100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 324 - Corruption
The goblin mage’s shoulders sagged with relief as if a noose had been cut from his throat. He slid backward at once, returning to what he truly was. The spine in the dark, the hand that arranged deaths from afar.
The Covenant-Breaker took the front.
He raised his staff.
It now looked like a knot in the void that had been forced into a shape and the longer one stared at it, the more the world behind it seemed to rot.
Void Corruption Staff.
It radiated a corruption that was not miasma alone. It was something deeper. It did not stain energy. It stained the space that energy relied upon.
Astraea’s eyes narrowed the moment she felt it.
That was the reason why her first exchange had gone wrong.
A storm needed a sky to argue with. Pressure, motion, gradients, a world that agreed to have direction.
The staff did not "block" Tempest.
It sabotaged the stage Tempest performed on.
Around the Covenant-Breaker, the air became dead.
Wind lost its authority. Lightning lost its path. The rules that made "storm" coherent were quietly corroded at the root. As if the void itself had been convinced to forget what atmosphere was.
Lucien felt it too and his blood ran colder for a heartbeat.
This might be the same corruption that had eaten the captives’ mana vessels earlier.
A void-taint that made every internal pathway misread reality and collapse into numbness.
Astraea lifted her chin.
"You bring a staff that eats the world beneath a law," she said. "I wondered what foul scripture made you so bold."
The Covenant-Breaker smiled with offense rather than amusement.
"Scripture?" he replied. "No, storm-bird. This is ownership."
He angled the staff toward Lucien.
"And you, thief. Prepare yourself."
Lucien did not answer.
Somehting changed within him.
Perfect Calculation was no longer a technique he ran. It was the way his mind breathed.
His eyes were already too red. The madness wanted the emperor’s throat. The calculation wanted the staff.
Astraea moved to his side. Lightning crawled along her skin like restrained judgment.
[Keep your claws off that staff unless you can break its corruption,] she warned him through their pact. [It is not merely a weapon. It is a boundary.]
[I know,] Lucien replied and his voice in her mind carried a quiet hunger. [That is why I am going to make it choke.]
The battle resumed before anyone agreed it had started.
The Covenant-Breaker stepped forward and the field’s logic cracked.
Collapse did not appear as a crater or a burst.
Collapse appeared as certainty being denied.
Distance lied. Momentum forgot its direction. A line between two points ceased to mean anything.
Astraea struck first anyway.
Her Tempest did not beg the dead air around the staff. She went wide, ripping motion from the living edges of the field, dragging kilometers of atmosphere into a wheel of pressure that spun like a divine saw.
The Covenant-Breaker did not dodge.
He turned the staff once and the void around him darkened.
The storm’s wheel reached him and fell apart as if it had never been a single thing.
Motion unraveled.
Wind forgot it was wind.
The saw became mist, and the mist became nothing.
The Covenant-Breaker’s voice carried across the field with contempt.
"You still sing," he said. "But the world no longer listens."
Astraea’s smile showed no humor.
"And you still crawl," she replied. "But the void has never loved vermin."
Lucien moved with her. His dragon wings snapped once as he blinked across the field.
He aimed for the Goblin King first.
But the Covenant-Breaker did not need to look.
The staff brightened faintly like a warning glow.
The allies reacted on instinct.
The human woman shouted, sharp with memory. "Spread. It is going to corrode our vessels again."
The Covenant-Breaker’s smile deepened.
The glow shifted.
A feint.
The staff’s head clicked once and the field’s foundation buckled.
Collapse on Law.
The five allies surged toward the goblin mage and then froze mid-motion as if their own realms had suddenly forgotten how to stand.
It was not paralysis.
It was worse.
Their Law foundations trembled and sagged as if the base upon which their Edicts were written had been cracked.
Reality did not reject them.
Reality misheard them.
Their Laws tried to stand and found no ground.
The goblin mage spoke from the back too.
He issued an Edict that went straight for the weakness the staff had opened.
"Let your foundations fold."
The words struck like a verdict.
The Serpentile man’s Constriction faltered mid-bloom. The coils he had woven into intent became slack, then frayed.
Molting tried to shed the instability and found that the instability was not on the surface. It was underneath.
