100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 755 - Risk Detection

Vorren joining Lootwell’s administration proved useful much faster than Lucien expected.

Embarrassingly useful.

Lucien had originally assumed the arrangement would mostly consist of keeping Vorren close enough that his danger sense could serve as an early warning whenever the approaching crisis changed.

That alone would have justified giving him a place among the administrators.

Anything beyond that would have been a bonus.

Then the reports began arriving.

The first came from Kael.

Lucien opened it expecting some complaint about Vorren avoiding paperwork.

Instead, Kael had written several paragraphs explaining why he wanted Vorren involved in future audits.

Lucien read the report twice.

Then he frowned.

Apparently, Vorren had been sitting through a routine review of regional supply expenses when he became uncomfortable.

There had been nothing obviously wrong.

The totals matched.

The recorded deliveries matched the warehouse receipts.

The administrators responsible for the account had already checked everything.

Vorren simply disliked one section.

He could not explain why.

Kael, who had initially assumed Vorren was trying to escape the meeting, had ordered the figures checked again.

The problem appeared three layers deeper.

A recurring transport expense had been calculated using an outdated conversion rate after one route had been expanded. The error was tiny in a single shipment.

Across months of scheduled deliveries, it would have become enormous.

Vorren had not discovered the calculation.

He had merely looked at the report and felt that something about it was dangerous.

Kael had found the actual reason.

That distinction mattered.

Still, Lucien stared at the report.

Then another one arrived.

•••

This one came from Elias.

Vorren had accompanied the usual administrative inspection through one of Lootwell’s crowded commercial districts.

Everything had been normal.

Merchants were operating. Patrols were moving. The streets were busy but orderly.

Then Vorren stopped near an intersection.

He told the accompanying guards that he did not like the area.

Naturally, they searched for assassins.

They found none.

They searched for suspicious formations.

Nothing.

They inspected the buildings.

Still nothing.

Vorren became increasingly annoyed because everyone kept asking him what he had sensed.

He did not know.

He simply did not want to remain there.

Elias had heard about the situation and ordered a broader investigation rather than dismissing it.

The problem turned out to be considerably more mundane than an assassin.

Two groups of young practitioners had been gathering in nearby establishments for several days.

There was already hostility between them.

Neither group had broken any law.

Yet small arguments had been escalating.

The patrol records showed that their usual schedules would place both groups at the same intersection the following evening.

No one could prove that a fight would occur.

There was not enough evidence to punish anyone.

Elias simply adjusted patrol routes and placed several visible guards nearby.

The following evening, both groups appeared.

They saw the guards.

They exchanged several unpleasant looks.

Then they continued walking.

Nothing happened.

Vorren’s unease around the intersection disappeared.

Elias had apparently become very interested after that.

•••

The third report involved a construction site.

Vorren had disliked one of the newly completed storage towers.

The engineers were not pleased.

The tower had passed inspection.

Its formations were stable.

Its supporting frame was well within calculated limits.

Vorren entered, looked around, and immediately wanted to leave.

The engineers inspected everything again.

Still nothing.

One of them eventually became irritated enough to dismantle part of a lower support housing simply to prove there was no problem.

Behind it, they found a hairline fracture along a concealed connection point.

It was not immediately dangerous.

It probably would not have failed that month.

Perhaps not even that year.

But the tower stored materials whose weight changed depending on shipment cycles.

Under repeated heavy loading, the fracture would have widened.

Eventually, one section of the structure could have collapsed.

Lucien slowly lowered the report.

Then he looked toward Vorren’s office.

His expression became complicated.

He had made a mistake.

A very stupid one.

Vorren’s ability was not merely useful for surviving catastrophes.

Lucien had treated it that way because that was how Vorren himself had always used it.

Danger appeared. Vorren felt danger. Vorren left.

Simple.

That had hidden the real value of the ability.

Vorren did not merely sense death.

He sensed developing risk.

