100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 473 - Aftermath

Upon reaching the battlefield, Seran instantly grasped its immense scale.

Violence had utterly reshaped the terrain.

Faint law-residue still scorched the air. Massive earth chunks lay flipped over, as if torn from a book's pages.

Far off, the final traces of a circular formation faded into ash-like glow and depleted essence. For some reason, those remnants hit him with a piercing familiarity that stole his breath.

His gaze dropped.

That's when he spotted the corpse.

It hardly qualified as a body any longer.

Shattered past any honor. Mangled beyond identification. A youth diminished to mere remnants, sprawled where the world had unleashed overwhelming destruction upon him.

Seran halted.

He couldn't explain why his body froze.

He had no idea why his hands turned icy, or why his chest clenched so fiercely that, for a fleeting instant, he suspected a concealed strike.

He fixed his stare.

The face had vanished.

The features lay obliterated.

No reliable method existed to confirm the deceased's identity.

Yet—

something within him shattered.

His knees buckled.

That defied all logic. As an Eternal, his form never betrayed him. Not in this manner.

Not due to sorrow. Not from astonishment. Not over a cadaver he couldn't even identify.

Yet betrayal came now.

Seran’s fingers fumbled rigidly toward his coat. He withdrew a notebook. The action dragged, as if he sensed the dread awaiting discovery inside.

He flipped it open.

The script was his own hand.

He leafed through pages until locating the entry that had haunted him since the odd disquiet started.

Bait strategy. Origin Rewrite. Mimic target’s appearance. Take the fall if necessary.

Seran glared at those words endlessly.

The script stayed fixed. The ink remained sharp. The intent persisted.

But the linked recollection had vanished.

He recalled penning it.

He recalled scheming something.

He recalled Convergence.

Yet a gaping void scarred the plan's core. An absent form. A figure he had obviously meant to shield or trick, whose name, visage, and role had been ripped entirely from his mind.

His clutch on the notebook intensified.

Then his eyes shifted back to the lifeless youth.

And his frame trembled.

Not his thoughts.

His physique.

His reflexes. His sinews. His heartbeat. His respiration.

All surged as though the sight before him held greater significance than memory dared confess.

Seran’s eyes flared wide.

That's when true terror gripped him.

Memories might be altered.

Names could be erased. Faces obscured. Ideas rerouted.

But the body—

the body retained what the mind sometimes couldn't grasp.

It held onto kinship. Guardianship. Obligation. Bond. The outline of a vital soul lingering perilously near oblivion too long.

Seran eased the notebook down gradually.

Tears then streamed from his eyes.

He couldn't comprehend them.

That terrified him deepest.

He didn't recognize this individual. He couldn't name him. He couldn't reclaim the erased reality fully.

Yet his entire essence wailed that he had arrived too late.

Seran advanced one step.

Then a second.

Then his legs collapsed, dropping him to the dirt before the fallen youth—not by choice, but because some profound instinct deemed upright posture profane.

The tears persisted.

"I’m sorry," his whisper escaped.

That alarmed him further, for he didn't know the recipient.

…

The ancient beasts soon appeared.

The Void Disc had exhausted after channeling into the Void, so they had soared in via their innate might, ferrying Shadow across the last distance. They returned because an inner compulsion demanded it.

A tug. A soul-deep urge. An unnamed tether.

Upon landing and beholding Seran bowed before the remains, Shadow identified him instantly.

"The leader," he murmured.

He nearly shouted—

then traced Seran’s line of sight.

And beheld the corpse.

The ancient beasts froze.

All of them.

For entities who had endured over ten thousand years of conflict, devastation, dominion, and wonder's slow fade, their hush spoke volumes beyond any cry.

Something felt amiss.

Not the battlefield.

Them.

Their cores stirred before cognition caught up.

A tension built from primal drives. A turmoil beyond recall. The slain youth ought to mean nothing, yet every refined instinct screamed this void struck personally.

Grave sensed it first via his law's tongue.

Burden.

A heaviness linked them to the form.

Thal’voryn perceived otherwise.

