100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 676 - Projects

Lucien looked at the four women for a moment.

Then he made his decision.

"I have a project for you."

Their attention sharpened at once.

Lucien did not ask them to construct another great network.

What he wanted was smaller.

But only they could do it properly.

"Gather the elemental spirits that have not formed contracts."

Sylra tilted her head.

"All of them?"

"That would probably cause several regions to panic," Lucien replied. "Start with those already within Lootwell and the nearby territories. Prioritize young spirits, unstable spirits, and those that have only recently awakened."

The four women exchanged glances.

They understood what Lucien intended before he explained the rest.

Marie’s eyes brightened first.

"You want us to organize them."

"And teach them," Lucien said.

He opened a projection above his palm.

A small valley appeared within it.

Four regions surrounded a central clearing.

A stone basin rested in the earth quarter.

Streams crossed the water quarter.

Warm vents and controlled flames occupied the fire quarter.

High platforms and open currents filled the wind quarter.

"I want you to establish an Elemental Spirit Training Ground."

The women became completely attentive.

They had once been spirits themselves. They understood what it meant to awaken without guidance.

A young spirit did not begin with a human mind.

Its thoughts were shaped by its nature.

A fire spirit might mistake hunger for the need to burn everything around it.

A water spirit could lose itself while spreading through rivers and rain.

A wind spirit might travel so far that it forgot where its consciousness began.

An earth spirit could become trapped in stillness, sleeping beneath the ground until centuries passed without meaning.

Power was not the only danger.

Awareness itself could become unstable.

The training ground would teach them how to remain themselves.

It would help newly awakened spirits stabilize their consciousness, control their elemental instincts, and understand the difference between acting according to their nature and becoming enslaved by it.

It would also prepare spirits that eventually chose to form contracts.

A contract did not fail only because of poor compatibility.

Many young spirits had never learned how to share their senses, authority, or emotions with another existence.

The same was true for practitioners.

Some treated spirits like weapons.

Others became overwhelmed by the spirit’s nature.

The training ground could teach both sides before a contract was ever attempted.

Marie nodded slowly.

"This can be done."

Sylra smiled.

"The spirits will come if we call."

That was not arrogance.

Their transformed constitutions carried an authority elemental spirits recognized instinctively.

To young spirits, the four women would feel like ancient origins given human form.

They did not need to force obedience.

Their presence alone could calm elemental turbulence.

Kaia’s flames stirred around her fingers.

"It seems a new force may be born."

Marina looked toward Lucien.

"My prince, we will do our best."

Sylra lifted her chin slightly.

"The wind spirits will learn how to blow the enemy away properly."

Marie glanced at her.

"They should learn not to blow away their allies first."

Sylra considered that.

"That can be the second lesson."

Lucien smiled.

"You can leave it to us," Marie said.

"Good."

He had no reason to worry.

They were powerful, experienced, and unusually coordinated.

More importantly, this was not merely another assignment.

It belonged to them.

The four women left the shrine soon afterward.

A quiet current swept through the chamber.

Warmth followed.

The ground trembled faintly beneath Lucien’s feet, while a ring of water dissolved into mist.

Then Lucien was alone again.

He turned back toward the Origin Core.

The elemental spirits now had their own path.

It was time to finish preparing another.

•••

The final preparations for the incarnation plan took longer than Lucien expected.

Creating the incarnation threads was only one part of the process.

A thread could open a road. It could not protect the person walking through it.

Lucien needed something that would remain with each incarnated individual after the crossing.

He created a framework. An Incarnation Support System.

It carried only what the traveler needed.

A memory seal protected the original identity from being overwhelmed by the new body.

A continuity record preserved the distinction between the life before incarnation and the life that followed.

A soul-stability measure warned Lucien if the new existence began rejecting the incarnated consciousness.

An emergency severance authority allowed the connection to be cut if something hostile tried to travel backward through the road.

A return marker preserved the route in case Lucien eventually gained enough control over the destination to retrieve the traveler safely.

The system would not direct their decisions.

It would observe, protect, and record.

Nothing more.

Its most important function was the anchor.

Once the incarnation road reached a hidden plane and the new life successfully formed, the system would bind itself to that destination.

Lucien would immediately know where the road had ended.

Not everything about the world.

But he would no longer need to trace the entire incarnation thread manually through the void between planes.

The support system would preserve the direction and final anchor point for him.

That alone removed one of the most exhausting parts of the process.

Lucien examined the finished framework.

It resembled a small star suspended inside a transparent shell.

Countless fine threads crossed through it.

Each one carried a specific safeguard.

Lucien tested the identity lock.

Stable.

He tested the emergency severance.

Immediate.

He tested whether a false signal could imitate the incarnated person.

Rejected.

