100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 456 - Prankster

The slime on top of the table hopped once.

"Surprise, motherfucker," it said.

Lucien just stared.

For one absurd moment, his mind went completely blank.

Too many feelings hit at once. Shock. Recognition. Suspicion. A strange urge to laugh. A stronger urge to grab the slime and shake it until answers fell out.

The others were no better.

Eirene’s eyes had widened. She looked as if she wanted to speak, then decided with visible effort that whatever she wanted to say could wait.

Lilith, who had never met the Primordial Slime, looked from Lucien to the slime then to the others with open confusion, as if she were trying to determine whether everyone else had gone mad.

Shadow, on the other hand, closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

At last, Kaia spoke.

"Leader," she said flatly, "enough of your nonsense. There are more important things than your terrible sense of humor."

The slime turned toward her.

"Boo," it said. "What a killjoy." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Then its body rippled.

The wobbling, harmless shape began to stretch, refine, and climb. Slime became outline. Outline became flesh. A man stood where the little creature had been.

He looked to be in his thirties. Not young in the careless way of youth, but in the finished way of someone who had already chosen what sort of face he wanted the world to remember.

There was a trace of mirth in him even before he smiled, and yet nothing about him felt soft. His presence was controlled, layered, and old in ways that had nothing to do with appearance.

He had retired the youthful disguise.

He was Eternal.

Lucien froze again.

Then, slowly, embarrassment began creeping up on him.

He had been deceived completely.

Part of him wanted to protest that the prank had only worked because he had walked into the room already prepared to see the Primordial Slime. Another part, the honest part, admitted the truth.

No.

He had simply been fooled cleanly.

And now that he looked harder, he understood what the man had done.

The principle was similar to Origin Rewrite.

But far cleaner.

It was reflective replication carried to such absurd refinement that even the aura had matched. The texture of presence. The rhythm of force. The tiny instinctive wrongness of the Primordial Slime itself.

All of it had been copied.

Lucien had not merely been tricked.

He had been professionally deceived.

Seeing his expression, the man laughed out loud.

His prank had landed exactly as intended.

Eirene and the others let out the breaths they had been holding.

Shadow and Kaia, meanwhile, looked less surprised than tired, like people who had long since accepted that the man in front of them was incapable of entering a serious moment through the front door.

Marie leaned toward Lucien and whispered, "I want to hit him."

Lucien whispered back, "Me too."

That only made the man laugh harder, which meant he had probably heard them.

...

Soon, they all took their seats.

The man spoke first.

"It is good to finally meet you all," he said. "I am Seran Vale."

He placed a hand over his chest with exaggerated politeness.

"Leader of the Liberators. Occasional genius. Full-time victim of unimaginative subordinates."

Kaia rolled her eyes.

Shadow did not even blink.

The introductions followed after that. Lucien and the others gave their names, though the atmosphere remained strange. Half formal. Half one step away from someone throwing something at the table.

Lucien did not waste time.

"Brother," he said, "Shadow told me I’m in trouble. What do you mean by that?"

For the first time since they entered, Seran Vale fell silent.

The smile faded.

The room tightened.

Even Shadow and Kaia glanced at him differently. It was one thing for their leader to be strange. It was another for him to become still.

Then he opened his mouth and said:

"Did I say that?"

He scratched his head and burst out laughing.

Nobody joined him.

Not one person.

Lucien stared at him without expression.

That did it.

He truly wanted to smack him now.

When Seran finally stopped laughing, he wiped at the tears in his eyes and let out a long breath.

"Alright," he said. "Fair. I deserved that look."

His tone lost most of its playfulness then.

"There’s news I need to tell you. I don’t know whether to call it good or bad."

That was enough to pull the room forward again.

"A Liberator has been taken," he said. "One of the reincarnators. His body is being used as a shell by a Primordial Incarnation."

Silence struck the room.

This time even Shadow went still.

It was obvious that this part was new to him too.

Nobody spoke at once.

For a moment, they all seemed to be waiting for Seran to grin and admit it was another joke.

But...

He did not.

Lucien’s mind began moving quickly.

Marina was the first to challenge it.

"How is that not simply bad news?" she asked.

Sylra’s expression had tightened.

