100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full? Chapter 847 - 857 - Remember

Several days passed after Seran and Aurelia arrived in the village.

Lucien had expected questions. He had expected suspicion too.

Instead, the two of them settled in far more easily than he imagined.

Seran helped wherever someone pointed him.

One morning he was carrying timber with Tavian. By afternoon he had somehow joined a group repairing a damaged shed, despite admitting that he knew almost nothing about carpentry.

He compensated for the lack of experience by learning quickly and talking enough that the older men eventually stopped treating him like a stranger.

Aurelia adapted in a quieter way.

She helped Cienna sort herbs, assisted Mirelle with records whenever there were numbers to organize, and occasionally entertained the younger children by reading their palms with a seriousness that made them believe every word.

Lucien caught her doing it once.

She had been holding a little girl’s hand while staring solemnly at the lines across her palm.

"You are destined to receive something sweet before sunset."

The girl gasped.

Lucien looked toward the basket of honey cakes cooling behind Aurelia.

Aurelia noticed him.

She smiled.

Lucien continued walking.

He decided not to interfere with destiny.

Even Cienna had accepted the newcomers quickly.

Lucien himself had also survived another danger.

The money.

Cienna eventually discovered that part of what she had given him for the city had been spent buying beer for strangers.

Lucien had expected a lecture.

He received one.

Fortunately, explaining that the beer had purchased information about Seran, Aurelia, the dragons, and the disturbances softened the punishment considerably.

Cienna still informed him that there were cheaper ways to make friends with drunk men.

Lucien wisely avoided asking for examples.

The village gradually returned to its usual rhythm.

The wall reinforcement was nearly complete.

Heavy timber posts now stood deeper in the earth. Angled supports strengthened the weaker sections, and packed soil reinforced the lower portions where repeated rain had previously softened the ground.

The gate had been altered as well.

It remained simple enough for daily use, yet the approach forced anything large to slow before reaching it.

Lucien was satisfied.

The wall would never stop a dragon.

He had accepted that.

It would stop ordinary beasts, discourage raiders, and give the villagers precious time during another charge like the boar attack.

For now, that mattered.

The money from the first preserved-meat sale had also been divided.

Mirelle handled the accounts personally.

The families who contributed meat received their shares. The households of the two men who died during the attack received more. A portion remained set aside for repairs and communal materials.

Nobody argued.

Mirelle’s records were too precise for that.

Lucien continued his own training as well.

His current body remained frustratingly ordinary.

Every morning reminded him of muscles that tired, joints that protested, and lungs that demanded air regardless of how experienced the mind commanding them might be.

He trained anyway.

Strength. Balance. Endurance. Grip. Footwork.

The villagers trained with him.

What had begun as emergency preparation after the boar attack had become a regular part of village life.

On that particular afternoon, Lucien stood near the cleared ground beside the wall with a wooden spear in his hands.

Across from him stood Seran.

Several villagers had gathered nearby.

They always did when the two fought.

Seran rolled his shoulders and looked around.

"You realize they are starting to treat this like a performance."

Lucien adjusted his grip.

"You were a performer."

"I usually got paid."

"You are living here for free."

Seran considered that.

"Fair."

Then he attacked.

The wooden blade in his hands came forward quickly.

Lucien redirected it.

Seran shifted immediately, changed his grip, and swung from an angle that would have been awkward for most people.

He had adapted to nearly every weapon Lucien introduced.

Spears. Short blades. Staffs. Axes.

Even the crude training crossbows fascinated him.

He lacked Lucien’s breadth of experience, but he possessed an unusual ability to understand how a weapon could be misused effectively.

Lucien had learned to expect that.

Seran struck low.

Lucien stepped aside.

The staff changed direction midway.

Lucien caught it.

Seran released one hand and attempted to grab Lucien’s sleeve.

Lucien knocked the hand away before it reached him.

Seran sighed.

"You are getting more irritating."

"You are improving."

"That somehow makes it worse."

Lucien smiled.

They continued.

The villagers cheered whenever Seran managed to catch Lucien off balance.

They laughed whenever Lucien anticipated one of Seran’s tricks before he could complete it.

