100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 411 - Kharzun’s Fate

Days passed.

By Lucien’s estimates, the Covenant of Pathless Sovereignty would require roughly ten more days of charging before he could make a clean leap to the West Continent.

Lucien had not been idle during these days.

At last, he took the time to deal with Kharzun.

Lucien entered the Gargoyle Dungeon inside his divine energy core, where the chained ancient beast lay.

He studied the creature’s body the same way Seraphine studied a patient.

Kharzun was supposed to have an Origin Core Fragment. Or else, how could he leave the Black Mass?

And yet, inside Kharzun, he felt nothing. No storage ring. No hidden pocket. No familiar "weight" of a fragment.

Lucien narrowed his eyes.

"Either you never had it," Lucien murmured, "or you buried it so deeply you buried the act of burial too."

Kharzun’s gaze sharpened, furious.

He tried to force his aura outward.

The Stillness chains did not allow even that.

Lucien’s gaze cooled.

He activated Structural Insight.

The world peeled open.

And then Lucien saw it.

Kharzun’s Law of Petrification.

It petrified... existence.

Inside Kharzun, tucked behind layers of clauses and wrapped in petrified "not-being," was a section of reality that had been frozen so completely it had become invisible to ordinary perception.

It was petrified against detection and petrified against recognition itself.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed with slow admiration and colder amusement.

"So that is your trick," he said quietly.

Kharzun’s pupils contracted.

He could not smile, but Lucien saw the pride in the hate.

This was a genius concealment.

And it was exactly why Lucien had failed to sense the fragment before.

Lucien straightened.

"And it is exactly why you are going to lose it now."

Once Lucien knew what he was looking for, acting became simpler.

He summoned the Constellation of Recall again.

This time, he did not use it to compress the strings.

Formation discs unfolded around Kharzun’s chained body, locking into positions that matched the joints of his existence.

Lucien’s fingers pressed the central disc.

The constellation lit in a restrained, steady pattern.

And Kharzun’s body... reacted with forced compliance.

His vast frame shuddered as if the world was turning him inside out one careful inch at a time.

The first pulse did not harm him.

It redefined his shape deliberately.

The second pulse created a hollow.

Kharzun’s chest began to open as a space being instructed to become empty.

His ribs separated with the slow humiliation of a fortress being dismantled stone by stone while the fortress remained alive to feel it.

Kharzun’s eyes went wide.

His entire body strained in rage.

His horns flared with light that could not become power.

The Stillness chains held.

No roar came.

Only silent, shaking hatred.

Lucien watched without flinching.

He was careful, almost gentle.

That gentleness was what made it unbearable.

Kharzun’s chest became a hollow chamber, a clean cavity where his organs still functioned through redirected clauses and rerouted life flow.

Nothing was "wrong."

Everything was stable.

Which meant the humiliation was complete. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

He was not being killed.

He was being opened.

Like a specimen.

Lucien’s eyes remained calm as he adjusted the constellation.

"You should be proud," Lucien said. "You made your secret so perfect that it requires effort to steal."

Kharzun trembled harder.

If rage could break chains, the Stillness would have shattered.

It did not.

...

Inside the hollow chest, Lucien finally saw it.

A petrified pocket, a frozen slice of reality.

It looked like a chunk of air turned to glass, veined with gray-white cracks that did not move.

It was petrification taken to its logical extreme.

Lucien did not rush.

Kharzun’s Law of Petrification was strong enough that crude force would do what it always did.

It would shatter the statue.

And if the statue contained an Origin Core Fragment, the fragment could fracture with it.

Lucien would not accept that.

So he worked slowly.

His Laws surged in a controlled wave.

He adjusted his frequency. He shifted pressure. He created micro-gaps.

He let the petrified reality "breathe" by introducing controlled inconsistencies, like thawing ice by warming the room rather than smashing it with a hammer.

•••

Days passed like that.

Kharzun’s eyes never left him.

Hate.

Fear.

And the sick realization that Lucien was not improvising.

He was performing a practiced method.

On the fifth day, the petrified pocket finally yielded.

A seam appeared.

Then a hairline crack.

Then the crack widened into an opening that did not explode.

It unfolded.

Lucien’s eyes brightened faintly.

Inside was the presence he had wanted.

An Origin Core Fragment.

It pulsed with quiet authority, as if it had been waiting in a coffin that did not rot.

Lucien smiled.

Kharzun’s body convulsed.

He tried to scream.

No sound came.

Lucien reached in, withdrew the fragment, and held it for a moment as if acknowledging the effort it took to steal from someone who deserved to be stolen from.

Then he merged it with his own.

The fragment he held had grown larger, and the obsidian necklace he had crafted to prevent its aura from leaking could no longer contain it.

He exhaled once, satisfied.

Behind him, Kharzun’s eyes burned with a mute, roaring curse.

Lucien did not look back.

He continued retrieving what the petrified pocket had held.

Gargoyle rings, used as their storage pockets.

Lucien opened the first.

His eyes narrowed.

There were void metals and shards of minerals that hummed with spatial resistance, the kind that could only be harvested where reality was thin and hostile.

Another ring contained rare materials used for formation crafting.

Another ring held rolled schematics and etched plates.

And the list went on.

Lucien’s mouth curved.

And then, in the deepest ring, he found what interested him most.

A formula.

The Execution Circle.

A formation array capable of ending an Eternal.

Lucien read it once.

Then again.

And sighed.

The cost was obscene.

It required massive essence input, a sustained burn that would injure even the victor’s recovery cycle.

The soul could regenerate after an essence-burn, yes.

But slowly..

And Lucien did not enjoy paying with parts of himself when he had cleaner options.

"I would rather use the Covenant of Ending," Lucien said quietly.

Still, having the formula mattered.

Knowledge was leverage.

Lucien filed it away.

•••

Lucien was not finished.

Kharzun had served as a vault.

Now he would serve as fuel.

Lucien’s gaze shifted inward, toward the dungeons he had sealed away long ago.

The dungeon cores had been scars, wounds the small world carried from past invasions.

Lucien had delayed dealing with them because wounds were complicated.

But now he had time.

And he had a captive Emperor whose existence could be repurposed without mercy.

Lucien began the work.

He linked Kharzun’s essence output to the dungeon cores.

He modified the cores first, of course. He rewrote parts of their clauses and installed spawn-identity arrays.

Their function changed.

They would produce defined monsters with defined drop tables.

A controlled ecosystem. A breeding ground.

Then he interfered with Kharzun’s strings of existence and collapsed specific clauses.

Enough to force a sleep state and enough to keep his essence flowing steadily, like a river redirected through channels.

Kharzun’s eyes remained open through most of it.

Hatred burning.

Humiliation complete.

Then his consciousness finally dimmed as the altered clauses pulled him into enforced dormancy.

Kharzun now slept beside the Gargoyle Ancestor.

Lucien stepped back and observed the linked network.

Dungeon cores pulsed.

Runes ignited.

The first spawn cycles initiated.

Lucien smiled.

"Good," he said softly. "You will repay your existence."

...

That day, Lucien sent an announcement through his bonds.

He sent a message to his pets.

’The sealed dungeons are open.’

’Monsters will spawn consistently.’

’Farm them.’

’Harvest drops.’

Lucien stood in the quiet after the announcement, hands behind his back, and looked at Kharzun’s sleeping form.

An emperor reduced to a battery.

A tyrant turned into a resource.

Lucien’s eyes were calm.

Ten days remained before the leap to the West.

And in those ten days, Lucien won’t stay still.

The board was moving.

Quietly.