100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 580 - Deadman
Previously on 100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?...
The next day, Virel and Aniel brought Lucien unexpected news.
A visitor had come to Grand Confluence.
Deadman.
The man who had helped Virel and Aniel incarnate into the small world.
The man who currently held the Reincarnation Disc.
Lucien went to Grand Confluence personally to meet him.
The moment Lucien arrived near the public entrance of Grand Confluence, he noticed the crowd.
People had stopped along the roads, looking upward with wide eyes and murmuring among themselves.
Lucien followed their gazes.
Then he froze for half a breath.
Above, a massive sphere floated silently in the sky.
At first glance, it looked like a pearl of light wrapped in transparent barriers.
But Lucien knew better.
It was a small world. A whole small world enclosed within a vast spherical barrier.
The crowd below had clearly noticed that much too.
"Isn’t that the infamous floating city that only appears whenever disaster strikes?" one person whispered.
"Grand Confluence can even invite the master of that city?"
Lucien listened for a moment, then looked up again.
Virel and Aniel appeared before him not long after.
"It seems Deadman came to meet you this time."
Aniel nodded softly.
"He especially asked for you."
Virel and Aniel guided Lucien upward.
They passed through layered barriers, and reached the exterior of the floating small world.
The barrier opened for them like still water parting.
Then Lucien entered.
•••
The small world was beautiful. It looks like pleasant paradise beneath a quiet sky.
Lucien looked around.
There was a small castle at the center of the world.
As they entered the castle, Lucien heard laughter.
He heard Seran.
Lucien stopped outside the door.
Then the door opened.
Inside was a reception hall arranged with simple elegance. Seran was seated comfortably near a long table, smiling like a man who had found entertainment older than good wine.
Across from him sat Deadman.
Lucien’s first impression was exhaustion.
Deadman looked human, though Lucien immediately doubted whether that word explained anything about him properly.
His face was young enough, yet his expression carried the heaviness of someone who had buried versions of himself until the graveyard became too large to count.
His clothes were simple.
His posture was lazy.
His eyes were not.
They looked at Lucien with familiarity.
Seran turned and grinned.
"There you are."
Lucien nodded.
Deadman looked at him for a moment.
Then smiled.
It was a small and awkward smile. Almost relieved.
"It is nice to see you again."
Lucien tilted his head.
"Have we met before?"
Seran laughed immediately.
Deadman froze.
Then he looked to the side.
"Maybe."
Lucien decided not to pursue the matter.
Not yet.
Virel and Aniel exchanged a glance.
"We will leave you three to talk," Aniel said.
Virel nodded.
"Call us if needed."
They left the hall.
The door closed quietly behind them.
For a moment, only the three remained.
Lucien took the seat offered to him.
Then he looked at Deadman.
"Why did you call for me?"
Deadman did not answer immediately.
He rubbed the side of his cup with one finger, then gave a familiar but awkward smile.
"Can my people and I live in your territory?"
Lucien went still.
He did not answer immediately.
Instead, he leaned back.
"Tell me first why."
Deadman looked at him.
Then nodded.
"Fair."
•••
They talked.
At first, carefully. Then more easily. Then, strangely, almost naturally.
Deadman was easier to speak with than Lucien expected.
He was dry, tired, and occasionally ridiculous in the way of someone who had seen too much to be properly impressed by dignity.
Seran joined the conversation freely, and the two of them clearly had history.
Still, the longer they spoke, the more Lucien felt it.
Deadman treated him and Seran differently from how Virel and Aniel had described him.
Virel had called him silent.
Aniel had called him distant.
But now, Deadman spoke a lot.
He told stories with a tired smile. He laughed at Seran’s teasing. He answered Lucien’s questions with the awkward openness of someone who had held too much inside and finally found people he was allowed to speak to.
It was not loud happiness.
It was relief wearing conversation.
Eventually, Lucien learned about his cheat.
Reincarnation.
Deadman said the word with none of the wonder others might have used.
"If I die, I reincarnate," he said.
Lucien’s eyes sharpened.
Deadman raised one hand.
"That would be impressive if it ended there."
"It does not?"
"No."
His smile thinned.
"Sometimes it activates while I am still alive."
Lucien’s expression changed.
Deadman tapped his own chest.
"My real body falls into a coma. My consciousness is thrown somewhere else. Another life. Another body. Another set of parents, friends, enemies, hunger, illness, talent, weakness, obligations, tragedies, and endings."
