100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 714 - Old Grudge

The first major groups were scheduled to arrive the following day.

Lucien expected another round of reports before then.

Instead, an unexpected guest came looking for him.

The Red Dragon.

Lucien received him somewhere quiet, away from the increasingly busy preparation districts.

The moment the ancient dragon entered, Lucien noticed something unusual.

The Red Dragon still carried himself with the same overwhelming pride as always. His back remained straight, his presence heavy enough to make the surrounding air feel warmer, and there was no trace of meekness in his expression.

Yet something about him felt uncomfortable.

Lucien studied him for several breaths before understanding why.

The Red Dragon looked like someone who had come to apologize but would rather fight three Eternals simultaneously than actually say the word sorry.

Lucien almost smiled.

He did not make things harder for him.

"Why did you want to see me?"

The Red Dragon remained silent for a moment.

Then he answered directly.

"The Nephralis Sect. The Varkhaal Sect. And what happened between us."

Lucien’s amusement disappeared.

That was an old wound.

One he had never bothered reopening.

•••

The Red Dragon did not attempt to soften what had happened.

After his return from the Stillness Prison, the Nephralis and Varkhaal Eternals had acted under his authority when they pursued Lucien and the members of Verdant Veil.

Marie had been there. Eirene had been there. So had several others.

They had cornered Lucien badly enough that his escape eventually left him drifting through space.

Lucien had never forgotten it.

Neither, apparently, had the Red Dragon.

"I ordered them to act," the Red Dragon said.

Lucien watched him quietly.

There was no excuse following the admission, no attempt to blame subordinates, and no convenient claim that the sects had misunderstood his intentions.

The Red Dragon accepted the responsibility plainly.

"At the time, I believed you would become a threat."

"To you?"

"To what I intended to build."

Lucien raised an eyebrow.

The Red Dragon’s expression remained steady.

"I wanted to dominate the five continents."

There was no shame in the statement.

Only acknowledgment.

"I believed the world needed one command. One ruler strong enough that when another great war came, every faction would move in the same direction instead of wasting themselves against one another."

Lucien understood the logic.

That did not make the method acceptable.

The Red Dragon knew that too.

"I believed I should be that ruler."

His mouth twisted slightly.

"Perhaps that was the first mistake."

Lucien said nothing.

The Red Dragon continued.

For countless years, he had been trapped inside the Stillness Prison.

During that time, the Nephralis and Varkhaal Sects had continued without him.

Their entire civilizations had grown around old teachings, old ambitions, and above all, one goal that gradually consumed everything else.

Free their ancestor.

Generation after generation inherited that purpose.

Power became justification.

Anything useful to the sect was taken.

Those they considered lesser were treated as resources.

Some were imprisoned. Others were enslaved.

The sects convinced themselves that whatever they did was acceptable as long as it contributed to their eventual goal.

The Red Dragon had not personally stood above them during those countless years.

But he was not willing to use that as an excuse.

"They built themselves around my name."

Lucien’s eyes shifted toward him.

The Red Dragon continued more quietly.

"Their arrogance did not appear from nothing."

That surprised Lucien.

The ancient dragon had always possessed enough pride for several races.

Hearing him admit that something born from his legacy had become rotten carried more weight than a simple apology ever could.

"And after you returned?" Lucien asked.

The Red Dragon’s expression hardened.

"I made it worse."

That answer came without hesitation.

He had emerged into a world that had changed beyond recognition and immediately tried to impose the same worldview upon it.

Strength first.

Submission second.

Unity afterward.

When he first saw Lucien, he immediately realized that Lucien was someone who would never willingly place himself beneath anyone.

So the Red Dragon had treated him as a future obstacle.

Then Lucien disappeared when the Nephralis Eternal was about to take him to their conquered world in the void.

And shortly afterward, the world changed again.

•••

The Evershade Exchange appeared.

That was when the Red Dragon first understood how small his ambitions had been.

He had been thinking about ruling continents.

