100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 334 - Observatory

Lucien did not waste another breath on doubt.

If the Gargoyles were silent, it meant they were not idle.

He rose into the air and flew toward the highest level of the Obsidian Tower.

The tower felt like a sleeping organism, waiting for a master who knew where to press.

And now...

He did.

Because in the Covenant-Breaker’s Organ Storage, Lucien had found a scroll that changed everything.

A scroll that was never meant to be recovered by an enemy.

A scroll that explained the Obsidian Tower’s truth.

When Lucien reached the summit, he stepped into the chamber that made his spine tighten.

He had been in this place before.

This was the same heart-room where the three goblin Monster Lords had stood long ago, back in the small world.

The memory lingered.

The ceiling curved like a closed eyelid.

The walls were smooth obsidian like the inside of a shell.

And at the center...

A pedestal.

Lucien approached it slowly.

He remembered what had once rested here.

An Origin Core Fragment.

He had taken it, and merged it with his own.

Now the pedestal stood empty.

Lucien exhaled once, then reopened the notes in his mind.

Photographic Memory unrolled the stolen knowledge perfectly.

Every rune. Every sequence. Every warning.

And one line remained heavier than the rest.

Insert an energy source.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened.

The most optimal source was written plainly.

Origin Core Fragment.

He reached into his inventory and took out the core he had extracted from the Void Corruption Staff.

Lucien placed it gently onto the pedestal.

The chamber shivered.

Then pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

The pedestal’s surface drank the fragment’s radiance like thirst remembered.

Thin lines appeared in the floor, faint grooves that had not existed before.

They spread outward, branching like roots under stone.

Lucien smiled faintly.

The tower had accepted the offering.

But the scroll’s next instruction rose in his mind like a blade.

A power source only made the tower awake.

To make it obedient, it needed a second key.

A key the goblins had always favored.

Blood.

Lucien raised his hand and summoned his Magic Book.

The pages began to flip on their own.

Lucien’s gaze narrowed.

It benefited him that everything had been unlocked now.

The monster’s system of magic was broader than he thought.

Miasma-born creatures could wield many attributes, depending on their origin.

Lucien’s mind sifted through the categories he saw in the book, filing them for later.

Rot Magic Attribute. Plague Magic Attribute. Bone Magic Attribute. Soul Magic Attribute. Grave Magic Attribute. Mutation Magic Attribute.

A civilization built on weapons that behaved like diseases.

Lucien ignored the rest for now and focused on what he needed.

Blood Magic.

His eyes traced on a magic circle sequence.

A ritual meant to feed mechanisms that refused to respond to ordinary mana.

Lucien reached into the air and pulled the Covenant-Breaker’s corpse closer.

It was still full of vitality even if dead.

Lucien did not like touching it.

But disgust was a luxury he could not afford.

He wore the Crown of Transcendence.

The moment it settled onto his brow, the world changed.

The air’s texture thickened.

His veins did not corrupt.

They adapted.

He raised his hand.

Then drew blood from the Covenant-Breaker’s corpse with a precise cut of will.

The blood dragged itself out as if even in death it wanted to remain sealed inside its vessel.

Lucien began the ritual.

He spoke the commands written in blood-shaped grammar.

"Crimson Conduction."

"Hemoglyph Key."

"Vitae Circuit: Open."

The blood rose from the air and turned into symbols.

Each symbol locked into the pedestal like a tooth into a mechanism.

The Origin Core Fragment flared.

The chamber pulsed again.

But this time, it was not merely awakening.

It was recognizing.

The pedestal drank the blood-script.

The floor-grooves brightened.

Tubes that Lucien had seen before appeared under the obsidian like veins beneath skin.

Power-lines awakened in silence, running downward through the tower in vertical spirals.

Light moved like black lightning trapped behind glass, traveling through channels that had been dead for centuries.

Then—

The Obsidian Tower breathed.

A low vibration rolled through the chamber, deep enough that Lucien felt it in his bones.

The tower’s heart accepted him.

And the mechanism triggered under his will.

Lucien stood still. Then smiled.

Because the tower did not resist. It obeyed.

Lucien placed his palm on the pedestal.

The pedestal’s surface softened briefly... then it hardened again.

And in his mind, a new awareness unfolded.

A structure.

A network of functions, dormant tools awaiting a master.

He had become something the goblins never intended.

An administrator.

Lucien inhaled once and activated the scroll’s next instruction.

The Observatory.

Outside, the Obsidian Tower shifted like a living thing adjusting its senses.

Along the walls of the tower, thin seams widened.

And from those seams...

...eyes opened.

Lidless and unnervingly calm Obsidian Eyes.

Each one rotated slowly, scanning the space beyond the tower like a predator watching a shoreline.