The room quieted.
Deadman continued calmly.
"At first, I thought it was a gift."
His eyes drifted toward the window.
"In my past life, I wanted more than my own life. I wanted to see other lands. I wanted to become a swordsman once, then a healer, then a merchant, then a king, then a farmer, then a scholar, then something stranger. I used to joke that I wanted to live a thousand lives."
His lips curved without humor.
"The universe has a cruel sense of humor."
Deadman paused.
"Or perhaps the Primordial Slime does."
Lucien did not speak.
Deadman looked down at his hands.
"I lived as a soldier who died holding a gate while the city behind him escaped."
His voice remained steady.
"I lived as a mother who had three children and lost two before winter ended."
Seran’s smile had vanished.
"I lived as a blind musician who never transcended but heard rain better than any practitioners I have met."
Deadman’s fingers curled slightly.
"I lived as a prince who was poisoned by his brother. I lived as a fisherman who drowned saving a stranger. I lived as a nameless slave who learned one song and carried it to the grave. I lived as a doctor who could save everyone except the woman waiting for him at home."
The hall felt colder.
Deadman laughed softly.
"Each time, I woke up."
He touched his temple.
"And I remembered."
Lucien’s chest tightened.
Deadman continued, "The skills remained. The languages. The instincts. The pain. The love. The grief. The faces."
His smile became hollow.
"People call that powerful. They are right."
He looked at Lucien.
"But power is heavy when every skill comes with a funeral."
No one spoke.
Outside the window, the peaceful small world continued living.
Children laughed faintly in the distance.
Deadman listened to that sound for a moment.
"I became good at everything. Swords, medicine, formations, cooking, farming, negotiation, assassination, childbirth, carpentry, painting, mourning."
He exhaled.
"Jack of all trades. Master of all. That sounds impressive until you realize mastery was paid for by lives I could not keep."
His eyes closed briefly.
"When my cheat activates, I do not know if I will return quickly. Sometimes days pass here. Sometimes months. Sometimes years. Sometimes I live an entire life and wake to find this body has been asleep for a week."
Lucien’s gaze lowered slightly.
Deadman’s voice grew quieter.
"I have buried so many wives that I stopped promising forever. I have held children who called me father and then woken up in this body where they never existed. I have died old and content, then opened my eyes young and empty. I have died screaming, died laughing, died alone, died loved, died hated, died victorious, died useless."
He opened his eyes.
"They all remain."
His smile returned.
"So yes. Reincarnation is a wonderful cheat."
Seran’s hand rested on the table.
For once, he did not make a joke.
Lucien finally understood the name.
Deadman.
Not because he was undead.
Not because he was cold.
Because too many of him had died, and the one who remained had to remember all of them.
•••
Lucien was stunned.
The cheat was frightening.
Also ruthless.
A person who accumulated lives could become impossibly skilled. Deadman had done exactly that. He knew too much because he had been too many people.
But beneath all of that was exhaustion.
Deadman laughed with them.
But there was a hollow space inside him.
A quiet place that had been worn thin by too many endings.
Seran looked at him.
"You remembered your past after entering your special location?"
Deadman nodded.
"That helped."
"How?"
Deadman leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
"It reminded me which memories were mine first."
Lucien understood.
Deadman continued, "Without that, I would have drowned eventually. The lives I lived are real. I will not call them dreams. That would be too cruel to the people inside them."
His fingers tightened around his cup.
"But I needed an anchor. My special location gave that back to me."
Deadman looked at him as if he had known him across a distance Lucien had not yet crossed.
And Seran, who usually joked through anything, treated him like someone whose wounds were not to be touched carelessly.
Whatever tied the three of them together, Lucien did not have the missing pieces yet.
So he waited.
He had learned to wait.
Sometimes.
•••
"So, to summarize, I am tired."
Deadman’s smile thinned.
"I want my people and me to finally settle somewhere and find a true home."
He looked at Lucien.
"And I think we may find peace in your territory."
Eventually, Deadman reached into his storage space.
"I did not come empty-handed."
Lucien watched him carefully.
Deadman placed two things on the table.
The first was an Origin Core fragment.
Lucien’s eyes sharpened.
The second was a disc.
The moment it appeared, the room changed.
It’s... The Reincarnation Disc.
