100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 635 - Souls

Lucien finally took time to study the Reincarnation Disc too.

The Disc floated silently. It turned, slow and patient, as if time itself had no reason to hurry.

Lucien closed his eyes.

Then he sent his senses inside.

The world vanished.

...

He expected something like a storage.

But he found a domain.

The inside of the Reincarnation Disc was vast in a way that did not care about distance.

There was no sky, but there was depth.

There was no ground, but his awareness had a place to stand.

Mist moved in slow rings. Pale roads stretched into darkness, branching and fading before he could follow them too far.

Countless lights drifted through the space, some steady, some dim, some cracked, some wrapped in black stains or old wounds.

Souls. All of them were souls.

The Disc had taken them without preference.

Heroes and murderers.

Civilians and fanatics.

Children and elders.

Complete souls and damaged souls.

Those who died protecting others.

Those who died cursing the world.

Those who had never understood why they were dying at all.

The Reincarnation Disc did not reject them.

It held them.

Lucien watched in silence.

He understood something immediately.

The Disc was impartial.

It had been created by the Primordial of Eternity, the one who made reincarnation possible under this universe. Under that order, death did not ask whether someone was loved before accepting them. Reincarnation did not refuse a soul because it was ugly. The cycle gathered everything.

That made the Disc more frightening than he expected.

It did not judge first.

It preserved first.

The judgment came later.

Lucien moved his awareness closer.

The souls did not decay inside.

A soul that would have scattered within hours outside remained stable here, held in the Disc’s mist. Broken edges did not continue crumbling. Contamination did not spread unless left unattended. Even heavily damaged souls flickered, but they did not vanish.

That was mercy.

Then Lucien saw the other side.

The souls were preserved, but their spirits were gone.

Death had already happened.

The Disc could hold the soul.

But the person who had lived, spoken, chosen, feared, and loved was not simply waiting to stand up again.

Their spirit, their surface identity, their living self, had already begun to dissipate at death.

If they reincarnated normally, they would not return as the exact same person.

They would become new lives, new names, new bodies, and new circumstances.

The soul would continue.

The person would not remain whole unless something preserved or recreated the spirit and identity around it.

Special circumstances could happen.

According to Deadman, a powerful soul might be able to remember traces of its former life after reincarnation.

A reincarnator could even regain their spirit again.

With special means, the holder of the Reincarnation Disc could also help a soul rebuild the spirit and identity it had lost through death.

Lucien and the Liberators were proof of that.

They had been reincarnated through the Reincarnation Disc as well.

Lucien opened his eyes for a breath.

Then closed them again.

"So resurrection is still not cheap," he murmured.

•••

Lucien studied longer.

The lights inside the Disc slowly became easier to distinguish.

At first, they had only seemed bright or dim.

Then he began to perceive rhythm, frequency, weight, and direction.

Some souls rang gently, like clean bells struck once and left to fade. Ordinary civilians, frightened soldiers, people who had not lived saintly lives but had not twisted themselves into monsters either.

Some souls carried warmth. Those were the ones who had died protecting others, holding lines, saving children, shielding wounded, delaying enemies, or choosing duty when escape had been possible.

Some souls were heavy. Not evil in a simple way but burdened. Regret, fear, resentment, guilt, unfinished vows, broken oaths, and deaths that had arrived too violently all changed the way a soul moved.

Some were stained. Those did not belong to the souls. They were foreign interference. The Disc’s mist touched them slowly, washing at the edges.

Lucien understood another function.

The Reincarnation Disc could cleanse.

It did not remove guilt.

It did not make a murderer innocent.

It did not turn hatred into virtue.

But it could remove what had been forced into a soul from outside.

Those things could be washed.

Slowly.

The soul beneath could become itself again.

Lucien continued.

The Disc responded to his attention.

The mist shifted.

The souls arranged themselves in wider rings.

Ordinary dead.

Heroic dead.

Civilians.

Damaged souls.

Bound souls.

Corrupted souls.

Fanatic souls.

Guilty souls.

Unfinished souls.

Souls with heavy resentment.

Souls too broken to classify.

It was not a perfect division between good and evil.

That would have been too easy.

A good person could die full of resentment.

A guilty person could regret too late.

A fanatic could also be a victim of a childhood built inside lies.

An innocent soul could carry corruption that made it dangerous to reincarnate.

The Disc did not simplify them for Lucien’s comfort.

It showed him conditions.

And beyond the rings, he saw roads. Faint branching paths that stretched outward from the Disc into places his senses could not fully reach.

Some roads were dim.

Some were closed.

Some were not suitable.

Lucien could see the principle now.

Guiding someone to reincarnation was not throwing a soul into life.

It was finding a road that could receive them.

A suitable birth.

A karmic weight that would not reject them.

A soul stable enough to survive the transition.

A path that would not create a cursed life, a broken spirit, or a disaster wearing a newborn’s face.

Lucien breathed out slowly.

That was not easy.

That was not something to do carelessly.

And now was not the time.

The seas had stirred.

The next disaster was approaching.

If he guided souls into unstable places too soon, they might be born into war, die before their first breath, or reincarnate into paths that collapsed under the next wave of disaster.

That would make the Disc’s mercy meaningless.

For now, holding them was safer.

For now, he needed to understand more.

•••

Then Lucien found the damaged souls.

They were the hardest to look at.

Some were cracked like glass.

