100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 435 - War?

Months earlier, the Liberators finally stepped out of the dark.

They did not reveal themselves everywhere at once.

They chose the East Continent first.

The Extinction-grade existence guarding the Evershade Exchange in the East had still not returned, and the absence of that pressure created the first true gap in the Exchange’s hold.

Once the cures were mass-produced, the Liberators began to move.

At first, they moved quietly through healer networks, merchant caravans, and trusted intermediaries long buried beneath the Exchange’s influence. They chose their points carefully, beginning where oversight was weakest and need was greatest.

Then the cure appeared.

And the East Continent trembled.

It did not become liberation overnight.

That would have been too simple.

It became uncertainty first.

And that was the true beginning of collapse.

For years, the Evershade Exchange had ruled through dependency.

Their miracle drugs had done exactly what made them so dangerous.

They worked just well enough to make people trust them.

They granted strength. They accelerated breakthroughs.

And so people kept taking them.

The cost did not reveal itself immediately.

It came later.

The trembling. The spiritual lesions. The growing dependence on the next dose.

And the quiet truth that, once the body adapted, stopping would cause it to turn against itself.

By then, it was already too late.

The Exchange never needed to chain everyone.

It only needed to make survival dependent.

Then it made itself the only source.

So—

When the Liberators introduced a cure, the reaction across the East was immediate... but divided.

The desperate wanted to believe.

The cautious feared a trick.

The powerful hesitated.

And the already compromised felt terror before hope.

Because the cure did not merely promise health.

It threatened the entire political structure built around dependency.

Among the common practitioners, rumors spread first.

Some whispered that a hidden organization had discovered a way to purge the corruption from the miracle drugs entirely.

Others claimed the Liberators were frauds planted by rival powers to break the Exchange’s hold on the market.

Some said the cure was real, but that accepting it would cripple the user and erase every gain they had earned through the flawed drugs.

That last lie spread especially fast.

It was effective because it was not entirely false.

The cure could not erase true advancement already stabilized into the body and soul. But it did strip away the unstable false momentum, the chemically coerced surges, and the borrowed pressure that had never truly belonged to the user.

For many, that distinction was too subtle to matter emotionally.

If a man felt weaker after being cured, he did not care whether the strength he lost had ever really been his.

He only knew it was gone.

And the Exchange understood the Thousand Race’s fear very well.

They moved quickly.

Their branches denounced the Liberators as poisoners and destabilizers. Their agents spread pamphlets and whispered arguments into sects, clans, and markets:

The cure is incomplete.

The cure destroys your gains.

The cure leaves you defenseless.

The cure is bait for recruitment.

The Liberators want your loyalty, not your health.

At the same time, the Exchange quietly tightened its control over those already under its grasp.

Supplies were restricted in some cities and over-provided in others.

Those most dependent on the flawed drugs were offered discounts, emergency rations, and "protective treatment packages" to deepen their reliance.

A few local leaders who had begun wavering suddenly received enough product to keep their households, guards, and heirs stable for another cycle.

The message was simple.

Stay with us, and you live.

Leave us, and your body will betray you before the cure ever reaches you.

That was the real battlefield.

Trust.

And the Liberators understood that too.

So they did not respond by arguing louder.

They responded with proof.

They began publicly curing people.

They began with those who could not fake recovery.

Half-crippled practitioners whose veins had already begun darkening. Children born from parents long exposed to the flawed medicine. Independent practitioners who could no longer afford the drugs and now hung between life and death.

They treated them in open view where they could.

When they could not, they brought witnesses.

Healers.

Sect masters.

Neutral observers.

Even a few hostile eyes who had come expecting fraud.

And then the impossible happened.

The corrupted veins stabilized.

The spiritual trembling quieted.

The dependency lessened.

The side effects did not worsen.

The cured did not collapse into invalids.

And, most importantly of all, those whose strength had truly become their own did not lose it.

That changed everything.

Not all at once.

But enough.

In the East, people began splitting into camps.

Some defected quietly to the Liberators.

These were often the ones who had suffered most and gained least from the Exchange’s bargain. Many had no love for their borrowed strength and only wanted their bodies back.

Others refused the cure even after seeing proof.