The things hiding beyond the world were thinking about consuming them.

The Nephralis Sect eventually sealed itself away.

Dark Shade withdrew as well.

The forces they had once considered overwhelming suddenly became insufficient.

Extinction Grade had stopped being an abstract height and became the minimum level required to even stand before certain enemies without immediately becoming irrelevant.

Then Lootwell rose.

Lucien returned with allies the Red Dragon had never expected.

Astraea and ancient beasts who should have had little reason to trust a human chose to stand beside him.

Former rivals cooperated.

Races that had once despised one another worked together.

Entire continents were connected without anyone being forced to kneel first.

And those alliances did something the Red Dragon’s old philosophy had failed to do.

They became stronger together.

The Red Dragon had watched it happen.

He had watched Lootwell spread across the five continents without conquering them.

He had watched people voluntarily bring their craftsmen, soldiers, scholars, healers, and resources into the same projects.

He had recently watched an infamous dead region become something that powers working alone might have needed decades to create.

Eventually, there was no longer any point pretending his old answer had been the correct one.

"I wanted unity," the Red Dragon said. "I simply believed domination was the only way to achieve it."

Lucien looked at him.

"And now?"

The Red Dragon glanced toward the distant preserved region.

"Now I have seen something better."

That answer carried no humility for humility’s sake.

The Red Dragon remained proud.

He simply no longer confused pride with infallibility.

•••

There was another reason he had come.

The Red Dragon could feel it.

The tension beneath everything.

The strange direction of Lootwell’s recent projects.

The way authority, suppression, retreat, cooperation, and survival had suddenly become central to so many new systems.

Perhaps ordinary people could accept the Grand Intercontinental Competition as an explanation.

The Red Dragon could not.

His instincts had been sharpened through an age when the world had nearly destroyed itself.

He knew the smell of approaching war.

"The cycle is returning."

Lucien’s expression became still.

The Red Dragon did not ask for confirmation.

"I do not know when. I do not know what shape it will take. But I have lived through enough to recognize when a world begins preparing for something it cannot yet name."

Lucien remained silent.

That was answer enough.

The Red Dragon’s eyes darkened.

"I hate the Black Mass."

There was something deeply personal in the way he said it.

"They betrayed this world, took what did not belong to them, and twisted themselves into things that barely resemble what they once were."

His voice became colder.

"My ancestral home is on land they occupy now."

Lucien remembered.

Before the Millennia War shattered the ancient supercontinent and divided the world into what now existed, many ancestral territories had lain in places no member of the Thousand Races could safely reclaim anymore.

The Red Dragon’s home was one of them.

For him, the coming conflict was not only about survival.

It was unfinished history.

"I want it back," the Red Dragon said.

Lucien met his gaze.

"And I want the rest of what they stole returned to the world."

The ancient dragon’s hands slowly clenched.

"But I cannot fight that war while carrying old grudges behind me."

That, Lucien realized, was why he had come.

Not merely because he regretted the past.

He was preparing himself for the future.

He wanted every unnecessary enemy removed before the real ones arrived.

For once, Lucien could respect that completely.

•••

Lucien remained quiet for some time.

If he claimed he had forgiven everything, he would be lying.

The Nephralis and Varkhaal Sects had done terrible things.

They had tried to kill him.

They had enslaved others.

They had built power through suffering and convinced themselves that their purpose justified it.

Lucien had simply reached a point where destroying them for revenge no longer felt useful.

Fate had also been strange.

Because they forced him into space, Lucien had met the Lithrens.

One disaster had led to another road.

That road had eventually brought people into his life whom he would not willingly lose now.

It did not make the original act good.

It merely meant Lucien no longer wanted his future dictated by it.

"I haven’t forgiven you."

The Red Dragon’s expression did not change.

Lucien appreciated that.

He had not come expecting easy absolution.

"But I also don’t care enough about an old grudge to weaken the world because of it."

The Red Dragon’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Lucien continued.

