100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 796 - Branching Futures

Lucien did not ask them to begin with something small.

Aurelia realized that immediately when he projected a map of the Big World across the center of the room.

Five continents appeared.

The distances between them were enormous.

Oceans filled most of the gaps.

The Black Mass supercontinent remained separate, wrapped in corruption and the slowly receding barrier that had changed the world’s balance months earlier.

Lucien looked at the five inhabited continents.

"I want to put these back together."

Nobody answered.

Elunara stared at the map.

The Grandmaster leaned forward.

Aurelia looked at Lucien as though she was waiting for him to clarify.

He did not.

Eventually, Elunara pointed toward the projection.

"You mean politically?"

"Physically."

The room became quiet again.

Lucien had expected that reaction.

The idea had been forming in his mind for some time now.

The five continents had spent ages separated.

That division once mattered far less because the world had been comparatively stable.

Now it created weaknesses.

Every coastline became another direction that needed watching.

Every distant continent required its own large reserve forces because reinforcements could not always arrive instantly.

Teleportation helped.

Communication helped.

Tidewatch helped.

None of them erased geography.

A single connected landmass would change that.

Lucien did not intend to simply push the continents together and hope the world survived.

That was why the three diviners were here.

"I want to know whether this is worth doing."

Aurelia studied the map.

"And if it is not?"

Lucien shrugged.

"Then I won’t do it."

That answer relaxed her slightly.

He had no attachment to the idea simply because it belonged to him.

If the future showed that reunification created more danger than it solved, Lucien would abandon it.

Aurelia closed her eyes.

"Tell us exactly what you intend."

Lucien did.

•••

He explained the rough plan.

The continents would not be dragged violently through the oceans.

Lucien had enough control over Space and the world itself to move them far more carefully than that.

Their orientation would change gradually.

Sea routes would be cleared.

Tidewatch structures could be relocated.

Teleportation networks would maintain logistics throughout the transition.

Living Creation could help stabilize damaged environments afterward.

The final geography would not reproduce some ancient map merely for nostalgia.

Lucien wanted a defensible continent.

A connected one.

Something designed around the world they had now.

Aurelia listened to everything before beginning.

Her divination expanded.

The room disappeared from her awareness.

Lucien felt causality respond around her.

Before the return of the Parallel Timelines, Aurelia’s visions narrowed toward the strongest outcome.

Now they spread.

Lucien could not see what she saw, but he felt the sheer number of possibilities opening around the question.

Elunara began afterward.

She could not lock directly onto Lucien. That had been a problem for a long time. His existence resisted straightforward divination too strongly.

So she chose the people whose decisions would determine whether the plan succeeded around him.

Those whose actions would shape the actual transition.

The Grandmaster waited.

He watched both women carefully until enough futures had formed for him to examine.

Then his own perception changed.

•••

Aurelia spoke first.

"It works."

Lucien’s attention sharpened.

She did not open her eyes yet.

"I can see failures."

That was expected.

"Some are severe."

Lucien waited.

"But the stable branches are unusually consistent."

That mattered much more.

Aurelia’s breathing slowed.

Her vision moved through futures where the five continents had become one.

The geography changed slightly between branches because Lucien’s exact decisions during the process differed.

In some futures, the continents formed a wide crescent.

In others, the final landmass was more compact.

The details varied.

The strategic effect did not.

The Thousand Races became easier to coordinate.

Reinforcement no longer depended so heavily on long-range teleportation.

Military formations could move across continuous territory.

Emergency supplies reached threatened regions through several routes instead of relying on individual hubs.

Civilian evacuation became easier to distribute.

More importantly, the world stopped needing five largely independent defensive structures facing every direction at once.

Aurelia opened her eyes.

"The invasions... become easier to understand."

Lucien looked toward her.

She searched for the right wording.

"Right now, every continent behaves like its own battlefield. Even when the command structures cooperate, each region must assume it may be isolated."

Her gaze returned to the map.

"Once they are connected, the defense begins behaving like one body."

Lucien smiled faintly.

That was exactly what he had hoped.

Aurelia raised a hand before he became too pleased.

"The process itself is dangerous."

Lucien’s smile faded.

"How dangerous?"

"Enough that I would not begin until we understand the ocean."

That was when the Grandmaster finally looked up.

Lucien noticed immediately.

He had found something.

•••

Elunara spoke before the Grandmaster.

Her experience had been very different from Aurelia’s.

"I followed the people responsible for managing it."

Lucien turned toward her.

"They hate your plan."

Lucien blinked.

Aurelia’s mouth moved slightly.

Elunara continued.

"Not because they think it is bad."

That clarification saved the idea.

"They hate it because every path where the reunification succeeds makes them extremely busy."

Lucien laughed.

That sounded much more believable.

Elunara had traced Vivian through several branches.

In almost all of them, the administrative burden became enormous during the transition.

Populations had to be relocated away from unstable coastal zones.