Some out of fear. Some out of greed. Some because they had risen too quickly on Evershade methods and could not bear the thought that any portion of their power might be false, unstable, or not truly earned.

Those were the most dangerous.

Because they did not merely doubt the Liberators.

They resented them.

The cure was not only medicine.

It was accusation.

It threatened to turn proud advancement into evidence of compromise.

And so the East did not become united.

It became polarized.

Families divided.

Sects split.

Mercenary bands sold themselves to whichever side could protect their future.

Some city lords invited Liberators secretly by night while publicly reaffirming trade agreements with the Exchange by day.

The strongest under Exchange control faced the worst dilemma.

Many of them already knew the truth of the drugs. They had known for a long time.

But they had been cornered into obedience by necessity. Continue consuming and live under the Exchange’s shadow, or refuse and let the accumulated corruption consume them.

For those people, the cure was not just a remedy.

It was an exit.

Which made it more terrifying than any weapon.

Some defected in secret.

Some faked loyalty while feeding the Liberators intelligence.

Some remained with the Exchange, either because they did not trust the cure yet or because they had become addicted not merely to the medicine, but to what it had allowed them to become.

The East Continent did not erupt into immediate all-out war.

But violence still came.

Raids. Assassinations. Supply interceptions.

Healer convoys were ambushed on the road.

Safehouses were exposed.

Exchange-aligned sects accused rival sects of collusion with "rebels."

The Liberators retaliated only where necessary, careful not to appear like conquerors.

That restraint mattered.

The Liberators understood that if they looked too eager for conflict, the Exchange would win the narrative.

So their first war was not fought for land.

It was fought for legitimacy.

And in that war, public perception became as important as combat.

The Exchange tried sabotage constantly.

False cures were planted in black markets under the Liberators’ name.

Recovered patients were abducted and displayed as "examples" of failed treatment, even when their decline had been induced afterward.

Witnesses disappeared.

Testimonies were bought.

Rumors were sharpened into weapons. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

But the Liberators were not unprepared.

They released treatment patterns in fragments, enough that serious healers could verify the logic without giving away every step to saboteurs.

They built networks of mobile treatment houses that relocated constantly. They moved under Liberator codes, used mirrored records, and began forming local circles of trust faster than the Exchange could erase them.

And slowly—

The East shifted.

Not fully... but visibly.

The Exchange had not lost control.

Yet for the first time in years, it was no longer the only answer.

That alone was enough to make the continent restless.

The tension did not remain confined to the East.

Even with the Intercontinental Teleportation Array destroyed, news of the cure spread across the world anyway.

That was inevitable.

Major sects possessed long-range communication treasures. Ancient lineages had diviners. Merchant coalitions trafficked in information even faster than goods.

And there were always those who loved unrest enough to spread dangerous news simply to watch what it would do.

Soon, every continent knew some version of the same rumor.

An organization known as the Liberators had emerged.

The cure existed.

The Exchange was vulnerable.

That news stirred different reactions depending on who heard it.

Some powers saw hope.

Some saw opportunity.

Some smelled profit.

Neutral factions considered how to position themselves before the balance tipped.

Predatory factions began waiting for war the way vultures waited for wounded armies.

Certain sects quietly began investigating their own people for Exchange dependence.

Others accelerated secret deals with the Exchange, hoping to lock in favorable terms before chaos made everything more expensive.

The Void-Walkers reacted too.

Each main branch of the Evershade Exchange still had an Extinction-grade guardian behind it.

That reality prevented the Liberators from revealing every branch openly. No matter how strong they had become, they could not yet fight that scale of power on all fronts at once.

So instead of a grand unveiling, the Liberators chose a smarter path.

They spread the cure first.

Branch by branch.

Region by region.

Enough to destabilize the Exchange.

Not enough yet to provoke unified annihilation.

It was war, yes.

But a war fought through nerves, supply lines, testimonies, and timing.

A war where whoever controlled the story would control the first great fracture.

And in Lootwell, despite all of that, the days remained strangely peaceful.

The building continued.

The slimes worked.

The people grew.

They had not stepped beyond their bounds.

The only reason Lucien and the others learned the full scale of what was happening outside was because a visitor had arrived.

A Liberator.

The black-robed leader from the ruin expedition.

He was here now.

And from him—

They heard everything.