100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 499 - Location

A peculiar smile emerged on Seraphine's face when Lucien declared his plan to accompany her to the spot her system had indicated.

It started faint.

Then it stretched a bit more, sufficient to instantly arouse his doubts.

Seraphine cocked her head and questioned, "Are you sure it is because of the location?"

Lucien gazed at her.

She met his eyes steadily, unblinking.

Next, she continued, "Are you sure it is not because you wanted to see me and be with me?"

Lucien stayed silent for a moment.

Afterward, he grinned.

"Would you believe me if I said that is a very big part of the reason?"

Seraphine stiffened.

The response struck too bluntly.

She averted her gaze first, folded her arms, and turned aside as though the closest wall had abruptly gained more reliability than his expression.

"Hmph," she huffed. "And then what? You’ll leave again, disappear somewhere, and forget about me."

Lucien didn't reply right away this time.

Under the sharpness in her voice, he detected the true emotion.

Sadness and fear.

Seraphine understood, more than many others perhaps, that Lucien wasn't the type she could just request to remain. His existence surged with excessive drive. Countless forces tugged at him. Endless calamities seemed drawn to him.

And the forgetting...

It wounded her deeply, in a manner she couldn't define or endure.

She relied on medicine. She relied on remedies, treatments, and diagnoses.

Yet no straightforward remedy existed for her own pain.

Quietly, guilt over this sank into Lucien.

He longed to assure her he wouldn't forget.

He yearned to promise his memory wouldn't betray her. That he possessed Photographic Memory. That once captured in his thoughts, she would linger there vividly.

Yet wisdom held him back.

Such words now would ring like mere justification. A promise too fragile against her underlying dread.

Thus, unusually, Lucien offered no witty retort.

Noticing the remorse and regret on his features, Seraphine surprisingly smiled.

Enough to pull him free from the tension.

"I’ll forgive you," she declared, "if you let me borrow Structural Insight."

In shocked offense, Lucien gaped at her.

"Sister," he exclaimed, clutching his chest theatrically, "that hurts."

Seraphine arched an eyebrow.

"You only see me as a convenient skill lender."

"Stop acting," she stated bluntly.

Both burst into laughter then, melting away the remaining unease.

From there, their talk flowed smoothly.

They began with everyday topics, shifted to complex ones, and delved into matters fit only for two with perilous intellects and meddlesome inquisitiveness—lingering far too long without noting the slipping time.

Medicine became a focus.

The gap between treating symptoms and fixing foundations. How typical healers fell short in ambition. Bodies viewed as mechanisms, souls as stacked persistence, minds as far more delicate and resilient than thinkers or fighters cared to concede.

Law entered the discussion as well.

Did comprehension arise from immersion or breadth? Were expansive laws naturally tardier, requiring greater authenticity from users? Did truth possess form prior to words, or did words shape truth into something practical?

Lucien kept pace with her adeptly in that realm.

Seraphine took greater delight in it than she revealed.

Few could handle her unconventional thinking without alarm or rushing to mundane chatter. Lucien never faltered. He trailed her into thorny concepts without fatigue, and his oppositions honed the debate rather than blunting it.

Eventually, their exchange circled back to him.

To Oblivion.

To memory.

His tone softened noticeably.

"Thank you," he murmured.

Seraphine shot him a look. "For what?"

"For remembering."

She paused before responding.

Though her composure had eased lately, those words pierced beyond lighthearted jabs.

At last, she replied, her tone hushed.

"You make that sound as if I did something extraordinary."

Lucien regarded her briefly.

"You did."

Seraphine turned away first.

He let it rest.

Soon enough, they circled to the purpose of his visit.

The location.

Seraphine described how her system disclosed it soon after she sensed a profound flaw in her recollections and pushed past it until Lucien's erased form resurfaced.

That was her account.

Lucien paid attention.

Yet he sensed at once she concealed details.

Not a full deception.

But a deliberate skip.

He recognized the nuance.

Even so, he held his tongue.

The unspoken truth from Seraphine proved too mortifying to voice, even silently within herself.

The true trigger went beyond mere recall.

It was awakening.

Love.

That moment marked when her system finally answered, unveiling the hidden spot to her.

Merely contemplating the name caused an inward flinch of shame within her.

Therefore, she kept it unspoken.

Their discussion soon turned to setting off.

Seraphine mentioned needing more time to ready herself for the trip.

Lucien, on the other hand, casually retrieved the Covenant of Pathless Sovereignty and set it between them.

Seraphine fixed her gaze upon it.

"This is the thing you used before?"

"It’s charged," Lucien said. "Brother Seran made sure of it before I came."

He described its function in straightforward terms.

Seraphine grasped it after one listen, comprehending the core mechanism in seconds to wield it flawlessly.

Lucien smiled.

She belonged to the type of woman who mastered perilous knowledge frighteningly quickly.

"You know the coordinates, right?" he asked.