Trade routes changed.

Regional command structures had to be reorganized.

Formation networks needed to be rebuilt.

Local governments suddenly found themselves connected directly to neighbors that had once been separated by oceans.

The first period was exhausting.

Then more invasions came.

That was where the advantages became obvious.

Commands traveled through shorter chains.

Regional forces understood neighboring battlefields better because those regions were no longer distant abstractions.

Reinforcements moved naturally between fronts.

If one defensive region failed, another could respond without crossing an ocean or depending entirely on teleportation.

Elunara followed several commanders through separate branches.

The pattern remained surprisingly stable.

"They complain more before the battles."

Lucien nodded seriously.

"Understandable."

"They complain much less afterward."

"Even better."

Elunara ignored him.

She had also seen something less obvious.

People began understanding the war differently.

Separated continents naturally encouraged separated thinking.

Even with the Thousand Races cooperating, a crisis in another continent could still feel distant until reinforcements were requested.

On one landmass, that psychological distance diminished.

News traveled through neighboring regions.

Armies trained together more often.

Civilian logistics became intertwined.

The idea of five defensive fronts slowly disappeared.

There was one world.

One front.

Lucien’s expression became thoughtful.

That benefit would be difficult to quantify.

It might also become one of the most important.

•••

Then the Grandmaster spoke.

"The ocean."

Lucien looked toward him.

The Grandmaster’s expression was grave.

Every version of the plan Aurelia had shown him contained danger around the seas.

Not the normal dangers of moving enormous landmasses.

Something else.

"When the continents begin moving, regions of the deep ocean will be disturbed."

Lucien’s attention sharpened.

"Sea monsters?"

"Some."

The Grandmaster shook his head.

"That is not the danger I am seeing."

He closed his eyes briefly.

"The ocean is hiding things."

Lucien said nothing.

The Grandmaster’s divination did not show him clear images the way Aurelia’s might.

It gave him danger, pressure, direction, the points where futures became increasingly likely to end badly, and every successful reunification passed close to the same problem.

The deep seas between several continents.

The danger increased sharply whenever Lucien attempted to move the landmasses without first investigating those regions.

The Grandmaster pointed toward the vast stretches of ocean on the map.

"Here."

Then another.

"And here."

His finger stopped above the deepest region.

"This is the worst."

Aurelia closed her eyes again.

Her expression changed after several moments.

"I didn’t notice it before."

Lucien looked toward her.

"The reunification still succeeds in many futures," Aurelia said.

Elunara followed one of the commanders assigned to the transition.

Her face gradually tightened.

"Something happens before the continents finish moving."

Lucien waited.

She shook her head.

"I cannot see what. The person I’m following only knows that forces are redirected toward the sea."

That was enough.

Lucien leaned over the map.

So the plan itself was viable.

The danger was not the final continent.

It was what they might disturb while creating it.

That changed everything.

Lucien stared at the marked regions.

For years, most of their attention had been directed toward the Black Mass, the continents, and the void beyond the world.

The deep ocean had received comparatively little attention.

That suddenly seemed careless.

•••

They continued for several hours.

Aurelia searched wider futures.

Elunara shifted between the people whose decisions mattered most.

The Grandmaster tested the danger surrounding each revised plan.

For the first time, Lucien watched three completely different forms of divination operate as one method.

Aurelia found the road.

Elunara showed what happened to the people walking it.

The Grandmaster showed where they were most likely to die.

Lucien found the arrangement disturbingly efficient.

By the time they finished, the original idea had changed considerably.

He would not begin moving the continents immediately.

The oceans came first.

Tidewatch possessed enormous amounts of information, but ordinary detection was not enough for whatever the Grandmaster had sensed.

Lucien would need to inspect the deep regions personally.

Ancient beasts adapted to the sea could help.

Tidewatch could map miasma concentrations, unusual energy flows, dormant formations, and living populations.

The Shadow Spies could investigate coastal connections and old records.

Only after Lucien understood what was hidden between the continents would he consider beginning the reunification.

He looked toward the three diviners.

"This is useful."

Elunara stared at him.

"You almost moved five continents before checking what was underneath the ocean."

Lucien considered the accusation.

"I asked you first."

"Fortunately."

Aurelia laughed softly.

Even the Grandmaster looked amused.

Lucien decided not to defend himself further.

The important part was that they had found a viable future before committing to the dangerous path leading toward it.

That alone justified everything Alanthuriel had told him.

The return of the Parallel Timelines had made prophecy more complicated.

It had also given them more ways to examine a decision before living with it.

Lucien looked once again at the projection.

Five continents.

Separated by ancient seas.

For countless generations, people had treated those divisions as permanent.

Perhaps they were not.

If the oceans allowed it, Lucien intended to make the world whole again.

His gaze settled on the deepest region marked by the Grandmaster.

Before that happened, however, he needed to discover why every safer future insisted he look beneath the water first.