100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 673 - The Shape of Faith

Lucien completed the final authority link.

The ring rested above his palm.

Its surface remained plain, marked only by a narrow golden line. Yet inside, countless recognition channels connected to chapels across the five continents.

Lucien admired it for a moment.

Then the Faith Ring activated by itself.

He paused.

The reaction was immediate. It behaved like Auto-Collect.

Lucien did not need to command it each time. Once the rules were established, the artifact understood its purpose and performed it automatically.

Still, the authority remained his.

He could activate or deactivate the ring whenever he wished.

The golden line around its surface brightened.

Across the continents, unseen currents moved.

Faith divine energy gathered within chapels trembled, recognized the call, and rushed toward the ring.

The distance between continents became irrelevant.

The energy crossed the network like water returning through forgotten rivers.

It was drawn toward the authority it already recognized.

Lucien felt the connection at once.

It was vast, subtle, and alive.

•••

The Faith Ring did not pull everything.

That was one of its most important functions.

Clara had turned theology into routing. She had never ordered people to worship Lucien directly.

Lucien would have hated that.

Instead, she taught people to recognize the source behind the Grace that answered them.

Faith did not always follow a name. Sometimes, it followed the answer.

Gratitude naturally searched for where that answer had come from.

Through chapels, Grace, and the authority behind them, much of that faith eventually reached Lucien without requiring anyone to kneel before his image or call him a god.

Clara had succeeded across most of the continents.

The South was more complicated.

For thousands of years, the people there had worshipped the Silent Guardians.

That devotion had roots deeper than law.

The Silent Guardians were not forgotten legends to them. They were protectors, sacrifices, and the reason many bloodlines still existed.

After the Remembrance Trial was made, Clara had redirected part of that faith.

Not by erasing the Silent Guardians, but by separating remembrance from present answer.

Some people continued honoring the Silent Guardians while placing their present hope in the Grace that now protected them.

That faith flowed toward Lucien.

Others remained devoted entirely to the Silent Guardians.

Their prayers, gratitude, and reverence still belonged to those ancient beings.

That faith also formed divine energy.

Lucien had seen it before.

Within the Silent Monastery of the Ninth Bell, the devotion directed toward the Silent Guardians had gathered into dense faith divine energy.

The faith carried their imprint, as though every prayer recognized the distant consciousness resting within the Primordial Space.

That was enough for Lucien to know it did not belong to him.

He had never tried to absorb it.

He did not know what would happen if he consumed faith directed toward another authority.

Perhaps nothing.

Perhaps rejection.

Perhaps something far worse.

Lucien had no desire to test it.

Fortunately, the Faith Ring did not need him to decide manually.

It examined the imprint within every current.

Only faith that had truly found its way to Lucien could pass.

Faith directed toward the Silent Guardians remained untouched. So did faith offered to other gods, ancestors, saints, or authorities.

The ring did not judge those beliefs.

It simply recognized that they did not belong to him.

Lucien smiled.

That alone made the artifact worth creating.

•••

The faith divine energy from Lootwell’s main territory arrived first.

It entered the ring in streams of pale gold.

Then the West answered. The East. The Middle. The North. Finally, the South.

Lucien expected only a burst of power.

Instead, he felt people.

Hope entered first, not as words.

As warmth.

A farmer praying that the next harvest would survive.

A mother thanking the Grace because her child had recovered.

A merchant asking for safety on a dangerous road.

Their needs passed through Lucien in fragments.

Their gratitude followed. Their fear. Their trust. Their exhaustion. The quiet faith of people who did not expect miracles, but still hoped tomorrow might be kinder.

Lucien’s expression changed.

The Faith Ring did more than collect energy.

Because it preserved origin records, every current still carried the emotional shape that had formed it.

Lucien could feel which regions were peaceful.

Which chapels carried growing fear.

Which communities had begun recovering.

Where gratitude was deepening.

Where hope was thinning.

The ring had become a map of belief.

Belief as the pressure inside people when they reached toward something greater than themselves.

Lucien had not expected it to be so clear.

•••

The sensation reminded him of the Reincarnation Disc.

When souls entered it, Lucien could feel the weight of their lives.

The Faith Ring was different.

It carried the emotions of the living. The quiet determination to endure one more day.

Lucien sat in silence as the currents continued flowing.

Then he shivered.

"Crap."

His voice sounded unusually serious inside the shrine.

"If this continues, will I actually become a god?"

The thought disturbed him.

Lucien did not want worship.

He did not want temples filled with people praising his name.

He did not want every kindness turned into doctrine or every success treated as proof of divinity.

The idea of becoming the center of a religion made something cold crawl down his back.

Unfortunately, the faith divine energy was too valuable to abandon.

It nourished the Tree of Creation.

It helped the Fruits of Creation ripen.

It expanded his inner realm.

Every current of faith became growth.

Not only for Lucien.

For everything living inside him.

The benefits were too great to ignore merely because Lucien disliked the title others might one day give him.

He sighed.

"As long as they do not start making statues."

That was a boundary worth defending.

•••

Lucien closed his eyes.

The Faith Ring continued collecting.

Parallel Thoughts activated naturally as the emotional weight increased.

One thought processed gratitude.

Another sorted fear.

Another separated personal prayers from broader social pressure.

Another monitored the flow of divine energy.

The Starlit Codex arranged the countless impressions into patterns Lucien could understand without drowning in them.

He allowed the feelings to pass through him.

For once, the sensation was pleasant.

Heavy, but not cruel.

Lucien remembered religion from his previous life again.

He had never thought about it deeply then.

But now, feeling the hopes of countless people, he understood why faith endured.

Religion gave people somewhere to place fear when fear became too large to carry alone.

It gave shape to hope.

It gave the dying something to hold.

It gave the grieving a language for loss.

Even when no answer came, believing that someone might be listening could become an anchor strong enough to survive another night.

Lucien did not know whether that made gods necessary.

But he understood why people created them.

The thought made him uneasy.

It also made him gentler.

Through the origin records, he could see where Lootwell’s people were struggling.

The Faith Ring was not merely telling him who believed. It was showing him who needed help.

Lucien opened several records and quietly marked them for review.

Perhaps Clara would understand the emotional patterns better.

Perhaps the administrators could respond before fear became despair.

The ring had been meant to collect energy.

Instead, it had given Lucien another way to listen.

•••

The final streams entered.

The Faith Ring grew warm around his finger.

Lucien directed the stored divine energy inward.

The Tree of Creation answered.

Its branches trembled.

Light moved through the bark.

Leaves unfolded.

The inner realm expanded around it, boundaries stretching farther as new space formed beyond the old edges.

Mountains gained distance. Seas widened. The sky rose.

Across the Tree’s branches, the Fruits of Creation began to change.

Their colors deepened. Their surfaces brightened. The dense authority within them matured.

One after another, fruits that had still been unripe began settling into completion.

Lucien opened his eyes.

Above him, within the Tree of Creation, another batch now waited.

Lucien looked at them and smiled.

The Faith Ring had worked better than expected.

He had only wanted to stop visiting chapels one by one.

Instead, he had created a way to hear his people across continents and ripen miracles without leaving the shrine.

That was convenient.

It was also slightly terrifying.

Lucien looked down at the plain ring around his finger.

Then back toward the newly ripened Fruits of Creation.

He had no intention of becoming a god.

But apparently, the universe had decided to make that position increasingly difficult to avoid.