100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 837 - 847 - Changes

Days passed.

The village did not return to what it had been before the boar attack.

It recovered, certainly.

The damaged houses were repaired, the wounded gradually returned to their work, and the northern side of the settlement stopped looking like the aftermath of a battle.

But the old wall did not return.

Lucien made sure of that.

He spent the first few days walking the perimeter with Tavian, the village chief, and several of the older builders, studying what had failed and what materials they could actually obtain without draining the village of everything useful.

The System could have provided him with far more sophisticated fortifications.

Most of them were completely useless here.

Lucien had no refined cement, no advanced metal fittings, no machinery capable of moving enormous stones, and certainly no materials that could survive supernatural attacks.

So he asked a simpler question.

What was the strongest defensive wall they could build using the timber, stone, packed earth, rope, simple iron fittings, and labor already available in this region?

The answer was far less glamorous than anything surrounding Lootwell.

Lucien missed Slime Cement.

He missed it more than he was willing to admit.

There had been something deeply convenient about having a substance that could solve problems simply by being poured into the right ratio.

Here, everything required hands.

Logs had to be cut. Stone had to be hauled. Earth had to be packed.

Drainage had to be considered before the first support was placed because a wall that turned the ground beneath itself into mud during the rainy season would eventually become its own enemy.

Lucien had forgotten how exhausting ordinary construction could be.

He had also forgotten how satisfying it was.

The new design did not rely on a single row of upright timber.

The heaviest posts were buried deeper and supported from behind by angled braces similar to what had saved the old wall during the attack. Packed earth reinforced the lower sections, while stones were placed where constant moisture would have weakened the timber fastest.

The ditch outside the northern approach was widened rather than merely deepened. Lucien wanted anything charging toward the village to lose speed before it ever touched the wall.

The gate received the greatest attention.

Instead of rebuilding it as a simple opening that had to endure the full force of whatever came down the road, Lucien altered the approach so that carts, animals, and people naturally slowed before reaching it.

Tavian had stared at the sketch for a long time.

"So you are making the road inconvenient."

"I am making it inconvenient for something trying to charge through the gate."

"It will also be inconvenient for me."

"You are less likely to charge the gate with your head lowered."

Tavian considered this.

"Usually."

Lucien decided not to ask.

The villagers adapted to the new work quickly.

Nobody complained much about the added effort.

They remembered what happened when the old wall failed.

They also remembered that the underground shelters had remained untouched because the defenders managed to redirect the boars before the animals reached the center of the village.

A little inconvenience no longer seemed unreasonable.

Luke joined the construction before Cienna considered him ready.

Lucien found him carrying a timber support one morning with several other men.

He stopped in the road.

"Father."

Luke looked over.

His shirt was open enough for Lucien to see the long scar cutting across his side.

The wound had closed surprisingly well.

Too well, if Lucien was being honest.

Luke still moved slightly carefully when twisting his torso, but the recovery was faster than Lucien had expected from a normal human body without healing magic.

Lucien had checked more than once.

There was still no unusual energy inside him.

Luke was simply irritatingly healthy.

"You should not be carrying that."

Luke adjusted the timber on his shoulder.

"Your mother said the same thing."

"Then why are you carrying it?"

Luke looked genuinely confused by the question.

"Because it needs carrying."

Lucien stared at him.

The scar stretched across Luke’s side whenever he moved.

"That will probably never disappear."

Luke glanced down, then he smiled.

"A man’s honor."

Cienna’s voice came from behind them.

"A man’s stupidity."

Luke froze.

Lucien looked away immediately.

He had no desire to become involved.

Cienna walked past him and stopped in front of her husband.

"You said you were helping with measurements."

"I am."

"You are carrying half a tree."

"It was in the way of the measurements."

Cienna closed her eyes.

Lucien quietly continued walking.

He heard Luke call his name for assistance.

Lucien pretended not to.

The wall was not the only thing that changed.