Inside, panels emerged from the walls.

Sheets of obsidian glass slid outward one after another, forming a half-circle around Lucien.

At first, they were blank.

Then they filled with living vision.

Each panel showed a different location outside the tower.

Different angles. Different distances. Different layers of reality as if the tower could see through fog, stone, and concealment with equal ease.

Lucien’s face turned grim.

Because he finally understood the silence.

The Gargoyles...

They were not waiting at the gate.

They were preparing a death-sentence.

...

Lucien pulled everyone into the tower’s heart-room.

Astraea arrived first, descending as if the tower’s air belonged to her. Her Tempest Crown whispered faintly.

Vaelcar stepped through next with an unreadable expression.

Then the Liberator members appeared.

Kaia’s eyes were bright. Rhazek looked ready to punch the world. Velun immediately stepped closer to the panels. Darian’s expression tightened at once. Seryth said nothing.

Lucien did not speak yet.

He only gestured toward the observatory panels.

And when they saw what the tower saw...

The room went silent.

Astraea stared for a long moment.

Then she laughed once.

Vaelcar’s voice came low.

"So the weight has been arranged."

Lucien’s gaze did not move.

"Look," he said quietly.

On the panel...

Dozens of Gargoyles stood outside the tower.

They were working.

Each gargoyle moved with deliberate precision, carving runes into the air using claws that left scars in reality itself.

They were forming a formation array.

A large-scale execution circle. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Layer after layer of concentric rings hovered in the void, rotating slowly.

The runes were immense, ancient, and structured.

Even incomplete, the formation radiated something monstrous.

It felt like a blade being sharpened in silence.

And at the center of it all—

Kharzun.

The Gargoyle Emperor moved like a commander conducting a funeral hymn.

Each gesture placed another piece of the array. Each command tightened the noose.

Astraea spoke,

"It seems the Basalt Regent trusts their ancestor’s strength deeply," she said. "To build an altar of death while his own hands are elsewhere... that is arrogance fit for stone."

Vaelcar’s gaze remained fixed.

"This is not a formation meant to keep something out," he said. "This is an arrangement meant to make something stop existing."

Lucien’s eyes sharpened.

"So he was confident," Lucien murmured, "that even the Covenant-Breaker could not fully suppress the Primarch of Stone. That is why he prepared this."

Astraea’s smile thinned.

"Yes."

Vaelcar’s words followed like a closing door.

"As you witness it, the intent is not merely to kill," he said. "It is to ensure the target cannot return. It is an execution meant for Emperors and Eternals."

Kaia’s voice came quietly,

"They are building something that even my fire cannot burn through."

Rhazek spat to the side.

"That means it can burn through us."

Velun’s eyes narrowed, calculating.

"They are not guessing we survived. They are accounting for it."

Darian exhaled.

"This is a contingency," he said. "A backup built by someone who believes victory is inevitable."

Seryth’s jaw tightened.

"And it is nearly complete."

Lucien’s gaze grew colder.

Because he saw the truth.

The formation wasn’t meant to fight him. It was meant to delete him.

His eyes moved across the panels again.

Once.

Twice.

Then he noticed what made his blood turn colder than the void.

The Lead Gargoyle King was not there.

Harold Coalheart was not there either.

Not even the gargoyles that usually moved with the Lead King.

It was as if they had been erased from the scene.

Lucien’s fingers tightened unconsciously.

’So that was the reason.’

No wonder the Lead Gargoyle King never returned.

He had never been stationed here at all.

Kharzun had sent him elsewhere.

And Harold—

Lucien’s heart gripped hard.

Harold Coalheart.

The one who had killed his parents, Aniel and Virel.

The first enemy Lucien had ever sworn to bury.

He had been within reach.

And once again...

He was gone.

Lucien stared at the panels until his eyes felt dry.

A slow breath left him.

"Just when I finally found the time to kill him," Lucien murmured, "he disappears."

Kaia looked toward him, sensing the change.

Astraea’s gaze sharpened, storm tightening behind her eyes.

Vaelcar’s expression did not change but the air around him grew subtly heavier.

Lucien lifted his eyes back to the formation.

It was nearing completion.

They did not have the luxury of hesitation.

They needed another plan.

A better plan.

Because if that formation completed—

They would not be fighting a Gargoyle Emperor.

They would be fighting an execution written by him.

Lucien’s gaze hardened.

"Everyone," he said quietly.

The room tightened.

"We need to move now."

Outside the tower, on the panels, Kharzun raised both hands.

The formation array responded.

The rings rotated faster.

The runes brightened.

And the void itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the final line of the sentence.

Lucien stared at it.

And understood.

The Basalt Regent was not the only danger.

The real danger...

Was that stone had learned how to kill even the things that should have survived.