100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 738 - 739 - Thresholds

Time continued moving.

By the time Lucien noticed how much of it had slipped past him, he had already turned thirty years old.

Back on Earth, thirty had once sounded like the point where youth could no longer be used as an excuse for everything.

In the Big World, the number meant considerably less.

There were beings who measured their lives in centuries, millennia, and far longer stretches of time. Compared with them, Lucien was still absurdly young.

That did not stop him from feeling slightly strange about it.

Thirty years old.

He had somehow reached that age while managing Lootwell, rebuilding continents, collecting increasingly unreasonable treasures, preparing for disasters, and occasionally creating new problems while solving older ones.

Lucien decided not to think about it too deeply.

More importantly, the world around him had changed with the passing time.

Some changes were large enough to affect entire continents.

Others happened quietly, becoming part of everyday life before most people realized anything had changed at all.

Together, they were steadily transforming the five continents.

•••

One of the more unsettling changes came from the seas.

The first incident attracted considerable attention.

The second made people nervous.

By the fourth, witnesses had already learned what normally happened next.

The Tidewatch Network would react first.

Warning formations along the coastline would activate as something powerful approached from beyond the continental waters. The disturbance was not always visible, but the pressure accompanying it could be felt from enormous distances.

Sometimes the sea itself became unnaturally still.

At other times, waves changed direction without wind, or marine beasts fled toward shallower waters before anyone on land sensed anything unusual.

Then Tidewatch sounded the alarm.

Lootwell responded almost immediately.

A teleportation formation would activate near the affected region, followed by people capable of handling whatever had triggered the network.

And almost every time, that was where the incident ended.

The distant presence stopped advancing.

The pressure weakened.

Whatever had been approaching the five continents withdrew before direct contact could occur.

No great battle followed.

No coastal city was destroyed.

Nothing dramatic enough to satisfy the people who spent hours discussing every incident through their communication devices ever happened.

That somehow made the situation more disturbing.

Something powerful had approached.

Lootwell had appeared.

Then whatever was outside had decided not to continue.

•••

Witness accounts spread quickly.

A fisherman would report the sea suddenly sinking several meters before the warning formations activated.

Someone aboard a merchant vessel would describe a pressure that made the entire crew unable to breathe properly.

A coastal settlement would record distant lights moving beneath the horizon before several Lootwell figures appeared through teleportation.

Within hours, those stories would circulate across the communication network.

Naturally, the old rumor returned with them.

Another war was coming.

The idea had never completely disappeared after the Grand Intercontinental Competition.

Now it became harder to dismiss.

Things carrying terrifying pressure were repeatedly approaching from the seas.

Fear followed.

But something else grew alongside it.

Relief.

Because every incident ended the same way.

Tidewatch noticed the threat before it reached land.

Lootwell arrived before anything could happen.

The approaching presence withdrew.

For ordinary people, that pattern gradually became something important.

They still worried about what might be outside.

They simply stopped feeling as though the danger could appear beside their homes without warning.

The five continents were no longer blind.

Someone was watching the borders.

And increasingly, people began believing that as long as Lootwell remained standing, anything trying to enter the territory of the Thousand Races would have to pass through Lootwell first.

That belief carried more weight than Lucien initially expected.

People slept more easily because of it.

Merchants continued crossing coastal routes.

Settlements near the seas did not empty simply because another warning appeared.

Even factions with enemies across the continents worried less about some unknown force quietly entering from beyond the known world and observing them unnoticed.

Tidewatch had been created to prevent exactly that.

Lucien was glad to see it working.

•••

The Thousand Races did not respond by leaving everything to Lootwell.

That pleased him even more.

Training continued.

The preserved region had long since stopped feeling like the remains of a competition venue.

People traveled there deliberately now.

Some stayed for weeks.

Others arrived for only a few days to use one particular facility before returning home.

Authority Resistance Fields remained among the most popular.

So did the Interweaving Grounds.

Clear Mind Halls were used not only by fighters but by commanders, healers, scouts, and people preparing themselves for high-pressure work.

The General Training Plan Lootwell had released months earlier had also spread farther than Lucien expected.

Plenty of people had mocked its excessive detail when it first appeared.

Many of those same people were now following it.

The energy-circulation sections became particularly popular once practitioners realized the methods were not designed to increase raw output, but to reduce waste and preserve reserves during prolonged combat.

