100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 687 - Testing Period

The next few days passed inside testing chambers.

The first Law Interweaver prototype was completed sooner than expected.

Its appearance was simple.

A dark metal bracelet rested around the wearer’s wrist, set with three gemstones arranged evenly along its surface.

Once the reservoirs were filled, the stored authority remained dormant until the wearer activated the corresponding slot.

The first tests went smoothly.

When the wearer released their own Law, the selected reservoir opened at the same moment. Both authorities entered the same internal channel, passed through a convergence structure, and emerged as a single interwoven manifestation.

The process required some control.

But far less than performing the merger manually.

Lucien immediately noticed the difference.

Whenever he mixed his Laws without assistance, he had to maintain the balance himself.

He needed to control the proportion of each authority, prevent one from overwhelming the other, and ensure that their structures did not separate during use.

The Interweaver handled most of that work.

Its internal formations maintained the flow, adjusted the ratio, and prevented the stored Law from drifting away from the wearer’s authority.

Lucien only needed to choose the slot and guide the result.

It was almost unfairly convenient.

Eirene reached the same conclusion after trying it.

Her Law flowed through one gemstone while another authority entered from the bracelet. The two merged before leaving her hand, forming a manifestation she could never have produced alone.

Seran tested it next.

He spent far longer than necessary changing between the three slots. He was clearly having fun.

The others reacted similarly.

For practitioners who had spent their entire lives using only the authorities contained within their own foundations, temporarily wielding another person’s Law was a strange experience.

It did not provide the original owner’s full comprehension. It did not grant their Domain, instincts, or personal techniques.

But it allowed the wearer to feel how the Law moved, how it resisted, and how it responded when placed beside another authority.

That alone made the device valuable beyond its original purpose.

Its limitation was equally clear.

The stored authority was finite.

Every activation consumed part of the reserve.

Once a gemstone was emptied, someone had to refill it.

The bracelet did not create authority from nothing. It merely preserved, released, and interwove what had been entrusted to it.

That limitation did not disappoint Lucien.

It was part of what made the Interweaver meaningful.

A person could carry another’s Law into battle.

But they could not carry it forever without that person’s continued support.

•••

The Obsidian Collegium returned after three days.

The speed surprised even Lucien.

The Grandmaster’s scholars had not merely organized the records they already possessed.

They had compared historical composite Laws, inherited dual authorities, failed mergers, accidental Domain collisions, and surviving testimonies from experts who had attempted to combine incompatible principles.

The result was a preliminary compatibility registry.

Every tested combination fell into one of four categories.

Stable.

Conditional.

High risk.

Forbidden without direct supervision.

Stable combinations could be used by most qualified practitioners after basic training.

Conditional combinations required specific ratios, compatible interpretations, or stronger control.

High-risk combinations could succeed, but a mistake might damage the bearer’s soul foundation or cause the manifested Laws to erupt inward.

The forbidden category contained combinations that had repeatedly ended in catastrophic rejection.

Lucien studied the records carefully.

The Collegium had done remarkably well with the time available.

One stable example was Fire and Motion.

Motion naturally encouraged the spread, acceleration, and force of flame.

A high-risk pairing was Life and Decay.

The two could coexist under a sufficiently refined understanding of natural cycles, but forcing them together carelessly caused both authorities to attack the structure sustaining them.

One forbidden combination involved Order and Chaos.

There were historical cases in which the two had formed powerful composite authorities.

There were also far more cases in which the user’s Domain tore itself apart before the manifestation fully appeared.

Lucien approved the classifications.

The registry did not claim that any combination was universally safe or impossible.

Understanding still mattered. Control still mattered. The nature of the individual Law still mattered.

But the categories gave people somewhere to begin.

They also gave Lootwell a clear standard for testing the Interweaver.

Lucien personally examined the high-risk and forbidden combinations.

Most people in the room would have preferred that he begin with the stable category.

Lucien had already finished those.

The dangerous combinations interested him more.

His control was high enough that even conflicting authorities could be held together briefly without immediate backlash.

That did not make the combinations safe.

It only allowed him to observe why they failed.

Some rejected one another at the point of contact.

Others appeared stable at first, then began competing over the structure carrying them.

A few merged successfully but produced effects so unstable that releasing them near ordinary people would have been irresponsible.

Lucien recorded everything.

What succeeded for him could still kill someone with weaker control.

That distinction would need to be repeated often once the Interweaver became public.

•••

Living Creation proved unusually compatible.

