100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 440 - Progress

A day later, Lucien went to visit Rurik and Shadow.

The moment he saw them, the air felt different.

Rurik was waiting for him.

He looked pleased.

Shadow stood beside him, arms folded, with the expression of someone trying to appear calm while also clearly expecting praise.

"Savior, we’re close," Rurik said with a big smile.

Then he raised a sheet of dark metal from the worktable.

It was not large.

Only broad enough to serve as a prototype plate.

But the moment Lucien saw it, he understood one of its core materials.

Memory Alloy Fragment — metal that "remembers" repeated impacts and adapts accordingly. (A rare drop from the Alloykins)

Lucien’s eyes sharpened.

Rurik had not wasted it.

He had blended it.

Lucien could see the additional traces in the metal immediately. It had not been forged as a simple sheet. It had been built like a learning organism pretending to be armor.

Lucien smiled.

"You mixed it well."

Rurik’s grin widened.

Shadow gave a small nod.

"We want it to remember everything," Rurik said. "Not one type of impact. All types. Compression, penetration, shock, shear, vibration, concentrated bursts, sustained force. If it survives enough patterns, then the shell won’t merely be durable. It will become difficult to surprise."

Lucien immediately understood the goal.

Adaptive armor.

Not armor that was merely hard.

Armor that learned.

Shadow added, "If this succeeds, the construct will not just withstand battle. It will study battle through pain."

Lucien looked at the sheet again.

Then at the two of them.

"You want me to hit it."

Rurik coughed once, suddenly sounding less confident.

"Yes please."

Shadow, at least, did not pretend.

"We need a worthy baseline."

Lucien looked down at his own hand.

Then back at them.

He was interested too.

So he agreed.

He stepped forward, held the metal sheet upright between suspended clamps, and slowly raised one fist. Divine energy wrapped around his hand in a thin, tightly bound layer. Then, over it, the Law of Nihility gathered and darkened his knuckles with a presence that made even the air feel slightly wrong.

Rurik’s smile faltered.

Shadow’s eyes narrowed.

Then finally—

Lucien drove his fist forward.

The air shook.

His fist met the metal.

But...

The sound was not a clang.

It was a short, brutal rupture.

Lucien felt resistance.

Only slight resistance.

Then his fist passed through...

The metal sheet now had a clean hole in its center.

Silence followed.

Lucien stared at the result.

Rurik stared too.

So did Shadow.

For several breaths, no one said anything at all.

Then Lucien cleared his throat lightly.

"Hmm," he said. "Maybe add Adamantine Core(Metal Gargoyle Epic Drop). That metal is nearly indestructible."

Rurik opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

Shadow answered instead. His tone was very controlled in the way that suggested violence was being compressed into dignity.

"We already did."

Lucien looked at him.

Shadow stepped forward and tapped the damaged plate with one finger.

"We layered Adamantine Core into the central reinforcement grid. We also wove in Living Alloy Essence so the sheet could yield microscopically under impact and spread the force instead of taking it all at one point. In theory, it should have softened the blow, redistributed the pressure, and let the memory-metal preserve the pattern."

A pause.

Then he looked at the hole again.

"In practice, you erased the argument."

Lucien fell silent.

That... was fair.

He looked at his own hand. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Then at the sheet.

The Law of Nihility truly was too much for ordinary testing. Even the best prototype armor could not "remember" an impact that had partially crossed into deletion.

Lucien sighed.

"That one doesn’t count."

Rurik, to his credit, did not collapse into despair.

Instead, he stepped closer to the ruined metal and inspected the edges of the breach.

"Not entirely useless," he murmured. "It failed, but it failed cleanly. That means the ratios are wrong, not the principle."

Shadow nodded slowly.

"The shell resisted before it gave way. That matters."

Lucien looked at the two of them and smiled faintly.

"Good. Then take the next version outside. Let the others attack it. If it’s going to learn, let it learn from variety."

That suggestion immediately restored the atmosphere.

