100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 674 - Eternity’s Gift

Another week passed before Seran contacted Lucien again.

By then, Aurelia had completed her examination of the candidates who had passed the Grace System’s compatibility screening.

Lucien opened the report inside the Origin Core Shrine.

The first section contained the full list of compatible candidates.

A second section contained Aurelia’s assessment.

Several names had been crossed out from the active list.

Beside each one, she had written the reason.

Lucien read the notes carefully.

The problem was not compatibility.

Every person on the original list could withstand an incarnation thread. Their souls were stable enough, and their resonance with Primordial Slime authority had already passed the required threshold.

Aurelia had rejected them for what gathered around the road before it was even formed.

Some candidates carried dangerous tension around their current lives.

Their fate was too tightly knotted to people, duties, and unfinished consequences within the Big World.

One candidate had become the sole pillar holding together three generations of a family. Growing an incarnation thread from that soul would not kill him, but the road would continue pulling against the obligations he refused to release.

Another candidate had made promises under such heavy karmic weight that a second life might interpret every new relationship as betrayal.

One woman was compatible with the process, but the tension around her decision was wrong.

She believed she owed Lootwell her life and would accept any danger Lucien offered, even if she did not truly want it.

The road itself might still form.

That was precisely why Aurelia rejected her.

A road born from debt could remain stable while leading its traveler somewhere they had never freely chosen to go.

Lucien agreed with every cross.

Compatibility answered whether the soul could survive.

It did not answer whether the person should be sent.

Several other names carried a simpler note.

Some matched small worlds that Lucien had already recovered. Those worlds currently orbited inside Lootwell’s makeshift universe.

There was no reason to create incarnation roads toward places already within reach.

Lucien understood why the matches had appeared.

The Grace System had searched for people resonant with Primordial Slime authority.

The small worlds already inside Lootwell carried that same foundation.

Naturally, some candidates would answer them more strongly than any hidden world.

Without Aurelia, Lucien might have spent enormous effort growing incarnation threads only to discover they pointed somewhere he already owned.

Making one thread was not cheap.

Even Lucien could not produce them carelessly.

Aurelia had saved him time.

More importantly, she had saved several people from being offered roads that should never have opened.

The report contained one remaining limitation.

Aurelia could not see beyond the point where the road crossed into another plane.

She could examine the tension before departure.

She could see whether the candidate’s choice twisted the road.

She could detect whether the first formation of the thread gathered dangerous consequence.

But she could not confirm the destination.

Trying to look farther would force her sight beyond the Big World and invite the same backlash as before.

Some candidates might still answer the same hidden world.

Some roads might prove redundant.

That uncertainty could not yet be removed.

Lucien did not mind.

Aurelia had already done enough.

He sent a reply.

[This is sufficient. Do not look farther.]

Seran answered shortly afterward.

[Then we begin the next phase.]

Lucien leaned back slightly.

[You will speak with them?]

[Yes. Leave the difficult part to someone charming.]

Lucien stared at the message.

Then another line appeared.

[Aurelia will be present so I do not accidentally charm them into agreeing.]

Lucien smiled.

[I will leave it to both of you.]

Seran promised good news.

The communication ended.

Lucien remained seated before the Origin Core.

The incarnation threads were only the beginning.

Even after a willing candidate accepted, Lucien still needed to prepare memory seals, return conditions, emergency severance measures, identity safeguards, and a way to preserve continuity if time flowed differently in the destination world.

Finding the road did not mean the road was safe.

He had more work to do.

•••

Later that day, someone entered the shrine without announcement.

Lucien sensed him immediately.

"You finally returned."

Deadman walked through the golden light.

He looked almost the same.

Almost.

The dark circles beneath his eyes had faded.

Well, not completely.

They had become part of him long ago.

But the heaviness behind them was different.

Deadman gave him a weak smile.

"The fruit was good."

He lowered himself beside Lucien without ceremony.

There was no need for formal greetings between them.

Lucien examined him.

Deadman’s aura had changed, but not in the way the others had.

His Law remained the Law of Eternity.

It had not evolved into something broader. It had become deeper.

Lucien narrowed his eyes.

"What changed?"

Deadman looked toward the merged Origin Core fragment.

"The Primordial of Eternity left me something."

Lucien went still.

Deadman continued.

"It seems there was still a trace of its essence inside my system. And... It was waiting."

Deadman’s faint smile disappeared.

"When the Fruit of Creation reached the deepest layer of my soul, the trace awakened. It carried the Primordial’s remaining legacy."

Lucien’s thoughts stopped for one breath.

The Primordial of Eternity...

It seemed to have chosen a successor.

Or at least someone capable of carrying what remained.

"Did it speak to you?" Lucien asked.

"Not directly."

Deadman tapped his temple.

"The system translated it. A message. A recognition. Then the legacy entered."

Lucien studied him again.

"That means it accepted you."

Deadman gave a tired shrug.

"Apparently, surviving too many lives eventually becomes a qualification."

Lucien did not laugh.

This was no small matter.

Lucien felt genuine happiness for him.

Deadman had carried Eternity longer than anyone Lucien knew.

