100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 753 - Copies?

Lucien watched the reports from Lootwell.

For the first time since the void attacks began, the attacks were no longer multiplying faster than they could respond.

He should have been satisfied.

Part of him was.

They had made the promise.

They had kept it.

Lootwell’s reputation remained intact.

More importantly, people were alive who might otherwise have died holding broken barriers together with their bodies.

That mattered more.

Still, Lucien’s gaze remained on one report.

Monster Emperor casualties.

There were several.

Strong beings thrown into attacks that had little chance of succeeding once the ancient beasts arrived.

He remembered Astraea’s unease.

He remembered how quickly another Monster Emperor had replaced the one she killed.

The enemy had lost valuable forces.

Yet the attacks had continued.

Lucien did not believe they were stupid.

That meant they believed whatever they were learning was worth the price.

Or worse...

The price did not matter to them.

His eyes moved toward the darkness beyond the mapped void.

Voidwatch had solved one problem.

It had prevented the conquered worlds from becoming easy tools for dividing the Thousand Races.

But as the defenses stabilized and the five continents regained their balance, another question became harder to ignore.

If Monster Emperors were expendable...

What exactly was the enemy saving?

A memory came almost immediately.

Covenant-Breaker, the Goblin Monster Emperor.

Lucien had fought more than one body belonging to that monster.

The first time, he had thought killing one meant progress.

Then more appeared.

Each clone carried power at the same terrifying level.

A true Monster Emperor-class body.

Worse, the original might be able to recover what the clones had experienced.

Lucien’s expression slowly changed.

The report in front of him suddenly looked much worse.

"What if they aren’t losing anything important?"

The thought settled heavily.

Covenant-Breaker had already proven that a high-level monster could create bodies capable of fighting at an absurdly high level.

If that method was not unique...

If other Black Mass monsters possessed something similar...

Then the Monster Emperors dying in the void might not represent the enemy’s true losses at all.

They could be copies.

Manufactured combat units carrying the authority and strength of beings that remained somewhere safer.

Lucien’s fingers tightened around the report.

That possibility changed the arithmetic completely.

•••

The Thousand Races had been counting Eternals.

So had Lootwell.

Every faction knew roughly how many high-level experts it could field, how many ancient beings had returned, and how many powerhouses could be moved before another region became exposed.

That balance mattered.

A war between strong forces was often decided long before the final battle by how many people could actually stand on the battlefield at the same time.

But if one side could reproduce Monster Emperor-level bodies...

Then the balance they had been calculating might not exist.

A thousand weaker monsters could be handled.

Ten thousand could still be managed with formations and prepared armies.

But thousands of Monster Emperors?

Even Lucien found the thought unpleasant.

Preparations only mattered when the pressure stayed within a range preparation could answer.

No barrier was truly permanent.

No army had endless endurance.

No Eternal could fight forever without cost.

Even Extinction Grade beings could eventually be overwhelmed if the enemy possessed enough Eternal-equivalent bodies to throw away without hesitation.

Lucien leaned back slowly.

Voidwatch had bought them time.

That was still valuable.

But time mattered only if they used it to understand what they were actually facing.

•••

He immediately ordered all Monster Emperor remains recovered where possible.

Every battlefield report involving them would be compared.

Anything that might reveal whether they were natural individuals or something manufactured.

Lucien also asked the ancient beasts to pay closer attention.

If they encountered another Monster Emperor, they were to observe before destroying it when the situation allowed.

Astraea agreed immediately.

So did Vaelcar.

The others understood the concern.

They had lived through enough wars to know that an enemy willing to sacrifice strong units carelessly was either desperate...

Or rich.

Lucien suspected the second.

•••

The situation in the void nevertheless continued stabilizing.

Voidwatch deployments expanded.

The worlds that had suffered direct attacks received the full networks first.

After them came worlds positioned along major routes, resource chains, and vulnerable spatial corridors.

Then something predictable happened.

Factions whose conquered worlds had not been attacked began requesting Voidwatch too.

At first, Lootwell prioritized only the threatened regions.

That did not last long.

The logic was obvious.

Waiting for a barrier to be attacked before improving it defeated half the purpose of early detection.

So the deployment policy widened.

Worlds with no confirmed Black Mass presence could still request installation, provided they supplied their own compatible materials and engineers where possible.

Lootwell would provide the framework, specialized components, training, and adaptation support.

That decision accelerated everything.

The factions began helping one another manufacture parts.

Lunarian designs spread through approved workshops.

Celestial purification cores were produced under controlled specifications.

Local formation masters learned how to connect the network to their own barriers instead of waiting for Lootwell teams to arrive.

The expansion stopped being something Lootwell alone was building.

It became something the Thousand Races were helping spread.

That made it much faster.

•••

Within days, the void changed.

Not visibly at first.

The conquered worlds still hung where they always had.

Their barriers still shimmered across the darkness.

Void routes still crossed enormous distances.

But around more and more worlds, additional points of light appeared.

The new networks made the void organized.

Black Mass groups approaching a protected world were noticed earlier.

Defenders stopped being surprised by sudden concentrations of monsters.

Barrier failures became rarer.

When one section weakened, nearby anchors carried the load before the collapse spread.

Several attacks ended before faction Eternals even needed to arrive.

Others still required reinforcement, especially when Monster Emperors appeared, but the deployments were smaller and more controlled.

That difference accumulated.

Elders returned to the five continents.

Rotations normalized.

Formation masters finally slept.

Emergency stockpiles stopped disappearing at absurd rates.

For the first time since the attacks began, the Thousand Races were no longer reacting to every movement as though the void itself might collapse overnight.

•••

The public noticed.

Of course they did.

The first Voidwatch broadcast had already spread widely.

The second wave of reports made the effect clearer.

Another conquered world had survived a Monster Emperor assault without losing its main barrier.

A different faction had intercepted Black Mass movement hours before it reached the boundary.

One of the oldest resource worlds had reduced its permanent force deployment by more than half after its Voidwatch network stabilized.

Those results spread through communication channels.

This time, the conversations were different.

There was still caution.

There always would be.

But the arguments no longer centered on whether the five continents should empty themselves into the void.

Instead, formation masters debated which Voidwatch adaptation was most efficient.

Faction representatives compared installation schedules.

Young fighters who had previously panicked over casualty reports now argued about which ancient beast had destroyed the most Monster Emperors.

Someone started keeping an unofficial count.

Astraea disliked being second.

Lucien decided not to ask who was first.