100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 791 - Mature

Lucien kept returning to the new world.

He never stayed long enough to become part of it, but he watched.

The first intelligent being learned quickly.

At the beginning, almost everything fascinated him. Water. Fire. Shadows. The difference between soft earth and stone. He spent an entire afternoon dropping different objects into a stream simply to see which ones floated.

Lucien found that surprisingly entertaining.

As the months passed inside the accelerated world, curiosity became understanding.

The being learned which fruits could be eaten and which animals should be avoided. He discovered how to sharpen stone against harder stone. When the weather changed, he began seeking shelter before the rain arrived instead of only reacting once he was already soaked.

There was no implanted knowledge guiding him.

He learned because experience remained with him.

That mattered to Lucien.

It also created a problem.

One intelligent being alone was not the beginning of a race.

Lucien watched him sitting beside the same stream where he had first discovered his reflection and finally accepted what came next.

He needed another.

This time, Lucien already understood the process well enough to avoid repeating every experiment from the beginning.

He created another seed and placed it elsewhere in the same valley, far enough away that the first being would not discover it immediately.

The universe responded more easily than before.

Living Creation gathered around the seed while the surrounding Laws shaped its development according to the same world.

Lucien did not choose its appearance.

He only introduced one difference at the beginning.

Female.

Everything else was left to the process.

The result amused him more than it should have.

Lucien watched the developing seed for a while before rubbing his forehead.

"This is starting to feel familiar."

Adam and Eve immediately came to mind.

He dismissed the comparison.

There was no garden.

There was no forbidden fruit.

And Lucien certainly had no intention of appearing from the sky to give them commandments.

That would only make everything worse.

•••

The second being awakened months later.

Her body belonged unmistakably to the same species, though enough differences had emerged that Lucien could already see individual variation.

She adapted just as quickly.

Her first responses were different from the male’s.

She was more cautious around unfamiliar animals and far more interested in plants. She began arranging objects long before he had, grouping stones according to texture and plants according to smell.

Lucien watched without interfering.

Eventually, their paths crossed.

The first meeting was considerably less profound than Lucien imagined the birth of a civilization might deserve.

They frightened each other.

The male nearly dropped the sharpened stone he was carrying.

The female backed into a tree.

Both stared.

Neither moved for several long seconds.

Lucien remained hidden far above them and tried very hard not to laugh.

Curiosity won first.

They approached slowly.

Neither possessed a true language yet, but gestures already existed, and both had learned to associate certain sounds with simple intentions.

Understanding came awkwardly.

Then it came faster.

They began spending more time together.

The male showed her how he shaped stone.

She showed him which plants produced fibers strong enough to twist together.

He learned from her.

She learned from him.

Lucien found himself returning more frequently than necessary.

He told himself it was observation.

It became increasingly difficult to maintain that excuse.

Years had not passed.

Only months within the accelerated world.

But intelligent beings learned quickly when everything around them was new.

Their communication expanded.

Simple sounds acquired meaning.

Shared habits formed.

They learned to work together without consciously deciding that cooperation was important.

Then something else appeared.

Lucien noticed it long before either of them understood it.

Attachment.

They searched for each other whenever they separated.

Food gathered by one was brought back for the other.

When the female injured her leg, the male remained beside her instead of leaving to forage farther away.

When he became sick after eating something he should have known better than to touch, she spent most of the night nearby.

Lucien watched quietly.

No Law had forced that behavior.

He had not designed affection into them.

The world had simply given two intelligent beings enough time together for something deeper to form.

Eventually, affection became love.

Lucien smiled when he realized it.

There was something strangely comforting about seeing such a familiar thing appear in a world where almost nothing else was familiar.

Perhaps some parts of life did not require instruction.

He decided that was enough observation for now.

The world deserved a little privacy.

Before leaving, however, Lucien considered one obvious problem.

Two individuals were not enough to sustain a healthy race.

He coughed into his fist.

"Right."

That would need to be addressed.

Whatever morals eventually developed here, Lucien had no intention of allowing the first generations to discover genetics through catastrophic trial and error.

He would introduce more seeds later, each given enough variation to ensure the population could expand safely.

After that, he would interfere as little as possible.

Probably.

Lucien knew himself well enough not to make promises.

•••

He left the world and returned to one of the quieter training regions.

The experiment had given him far more than he expected.

Watching the first life emerge had deepened his understanding of Living Creation, but watching two independent beings interact taught him something different.

Creation did not end when something opened its eyes.

Every relationship changed what followed.

One choice affected another.

One life influenced another life.

The possibilities multiplied faster than Lucien could consciously track them.

That complexity fascinated him.

He settled into meditation and let Living Creation move naturally around him.

The Law responded immediately.

Its authority flowed more smoothly through his body than before, no longer feeling like something he had to actively pull into alignment every time his thoughts changed direction.

Lucien compared the sensation against what he knew of the original Creation Law.

The estimate remained imperfect.

Living Creation had already diverged too far to be measured cleanly by the standards of its predecessor.

Still, if he forced the comparison, his comprehension felt close to ninety-three percent of what the original Creation Law might have represented at complete mastery.

Lucien opened his eyes.

Ninety-three percent sounded close.

It was not.

At this level, every remaining step represented an enormous gap.

He knew better than to assume seven percent meant seven easy steps.

The distance between his current authority and a true Primordial embodiment remained vast.

That did not disappoint him.

It gave him direction.

Living Creation continued settling around him as he examined the deeper changes within himself.

That was when he noticed the more interesting part.

The boundary between his body and his universe had become harder to define.

Lucien could feel the distant worlds without deliberately extending his perception toward them.

He sensed the temporal regions maintaining their separate rhythms.

He sensed the new world where the first two members of an unknown race were continuing their lives without him.

The connection did not feel like ordinary awareness.

It felt physical.

A distant shift in Space registered with the same familiarity as movement in one of his limbs.

Changes within the flow of Time carried through him like changes in breathing.

Lucien slowly raised one hand.

For a moment, he understood why the name Omnigenesis Vessel had felt increasingly appropriate.

His body was no longer merely containing a universe.

The distinction between the Vessel and what it contained was beginning to blur.

Lucien smiled.

He still had no idea where that would ultimately lead.

For once, that did not bother him.

He had enough things to study already.