100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 808 - Preparation

Lucien did not tell anyone immediately.

For the next several hours, he remained inside his inner universe and thought.

Traveling into the past still sounded ridiculous whenever he phrased it plainly.

Unfortunately, ridiculous things had stopped being useful reasons to dismiss anything in his life.

Alanthuriel’s warning mattered more.

He might leave without knowing how long he would remain away.

That meant Lootwell could not depend on him being present when the real war began.

Lucien had spent years preparing the world to function without his constant intervention.

Now he needed to prove he meant it.

•••

He began with the leadership structure.

Vivian noticed something was wrong before he finished summoning everyone.

She said nothing until the core members of Lootwell had gathered.

Eirene arrived soon afterward.

Seran came from one of the recovered-world operations.

Seraphine left the medical districts.

Lilith, the Grandmaster, Aurelia, and several of the senior administrators followed.

Representatives responsible for the monster forces and continental defenses joined them as well.

Lucien looked around the room.

He had already made the decisions.

The meeting existed to make sure everyone else understood them.

"I may need to leave for a while."

Seran frowned immediately.

"How long?"

"I don’t know."

That answer created exactly the reaction Lucien expected.

Vivian’s expression remained calm.

Her eyes did not.

"What happened?"

Lucien smiled faintly.

"Something complicated."

Seran stared at him.

"You keep saying that whenever you don’t want to tell us something."

Lucien had no defense because Seran was correct.

He also had no intention of explaining that he might soon follow a Primordial Incarnation into the past.

The knowledge itself was dangerous.

If the Abyssal Arch-Lords possessed ways to interfere with causality and divination, spreading information about the plan could create exactly the kind of trail Alanthuriel was trying to avoid.

Lucien settled for part of the truth.

"I found a possible path beyond where I am now. I need to investigate something connected to it, and I may not be able to return immediately."

That much was technically true.

The path simply happened to lead backward through history.

Seran’s expression made it obvious that technical truth had not fooled him.

Lucien ignored that.

•••

He turned to Vivian first.

"If I’m absent, Lootwell answers to you."

The room remained quiet.

Vivian did not react with surprise.

She had been handling more of Lootwell’s affairs for years and had already trained as the overall commander for the possibility of a larger war.

Lucien continued.

"You don’t need to run everything personally. Your job is to keep the parts moving together."

That distinction mattered.

Lootwell had grown far beyond anything one person could control minute by minute.

Vivian would hold final authority when disagreements crossed divisions or when the entire organization needed one decision.

Eirene would stand immediately beneath her.

The Lunarian networks, large-scale formations, and the remaining continental reunification project naturally fell within her expertise, but Lucien wanted her authority broader than that.

If Vivian became unavailable during a crisis, Eirene would assume command.

Eirene nodded once.

No ceremony.

No hesitation.

Lucien expected nothing less.

Seran came next.

"You’ll command the Liberators."

Seran folded his arms.

"I already do most of the coordination."

"Now you get the responsibility officially."

Seran looked displeased by the wording.

Lucien continued before he could complain.

The Liberators occupied a strange position in Lootwell.

Many had their own worlds, histories, unique abilities, and methods that did not fit ordinary military organization. Seran understood that better than anyone.

If outside routes became unstable, if recovered worlds needed emergency coordination, or if the Primordial Incarnations tried something unconventional, Seran would have authority to move them without waiting for approval from every administrative layer.

Seran eventually nodded.

He still looked annoyed with Lucien.

That was probably unrelated to the assignment.

•••

Seraphine received authority over the medical network.

That extended beyond ordinary healing.

The coming war could produce corruption injuries, authority wounds, damaged souls, mass casualties, and conditions that conventional healers were not prepared to treat.

Seraphine had already spent years organizing specialists for exactly that possibility.

Lucien simply removed the remaining ambiguity.

If she ordered an evacuation from a medical zone, military commanders would listen.

If she said a force was no longer fit to fight, nobody would send it back because they wanted another hour from exhausted soldiers.

Seraphine accepted quietly.