That sounded less impressive than a destructive technique.

After the Battlefield Simulation, people understood why it mattered.

Other recommendations gradually became normal as well.

Groups practiced retreating without collapsing formation.

Factions prepared secondary commanders.

Interweaver users trained with combinations they normally would not choose.

People learned basic emergency response even when they were not healers.

The rare attributes distributed after the competition helped too.

By now, almost everyone eligible for the promised compensation had received their chosen extract.

For many, the new attribute remained weaker than their primary abilities.

That was fine.

It gave them another option.

If their Law became suppressed or unsuitable for a particular enemy, they were no longer left with nothing except whatever physical strength they possessed.

The competition had ended long ago.

Its lessons had not.

•••

Lucien’s personally selected group had changed even more.

The people he had chosen from the competition were progressing faster than most of them had believed possible.

Lucien had deliberately avoided simply burying them beneath resources.

That would have been easy.

It would also have been stupid.

Instead, Lootwell gave each person enough to accelerate their growth without allowing the resources to replace effort, judgment, or actual experience.

Their weaknesses were identified.

Their training was adjusted.

Those lacking endurance were forced to operate longer under pressure.

Those with excellent strength but poor judgment were repeatedly placed in situations where excessive force created worse outcomes.

Commanders were given increasingly complicated groups to manage.

Scouts learned to work with incomplete information.

Healers practiced prioritizing people when everyone could not be treated at once.

Lucien supervised the larger direction and intervened whenever someone reached a point where his help mattered.

He no longer needed to watch everyone personally.

That was another good sign.

They were beginning to develop under their own momentum.

Some had advanced significantly in strength.

Others had improved in ways that were harder to measure.

They made decisions faster.

They recovered from mistakes without losing composure.

They understood their roles more clearly.

Most importantly, none of them resented the training.

They had been told from the beginning why Lucien selected them.

The next disaster might not give them another chance to become ready.

They had accepted that.

Some were grateful enough that Lucien occasionally suspected they had misunderstood how unpleasant he intended their training to become.

That misunderstanding usually disappeared after a few sessions.

They kept returning anyway.

That was one of the reasons he had chosen them.

Lucien did not need reluctant heroes.

He needed people who wanted to become capable enough to matter.

•••

Despite everything progressing well, one subject continued returning to Lucien’s attention.

The Tidewatch reports.

He sat inside Lootwell with several months of records spread before him.

The individual incidents had looked harmless because none had developed into a battle.

Taken together, they formed a much less comforting picture.

The disturbances were not random.

Several signatures matched what Lootwell had already recorded from Primordial Incarnations.

They had approached the continental boundaries repeatedly.

Some came from different directions.

Others disappeared the moment Tidewatch detected them and Lootwell’s response began.

They were testing the borders.

Lucien had suspected that for some time.

The newer reports made the conclusion difficult to avoid.

The Primordial Incarnations wanted to know how closely the five continents were being watched.

Tidewatch had prevented them from learning too much.

Without it, some of those entities could have reached continental territory before anyone even realized something had entered.

Lucien leaned back.

Building the network had been worth every resource poured into it.

Unfortunately, the Primordial Incarnations were no longer the only problem appearing in the records.

There were other signatures.

Void-walkers.

Lucien’s expression gradually lost its amusement.

They had been absent long enough that part of him had hoped they would remain outside the coming conflict.

Apparently, that had been optimistic.

Several recent encounters suggested the Void-walkers were moving in ways that aligned far too closely with Primrodial Incarnation activity.

Not enough existed for Lucien to claim absolute certainty.

But enough pieces had accumulated that he no longer liked the alternative explanations.

The Void-walkers seemed to be joining the Black Mass.

Lucien sighed.

’More Extinction-grade entities for the enemy. Exactly what the world needed.’

His gaze remained on the Tidewatch records for several moments before another thought softened his expression.

The balance had not remained unchanged on his side either.

The Thousand Races were stronger.

Lootwell was stronger.

And among the people standing with him, beings were beginning to cross thresholds that once belonged only to the greatest threats in the world.

Lucien smiled.

His thoughts drifted toward Astraea and the others.

The enemy was gathering more Extinction-grade monsters.

Fortunately, Lucien had been growing some of his own.