Seraphine nodded.

"Then use it."

No doubts lingered in her afterward.

She triggered the disc.

The target direction pointed eastward.

Side by side they positioned themselves while the artifact stirred to life.

Around them, space creased in flawless patterns.

The room's borders faded into shadow. Solidity vanished from the floor below.

Once, they glanced at each other.

Reality then dissolved.

On a ridge they rematerialized.

Smooth was their touchdown.

Resonance immediately pulsed from Seraphine’s system.

Her face betrayed it prior to any words.

"It’s here," she said quietly. "Closer now."

The instructions they pursued.

Over weathered stone, scant grass bowed by gales, and a gradient arching to a partly veiled structure amid the peak, the route guided them.

The cave then came into view.

Entry was commanded by Seraphine’s system.

In they went.

Cooler than expected hung the inner air, yet welcoming. Through innate gloom the cavern curved before yielding to crafted unnaturalness.

Carved by hand stood the forward stone.

Them halted what seemed a barrier.

Or appeared as such.

Forward Seraphine moved, channeling her Law of Remedy into the obstructing wall. One after another, ghostly runes emerged like dozing entities summoned back. Beneath the rock, archaic glyphs ignited, weaving rings, strokes, superimposed seals, and reactive matrices.

Open slid the wall.

A chamber awaited past it.

Upon Seraphine’s step across the boundary, the space burst alive.

Floor lines erupted in brilliance. Dormant lanterns brimmed with glow. Central loomed a dais encircled by dense runes and overlapping formations that instantly honed Lucien’s vision.

Closer he drew.

"This is a teleportation array."

Faintly Seraphine nodded, her astonishment mirroring his own.

No common variety was it.

Excessively pristine was its structure.

Toward the core as they neared, density thickened the ambiance.

Each other they regarded.

Silence sufficed then.

Onto the dais both ascended.

Instantly the array reacted.

Blinding radiance then erupted.

Once more the world transformed.

Seamless proved the passage.

In one breath the chamber enclosed them.

In the next, a wholly alien locale surrounded them.

Narrowed instantly Lucien’s eyes.

He sensed right away their exit from the Big World.

Constricted felt the laws, clamped at fringes.

Senses flung outward, he affirmed instinct’s whisper.

A lesser realm this was.

Starfruit Halo he withdrew.

Starfruit Halo — A navigation relic. Once locked onto a chosen celestial reference, it provided an absolute frame of orientation... even within voids, warped space, or collapsing starfields.

Within his palm it hummed active, calibrating to the stellar anchor preset ages past. The Big World.

As readings stabilized, Lucien’s stare altered.

Beyond merely the Big World they had ventured.

Remote from the solar system they stood.

Deeper than foreseen did that truth impact him.

One speck of a planet they occupied amid universal expanse.

More enthralling still was the transit’s impeccable execution.

Absent were lag, breach, void passage, sense distortion.

No journey sensation prevailed.

Precise displacement it evoked.

At once surged Lucien’s fascination with the primal array.

Beyond advanced it transcended.

Elegant it embodied.

Yet forward both turned their eyes.

The array momentarily eclipsed.

A immense plain unfurled before.

Endlessly barren, akin solely to purged expanses.

Walking they commenced.

Unease alone Lucien first deemed the stirring sentiment.

True nature he soon discerned.

Nostalgia.

Sudden, baseless yearning profoundly corporeal.

Memories he ransacked promptly.

Void.

Prior presence here unknown to him.

Yet distance traveled amplified the pull.

Intentionality permeated their environs.

In commonplace nature it lacked.

Formed.

Through Structural Insight, Lucien discerned it plainly.

The field, the atmosphere, the intervals, the faint tilt of the terrain, the very positioning of tranquility... everything had been refined via Creation.

This realm was crafted deliberately.

Lucien knew it for sure. The Primordial Slime was behind it.

Seraphine beside him had fallen quiet.

She sensed it too.

That painful recognition lacking any recollection. That unreal sensation of coming back to something beyond naming.

Without a single word, Seraphine took hold of his hand at some moment.

Lucien looked over at her.

She kept her eyes ahead.

She merely gripped it.

So he permitted her.

Thus, they strolled hand in hand across the vacant field as a wave of nostalgia enveloped them like a buried truth racing to recall its own essence.

Soon enough, they spotted it.

A lone cabin.

It rose solitary in the immense meadow, as if the entire world bent itself just to keep that single building pristine at its core.

With hands still clasped, they came to a halt.

Then their eyes met.

Seraphine voiced it first.

"I’ll go in first."

Lucien let her hand slip free.

"Then I’ll wait."

She nodded sharply once.

She advanced to the hut and went inside.

Lucien stayed out there.

Now by himself, the gentle wind rustling over the field while that bizarre, crushing emotion squeezed tighter at his heart, he discovered that after a long time—

he genuinely had no clue what was going on now.

And nothing else made this place's importance so clear.