Lilith and the major infrastructure divisions would keep the reunification project moving as long as conditions remained safe.

Lucien gave her explicit authority to halt it.

Nobody was expected to finish the continent merely because Lucien wanted it completed.

If the Black Mass transformed, if the old seals reacted, or if war made the project unsafe, Lilith could stop everything without waiting for his return.

The Grandmaster received broader wartime coordination authority alongside Vivian and Eirene.

His responsibility would remain what he did best: understanding the battlefield before individual crises became world-scale failures.

The Collegium would keep running simulations, revising deployment maps, and adapting defensive doctrine whenever the Black Mass revealed something new.

Lucien wanted them planning for problems nobody had seen yet.

Aurelia would remain independent.

That surprised nobody.

Divination became less useful when political authority pressured the diviner toward convenient answers.

Lucien wanted Aurelia free to report whatever she saw, especially when everyone else disliked it.

The ancient beasts would handle the highest-level external response.

Astraea, Vaelcar, and the others already understood the rotation system.

If Primordial Incarnations returned while Lucien was absent, their first responsibility was containment and protection rather than pursuit.

The Eternal monster army would remain under its established commanders, rotating through the secured gates so training continued even during prolonged alert.

Inside Lucien’s universe, the existing regional leaders would keep the worlds functioning.

Research would continue.

Training would continue.

The Grace System would continue handling the work it had already been designed to manage.

Lucien did not want his absence to turn the inner universe into a waiting room.

Life had to continue.

That was the entire point of everything he had built.

•••

The discussion lasted hours.

People questioned contingencies.

Vivian changed several chains of command that would become too slow during a simultaneous five-region emergency.

Eirene requested authority over additional formation reserves.

The Grandmaster insisted that at least one major ancient beast remain uncommitted at all times instead of assigning every Extinction-Grade defender to a fixed region.

Lucien approved all three.

Seraphine demanded larger medical stockpiles near the future land connections before the continents joined completely.

Lilith wanted independent shutdown controls for every major section of the reunification formation.

That was approved too.

By the end, the structure no longer depended on Lucien being reachable.

That felt good.

It also felt strange.

Vivian waited until most of the others had begun leaving before approaching him.

"Brother, you’re hiding something."

Lucien smiled weakly.

"I knew this conversation was coming."

Seran stopped near the doorway.

"So you admit it."

"I admit that both of you know me too well."

Neither looked amused.

Lucien sighed.

"I really cannot tell you everything this time."

Vivian studied him for several seconds.

"Is it dangerous?"

Lucien considered lying.

He decided he had already stretched that privilege far enough.

"Yes."

Seran muttered something unpleasant.

Lucien pretended not to hear it.

"But I intend to return."

Vivian’s expression softened only slightly.

"That is not the same as saying you know you will."

Lucien had no answer to that.

He smiled instead.

It worked poorly.

Seran looked even more annoyed.

"You do this every time."

"That isn’t true."

Seran stared.

Lucien reconsidered.

"It isn’t true every time."

That did not help.

•••

Eventually, Lucien gave them the explanation he was willing to share.

He had found evidence of a path beyond Extinction Grade.

That part was true.

He needed to investigate a place related to deeper authority and Time.

Also true.

The mission could remove him from ordinary communication for an unknown period.

Unfortunately true.

He left out the historical destination, the Primordial vessel, the Abyssal Arch-Lords, and the possibility that failure could threaten the continuity containing everyone in the room.

Most accepted the explanation.

Several clearly did not.

Vivian was among them.

Seran was not even pretending.

Eirene simply looked at Lucien for a long time and chose not to press.

Lucien appreciated that more than he said.

Before the meeting ended, he gave them one final instruction.

"Don’t wait for me."

Everyone looked toward him.

"If the war starts, fight it. If the continents can safely finish joining, finish them. If something changes inside the recovered worlds, handle it. Keep improving everything."

His gaze passed across the people who had helped build Lootwell from something much smaller into what it had become.

"I’ll come back."

This time nobody argued.

Perhaps because they knew arguing would not change anything.