100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 672 - Faith Ring

Lucien left the newly completed chamber only after Eirene’s tears had stopped.

Neither of them spoke about what had happened.

They did not need to.

Later that day, a message from Anvil-Horn reached him.

The old craftsman’s words were brief.

[What did you do to the lass?]

Lucien paused.

Another message followed before he could answer.

[She has become a monster. Her form changed. Productivity has tripled.]

Lucien almost laughed.

He could imagine the scene.

Eirene must have released her Stillbloom Moonbody.

It was the form born from the complete union of her Lunarian and Floran lineages after she absorbed the Fruit of Creation.

Most people had never seen it. Eirene usually remained in her Floran form.

In Stillbloom form, Absolute Stillness and Living Equivalence no longer felt like Laws she commanded from a distance. They moved with her like additional limbs, precise enough to halt disorder in one place while redistributing structure in another.

If she had willingly revealed that body, then something important had changed.

Eirene had finally accepted every part of herself.

Her Lunarian lineage and Floran rebirth were no longer separate identities she shifted between. The Eternal of Stillness she had once been and Eirene as she existed now had become one complete being.

Lucien smiled.

He sent Anvil-Horn a simple reply.

[Nothing harmful. Let her work.]

Anvil-Horn did not respond.

He was probably too busy trying to keep up.

•••

Lucien soon entered his Divine Energy Core.

He arrived near the Cycle Merit Web.

Threads of soft light stretched through the inner realm, linking life, death, consequence, and rebirth.

The first batch of reincarnated souls had already begun returning.

Some lives had been short.

That was natural.

A flower had died after being stepped on by a bear.

Lucien stared at that record for several breaths.

The flower had survived rain, drought, insects, and poor soil.

Then a bear had ended the discussion.

Another soul had lived as a small mammal.

It died fighting a predator to protect its young.

Its life had been brief, but not empty.

Then there was the sea slug.

Lucien reviewed its records.

It had eaten.

It had moved slowly.

It had reproduced.

Then it had been eaten by something larger.

Lucien decided the sea slug had fulfilled its responsibilities with admirable simplicity.

All three souls now rested inside the Reincarnation Disc, waiting for their next cycle.

But they were no longer the same.

The Cycle Merit Web had recorded what their lives contributed.

The flower had fed insects, carried fragrance across the field, and helped sustain the surrounding plants.

The mammal had protected its offspring and preserved a small bloodline within the ecosystem.

The sea slug had participated honestly in the food chain.

That counted.

Merit within the inner realm did not require heroism.

A life only needed to contribute according to what it was capable of becoming.

Their karma had also changed.

Each soul had formed deeper relationships with nature, survival, family, environment, and consequence.

Those connections would influence the next reincarnation.

Lucien looked across the Cycle Merit Web.

It was working.

The inner realm no longer contained only life and death.

It contained the meaning accumulated between them.

•••

Lucien prepared the next reincarnation cycle.

He adjusted several environments first.

A forest region needed denser plant life.

One aquatic zone required calmer currents and fewer large predators.

An insect path needed a wider breeding territory unless Lucien wanted the next group to spend their entire lives being eaten before understanding what legs were for.

He corrected each imbalance carefully.

Then he guided the waiting souls toward their new paths.

The flower soul entered a sturdier plant species with deeper roots and a natural defense against large animals.

Lucien did not specifically make it bear-proof.

That would have been favoritism.

The mammal soul entered a stronger social species, one whose members protected their young together rather than alone.

The sea slug soul entered another aquatic life.

It was slightly faster this time.

Lucien considered that meaningful progress.

More souls followed.

Plants. Insects. Fish. Birds. Small beasts.

Each incarnation received conditions suited to its accumulated merit, karma, and stability.

Lucien’s eventual goal was to let them rise into human or Thousand Race reincarnations.

But there was no need to force that stage.

A soul that had barely understood instinct should not be thrown immediately into the complexity of language, morality, ambition, and civilization.

The cycle would mature naturally.

Lucien would guide it.

He would not drag it.

When the final soul entered its new life, the Cycle Merit Web brightened faintly.

Another turn had begun.

•••

Lucien next traveled to the isolated abyssal training field.

The special force was still refining its future Celestial Bodies.

Many had entered the third stage.

Null-Marrow Washing.

They sat within controlled basins while the diluted Abyssal Pool moved through their bones.

Their bodies trembled beneath the pressure.

Black vapor rose from their skin, carrying impurities, unstable residue, and pieces of weakness the Abyss refused to tolerate.

Several candidates had already advanced into the fourth stage.

Void-Blood Circulation.

