100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 797 - Seals

Lucien soon went to the sea.

The deepest region marked by the Grandmaster lay between two of the older continental boundaries, far from any major island chain and well outside the routes most ships used.

Tidewatch had watched the surrounding waters for years without finding anything that justified the danger the three diviners had sensed.

That was what bothered Lucien most.

Tidewatch was very good at finding things.

If something dangerous had remained beneath the sea without triggering it, then the problem was either extremely old or designed not to look like a threat.

Lucien decided to assume both.

He did not go alone.

The Obsidian Collegium came with him, including Arctyx. Several Lunarians accompanied Eirene to stabilize the deeper leyline movements, while a small group of Celestials joined in case the anomaly carried corruption or damaged authority.

Lucien also brought several aquatic beasts from the Monster Small World.

They were far more enthusiastic about the assignment than everyone else.

One of them disappeared beneath the surface before Lucien finished explaining where they were going.

He watched the enormous tail vanish into the dark water.

"At least someone is excited."

Arctyx’s third eye opened.

Its crimson glow immediately killed the humor.

"There is really something below us..."

Lucien looked down.

The sea appeared ordinary.

That wouldn’t last.

•••

The group descended.

Sunlight disappeared first.

The water grew colder, denser, and eventually dark enough that ordinary sight became meaningless.

Celestial light formed around the group in muted layers, illuminating only enough of the surrounding sea to move safely without turning them into a beacon visible from hundreds of kilometers away.

At first, Lucien found nothing unusual.

Deep-sea creatures moved around them.

Old trenches divided the seabed.

Several enormous beasts noticed the group and wisely decided to become interested in somewhere else.

Then Arctyx stopped.

His third eye narrowed.

Lucien followed his gaze toward what looked like an ordinary wall of black stone rising from the trench floor.

"That does not belong there," Arctyx said.

Lucien’s attention sharpened.

His Structural Insight passed through the stone.

The mountain vanished from his perception.

What remained beneath it were strings.

Lucien stared.

The formations were buried inside the seabed.

The ancient structure ran through layers of rock, trenches, continental shelves, and deep leyline channels. Most of its pieces were dormant. Some had already shattered. Others were so faint that they looked like natural irregularities in the world’s energy flow.

Arctyx’s eye saw what ordinary detection had missed.

Misplaced origin.

Those structures were pretending to belong to the ocean.

Lucien’s expression slowly changed.

"We’ve seen this structure before..."

The Grandmaster of the Collegium moved closer.

He understood almost immediately.

"The Keepers."

Lucien nodded.

•••

Once they knew what they were looking for, the rest became much easier to uncover.

That was also when the scale of the problem became clear.

The Keepers had not merely constructed formations beneath individual continents during their attempt to overturn the world.

They had reached into the seas.

Lunarian devices began glowing as Eirene traced their connection to the energy flow.

The pattern was ugly.

The sea routes had been built around ancient structural wounds left after the Millennia War.

Places where the original supercontinent had torn apart.

Places where Primordial authority had once surged.

Places where the Primordial Slime’s old seals sank deepest into the world.

Lucien finally understood why the formation had been so difficult to detect.

The Keepers had not created an entirely separate system.

They had threaded their work around something far older.

The seals.

•••

The Primordial Slime had sealed hostile Primordial Incarnations during the old war.

Those restraints extended through the oceans.

Lucien had always known the black mass and the divided world were part of that ancient sealing work.

What he had not known was how much of the world’s deeper structure had been involved.

The ocean floor still carried portions of those protections.

They were not simple walls.

They were layers.

Pressure routes. Authority channels. World anchors.

The Keepers had damaged some of the outer structures when they attempted to reverse old protections and create conditions for the Primordial Incarnations to return.

The Thousand Races had stopped them before the work could be completed.

But stopping them had not erased everything they had already altered.

The damaged underwater array remained.

Waiting for the wrong movement.

Lucien stared at the immense pattern spreading through the seabed.

"So that’s why."

The Grandmaster nodded.

Moving the continents would have changed the old fracture lines.

The Keeper remnants would have shifted with them.

