100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?

Chapter 617 - Pressure-bearing Locks

The first wave ended without ending.That was the problem with wars fought across five continents.

No victory arrived cleanly.

No defeat arrived honestly.

Reports came as pieces.

A fragment secured in the East.

A Keeper captured in the North.

A custody completed in the South.

A convoy intercepted in the Middle.

Those reports were good.

There were many of them.

They were not enough.

Inside the Origin Core Shrine, the five-continent map projected by the merged Origin Core had changed many times.

Lucien stood before the projected map.

The surface layer showed factions, shadow routes, custody requests, origin core fragments, and active battle zones.

The deeper layer showed what Marie had mapped.

Pressure-bearing locks. Old leyline scars. Receivers. Relays. Dangerous sites where the earth leaned too heavily for violence to be simple.

Lucien looked at those deeper markers for a long moment.

The problem was no longer only speed.

It was touch.

The leylines were the blood vessels of the Big World.

They carried energy through continents, oceans, mountains, forests, cities, and old wounds that most people had forgotten existed.

The Keepers had built locks into those veins.

Not simple locks.

They controlled access, flow, and recognition.

They decided what entered a ley current, where that current bent, what authority it accepted, and which deeper routes it opened.

That was already dangerous.

The worse part was time.

Some of those locks had been hammered into damaged places thousands of years ago. Artificial or not, the world had grown around them. Leyline pressure had shifted. Old cracks had leaned against them. Flow had adapted around their shape.

They were enemy nails driven into a cracked wall. And after too long, the cracked wall had begun using the nails to hold itself together.

If Lucien pulled the nail out carelessly, the wall might break.

If he left it alone, the enemy would keep hammering.

That was why the Keepers had changed tactics.

They were not foolish.

They had realized too much.

The summit had exposed sites.

The Grace Quests had exposed routes.

The fragments had exposed thefts.

The Origin Mirror had exposed distorted reflections.

By now, the Keepers must have understood that Lootwell’s earlier survey had not merely been a survey.

It had been a net.

They had fallen into it.

So now they were dragging the battlefield into places where Lucien could not strike freely.

The pressure-bearing locks.

If Lootwell acted rashly, the damage would not look like Keeper sabotage.

It would look like Lootwell breaking the world.

The Keepers would not even need to lie much.

They would only need to point at the disaster afterward.

That made the tactic ugly.

It also made it effective.

•••

Marie stood beside the deeper map.

Her eyes were not bright with mischief now. They were heavy.

"These are not all theirs anymore," she said.

She pointed at one lock marker.

"The first layer is artificial. That part can be cut. The second layer is fed by stolen authority. That part can be starved. But the third layer is where the world leaned around the wound."

Her finger moved to the surrounding lines.

"If we break that wrong, the ground does not simply shake. The scar opens."

Kaia crossed her arms.

"Some have heat gathering under them too."

Marina nodded.

"Old fluid pressure. Preservation chambers nearby in several sites. Not all active, but waiting."

Sylra listened to something no one else heard.

"And some locks are speaking to each other now. Not loudly. Not with words. More like... a rhythm that pretends to be breathing."

Lucien watched the markers.

"It might be the Origin Core fragments."

Marie’s expression turned worse.

"Yes. Some reached the locks..."

The shrine became quiet.

Then the reports arrived from the shadows and branch teams, one after another.

Not all were bad.

Several dozen fragments had been secured. Some had been entrusted before the Keepers arrived. Some had been recovered from running thieves. Some had been sealed on-site seconds before black robes reached the treasury doors.

Each success mattered. Each secured fragment was one key denied to the hidden array.

But several markers on the deeper map now overlapped with pressure-bearing sites.

Stolen fragments had been placed into locks.

Lucien felt the merged Origin Core inside the shrine answer the change.

The lock could read an Origin Core fragment as authority.

Once the fragment settled into the lock, the pressure-bearing site did not simply hold it. It used it. The fragment became a key, a seal, a witness, and a command at the same time.

It accelerated flow.

It strengthened recognition.

It made the hidden array more confident.

Worse, it allowed the lock to whisper to the world scar in a poisonous language.

That was the most dangerous part.

The lock was not only feeding the Primordial Reclamation Array.

It was teaching the wound to accept enemy authority as medicine.

Taking the fragment out afterward would no longer be like removing a stone from a box.

It would be like pulling a thorn from flesh that had already begun to heal around it.

Lucien’s face became ugly.

He did not blame the teams.

The Keepers were strong.

They had old routes, prepared methods, hidden permissions, emergency sacrifices, and the will to feed fragments into dangerous sites before being captured.

Lucien and Seran were special cases.

Lootwell was powerful.

That did not mean every enemy would politely lose.

Kael read the final tally and exhaled through his nose.

"So we won many roads, but lost several keys into the wounds."

"That is accurate," Eirene said.

Vivian looked toward Lucien.

"What is the new priority?"

Lucien did not answer immediately.

He looked at the overlapping marks.

The problem had changed shape again.

He had wanted to catch carriers before they reached the locks.

Some had slipped through.

Now the fragments were inside.

"This has become complicated," Lucien said.

Seran leaned against a pillar.

"When you say complicated, people tend to lose sleep."

"They should."

"Very responsible."

Lucien ignored him.

His eyes remained on the map.

If he touched the lock directly, the wound might open.

If he let the fragment remain, the array would grow stronger.

If he tried to forcefully extract it, the lock might claim he was attacking the world scar.

If he waited too long, the lock’s grip would deepen.

There had to be another way.

The thought came suddenly enough that Lucien’s hand stilled.

Just then, a tiny sound entered the shrine.

Bounce.

Everyone turned.

A small rainbow shape hopped through the entrance of the Origin Core Shrine as if the fate of the world had politely moved aside to let it pass.

Skittles bounced once.

Then again.

The Rainbow Slime’s body shimmered with Celestial-level radiance, soft and ridiculous at the same time. Colors moved beneath its surface like candy, dawn, and cosmic condensation had entered a questionable agreement.

It stopped near Lucien’s foot.

Then it looked up.

Or at least, Lucien assumed it looked up.

Skittles did not have a face in the traditional sense.

It had intent.

And the intent was smug.

Lucien stared at it.

For one breath, the map, the locks, the stolen fragments, the pressure-bearing sites, the ancient array, the Keepers, and the weight of the Big World all remained exactly as terrifying as before.

Then Lucien’s eyes brightened.

"Right."

His expression became thoughtful in the way that made administrators prepare extra paper.

"The slimes."

Lucien had just thought of a fitting solution.

And somehow, it involved the slimes.

"Why didn’t I think of this sooner?"

He lifted Skittles with both hands.

"You menace. You’re my lucky charm. Leylines? Who understands them better than slimes?"

The others looked confused.

Lucien, however, had already remembered something from the past.

"Leybound Assimilation," he said. "The slime’s way."