The battle had exposed another weakness that Lucien could no longer ignore.

Most villagers knew how to use one or two weapons.

Hunters handled bows and spears.

Tavian was comfortable with heavy tools and close combat.

A few older men had experience with axes or longer polearms from years of protecting caravans or livestock.

The problem was that almost everyone relied on whatever they already knew.

That worked until the situation changed.

The boars had taught Lucien how quickly that could become dangerous.

A spear was useful against an approaching animal but far less useful if the wielder panicked and tried to stop hundreds of kilograms of moving flesh head-on.

A bow was valuable at range, but only if the user understood where to stand and when not to fire.

Heavy weapons could break bone, but they demanded timing and body control.

Lucien knew all of those things.

More than that, his soul seemed to remember them.

The sensation had not disappeared after the battle.

Whenever he picked up a familiar type of weapon, something buried deep within him settled into place.

The knowledge did not give his current body strength it did not possess.

It did not make his reflexes supernatural.

It simply made the weapon feel correct in his hands.

Sometimes the familiarity belonged to a life whose memories Lucien could barely distinguish from the countless identities woven through his soul.

A longbow brought back the patience of forests and distant targets.

A heavy hammer brought back the feeling of fighting with a body that had once possessed far more mass than his current one.

Blades, spears, staffs, axes, and stranger weapons carried their own echoes.

Lucien had no desire to lose that connection again.

So he turned practice into part of village life.

Tavian was delighted until Lucien handed him the first set of designs.

"You want how many?"

"Practice weapons."

"That was not my question."

"Enough."

Tavian looked at the drawings.

"You have drawn six different spear heads."

"They have different uses."

"You also drew three kinds of axes."

"They also have different uses."

Tavian slowly raised his eyes.

"Lucien."

Lucien waited.

"You are the reason blacksmiths become angry."

Despite the complaint, Tavian made them.

Most were wooden practice versions at first.

There was no reason to waste iron while people were still learning basic movement.

Lucien began with what the villagers already understood and expanded from there.

He did not try to turn farmers into soldiers.

That would have been pointless.

He taught them how to stand properly, how to keep balance when frightened, how to use a longer weapon without getting in the way of the person beside them, and how to change weapons depending on where they were fighting.

The difference became noticeable within days.

People stopped treating every weapon as though it were merely a different shape of stick.

Some discovered that they were better with weapons they had never considered using before.

Smaller villagers often handled lighter spears and slings better than axes.

Several hunters adapted naturally to longer bows.

Others preferred staffs because they could control distance without needing the strength required to drive a blade deep enough to matter.

Lucien also introduced crossbows.

Tavian stared at the first mechanism for a long time.

Then he stared at Lucien.

"So the bow stays drawn."

"Yes."

"And the person only needs to aim and release it."

"More or less."

"That seems unfair."

Lucien smiled.

"That is the point."

The first versions were crude.

The village did not possess the tools or materials necessary for extremely powerful designs, and Lucien deliberately avoided anything that would demand precision Tavian’s workshop could not reliably reproduce.

Even so, the advantage was obvious.

A person who lacked the years of strength and practice needed to handle a heavy bow could still use a crossbow effectively with basic training.

Cienna learned quickly.

So did several older villagers.

Lucien refused to let children handle loaded weapons unsupervised, but even the younger ones could practice aiming with light wooden mechanisms that had no real draw strength.

For those who could not use crossbows, he introduced improved slings and staff slings because leather, cord, and stones were readily available.

They were inexpensive, simple to replace, and could still discourage animals or attackers from a distance.

He also showed the villagers how long hooks fixed to poles could be used around walls and gates to pull obstacles, control animals, or move burning debris without approaching too closely.

None of these things would kill a dragon.

Lucien was perfectly aware of that.

If the creature they had seen returned and decided the village looked delicious, their best defensive strategy would probably remain running in the opposite direction.

