100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 409 - Constellation of Recall

Days passed, and Lucien became busy again.

He divided his tasks efficiently.

First was the cure.

He returned to Seraphine daily, lending her Structural Insight each morning. She used it without wasting a blink.

Lucien attempted to create a Skill Card for Structural Insight so she would not need him hovering at her shoulder.

But he failed. It proved far more complicated than he expected.

After all, he had only acquired it from the bark of the Tree of Creation.

It had not even existed in his Skillpedia until the moment he learned it.

Lucien exhaled and set the attempt aside.

Seraphine, meanwhile, began to hunt alternatives for mass production.

Lucien helped in every way he could.

...

Second was his inner realm.

Lucien returned to his divine energy core and began creating Law Books from the Laws he had absorbed in the Liberators’ archive.

The ones living within Morveth were ready to learn these Laws.

Then, Lucien observed his inner horizon.

The Laws inside his core had intensified in presence.

They were becoming less like ink on paper and more like weather. The air felt more real. Gravity behaved with more insistence. Even silence carried structure.

His main world had grown larger again. Still far from the Big World, but no longer laughably small.

A thought rose in him, half anticipation and half unease.

One day, it might begin to generate its own cycles.

Its own life.

Perhaps even its own distant lights.

Lucien felt something like excitement tighten in his chest.

...

Third was the torn reality.

He continued refining the method to pierce through planes. The small worlds created by the Primordial Slime were not prizes to be ripped open. They were locks. And Lucien was learning the shape of their keys.

The strangest part was that his best weapon had been with him all along.

The Obsidian Tower. The same instrument the Black Mass monsters had once used.

But then, the monsters had driven it with the Black Mass’ influence.

Lucien had none of that.

He had only logic, clues, and Laws.

He would have to adjust the Tower’s frequency and recalibrate its function.

...

Lucien smiled faintly.

Seraphine’s perspective had infected his thinking in the best way.

And that led to his best progress.

Because in those same days, Lucien finally solved the problem he had been circling since Starforge.

The Liberator in the air. The woman who had stretched her strings of existence.

Lucien had watched her through his split bodies until her pattern became familiar.

Her movement was maddeningly patient.

She traveled vast distances without leaving a wake that could be easily traced.

Lucien felt genuine respect.

Her will was iron.

He found himself thinking of Kaia for a moment, then dismissed the comparison almost immediately.

Kaia could become fire, but fire had to be born first. Fire was creation followed by hunger.

Air was different.

Air was everywhere.

It was no wonder the girl could maintain this form for so long.

Lucien’s split body hovered far above, watching her.

Then Lucien’s main mind returned to his body. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

He picked up the Covenant of Pathless Sovereignty.

The disc’s reserve was vast now, a swirling mass that felt like a contained storm.

Not enough to return to the West yet.

But enough for this decisive act.

Lucien exhaled.

"I will borrow a portion," he murmured.

He guided the disc’s energy with careful restraint.

The void disc activated.

And soon...

He vanished.

•••

Lucien reappeared in the open sky where his split bodies waited.

Wind tugged at his sleeves.

Lucien smiled.

Then he summoned what he had made.

Several small formation discs flashed into existence in his hands.

He called the set the Constellation of Recall.

Lucien handed one to each split body.

The main disc remained with him.

"Positions," Lucien said softly.

The pea-sized split bodies scattered at once, streaking outward like sparks thrown from a whetstone.

Their destinations were deliberate, fixed points on an invisible web.

They crossed miles in seconds and halted where Lucien’s Perfect Calculation had marked.

Lucien exhaled.

The girl occupied a vast distance.

His domain could not reach that far yet. If it could, he would place her into his core directly, and ended the problem in one breath.

And also, forcing his divine energy across that much sky would flare like a beacon.

Worse, the girl might retaliate on instinct, and tearing at an air-form too suddenly was the fastest way to injure it.

So Lucien prepared.

One by one, the split bodies lowered their discs into the air’s flow and anchored them in place.

Each disc locked with a faint click that only Lucien could sense, and the constellation completed.

Lucien held the central disc and waited.

•••

Lucien finally spoke into the wind.

"I am not your enemy," he said.

No answer came.

Lucien did not push. He changed the shape of his words, and he let patience carry the weight.

"I know you are hiding," he continued. "I know you chose this form because it keeps you alive. I am offering a safer place to breathe."

Still nothing.

But Lucien felt it.

A tremor in the lattice above him.

Her strings vibrated at a frequency that did not belong to wind.

Fear.

A disciplined fear that had been sharpened into survival.

Lucien softened his tone further.

"If you return to flesh, you worry the fluctuation will expose you. I understand."

For a breath, the sky was only sky.

Then the wind shifted.

A whisper threaded through it, so faint that ordinary ears would have dismissed it as a gust passing through seams in the world.

"Who are you?"

Lucien kept his voice low.

"An ally," he replied. "If you let me be one."

A pause.

The whisper returned, a little sharper this time.

"You cannot help me. If I gather myself, they will notice. I have been dispersed for too long. Re-forming takes time. By then, I would be dead."

Lucien’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"That is exactly why I came," he said. "I am offering you a method that avoids the flare."

Silence again.

Then, almost reluctantly, the wind spoke.

"I am marked."

Lucien did not answer immediately.

His attention sharpened and his sight changed.

He looked closer.

Lucien’s eyes widened.

She was indeed marked.

But she had dispersed it along with herself, thinning the imprint across her scattered strings of existence.

Even Lucien had been deceived. If she had not spoken of it, he might never have noticed.

But just then—

His instinct rang.

The girl’s scattered mark reacted the moment she used the wind to speak.

It answered something.

It called attention.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened.

"We have been noticed," he said quietly. "Explanations later."

The air stiffened, startled.

"What—"

Lucien cut her off.

"Do not resist unless you feel pain," he said. "If you feel pain, tell me."

A beat.

Then the wind whispered, furious and afraid.

"You cannot command me—"

"I am not commanding you," Lucien replied. "I am giving you the fastest way to stay alive."

Lucien’s split bodies moved.

At his silent signal, the discs flared.

From each disc, a filament shot upward.

A thread of pale light, thin as spider silk, fast as thought.

They pierced the air and latched onto specific parts of her dispersed existence.

Deliberately.

Lucien’s mind ran through the structure as the latches found their targets.

Anchor Strings. Memory Imprint Strings. Signature Strings.

The latches attached like needles sliding into fabric that already had seams.

The air spasmed in protest.

Her presence surged outward instinctively, trying to flee.

Lucien felt the resistance.

But the Constellation of Recall was not designed to overpower wind.

It was designed to make dispersal expensive.

At the center, Lucien pressed two fingers to the main disc and guided the recall rhythm.

"Follow the memory. Return along the thread you already trust."

The filaments pulsed once.

A second time.

The air above shivered.

A vast lattice began collapsing inward, strand by strand, like a storm being persuaded to become a single cloud.

The woman resisted for a heartbeat.

Lucien felt her trying to scatter past the loop’s boundary.

The Constellation answered by tightening gently, redirecting her escape routes back into the same stable rhythm.

Her presence condensed.

Mist gathered.

Then shape.

Then weight.

The air thickened around a forming spine.

A heartbeat later, a silhouette appeared, floating in the open sky where wind had been.

And then she was there.

A woman, born out of air like a secret forced to admit its own name.

Her hair drifted as if still half-wind. Her robes clung lightly, moving with currents that were no longer surrounding her, but obeying her.

Her face was cool and sharp, beautiful in a way that felt untouchable, like winter sunlight.

Lucien swallowed before he could stop himself.