If anyone deserved to inherit its final acknowledgment, it was him.

"What did the Fruit do to your body?"

Deadman extended one hand.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then his flesh became translucent.

Lucien saw other hands occupying the same space.

Older. Younger. Scarred. Calloused. Delicate. Human. Nonhuman.

Hundreds of lives overlapped within one limb before settling back into the present.

"My constitution became an Eternal Return Vessel."

Lucien’s gaze sharpened.

Deadman explained calmly.

The Fruit of Creation had gathered the residues left behind by his countless reincarnations.

Every life had carved instincts, adaptations, skills, injuries, and understandings into the deeper foundation of his existence.

Before, those traces remained scattered.

Now they had been organized into one vessel.

Deadman’s current body could call upon them.

When Deadman held a weapon, the best matching instincts among his incarnations could rise.

When he faced poison, old bodies that had adapted to similar toxins could lend their resistance.

When he suffered an injury he had died from before, the Eternal Return Vessel remembered how that death had happened and resisted repeating it.

Lucien stared at him.

"That is horrifying."

Deadman nodded.

"I thought so too."

There was more.

His soul had become harder to sever from continuity.

Killing his body would still kill him.

Destroying his soul could still harm him.

But death would have greater difficulty erasing the road connecting one incarnation to the next.

As long as that continuity remained, Deadman could eventually return.

Not if an authority powerful enough destroyed the entire road.

But ordinary death had become even less final than before.

Lucien rubbed his forehead.

"You became more difficult to kill and inherited the instincts of countless lives."

"Yes."

"Your Law did not even need to evolve."

"No."

Lucien looked at him for a long moment.

"Are you certain you are not the protagonist?"

Deadman considered it.

"I have suffered enough to qualify."

Lucien could not argue with that.

•••

Still, something felt strange.

Deadman had received a Primordial legacy.

His body had transformed into something that made death look increasingly negotiable.

His countless lives had become an arsenal.

Yet the happiness in his face did not seem directed toward any of it.

Lucien watched him quietly.

"What else happened?"

Deadman’s expression changed.

The brightness returned.

It was small and unfamiliar.

"The Primordial left one final gift."

Lucien waited.

Deadman looked down at his hands.

"You know how my reincarnations work."

Lucien nodded.

Deadman’s current self would sometimes fall into a deep sleep.

His consciousness would then awaken somewhere else.

Sometimes in the distant past. Sometimes closer to the present.

He would live another life as a real person.

He would grow, build relationships, love, grieve, and raise children.

Then that life would end.

Deadman would awaken again in his current body carrying everything he had felt.

His descendants sometimes still existed.

Some had become nations.

Some had vanished.

Some lived without knowing the weary man wandering the Big World had once been their ancestor.

But descendants were not the same as the people he had lost.

A bloodline could survive.

A moment could not.

Deadman’s voice became quieter.

"I had wives."

Lucien remained silent.

"Children. Brothers. Sisters. Parents. Friends who became family because life was too cruel to survive alone."

Deadman smiled faintly.

"I buried most of them."

Some died before him.

Some watched him die without knowing he would awaken elsewhere.

Some grew old while he remained trapped outside their time.

Every reincarnation had given Deadman a new world to love.

Then Eternity had taken it away.

He remembered all of them.

That was the cruelty.

Forgetting might have been kinder.

Deadman had never been allowed that kindness.

"The Primordial preserved echoes," he said.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened.

"Not souls," Deadman added immediately. "It did not steal them from reincarnation or prevent them from moving on."

They were impressions left within Eternity.

Moments preserved because they had mattered deeply enough to become part of Deadman’s endless road.

The final legacy had gathered those echoes together.

For one last time, Deadman had stood among them.

One life after another.

One home after another.

He saw a wife who had waited beside a window while war carried him away.

A son who had grown older than Deadman had ever seen him.

A daughter who had once refused to let go of his sleeve.

A family that had eaten around a small table beneath a leaking roof and still believed themselves fortunate.

He spoke with them.

They laughed.

Some scolded him.

Some told him he still looked tired.

Some asked whether he had finally learned how to rest.

Deadman’s voice trembled once.

"They were not truly alive."

Lucien did not interrupt.

"I knew that."

Deadman looked toward the golden light filling the shrine.

"But they were real enough to say goodbye."

The burden he had carried across ages had not vanished.

He still remembered them.

He still loved them.

But the memories no longer felt like doors slammed shut before he could speak.

Eternity had given him one final meeting.

Lucien finally understood the brightness in his eyes.

Deadman was not happy because he had become stronger.

He was happy because, for once, Eternity had returned something instead of only taking it away.

Lucien sat beside him in silence.

Deadman rarely spoke this much.

He hid grief beneath laziness, humor, and the posture of someone too tired to care.

Now, for the first time, he did not look ancient.

He looked alive.

"That was a good gift," Lucien said.

Deadman smiled.

"The best one."

Nothing more needed to be said.

Inside the shrine, two men sat beneath its light.

One carried the beginning of countless new lives.

The other had finally said goodbye to the ones he could never forget.