"If the enemy knows what we are—"

"That we’re reincarnators? That some of us carry foreign memory structures? That we remember a place called Earth?" Seran finished for her.

He spread one hand slightly.

"And what if they do? That part doesn’t matter as much as you think."

No one answered.

His expression softened into something more complicated.

"That knowledge sounds dangerous when you first hear it," he said. "But look at it properly. What does it actually give them? Names? Origins? A concept?"

He shook his head.

"Useless, unless they understand the design behind it."

Lucien narrowed his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

Seran looked over all of them then, and for once, the usual mockery in his face softened into something harder to read.

When he answered, he did not do so immediately.

He glanced toward the window.

Then back at Lucien.

Then he smiled again, but this smile was different.

It was stranger.

"Brother," he said, "what if I told you... We’re not from Earth the way we think we are?"

Lucien stared at him.

"That’s nonsense."

"Probably," Kaia said immediately. "Ignore him. He gets like this when he starts pulling at conspiracy strings."

Seran chuckled softly.

But he did not deny it.

Instead, he said, "What if ’Earth’ is only the cleanest memory-shape we were given? What if the truth beneath that is less convenient?"

That only made Lucien more irritated.

"What are you trying to say?"

Seran’s gaze sharpened.

"That to deceive enemies who watch the world, you don’t hide the piece. You hide the pattern."

He tapped the table once.

"And the cleanest lie is the one even your own side believes."

Lucien stared at him.

"Bullshit," he said immediately. "What are Liberators then?"

Seran tilted his head.

"We’re YOUR friends," he said. "Assuming YOU think of us that way."

The answer was so out of place that it made the room feel wrong for a second.

Lucien did not know what to do with it.

It sounded random.

Worse than random.

Like a truth jammed into the middle of a conversation that had not yet earned it.

Kaia leaned in at once.

"Don’t listen to him," she said. "He’s had that conspiracy for years. He says weird things, acts mysterious, then refuses to explain them properly. It’s nonsense."

Seran only shook his head, still smiling.

Then he said, "All warfare is based on deception."

That made Lucien even more confused.

He did not know whether Seran was being profound or impossible on purpose.

He could feel there was logic there.

He just could not see the shape of it yet.

Before anyone else could speak, Seran raised one hand.

"Enough. Back to the actual reason why you’re here."

The room settled immediately.

"The real reason I asked you to come," he said, "is not to tell you about the Liberator who got taken. That is connected. But it is not the central problem."

Lucien focused.

Then Seran’s voice sharpened.

"You were noticed," he said. "Not by the Incarnation at first. But by something else."

His gaze fixed on Lucien.

"An Abyssal Entity."

The words landed like cold iron.

Lucien’s eyes widened.

That was it.

At once, the scene in the interplanar gray space returned to him with full force. That impossible notice. That alien attention. The certainty that something had found him even across layers.

His expression hardened before he could stop it.

His thoughts jumped instantly to Alanthuriel.

His missing presence.

The hiding.

The strange silence.

If Alanthuriel had been running from something—

Then maybe that something had finally found the trail again.

Lucien’s pulse tightened.

Seran continued.

"Its notice led another to you as well."

He spoke the next name cleanly.

"The Primordial Incarnation using the Liberator shell is Convergence."

That made the last pieces align.

Lucien knew Convergence from the Mural World.

Convergence did not merely find things.

He made meetings happen.

If Convergence had become aware of him through that Abyssal notice—

Then hiding would no longer mean what it used to.

Lucien’s face hardened.

Seran saw the understanding arrive.

"You get it now," he said quietly.

Lucien nodded once.

"If it’s really him," Lucien said, "then this won’t be something I can just avoid."

"No," Seran said. "You can’t hide from a lot of things. Convergence is one of the nastier ones."

The room was silent again.

Seran leaned back.

And for once, even he did not look amused.

"You don’t have to panic," he said. "The meeting point hasn’t matured yet. If it had, you wouldn’t be sitting here. But make no mistake, Brother."

His eyes did not leave Lucien’s.

"You were not merely seen."

A pause.

"You entered someone else’s future."

And now, whether Lucien wished it or not—

That future had begun noticing him back.