100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 826 - 836 - Remain

Lucien dismissed the Hourglass only after every calculation had been checked.

The forest returned to its ordinary pace.

He sat beside the young man’s body and began separating everything that could not remain.

The Divine Energy Core would return with his original body.

The inner universe would go with it.

The Aevans would never know they had briefly traveled into the distant past.

Rust and Hunger would remain imprisoned in their isolated layers and leave with the universe that contained them.

Lucien’s Inventory, Morphis, the Tree of Creation, and the overwhelming reserves he had carried into this era would leave as well.

That was necessary.

If Lucien was going to replace the missing continuation Fracture had created, he could not solve the problem by inserting an Extinction-Grade existence carrying an entire universe into the young man’s place.

That would create a historical distortion far greater than the one he was trying to prevent.

He needed to live this person’s life as closely as circumstances allowed.

That meant becoming weak again.

The realization should have bothered him more.

Instead, Lucien found it strangely familiar.

He had started with very little once before.

He could do it again.

The difficult part was his soul.

Lucien closed his eyes.

His spirit tightened around the Divine Energy Core.

That part would remain.

His true identity could not leave his original body completely without turning the return route into another impossible problem.

So Lucien separated his soul carefully.

Pain arrived immediately.

It was unlike ordinary injury.

There was no flesh involved.

Something fundamental was being divided while remaining conscious enough to understand every instant of it.

Lucien endured.

Starlit Codex maintained the relationship between every separated portion so none of them lost the pattern of the whole.

Lucien left a small but exceptionally stable portion of his soul with his original body.

Enough to maintain the connection with his spirit.

Enough to preserve the body.

Enough to become the foundation from which Lucien’s soul could eventually regenerate after his active consciousness returned.

The larger portion remained with him.

It felt strange immediately.

Incomplete, yet not broken.

Lucien almost laughed at the distinction.

His soul had apparently spent long enough existing in pieces to tolerate being divided better than it had any right to.

He did not think too deeply about that.

There were already enough mysteries surrounding his existence.

Next came the return instructions.

Lucien placed one hand against his own chest.

Creation formed an imprint directly into the structure surrounding his body.

It contained no elaborate explanation.

Only what Alanthuriel needed to know.

Lucien had found a way to continue the mission.

His body must be preserved.

He should not be awakened by force.

The active portion of Lucien’s soul remained in the past and would return when the incarnation ended.

Then Lucien hid the imprint beneath a thin layer of Nihility he had learned to recognize through Alanthuriel’s thread.

He could not truly command Nihility the way Alanthuriel did.

He did not need to.

He only needed the message to sit along the same connection Alanthuriel had created.

If anyone could recognize it, Alanthuriel would.

Lucien looked at the thread connecting his body to Alanthuriel.

It was time.

Before using it, he turned toward the young man one last time.

Living Creation had repaired the body enough to live.

The heart waited.

The lungs waited.

The fractured identity remained suspended within the soul structure like broken pieces of glass that had not yet fallen apart.

Lucien felt bitterness return.

This person was gone.

What Lucien was about to do would not bring him back.

He could not pretend otherwise.

He was going to carry the life forward because allowing it to end here might erase everyone waiting in his own future.

It was an ugly solution.

It was still a solution.

Lucien placed two fingers against the Nihility thread.

His intention moved through it.

Return.

The response did not come immediately.

For several heartbeats, nothing changed.

Then the thread tightened.

Lucien smiled faintly.

"Senior Alan noticed."

Space around his original body began to distort.

The effect was different from ordinary teleportation.

Nihility appeared along the edges of Lucien’s existence, gently separating his body from the historical structure around it.

Lucien could feel Alanthuriel on the other end.

The pull strengthened.

Lucien had only seconds left.

He moved the active portion of his soul.

The sensation of leaving his true body was indescribable.

His senses separated from flesh.

His connection to the Divine Energy Core stretched.

The inner universe receded.

For a moment, Lucien perceived both bodies at once.

His original body sat motionless beneath the trees, eyes closed as the remaining soul fragment settled around his spirit.

The young man’s body lay beside it, waiting.

Lucien moved toward the second.

The first began disappearing.

Nihility swallowed his true body from the edges inward.

With it went the Omnigenesis Vessel, the Divine Energy Core, the Tree of Creation, his inner universe, and every overwhelming advantage that had carried him through the battles against Rust and Hunger vanished from this era.

Then Lucien entered the fractured vessel.

He expected resistance.

There was none.

His soul touched the broken identity and settled between the fractures as though the gaps had been waiting for something shaped exactly like him.

Lucien felt the young man’s remaining fragments around him.

They did not become whole.

They accepted his presence.

The connection stabilized.

At the same moment, his original body disappeared completely.

The forest became quiet.

Lucien could no longer feel his inner universe directly.

Divine Energy no longer answered in overwhelming quantities.

For the first time in years, the world around him felt enormous again.

Then the heart beneath his new chest moved.

Once.

A second beat followed.

Air entered lungs that had been still moments earlier.

Lucien’s fingers twitched against the grass.

His eyes opened.

The forest looked different from this height.

The body felt weak.

Pain ran through muscles that had never experienced the transformations Lucien took for granted.

His senses had collapsed from an Extinction-Grade existence capable of surveying enormous distances to those of an ordinary mortal.

Lucien remained on the ground for several seconds, staring through unfamiliar eyes at the ancient sky.

Then one thought surfaced above everything else.

He had no idea who he was supposed to be.

Lucien slowly pushed himself upright.

Somewhere in this era, history expected this young man to do something important enough that Arch-Lords had tried to erase him before he could begin.

Lucien knew neither the destination nor the road.

He only knew that the road could no longer belong to the dead man alone.

For however long this life lasted, Lucien would have to walk it in his place.