But dragons were not the only danger in the world.

Boars could be killed.

Bandits could be discouraged.

Predators could be driven away.

A village that could respond to several different threats instead of one was already much safer.

Lucien found himself enjoying the training more than he expected.

His current body was still ordinary.

He became tired.

His hands developed blisters.

His muscles needed rest.

Yet each weapon he handled brought another faint impression from somewhere deeper within his soul.

He could no longer call on the powers those identities once possessed.

Their experience remained.

Perhaps that was enough.

The villagers noticed.

Nobody asked how Lucien knew so much.

At first, he found that suspicious.

Then he discovered Luke and Cienna had solved the problem for him.

"Our son has always been clever," Luke told anyone who seemed confused.

Cienna was somehow worse.

"He simply never liked explaining himself."

By the end of the week, the accepted explanation throughout the village was that Lucien had apparently been a genius for years and had merely been too strange to demonstrate it properly.

Lucien decided not to challenge the story.

...

The preservation experiment helped his reputation even more.

The first batches of meat were inspected day after day.

The pieces Lucien had prepared with more consistent salting and controlled smoking held well.

The thicker cuts preserved through brining before smoking remained stable longer than the village’s usual method.

More surprisingly, several people preferred the taste.

Lucien had not intended that.

The more even salting simply meant there were fewer portions that tasted either bland or overwhelmingly salty, while the slower smoke penetrated more evenly instead of scorching the outside.

The butcher who had originally answered Lucien’s questions with references to the ancestors eventually stood beside one of the racks chewing thoughtfully.

"The ancestors approve."

Lucien looked at him.

"Do they?"

"They have not stopped us."

Lucien decided that was apparently enough evidence.

Mirelle arrived later that afternoon carrying a small board covered with numbers and household marks.

She had been watching the preservation results as carefully as anyone.

"It works."

Lucien glanced toward her.

"It appears to."

"Then we should sell it."

He knew exactly where the conversation was going.

"The city."

Mirelle nodded.

"Hunters will buy it. Travelers too. Anyone spending several days outside the walls needs food that survives the road."

Lucien looked toward the hanging meat.

That was sensible.

The village had more than enough preserved boar for its own needs, and repairs were consuming iron, rope, salt, and other supplies faster than usual.

Selling part of the excess solved several problems at once.

Mirelle had already gone further.

She handed Lucien the board.

Every household that had contributed meat was listed.

Beside each mark was the amount prepared for sale and the portion of the eventual payment that household would receive.

The families of the two men who had died were included with larger shares.

Lucien read the numbers twice.

"They trust you with all of this?"

Mirelle raised an eyebrow.

"They would notice if I stole from them."

"That was not what I meant."

"I know."

There was a faint satisfaction in her expression.

Lucien understood why.

Mirelle liked making things balance.

Resources. Value. People.

Even here, long before the strange power she would possess in another life, that tendency was already present.

"We leave tomorrow," she said. "The batches are ready."

Auren would drive the wagon.

Tavian had decided to join them as well because the village needed additional iron, nails, replacement tools, and several materials Lucien had requested for the wall.

...

By sunset, the preserved meat meant for sale had been wrapped, sealed as well as their materials allowed, and loaded carefully onto the wagon.

Mirelle checked every household contribution again before allowing the bundles to be tied down.

Tavian complained that she had counted the same stack three times.

Mirelle told him she would count it a fourth if he continued speaking.

Lucien watched them and smiled.

Tomorrow, he would finally leave the village.

The thought brought an unexpected anticipation.

The strange sound had not returned since the day of the attack.

The city might change that.

At the very least, Lucien would finally see more of this ancient world than one village, one forest, and the road immediately surrounding them.

He looked toward the nearly completed section of reinforced wall.

For the first time since arriving in this era, leaving did not feel like abandoning something unfinished.

The village was stronger than it had been.

Not invulnerable, but stronger.

That was enough for now.