Rurik straightened.

Shadow crossed his arms again and said, "Right. We’ll forge another one and fix the ratio this time. You are simply an unreasonable standard."

Lucien accepted that with the patience of a man who had heard similar complaints before.

Then his gaze shifted behind Shadow.

There, aligned near one of the side frames, stood seven puppet bodies.

They are clearly under reconstruction.

The original four had already changed shape. Their joints were smoother. Their frames more elegant. Their surfaces seemed more responsive, less rigid, as though the boundary between puppet and person had thinned.

And there were three more frameworks beside them.

Lucien raised a brow.

Shadow noticed the look and, this time, gave a genuine smile.

"Thank you," he said. "For this."

Lucien glanced at him.

Shadow rested one hand lightly against the shoulder of the nearest puppet.

"I never thought they could become stronger. Rurik has been helpful."

Rurik looked almost offended by how restrained that praise was.

"Helpful?" he said. "I am refining a philosophy here."

Shadow ignored him and continued, "He is also... surprisingly easy to work with."

Rurik lifted his chin.

"And he asks good questions."

Lucien smiled.

That was enough.

Shadow growing stronger would help him. Rurik gaining new understanding would help everyone.

And, judging by the modifications underway, the two of them were indeed dragging one another toward better outcomes.

Rurik had also clearly learned something from the puppets.

The female forms in particular had taught him things about flexibility, balance, and lifelike articulation that ordinary forge theory would never have given him. And he had learned it without relying entirely on Living Alloy Essence.

Lucien could see that insight in the way the new frameworks were being built.

Good.

He left them to it.

There was no reason to disturb craftsmen in the middle of revelation.

•••

Meanwhile, Eirene’s competence had once again become obvious on a scale that bordered on offensive.

The cure production had advanced with frightening speed.

Only a single day had passed, yet the output was already enormous.

Barrels lined the processing hall in ordered rows, each sealed, labeled, and stabilized. The smell of medicinal bitterness mixed with herb-steam and mineral heat.

Verdant Ark’s workers moved without panic, without waste, and without noise beyond what the work itself required.

Lucien stopped at the entrance and took in the sight.

Thousands of barrels had already been filled.

To keep the ration efficient, the dose had been standardized.

One ounce per person.

That meant a single standard forty-gallon barrel could treat a little over five thousand people.

And with more than two thousand barrels already filled or nearing completion, they had enough prepared to treat well over ten million.

In one day.

Lucien stood quietly for a moment and recalculated it again just to make sure the number had not become absurd by accident.

It had not.

It was simply absurd on purpose.

There was another reason the output had climbed so fast.

There was no waste.

Or rather—

Eirene refused to allow waste to exist.

Every residue that would have become useless byproduct under ordinary refinement was intercepted somewhere in the process.

Through her Law of Equivalence, anything that could not remain as waste was converted into something productive.

Heat support, stabilizing slurry, secondary nutrient substrate, or inert carrier medium. Under her hand, inefficiency became almost embarrassing.

Lucien watched one assistant pour off a failed sediment layer from a refinement basin.

Before it even hit the discard vessel, Eirene touched the flow once.

The useless grit turned clear and separated into two usable components.

The assistant blinked.

Eirene only said, "Again, but with less loss this time."

Then she moved on.

She led well. Quietly. Firmly. No wasted words.

Her former subordinates responded with the ease of people who had not merely respected her before, but had trusted her under pressure.

Time was the only remaining ingredient now.

Time... and continued labor.

Lucien stayed for a while, assisting where needed.

He stabilized heat in three chambers at once, corrected imbalance in one of the hybrid concentrates, and personally reworked a sequence where the medicinal strength had been climbing too fast and would have scorched itself hollow if left unchecked.

When the hall finally settled back into rhythm, he stepped aside and looked over the rows of barrels again.

Good.

The West would have its cure.

Now it only needed enough hands, routes, and courage to force it into the continent.