Depth.

A soul-plunging draw, akin to gazing into a chasm woven into his existence longer than current memory allowed.

Condoriano’s grin vanished unnoticed.

Aurvang’s nostrils widened briefly.

Noctryn averted his gaze, then refocused, as if angling to trap the deceased anew and compel memory's yield.

Ashkara’s tongue darted, then halted.

Saber stayed mute, but his grip crushed his midsection till ambient air whined.

And Astraea—

Astraea reeled most profoundly.

She gaped.

Not at the wrecked form.

At the aberration encircling it.

The moment her sight hit him, her chest wrenched with ferocity none matched fully.

As though she had forfeited a sky-side kin.

Then a notion pierced her.

The one who had christened her.

That resonated.

Excessively so.

Her eyes bulged.

For she recalled that figure's weight—

but not the countenance.

Not the tone. Not the identity.

Her reasoning stalled.

"This..." Astraea uttered, poise fracturing. "Are they connected?"

Grave abruptly addressed the group...

"You feel it too."

Her stare locked on the youth.

"There is a bond here. Something old enough to survive memory’s ruin. Something I should know."

Thal’voryn’s tone rumbled deep and hollow.

"The world has hidden a depth from us."

Saber edged one deliberate pace toward the remains and paused.

"Then the world is wrong."

No rebuttals came.

Ancient entities, they had outlasted ages by heeding what outlived mere cognition.

When instinct, law, flesh, and spirit all shrank from identical vacancy, they refused to ignore it merely because recall returned barren.

Thus they encircled the deceased with gravity befitting an unutterable agony.

…

Another arrived next.

The Verdant Ark plummeted hastily, excessively swift. Marie practically slammed it onto fractured soil before stabilization.

The hatch parted.

They dashed.

They raced as if souls had grasped the verdict yet bodies raced to disprove it.

Eirene led.

She noted the assembly: Seran. The ancient beasts.

She disregarded them utterly.

Her vision locked on Lucien.

And reality funneled into rejection.

"This isn’t possible," she declared.

Her tone stayed unnaturally steady.

That worsened it.

Trembling digits sought her throat's necklace, igniting Equivalent Exchange at once.

Her inhalation quivered.

She queried existence.

Is Lucien truly dead?

The toll extracted.

Her complexion blanched.

She settled it.

Truth emerged.

Not the desired one.

Eirene queried anew.

A fresh inquiry now.

Then what is he now?

Greater toll.

Greater torment.

Still undesired.

Once more.

And repeatedly.

Each reply bore only damning facts, none salvaging him.

Her breaths grew ragged. Digits quaked fiercer. Stance held solely by denial of her crumbling.

Finally, Eirene’s facade fractured.

It crumbled.

Tears cascaded as she posed the subsequent query:

How can Lucien Lootwell be returned to the world?

Silence.

No response.

Merely a price eclipsing her life's worth.

She rephrased instantly.

How can he be revived?

Emptiness.

Equivalent Exchange accepted her bids.

It merely valued insight beyond her grasp.

That crushed her utterly.

For it implied the cosmos deemed her unworthy of the route.

Lilith appeared a pulse later.

She braked so abruptly her knees jarred bruisingly into soil.

Instant recognition struck.

Via the armor.

Her palm caressed Beloved Bastion with mingled pride and shame's delicacy.

Fingers skimmed its face.

Then weeping commenced.

Quietly.

Louder would have eased endurance.

Tears flowed relentlessly, helpless, as shoulders heaved and she curled over him, enfolding Lucien and armor in warmth, remorse, sorrow—as if those might forge defense where her forging had faltered.

"It was supposed to protect you," she breathed.

Then frailer:

"It was supposed to protect you."

Marie reached and petrified.

For a complete instant, mere staring.

Then resolve drained from her features.

"No," she uttered.

Childlike repudiation.

Then sobs erupted.

Kaia flanked her, glanced once, and whipped away fiercely. Fist pounded earth, splintering rock and fissuring outward.

"Damn it," she spat.