Their blood moved beneath their skin in darkened streams threaded with faint gold.

Each heartbeat carried diluted abyssal essence through mana vessels and organs before the formations extracted it again.

The process was slow, painful, and dangerous.

But stable.

The protections Lucien had created continued working.

Stillness slowed corrosion.

Continuance preserved identity.

Living Creation repaired damage without feeding the Nihility.

Life and Death prevented erasure from disguising itself as ordinary injury.

Lucien inspected every candidate through the formation records.

No one stood near true collapse.

Some had slowed their progress deliberately.

That pleased him.

People who understood when not to advance were more likely to survive long enough to become useful.

Lucien did not disturb them.

Rushing the process would not create stronger bodies.

It would create corpses with impressive preparation records.

He left the Abyss to continue its work.

•••

Lucien returned to the Origin Core Shrine.

This time, he carried no broken artifact.

Only an idea.

Repairing Eirene’s necklace had taught him how a small vessel could interact with authority far larger than itself.

Equivalent Exchange did not contain the universe. It contained channels capable of identifying what belonged to the request, verifying whether the payment was valid, and translating the exchange into a form the bearer could survive.

That principle could solve a problem Lucien had ignored for too long.

Faith divine energy.

Across the five continents, chapels continuously gathered faith from citizens and practitioners connected to Lootwell.

The excess accumulated.

Lucien could collect it personally. But visiting every chapel was inefficient.

Creating a simple suction array would be worse.

Faith was not ordinary mana. It carried intent, identity, trust, gratitude, expectation, and sometimes desperation.

Pulling everything indiscriminately could drain energy meant for local miracles or gather faith that had never been directed toward Lucien in the first place.

He needed recognition, ownership, permission, and priority.

The same concepts hidden within Eirene’s necklace.

Lucien smiled.

The project was far less complicated than Equivalent Exchange.

But the lesson was the same.

An authority should not merely take.

It should understand what it was allowed to receive.

•••

Lucien began with the chapel network.

He mapped every source of faith divine energy.

Each chapel already carried his authority imprint.

That gave him a reference.

He designed a collection structure with several rules.

First, the artifact would accept only faith divine energy carrying Lucien’s imprint.

Energy directed toward other gods, local saints, ancestral spirits, or unrelated beliefs would be rejected automatically.

Second, the energy had to be freely generated.

Fear forced through coercion, manufactured worship, and false declarations would be filtered out.

Faith gained through manipulation was unstable.

Lucien did not want it.

Third, every portion collected would retain its origin record.

The artifact would know which chapel produced it, what emotional foundation shaped it, and whether unusual pressure had appeared in the region.

That turned the collection device into more than storage.

It became a diagnostic tool.

A sudden surge of frightened faith could indicate disaster.

A sudden collapse could reveal corruption, isolation, or failing trust.

The faith itself would become another way for Lootwell to sense the condition of its people.

Finally, the artifact would remain connected to Lucien’s Origin Core authority.

Enough to verify identity and open a transfer channel when he chose to receive the stored energy.

The principle was similar to the necklace.

Recognition before exchange.

Permission before transfer.

Protection before power.

Lucien approved.

Then he began creating the vessel.

•••

He chose a ring.

There was no need for another elaborate necklace.

The structure did not have to judge universal equivalence or negotiate with existence.

It only needed to recognize, route, compress, and preserve one specific type of energy.

Lucien formed the base from Living Alloy Essence. Then he reorganized its strings.

Space attribute flowed into it, opening a storage region far larger than the ring’s physical size.

Then he layered the authority channels.

A Grace-recognition layer.

A voluntary-faith verification layer.

An origin ledger.

A compression structure.

An emergency rejection channel.

And at the center, a quiet imprint of Lucien’s authority.

His divine energy thinned into microstrings.

The work felt easier now.

Repairing Eirene’s necklace had taught his hands a new scale of precision.

He no longer treated authority channels like large formation lines.

He built them as relationships.

•••

Little by little, the ring took shape.

Its surface was plain.

Inside, however, the storage authority deepened.

Lucien linked the first chapel.

The ring accepted it.

Lucien smiled.

He linked a second chapel.

Then a third.

Across Lootwell, faith began moving quietly through the network.

The ring grew warmer in Lucien’s hand.

Soon, he would no longer need to travel from chapel to chapel merely to gather what had accumulated.

Lucien lowered his gaze to the ring.

It was only a collection artifact.

At least, that was what he had intended.

But the origin records gathering inside it were already forming a map of faith, fear, gratitude, and need across Lootwell.

Lucien’s smile slowly faded into thought.

Perhaps he had created something more useful than storage.