Lucien tested it against one Law after another.

Light joined it easily.

Life flowed through it almost naturally.

Growth, Structure, Adaptation, and even Decay could be woven into it with enough control.

That was not entirely surprising.

Living Creation did not merely produce finished objects.

It created structures capable of changing, responding, and continuing to exist.

Many Laws could find a place inside that principle.

Destruction resisted it more strongly.

The two were natural counters.

Creation formed.

Destruction broke apart what had been formed.

Yet they were not perfect opposites.

Destruction still required something to destroy.

It acted upon existence rather than denying existence itself.

With sufficient balance, the two could even form a cycle in which one authority broke structures down while the other rebuilt them differently.

The most difficult Law remained Nihility.

Living Creation tried to form, preserve, and adapt.

Nihility rejected the need for the structure to exist at all.

It did not merely destroy what had been created.

It denied the foundation upon which creation continued.

Lucien could still force the two together.

But doing so demanded far more concentration than any other combination he had tested.

The Interweaver’s internal formations trembled throughout the process.

One gemstone dimmed.

Several convergence lines nearly collapsed.

Lucien ended the test before the bracelet suffered permanent damage.

He looked at the remaining trace of Nihility inside the reservoir.

The problem might not be limited to those two Laws.

Nihility belonged to the Abyss.

The Laws of the Abyss did not behave exactly like the Laws of the universe.

They could interact.

They could oppose one another.

They could even fuse under exceptional circumstances.

But they did not seem to share the same fundamental structure.

Lucien suspected that most Abyssal Laws would prove difficult to interweave with ordinary universal authorities.

The thought made him more curious about the Abyss.

It also made him more cautious.

•••

The Tree of Creation continued feeding comprehension into him.

Lucien no longer needed to deliberately study every Law that appeared within his growing inner realm.

As the Tree expanded and its branches touched more aspects of existence, understanding flowed back toward him.

Some of it arrived as knowledge.

Some appeared as instinct.

At times, Lucien would realize that he understood the structure of a Law he had never consciously examined.

The process was passive.

And relentless.

The Tree seemed determined to make him comprehend the universe whether he asked for it or not.

But the Abyss remained outside that flow.

The Tree of Creation had never taught him Nihility.

Nor had it provided any understanding of the other Abyssal Laws.

Lucien only possessed Alanthuriel’s Law because he had once entered Symbiotic Fusion with him and directly experienced that authority.

Without that connection, the Tree had offered nothing.

That absence was revealing.

The Tree of Creation could draw from the Laws of the universe because it belonged to the universe’s living structure.

The Abyss stood elsewhere.

Perhaps beside it.

Perhaps beneath it.

Perhaps in a direction ordinary existence was incapable of describing.

Lucien stared at the remaining Nihility trace for a moment longer.

Alanthuriel had warned him not to look too deeply into the Abyss.

Warnings like that had an unfortunate habit of making Lucien want to understand something more.

He stored the thought away.

There were already enough dangers approaching from known directions.

•••

Testing continued.

More users tried the bracelet.

More Laws were stored.

More combinations were recorded.

The three-slot design proved increasingly useful.

One slot could hold a stable offensive pairing.

Another could contain a defensive authority.

The final reservoir could be reserved for emergencies, escape, healing, concealment, or another situational need.

The artifact was no longer merely a defense against suppression.

It had become a tool for battlefield adaptability.

That made secrecy increasingly difficult.

Sooner or later, the world would learn about it.

The greater problem was production.

Lootwell could create large numbers of Law Interweavers.

Its factories were efficient.

Its crafting technology stood above most factions.

Elk and the Crafting Division could refine the process further.

But the Thousand Races were too numerous.

Even supplying only the important experts would consume absurd amounts of material.

Supplying trillions was impossible.

Lootwell alone could not equip the entire world.

Lucien had known that from the beginning.

The tests merely confirmed the scale of the problem.

There was only one realistic answer.

The blueprint had to be released.

That decision carried danger.

Once public, factions could modify the design.

Individuals could remove safety structures. Enemies could study the artifact. The Black Mass could prepare methods to interfere with it.

A secret weapon retained surprise.

A public weapon gained scale.

For this threat, scale mattered more.

Lucien did not need the Law Interweaver to remain Lootwell’s private advantage.

He needed it in the hands of as many people as possible before the world faced higher authority again.

Still, he had no intention of releasing the original blueprint unchanged.

The military version contained functions the public did not need.

The public version would be simpler, safer, and harder to misuse.