learned immediately.

Do not multiply false paths too close together.

Inside this domain, enough crossing options could be made to "agree" with each other and become a finished answer.

Convergence watched him with quiet approval.

"Good," he said. "You’re learning. Most people don’t get to do that after death."

Lucien wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and stood.

Then attacked again.

He fought thinner now.

And sharper.

Stillness on one tenths-of-a-second opening. Burden on interruption points only. Horizon used not to create false paths, but to widen the final gap between cause and effect.

That worked better.

For several exchanges, he lived.

He even forced Convergence to shift twice, not with his body, but with the domain’s priorities.

Lucien noticed another pattern.

Convergence’s attacks were not random conclusions.

They arrived when Lucien entered a state the domain could finish cleanly.

Moments where action narrowed into a single best continuation.

That was when death came.

Lucien understood.

Convergence was not killing him "whenever he wanted."

He was letting Lucien complete the wrong sentence and then putting a period at the end of it.

That insight gave him one more breath of life than before.

Then he pushed too far.

He used Procrastinate to delay the domain’s closure on one route, then layered Crown’s erasure and a fast close-range strike with Morphis aimed at Convergence’s throat.

For the first time, Morphis actually touched him.

Just barely.

The blade scored across the skin.

A line of black-red wrongness opened.

Lucien’s eyes widened.

Then the wound vanished.

Convergence looked at the spot as if mildly interested.

Then he tilted his head.

"You’re very much like the human I once took interest in... We ended up killing him though."

Lucien did not answer.

He had seen enough.

The pattern was real.

But so was the cost.

Because touching Convergence had required him to commit too deeply to the final line.

The domain took the commitment and completed it before he could withdraw.

Lucien died for the fourth time in the battle.

Five lives remained.

He returned in a burst of saving light and staggered back three steps, chest heaving.

The world steadied around him slowly.

Convergence remained where he was, calm, hands at his sides now, not even slightly disordered.

Lucien looked at him and understood at last why the fight felt so different from everything before.

Convergence was not stronger in the ordinary sense.

He was simply always arriving first.

That was why Lucien felt weak here. Not because he had become lesser than he was. Because every strength he possessed had to pass through a domain designed to decide what his strength would mean before he could use it.

Lucien raised Morphis again.

His breathing slowed.

His eyes sharpened.

Convergence smiled faintly.

"You’re getting expensive to kill."

Lucien’s answer came just as cold.

"Then I’ll make it worth the cost."

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