Sylra held firm.

Rigid stance, eyes shut, for sustained sight promised total unraveling.

In thought, Lucien transformed impossibilities into resolutions. Persisted beyond reason's brink. She hadn't fathomed such finale claiming him.

Not thus.

Marina endured shorter than Marie.

Frame quaked wholly. A fractured noise escaped, unleashing unbridled sobs.

"My prince," through tears, voice stifled, impotent.

Then she lurched to Sylra, pressing close, gripping fiercely.

Sylra parted lids enough for a palm atop Marina’s crown.

She wept too.

Grief coursed diversely, yet identically wounding.

Lucien’s demise struck as shockwave.

…

An unforeseen duo followed.

Luke and Cienna.

They recalled Lucien via alternate route.

For primordial ties to him endured too profoundly to fully unbind.

Skillpedia and Magic Book retained them. Once, souls bound tight to those frameworks quivered when Lucien’s restraints wavered.

Arrival brought—

Luke’s motion ceased utterly.

Cienna clamped mouth with dual hands.

Their offspring.

They had scarcely reentered his existence rightly. Barely begun trusting time lingered for proximity, converse, late parental safeguarding.

And now.

Cienna’s legs softened. Luke steadied her from total tumble.

His visage etched stone-hard.

He regarded Lucien’s desecrated form as verity crashed in surges.

He ought to have shielded. Ought stronger. Ought swifter arrival. Ought barrier, not straggler.

All futile, he knew.

That amplified torment.

Cienna shuddered against him.

"We were supposed to be there," she breathed.

Luke gulped once.

Voice grated.

"I know."

Yet another certainty lingered.

Earlier arrival wouldn't have aided versus that carnage.

Such awareness offered no solace.

Merely deeper shame, for parenthood's anguish exacted unattainable might then scourged its lack.

He sealed eyes briefly.

Reopened, sustaining Cienna erect as his heart splintered mutely.

Silence reigned post-that.

Battlefield lingered. Blood's tang. Laws' waning blaze. Unsuppressed weeping's hush.

Some wiped eyes. Some bowed heads. Some fixated overly.

All discerned it eventually.

The smile.

Cruelest element.

Not bare demise.

His foreknowledge thereof.

Yet smiling into it.

That look revealed excessively.

He had witnessed finale's approach. Grasped it. Denied terror visage's claim.

Such smile burdened grief, marking bravery's foulest form. Solitary, fractured, defiant of death's plea-sight.

Precisely then—

Luke and Cienna sensed it.

A vibration.

Skillpedia and Magic Book summoned.

Both tensed simultaneously.

Gazes locked.

Comprehension dawned.

Something awaited activation.

Lucien had bequeathed via enduring conduits.

A "magic skill" granted them... activatable solely in tandem.

Swiftly, hands joined.

Forms luminous.

And abruptly—

Obsidian brilliance erupted.

Enveloping all upon the field.

…

The afflicted sensed intrusion.

Identification.

Propriety restored. Moniker repositioned. Kinship reknit to excision's scar.

The gleam didn't conquer Oblivion; it reinstated absent contours with superior assertion. The forfeited surged back.

All recalled.

It assailed as renewed anguish.

No ambiguity shielded now. No shielding haze. No kind vagueness.

Sole verity.

Ancient beasts stilled absolutely. Prior aberration gained visage, identity, full mass.

Astraea’s breath hitched.

"Little brother," she murmured.

Then lids sealed as utterance turned dagger.

Seran absorbed severest blow.

All aligned instantly.

Notebook. Scheme. Spare communicator. Physique's retention against mind's deprivation.

He recalled Lucien.

Recalled substituting if needed. Recalled ploy. Recalled his lapse.

Seran’s grasp quaked wildly.

Then a lone laugh escaped.

Shattered, incredulous self-mockery.

Now he knew precisely his tardiness' target.

Such insight demolished residual composure.

With truth reclaimed, battlefield brimmed fuller.

Fuller—yet eternally vaster in isolation.

For the name returned.

And Lucien remained deceased.