Lucien let out a slow breath.

The last memory bubble faded into nothing above the table, and with it, the room finally returned to itself.

He leaned back slightly, but his thoughts did not settle with the silence.

In truth, he was dissatisfied with that battle.

He could have done more.

The others might see impossibility. But Lucien saw the gaps, the unused options, and the paths he chose not to take.

It was not hesitation.

It was restraint.

He had other pieces he could have used.

He simply did not dare.

Slime Beast Mode was one of them.

The Incarnations were far too wary of slimes. That was why they had gone so far as to erase the species from the Big World.

Then there was the Origin Core Fragment.

Using it openly would have guaranteed attention. And if the Incarnations managed to take it from him, the result would not have been his loss alone.

Lucien then shook his head.

There was no use replaying it further.

He had returned.

That alone decided what mattered next.

He would grow stronger.

Quietly.

In ways that would not announce themselves until it was too late for anyone to respond.

This time, he would not rely on survival through narrow margins and calculated risks alone.

This time, he would build himself into something that could not be cornered so easily again.

...

After a few breaths of silence, Lucien lifted his eyes again and looked toward Marie.

"I want to see my original body."

Marie rose immediately.

"I’ll get it."

She entered the black cube without further ceremony and returned not long after with the cryogenic chamber.

None of them had shown it to anyone in this world. They had been right not to. The sight of it would have broken too many people who did not need that image burned into them.

The chamber settled gently onto the floor.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Inside lay Lucien’s original body.

It still wore the Genesis Set and Beloved Bastion.

Lucien stared at it.

Then, with a thought, the equipment peeled away from the corpse and returned to his inventory.

He stepped closer and activated Structural Insight.

The world changed.

The world became strings.

And there—

buried within the corpse’s deeper framework—

was the Divine Energy Core.

The sprout still existed on top of it. The inner logic around it still looked too large for even Lucien to grasp completely. But now, at least, he could see it without being drowned by it.

He raised two fingers then made a small motion.

Something answered.

The Divine Energy Core emerged from the old body in a silent pull of impossible delicacy.

The others watched with held breath.

The core drifted toward Lucien’s forehead—

and entered his conceptual space.

For one brief instant, Lucien saw inward.

His restored spirit turned at once toward the returning core and embraced it with a tenderness.

Then—

everything changed.

Divine energy rushed toward him from all directions.

No.

From the continent.

His eyes widened.

The torrent poured inward with such force that the others took a step back, and the people in the city hall felt their hair rise as the air grew charged with something far beyond ordinary mana.

Lucien understood almost immediately.

He turned, almost involuntarily, toward Clara.

She stood there with her hands folded before her and a small, terribly pleased smile on her face.

Of course.

This was faith.

Five years of cultivated faith.

The realization struck him with unexpected force.

All this time in the Big World, he had thought of the people left behind. He had worried about them, planned for them, calculated around them, carried them in the background of almost every major decision.

And they—

they had been thinking of him too.

The divine energy pouring into him was proof of that.

Lucien felt the core expand.

The sensation was impossible to describe properly. The growth was both luxurious and overwhelming, and for a few seconds he did nothing but stand there inside it and let the absurdity happen to him.

He still did not fully understand the logic.

How faith became nourishment. How devotion crossed that boundary. How Clara had been right quickly enough to build all this before he even knew such a thing was possible.

But he would study it later.

For now, he let himself receive.

The others in the room stared openly.

Only Clara looked unsurprised.

When the flood finally settled and the last threads of divine energy withdrew, Lucien exhaled slowly and rolled one shoulder, then the other.

He looked lighter.

•••

Later that day, Lucien went out alone.

After everything that had happened, he wanted something simple.

He wanted to walk through Lootwell.

The others protested only lightly. In the end they let him go, because all of them understood that this too was part of returning.

Lootwell under daylight felt different from the memory in his mind.

It had grown.

The roads were better structured. The dock systems had been reinforced. New districts had risen where there had once only been open land or temporary development.

Goblin-adapted technology had been integrated into local infrastructure with far more success than Lucien had expected. Defensive pylons and civil machinery coexisted now in ways that made the whole territory feel both advanced and lived-in.