Seran complained constantly that Lucien seemed to learn from mistakes before making them.

Lucien never explained why.

The truth would have been difficult.

He had already known Seran for years.

Just not this Seran.

After training, Lucien sometimes joined hunting parties in the forest.

That was where another problem became impossible to ignore.

There was less game.

Much less.

The forest remained strangely quiet compared to what the villagers remembered.

Deer had moved farther away.

Small animals appeared less frequently.

Even tracks were becoming difficult to find.

The dragon had disturbed more than the boars.

Perhaps the wider disturbances had done the rest.

On the fourth hunting trip, they returned with only two rabbits and a skinny deer shared among nearly a dozen men.

Lucien looked at the animal hanging from a pole between two hunters.

His expression tightened.

Preserved meat had worked well in the city.

The demand existed.

That no longer mattered if they lacked enough meat to sell.

The village could not strip the forest simply to support trade.

They needed food before they needed profit.

That evening, Lucien sat near the half-finished wall while Tavian checked several iron fittings brought from the city.

Mirelle sat nearby with her records.

Lucien looked at the remaining supplies.

Iron. Nails. Cord. Leather. Salt. Oil.

They are not enough.

The next stage of his plans required far more.

More metal for tools.

More fittings for the wall.

Better weapons.

Materials for wagons.

Eventually, heavier mechanisms if he was serious about developing anything capable of threatening a dragon.

All of that required money and resources.

Lucien frowned.

Something about that thought bothered him.

Resources.

He stared at the iron fitting in Tavian’s hand.

Then his expression changed.

A memory surfaced.

Metallic veins running through exposed rock.

An entire landscape filled with mineral deposits.

Lucien slapped his forehead.

Tavian looked up.

"What?"

Lucien stared ahead.

"I forgot something."

Mirelle immediately became suspicious.

"How important?"

Lucien slowly lowered his hand.

"Very."

He could almost hear Photographic Memory mocking him from a life where forgetting something this obvious would have been impossible.

Lucien sighed.

His memory truly was not what it used to be.

He returned to the day he first arrived in this ancient world.

Rust.

The battlefield.

The place where the Primordial Incarnation had fought with him.

Lucien had paid little attention to the surrounding terrain at the time because Rust had been considerably more important than geology.

Now he remembered.

The entire region had been filled with exposed mineral formations. Some deposits had been obvious even without specialized equipment.

Lucien sat straighter.

Tavian noticed immediately.

"What did you remember?"

"A place."

Mirelle closed her account board.

"What kind of place?"

Lucien smiled.

"The kind that might solve our resource problem."

That earned their full attention.

He explained only what was necessary.

There was an isolated region some distance away.

He had seen large mineral deposits there.

He did not yet know the exact quality or quantity of everything available.

They would need to survey it properly.

Tavian’s expression gradually changed.

"Ore?"

"A lot of it."

"How much?"

Lucien thought about the landscape.

"Enough that I feel stupid for forgetting it."

Tavian stood.

Mirelle’s eyes narrowed.

"Does anyone own the land?"

Lucien shook his head.

"Not that I remember."

The region had been remote.

There were no settlements, no estates, no visible mines, and no roads leading directly into it.

As far as Lucien could tell, nobody had claimed it.

That did not mean they could begin hauling entire wagonloads without consequences.

Even unclaimed land existed under a kingdom.

Small-scale gathering would probably attract no interest.

A functioning mine would.

Lucien understood that much.

"We should be careful," he said.

Mirelle nodded immediately.

"If it is valuable enough, somebody will decide it belongs to them after we prove it is valuable."

Lucien smiled.

"Exactly."

Tavian looked offended by the concept.

"That is ridiculous."

"That is politics."

Tavian looked even more offended.

Lucien stood.

"We survey first."

That was enough.

They would determine what was actually there.

What could be extracted safely.

What could be used.

What might be sold.

If the region was as rich as Lucien remembered, they could begin carefully and secure legal rights later before expanding.

More importantly, they could keep the true scale of the discovery quiet.

Lucien looked toward the village.

Everything required materials.

Perhaps the world had already placed a solution in front of him.

He had simply been too busy fighting Rust to notice.