Some were missing pieces.

Some flickered in shapes that could not decide whether they were whole or not.

Some carried the final moment of death too strongly, repeating fear, pain, confusion, or duty in silent pulses.

The Disc preserved them.

But preservation was not repair.

Lucien reached toward one.

A young fighter from the Middle Continent.

The soul had protected two wounded allies from a Keeper’s command spike and died before the shelter bell could reach him. The Reincarnation Disc had caught most of him, but not all.

Lucien touched the mist around the soul.

The damaged edges trembled.

The Disc answered.

Repair was possible, but not free.

The Disc could use reincarnation mist to stabilize the soul. It could cleanse foreign wounds. It could gather missing fragments if they still existed. It could use compatible residue, karmic warmth, and purified soul essence to patch what had been torn.

Then Lucien saw the darker answer.

Souls could be recycled.

His awareness turned toward another ring.

The unpleasant ones.

Those who had lived by cruelty.

Those who had willingly helped the Keepers feed rituals.

Those who had destroyed souls while laughing.

Those who had sold cities, families, disciples, and worlds for a promise of standing closer to the return.

Lucien’s gaze became cold.

He did not want to guide them peacefully into reincarnation.

The Disc did not stop him from considering it.

That was what unsettled him most.

He could recycle them.

He could grind down the soul weight of those he judged unworthy and use the refined essence to repair the broken.

He could feed their purified remains into damaged souls.

He could make the guilty become material for the wounded.

The function existed.

Lucien felt it clearly.

For one dark breath, it almost seemed fair.

Then he remembered the Keepers.

They had also used souls because souls were useful.

They had also turned people into parts of a structure.

They had also decided that purpose mattered more than personhood.

Lucien’s fingers tightened.

"No."

The Disc continued turning.

It did not argue.

It waited.

Lucien looked again, more carefully.

The crude path was possible.

But it was not the only path.

The Disc could recycle what no longer carried personhood.

Foreign contamination. Broken residue. The dead weight of curses. The karmic burden created by crimes.

Those could be processed.

Those could become reincarnation mist.

Those could help repair damaged souls.

But a whole soul, no matter how hateful, was still a soul.

Punishment was allowed.

Atonement was allowed.

Delay was allowed.

Consumption was a line.

Lucien would not cross it casually.

He studied the guilty ring again.

A new structure formed under his will.

An Atonement Ring.

The dark souls did not vanish.

They were separated.

Bound away from the innocent and the damaged.

The Disc’s mist began to strip away external corruption first. What remained after that would be judged more clearly.

Their karmic burden did not disappear.

It sank beneath them like weight.

Lucien understood.

Those who had created wounds could be made to pay toward healing them.

Not by being devoured. But by having the consequences of their actions processed through the Disc.

A soul-destroying fanatic would not be rewarded with a peaceful road.

A willing ritual feeder would not reincarnate beside the children he had helped kill.

Their debt would be held.

Their burdens would be used.

Their turn would come only when the Disc, and Lucien, could distinguish punishment from cruelty.

That was slower, less satisfying, but safer.

Lucien accepted that.

He returned to the damaged young fighter.

This time, he did not feed a soul into him.

He guided cleansed residue from a broken Keeper command hook, mixed with pale reincarnation mist, and let it settle along the cracked edge.

The repair was tiny.

Almost nothing.

But the flickering slowed.

The soul steadied by a fraction.

Lucien watched that small improvement with more relief than he expected.

He could not fix everyone today.

But he had found the beginning of how.

•••

Time passed inside the Disc differently.

Lucien did not know whether minutes or hours had gone by outside.

He continued sorting.

Enough to prevent the worst from mixing with the most fragile.

The heroic dead were not guided away.

Not yet.

They rested in a clear ring where their warmth could remain their own.

The civilian dead were settled into a quieter mist.

The damaged souls were gathered closer to the repair flow.

The bound and corrupted souls were placed where cleansing could begin.

The guilty and fanatical souls remained in the Atonement Ring.

The unfinished souls were left untouched for now.

Lucien did not know enough about unfinished vows to interfere without risk.

Beyond all of them, the reincarnation roads waited.

Some led far away.

Some led close.

Some shimmered toward other worlds.

Some bent toward places Lucien could not yet understand.

He could open none of them safely today.

He was not ready.

The world was not ready.

The seas had stirred, and the next war might begin before some of these souls could even be born.

That thought settled heavily in him.

Reincarnation was not escape from responsibility.

It was a beginning that needed a world stable enough to receive it.

Lucien withdrew from the Disc slowly.

The quiet hall returned.

The Reincarnation Disc floated before him, still turning.

It felt heavier now.

Not because it held more.

Because he understood more of what holding meant.

He opened his eyes.

Outside the hall, Lootwell continued moving.

Reports waited.

Plans waited.

The dead waited.

Lucien sat in silence for a while longer.

Then he called the administrators.

"Prepare the procession."

The answer came quickly.

Each main branch would hold mourning rites.

Every place that had sent people to war would be given space to grieve.

Lucien did not want the procession to be only grand.

Grand things were easy for rulers.

He wanted names.

Records.

The fallen honored by role, not only rank.

Those without bodies would have tablets.

The dead had paid.

The living would remember.

After that, Lucien would harden the living.

Not by denying grief. By letting them pass through it and stand again.

This would not be the last war.

The thought no longer surprised him.

It only hurt.