The danger did not have to be immediate.

It did not even have to be obvious.

A bad calculation that would eventually create a supply shortage could bother him.

A structural weakness that might fail months later could bother him.

Two groups moving toward an avoidable conflict could bother him.

Lucien stared at nothing for several seconds.

Then he almost cursed.

He should have noticed this years ago.

He had possessed a walking risk detector and had mostly allowed the man to use it for running away.

There were probably engineers somewhere who would have committed crimes for something like that.

•••

Lucien summoned Vorren.

The man arrived looking suspicious before Lucien even explained why.

That only made Lucien more certain.

"I wasted your ability."

Vorren blinked.

That was apparently not the accusation he had expected.

Lucien placed the reports in front of him.

"You noticed all of these before anyone else."

"I told them something felt wrong."

"Exactly."

Vorren stared at him.

Lucien leaned forward slightly.

"You never tried to make the feeling disappear before, did you?"

That caught him.

Vorren’s expression changed.

For most of his life, unease had meant one thing.

Leave.

If one road felt dangerous, choose another.

If one ruin made his instincts scream, never enter it.

If a city felt wrong, find another city.

His ability had always been directional.

Danger told him where not to remain.

Lucien saw the realization forming.

Vorren had spent his entire life treating danger as weather.

Something that arrived. Something to avoid. Something he had no reason to argue with.

Lucien had started treating it like a defect report.

•••

The experiment began the following day.

Lucien took Vorren to one of Lootwell’s major teleportation hubs.

The facility had already undergone multiple inspections.

Reserve power cores were maintained underground.

Formation engineers worked in rotating shifts.

Security was heavy.

Several evacuation routes connected the structure to surrounding districts.

On paper, it was excellent.

Lucien asked Vorren to walk through it.

Vorren did.

For several minutes, nothing happened.

Then his pace slowed near one of the reserve chambers.

"This area feels worse."

That was all.

Lucien did not immediately tear apart the room.

Instead, he called the local engineers and had them inspect every system connected to that section.

The reserve cores were fine.

The formations were fine.

The structural supports were fine.

It took nearly an hour before someone noticed the real problem.

During emergency activation, three separate systems would attempt to draw power through the same transfer junction.

Under normal usage, that could never happen.

Under a large evacuation, it could.

The junction would not explode.

It would simply throttle the transfer.

Teleportation capacity would drop precisely when demand reached its highest point.

They changed the routing.

A secondary junction was installed.

Vorren walked through the room again.

He stopped.

Everyone watched him.

The discomfort remained.

Lucien frowned.

They inspected again.

This time, they found that the alternate route crossed too close to a containment array that would automatically seal during a spatial disturbance.

They moved it.

Vorren returned a third time.

His shoulders relaxed.

"Better."

The engineers stared at him.

Lucien smiled.

That was the moment the project became serious.

He deliberately left the actual corrections to the engineers instead of stepping in himself.

He wanted them to grow accustomed to Vorren’s unusual way of detecting problems and, more importantly, to learn how to investigate those warnings without relying on Lucien to solve everything for them.

If he personally handled every issue Vorren pointed out, it would defeat the purpose.

So Lucien watched, guided when necessary, and allowed the teams to work through each problem themselves.

The approach worked.

Before long, the engineers stopped questioning whether Vorren’s unease was worth investigating.

They simply started looking for the reason behind it.

•••

They began using Vorren differently.

Not as an oracle. He could not identify precise causes.

He could not tell them which bolt would loosen or which formation line would fail.

Sometimes he disliked something and the reason took hours to find.

Occasionally, the risk was so small that the eventual discovery felt almost insulting.

But the pattern was reliable enough to matter.

Lucien would bring him somewhere.

Vorren would walk.

If nothing bothered him, they moved on.

If something did, they investigated.

Then they changed the environment and checked again.

Slowly, Lootwell began becoming uncomfortable for Vorren in fewer places.