Some broken sections would separate harmlessly.

Others would align.

That was the danger.

A damaged mechanism.

•••

Arctyx followed one of the buried paths with his third eye.

The further he looked, the colder his expression became.

"This one... is a Gate."

Lucien immediately moved toward him.

They followed the formation several kilometers deeper into the trench.

There, the hidden line divided.

One branch ended beneath an old seal.

The other continued toward the open sea.

The Collegium Grandmaster studied it.

"If continental movement changes the angle here..."

The remaining pieces would reconnect.

Lucien finished the thought himself.

The Gate was incomplete now.

After the continents moved, it might not remain incomplete.

Several other structures carried similar functions.

The Keepers had once used variations of the same principles while bending leylines and trying to force the world into a state favorable to the return of the Primordial Incarnations.

The underwater remnants were weaker, but they were also everywhere.

Then Arctyx found the worst part.

Routes leading beneath the shores of the continents.

Lucien stared at them for several seconds.

The formations did not approach the continents from outside.

It emerged beneath them.

If activated, an enemy using the network could bypass much of the warning structure protecting the outer seas.

Tidewatch watched threats coming toward the continents.

This route could allow something to appear inside the defensive perimeter.

A blind spot.

Lucien’s expression hardened.

"Now I understand why the future disliked this ocean."

•••

They spent the next several days mapping the network.

The investigation spread quietly across multiple seas. Lucien deliberately kept the operation contained while they were still uncovering the full structure beneath the seabed.

Arctyx became indispensable.

His third eye exposed pieces of the Keeper network that had spent ages blending into the world’s natural energy flow.

The Obsidian Collegium reconstructed how those pieces communicated, while the Lunarians stabilized the surrounding leylines whenever the inspection disturbed currents that had remained untouched for thousands of years.

The Celestials handled traces of foreign authority around damaged sections.

Lucien handled everything that came too close to the older structures beneath them.

That was where the real danger appeared.

The deeper they followed the Keeper network, the more obvious it became that the formations had never been intended to destroy the Primordial Slime’s seals directly.

They had been built around them.

Lucien understood why after examining the first intact section.

The Primordial Slime had not created passive restraints.

The seals defended themselves.

Any foreign authority attempting to penetrate their core structure was immediately treated as an attack.

The response did not simply strengthen the restraint. It forced the affected section inward, compressing everything connected to the imprisoned authority while severing the surrounding channels from the rest of the world.

Lucien tested the outermost layer with only the faintest thread of Living Creation.

The reaction was immediate.

The ocean floor groaned.

Several kilometers of buried runes flashed beneath the rock, and an ancient pressure surged upward strongly enough that the nearby Lunarians instinctively raised their defenses.

Lucien withdrew at once.

The response disappeared just as quickly.

Nobody spoke for several seconds.

Lucien stared into the seabed.

That explained a great deal.

If something powerful enough tried to tear them apart from the outside, the seals would collapse upon the imprisoned authority first.

And the surrounding region would pay the price with it.

Lucien could already see what a complete failure would do.

Suddenly, he understood why the Keepers had never simply attacked the seals.

They wanted the Primordial Incarnations back.

Breaking the restraints directly might kill what they were trying to release, destroy the surrounding world, or trigger the seals before the Incarnations were ready to escape.

So they had chosen a slower method.

They never touched the heart of the prison.

They changed everything around it.

The buried formations redirected leylines, altered pressure routes, interfered with recognition layers, and gradually weakened the conditions supporting the seals. Instead of smashing open a locked door, the Keepers had spent generations trying to convince the entire structure that the door was no longer supposed to remain closed.

Lucien’s expression darkened as he followed the logic.

That also explained his own caution whenever a Primordial Incarnation had begun breaking free in the past.

He had possessed enough strength to interfere with the surrounding battle, but rushing directly into an active Primordial seal had never been sensible. Once an Incarnation began forcing its way out, the restraint entered its most unstable state. An outside authority joining that struggle could become the final disturbance that turned a controlled failure into a catastrophe.

He had been right to keep his distance.

Now he finally understood exactly how right.