Then he examined the anchor.

It remained dormant.

That was correct.

It would awaken only after crossing into another plane and attaching itself to the incarnated existence.

Lucien smiled.

This was enough.

He created more.

One support system for every candidate in the first batch.

Then he returned to the incarnation threads.

Growing them remained exhausting even for him.

They could not be mass-produced blindly. Every thread had to be prepared for a specific person.

...

By the time Lucien completed the first batch, the shrine had grown quiet.

Several incarnation threads floated before him.

They were thin, almost fragile.

Yet every one of them could become a road leading beyond the known world.

Lucien looked at them for a long time.

Seran was still speaking with the candidates.

When the agreements were complete, the first incarnations could begin.

After that, the hidden small worlds would finally stop being unreachable names beyond the Origin Core’s sight.

One by one, Lucien would find them.

One by one, he would bring them back.

•••

Time continued moving.

By the time Lucien completed the remaining preparations, three months had passed since the Controlled Abyssal Tempering Framework began operating.

He went to inspect it personally.

The first stage had once been filled with practitioners learning to breathe diluted abyssal mist without allowing Nihility to hollow out their minds.

Now it stood empty.

So did the second.

The third contained only discarded equipment, sealed records, and traces of old formations.

The special forces had already passed beyond them.

Lucien continued forward.

The fourth stage held the slowest members of the first wave.

Even they had already entered Void-Blood Circulation.

Their bones carried faint gray patterns beneath the skin.

Abyssal influence moved through them under strict control, no longer behaving like poison trying to erase what it touched.

Most of the first wave had reached the fifth stage.

Nihility Body Condensation.

They sat within separated chambers around the Abyssal Pool.

Their bodies seemed to flicker between presence and absence.

At times, the practitioners appeared completely normal.

Then the light around them would pass through their flesh as though their bodies had forgotten how to obstruct it.

Their blood still circulated.

Their souls remained intact.

Their identities were stable.

But their existence had begun learning how to endure contact with absence.

Lucien inspected every chamber.

The protections remained in place.

The Quiet Vein Draught continued suppressing uncontrolled energy within the practitioners.

No one had been lost.

Several had suffered failures during individual stages, but the framework had withdrawn them before permanent damage occurred.

They had rested, recovered, and tried again.

Three months was not long.

Yet the results were better than Lucien had hoped.

Many were already close to completing the fifth stage.

Once their Nihility Bodies stabilized, they could attempt the final baptism within the undiluted Abyssal Pool.

That step would remain dangerous.

The diluted stages had prepared them to endure Nihility gradually.

The pool would not be gradual.

It would test whether their bodies had truly learned the difference between containing absence and becoming absent themselves.

Lucien did not intend to rush them.

Still, success was now visible.

The method worked.

That mattered even more than the progress of the first wave.

Lucien turned and looked back at the empty early stages.

The first three training regions no longer served anyone.

That meant the framework had room.

A second wave could begin.

Lucien smiled.

Hundreds more could enter Abyssal Mist Breathing while the first wave completed their final stages.

The special forces would not become Celestials merely because they formed Nihility Bodies.

They still required sufficient Law comprehension, stable Domains, and the right foundations.

But Lucien had already prepared the Law Books and other resources needed for that path.

The Nihility Body would remove one of the greatest barriers.

And after reaching Celestial, the remaining Law Books and Lootwell’s resources could continue guiding them toward Eternal without the dead ends that trapped most cultivators for centuries.

Lucien marked the second wave for selection.

The first group had proven the road could be walked.

Now Lootwell could begin widening it.

•••

Before leaving his inner realm, Lucien visited the Cycle Merit Web.

He did not neglect it simply because more urgent projects had appeared.

The web had grown.

Threads of merit and consequence stretched across the reincarnation cycle.

Some souls had lived through several brief existences since Lucien last examined them.

Creatures that once survived through violence had entered quieter lives and learned restraint through circumstances rather than instruction.

Lucien guided only where necessary.

A creature that fulfilled its place within an ecosystem could progress even if its life appeared insignificant.

Lucien adjusted several tangled routes.

Then he found the souls that had finally gathered enough qualification to enter the path of the Thousand Races.

He did not reincarnate them immediately.

Their next lives would be fundamentally different.

Lucien moved those souls into the Reincarnation Disc and allowed them to rest.

Their former lives settled around them like fading dreams.

When the right opportunities appeared, they would awaken as people.

Lucien watched them for a moment.

Soon, other people would travel in the opposite direction.

Living souls from the Big World would enter hidden worlds through artificial incarnation roads.

The two processes were different.

Yet both required patience.

A life could not be treated like cargo simply because Lucien had learned how to move it.

After completing the necessary guidance, Lucien left the cycle behind.