Venom hissed in the Serpentile woman’s veins, eager to rot corruption at its source. But then, she stuttered as if the source had been moved beyond her reach.
The two humans’ fire dimmed. Misaligned. The laws beneath their flame were shaking.
The allies staggered and for half a heartbeat their formation almost broke.
Lucien’s gaze sharpened.
His mind saw the shape of the trap instantly.
The Covenant-Breaker corrupted the void-substrate enough that Law could not anchor cleanly. Then the mage’s Edict did the rest, folding what remained.
It was an emperor’s front and a genius’s backline.
Astraea cursed under her breath.
"You gutter-born breaker," she snarled. "You arrived only to bite what others have already wounded."
The Covenant-Breaker’s eyes gleamed.
"I arrived," he replied, "to finish what belongs to me."
Lucien’s instincts screamed for violence.
His calculation reached for the one thing that could answer this without needing a higher realm.
Lucien’s hand snapped to his Magic Book.
The tome appeared.
He opened it mid-air. Its pages turned as if they were eager to prove a point.
He countered the Edict.
INVERSION.
Within the Magic Book, the Law of Inversion flared to life.
Before his eyes, the goblin mage’s Edict twisted. Its meaning folded in on itself as it rewrote its own decree.
"Let your foundations hold."
The inversion snapped outward like a quiet bell.
The allies felt it as an immediate return of weight beneath their souls.
The goblin mage’s eyes widened.
His mouth opened to speak an Edict again.
But...
Lucien did not give him the chance.
He hurled something across the battlefield with a flick of his wrist.
A pale root spun through the air, leaving a faint afterimage like a straight line in a world that wanted curves.
Root of Immutable Balance. A legendary drop born from Stillroot Fern.
It did not "heal" Law foundations. It pinned them.
The root struck the ground between the allies and split into five branching threads of pale light. Each thread surged into one ally like a needle finding a vein, not piercing flesh but piercing instability itself.
The effect was visceral.
The Serpentile man gasped as if he had been drowning and suddenly found the concept of breath restored. The human man’s fire snapped back into alignment with a hiss. Venom stopped stuttering in the Serpentile woman’s blood and became judgment again.
The collapse that had begun to eat their Law foundations did not "fade."
It was forced to retreat because it had met something that refused to move.
The allies leapt backward in unison, buying distance and buying their souls a moment to stand properly again.
Astraea’s laugh was low and sharp with approval.
"Good. So you possessed that codex too," she said through their pact. "A book that dares to argue with Edicts."
The Covenant-Breaker’s expression changed.
Recognition.
His eyes narrowed as if he had finally found the thread that connected too many stolen outcomes.
"It must be you," the Covenant-Breaker said quietly. He did not shout it, as if speaking too loudly would waste the weight of the realization. "The one who took from us in that small world. The one who made my kin die confused."
Lucien met his gaze without blinking.
The Covenant-Breaker’s smile returned, hungry now.
"I see your methods," he continued. "I see your theft. I see your arrogance."
His grip tightened around the Void Corruption Staff.
"And I see what I want to kill."
The clash resumed at once.
Lucien blinked forward. His dragon wings snapped once and Morphis already shifted in his hand.
He went for the staff.
The air around the Covenant-Breaker rotted. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮
A boundary, again.
Lucien tried to anchor the emperor and found that the space around him refused to be held. It slid away like oil. It was the same resistance Lucien had met earlier when he tried to displace him.
The staff was turning void into a medium where Lucien’s control could not grip cleanly.
Astraea struck from the side. Tempest rolled in disciplined arcs, cutting off retreat and forcing the emperor to stand where she wanted him.
The Covenant-Breaker did not retreat.
He stepped into the storm like a man stepping into rain.
Collapse surged and the storm’s authority cracked.
Chaos followed, unpredictable.
Astraea’s feathers sparked as wrongness clawed at her Law.
She held anyway.
Not because it was easy. Because she was ancient enough to understand that pride did not matter in a knife fight.
Lucien’s eyes reddened further.
The madness in him liked that the emperor refused to break.
The calculation in him liked that the emperor was focusing.
The battle had only just begun and it was already spiraling beyond control.