The population had surged.

Children ran where there had once only been anxious foot traffic. Traders moved through clean lanes. Storehouses had doubled. Signal towers carried coordinated light between sectors. The old territory still held its core character, but now it had density, confidence, and self-belief.

Lucien looked at it all and smiled.

"Well done," he murmured, though no one was there to hear it.

That was when the first of his pets found him.

Skittles shot toward him like a flying piece of joy.

The creature landed squarely on Lucien’s head as if that spot had remained reserved for it.

Lucien reached up, laughing, and lifted Skittles into both hands.

"Oh, Skittles," he said, hugging the slime close. "I missed you."

That was all the invitation the others needed. They came to Lucien at once.

Lucien laughed again and reached out to all of them.

"Of course," he said, already surrounded by fur, scales, feathers, warmth, and competing claims to his attention. "I missed all of you too."

They crowded him shamelessly.

Skittles tried to retake the head position. Oreo objected. Nyxis opened a portal under Skittles in what was clearly sabotage. Peek sang louder to assert relevance. Aboo joined in without understanding why volume was apparently becoming a legal argument. Korvyn bumped into Lucien’s leg and nearly knocked himself over in the effort.

Lucien let them.

Only after a while did he notice something else.

His split body.

It stood at a distance atop Sparkles.

Vivian, who had quietly trailed behind at some point and then decided not to interrupt, explained once he looked over.

"When we realized you died," she said, "it stopped moving. It didn’t disappear. It just... emptied."

Lucien looked at the split body.

"And they protected it?"

Vivian nodded toward the pets.

"They guarded it like it was the most important thing in the territory."

That warmed something in him more deeply than he expected.

The split body had not been abandoned. It had been kept.

He walked over to it, touched the shell once, and then absorbed it back into himself.

After that, he made sure to pat every pet again.

"Good work," he told them. "Thank you for protecting it."

Skittles puffed up with such self-importance that Oreo immediately knocked it off balance in protest.

Soon enough, Sparkles lowered itself before Lucien in invitation.

Lucien smiled and climbed up.

That began the true tour.

He rode through the territory with his pets around him like an honor guard too emotionally compromised to maintain proper formation.

Nyxis opened portals whenever Lucien’s gaze lingered on a place too far to reach quickly.

Oreo and Skittles fought intermittent wars over who had better claim to his shoulder.

Peek and Aboo, joined by little Peeko, sang ahead of him in shrill but enthusiastic harmony.

Korrak, Vyrran, and Korvyn followed behind with contented stomps that somehow never quite damaged the road despite looking like they should.

Now and then people saw him.

Then bowed. Or waved. Or simply stood there crying and smiling at once while Lucien greeted them as if resurrection had not already made the day strange enough.

He stopped when he could. Spoke when he could. Kept moving when staying too long would have turned a road into a festival.

What he saw pleased him.

Lootwell had become the most advanced territory on the continent.

They had integrated Goblin technology well. They had preserved local identity instead of burying it under foreign machinery. The haven at the center of Lootwell still felt like itself. It had simply become sharper, more capable, and harder to kill.

At one point, Nyxis opened a portal to a district Lucien had only glanced toward, and he emerged to find Sinep and Aginav there.

Their twins, Xes and Lana, had grown so much that Lucien nearly missed the shape of them in the first instant. And in their arms—

a newborn girl.

Aginav smiled with visible pride.

"Young lord."

They moved to kneel, but Lucien stopped them before they could.

Noticing where Lucien’s gaze had settled, Sinep gently stepped forward and introduced her.

"My Lord, This one is Suna," he said.

Lucien looked at the child, then at the family, then back at the child again.

Something in his face softened completely.

"Your family grew," he said.

Sinep laughed.

"Quite literally."

Lucien smiled and offered them quiet congratulations, and when he moved on, he carried that warmth with him.

By the time he returned closer to the central district, more and more people from outside Lootwell had begun to gather.

They had felt the phenomenon earlier.

There was only one conclusion any of them could possibly reach.

It was related to Lucien.

And then, through the opening crowd, Lucien saw a group he knew immediately.

His smile changed at once.

The Silvermine.

His uncles were here.