"If another war comes, I would rather have your people facing the Black Mass than wasting strength watching my back and wondering whether I’m coming for you."

For the first time since arriving, some of the tension in the Red Dragon’s shoulders loosened.

Then Lucien raised one finger.

"But that doesn’t erase anything."

The Red Dragon waited.

"If you truly want to settle this, then settling it with me isn’t enough."

Lucien’s voice became firmer.

"The Nephralis and Varkhaal Sects harmed people who had nothing to do with our conflict."

The Red Dragon’s expression grew serious.

"You and Dark Shade need to face that."

Lucien did not care whether apologies injured their pride.

That was part of the price.

"Admit publicly what happened. Admit what your sects became. Then compensate the people who were enslaved, imprisoned, displaced, or stripped of what belonged to them."

The Red Dragon remained silent.

Lucien continued before he could answer.

"And don’t expect forgiveness because you paid them."

That mattered.

Forgiveness could not be purchased.

"They decide whether you earned that."

The Red Dragon slowly nodded.

Lucien watched him closely.

There was no anger.

Eventually, the ancient dragon spoke.

"That is fair."

Lucien’s brows rose slightly.

The Red Dragon noticed.

"Do not look so surprised."

Lucien almost told him that his entire personality justified the reaction.

He decided against it.

The Red Dragon continued.

"If I intend to reclaim my ancestral land while refusing to repair what was done in my own name, then I would deserve to lose it again."

Lucien’s expression changed slightly.

That was probably the first moment he truly believed the Red Dragon had changed.

Not completely.

People did not discard countless years of pride and ambition after one realization.

But enough.

Enough to begin.

•••

Lucien leaned back.

"Then there’s something else."

The Red Dragon looked toward him.

"If you and Dark Shade actually follow through with this, I’ll help both of you with something."

The dragon’s eyes narrowed.

Lucien smiled.

"Extinction Grade."

The room seemed to become heavier.

The Red Dragon did not move.

For several breaths, even his breathing disappeared.

Then the pressure around him shifted sharply enough that the nearby formations reacted.

Lucien calmly suppressed the disturbance.

The Red Dragon stared at him.

"You can help someone reach Extinction Grade?"

"I didn’t say it would be easy."

"That was not my question."

Lucien’s smile widened slightly.

"Sister Thundersong and the others are already preparing for it."

The Red Dragon’s composure finally cracked.

For an ancient being who had survived countless years of war, he looked remarkably close to disbelief.

"Thundersong?"

"And the others."

Lucien did not elaborate.

He did not need to.

The Red Dragon understood the implication immediately.

The ceiling of the world had moved.

Again.

And Lootwell was already preparing people to cross it.

The Red Dragon rose.

Lucien blinked.

"That quickly?"

"I have wasted enough time."

There was something almost amusing about how decisively his entire mood had changed.

The Red Dragon had arrived struggling to apologize.

He was leaving ready to reorganize two ancient sects.

Apparently, Extinction Grade was excellent motivation for personal growth.

Lucien watched him turn toward the exit.

"Remember what I said."

The Red Dragon stopped.

Lucien’s expression became serious again.

"This isn’t about pleasing me."

"I know."

"Then make sure Dark Shade understands that too."

The Red Dragon gave one slow nod.

Then he left.

Lucien remained seated for a while after the ancient presence disappeared.

He had not planned on gaining another force before the competition even began.

Yet somehow, that was exactly what had happened.

The Nephralis and Varkhaal Sects still had a long road ahead of them.

Words would not erase what they had done.

Neither would one apology.

But if the Red Dragon and Dark Shade were genuinely willing to make their people face the consequences of their past, then Lucien was willing to leave a path open.

The world ahead did not need everyone to have clean hands.

It needed people willing to stop making them dirtier.

Lucien looked toward the preserved region in the distance.

Th Thousand Races would begin arriving for a competition meant to prepare them for war.

And somewhere else, an ancient dragon was finally preparing for a different kind of battle.

The one against what he used to be.