100\% DROP RATE : Why is My Inventory Always so Full?-Chapter 446 - Political Move

Dawnbinder reached into his storage ring and brought out small crystal droplets.

The room quieted.

Dawnbinder lifted the vial and said, "These are path-drops."

He let one bead of crystal hover above his palm.

"It contains my authority, my essence, and the route-marking logic of my Law. With one of these, a person can walk a Luminarch path without me physically guiding them."

That made even Shadow look at the droplets more closely.

Marie blinked. "You can do that?"

Dawnbinder smiled faintly.

"I cannot give them my eyes. But I can lend them my permission."

Lucien’s gaze sharpened with approval.

That was better than he expected.

It meant their movement would no longer be bottlenecked by Dawnbinder’s personal presence. They could split cleanly, strike multiple points, and still use the hidden routes without exposing the pattern behind them.

The mood in the room shifted at once.

What had been merely possible became practical.

Then they refined the plan further.

Dawnbinder spread the regional map wider and tapped the subdued settlements one by one.

"There are twelve pressure points that matter immediately," he said. "Not every conquered settlement is equally important. Some are symbolic. Some are supply nodes. Some are only useful because they connect the others."

His finger paused over three of them.

"These first. If they fall quietly, the others become harder to reinforce."

Then he looked up.

"But if we are going to move, it should be simultaneous."

Lucien nodded once.

That matched his own thinking.

Dawnbinder continued. "If we strike one place only, the others will become alert. The Exchange’s compromised people will either flee or fortify. We gain one clean victory and lose the region’s rhythm."

A pause.

"The problem is manpower."

Lucien looked at him for a moment.

Then he asked, "May I use your hall?"

Dawnbinder frowned slightly, confused by the question.

"You may."

Lucien gave a small nod.

Then he summoned them from his divine energy core.

The meeting hall changed

The ancient beasts emerged.

Astraea. Condoriano. Saber. Kira. Grave. Ashkara. Thal’voryn. Aurvang. Virex. Xianru. Noctryn.

Eleven ancient beasts. Eleven Eternals.

The air in the hall grew dense enough that the silence itself seemed to strain. Dawnbinder’s body stiffened before his mind fully caught up with what he was sensing. His mouth opened.

Then closed.

Then opened again.

He could feel their auras clearly now.

For a few breaths, the ruler of Aurion was left entirely without words.

Then, at last, he laughed once. Half genuine amusement, half disbelief.

"My friends," he said, looking at Lucien with new helplessness, "if you have such honored seniors walking with you, then you hardly need me at all."

Lucien shook his head.

"We have force," he said. "We do not have the skill of a Luminarch."

That answer pleased Dawnbinder more than flattery would have.

He smiled.

"Then let us do this properly."

Lucien turned to the beasts and explained the situation.

Twelve regional nodes. Quiet conquest under the Exchange. Simultaneous destabilization. Elimination or subjugation of local hostile forces. Seizure of records, routes, and supply traces before warning could spread.

When he finished, the atmosphere among the ancient beasts changed.

The older ones remained composed.

The newer allies did not hide their anticipation nearly as well.

It had been millennia since some of them had done anything more meaningful than endure, sleep, or remember.

Now the world was offering motion again.

Grave let out a low laugh.

"At last," he said. "Something with the flavor of old days."

Aurvang shifted with impatient approval.

"A campaign divided into precise charges," he rumbled. "This pleases me."

Ashkara’s tongue flicked once, almost lazily.

"Quiet conquest. Hidden roads. Coordinated severance. The Big World’s politics have become much more entertaining than I remember."

Marie grinned and whispered soemthing to Lucien.

"They’re all enjoying this too much."

Lucien folded his arms.

"And you are not?"

Marie coughed once and chose not to answer.

They divided the targets quickly.

Eleven ancient beasts for eleven points.

The twelfth would be handled by Lucien and the others directly.

Dawnbinder watched the division in silence for a time.

One thing had become impossible to miss.

These ancient beings treated Lucien like a brother.

That made Dawnbinder feel faintly embarrassed.

He was still being called "senior" by a man whom eleven Eternals followed with clear trust.

He did not comment on it yet.

Instead, he studied the map harder.

Soon, the plan sharpened again.

The discussion had just settled into its final phase when a knock came from the door.

Dawnbinder allowed the guard inside.

The man entered, saluted, and said...

"The first administered doses have completed observation, my lord."

Dawnbinder’s eyes narrowed.

"Well?"

The guard’s expression was tight with controlled disbelief.

"It worked."

No one in the hall spoke for a moment.

The guard continued.

"The symptoms receded. The distortions stabilized. The dependency strain disappeared."

Then his tone shifted.

"But..."

Dawnbinder finished the thought calmly.

"Their false strength disappeared too."

"Yes, my lord."

That did not surprise anyone in the room.

Still, hearing it confirmed carried weight.

In the clinics and treatment halls, the result had thrown people into mixed emotion.

Some wept with relief when the internal pain stopped and the trembling eased. Some panicked the moment they felt the unstable borrowed pressure collapse out of them. Some accused the healers of theft before realizing, slowly and terribly, that what was vanishing had never been truly theirs to begin with.

The cure had healed them.

But healing was not comfortable for everyone.

Not when it forced them to feel the difference between true power and purchased momentum.

The facilities themselves were in near uproar. Half ecstatic, half struggling to contain the shock.

Dawnbinder understood the danger immediately.

He turned to the guard.

"Control the area," he said. "No one leaves the treatment quarter without authorization. Tell them this is still an observational phase and that movement must be limited until stability is confirmed."

The guard bowed lower.

"Yes, my lord."

Dawnbinder continued.

"Do not lie more than necessary. But do not allow news of the cure to spread freely yet. Not until everything has been stabilized."

What they needed now was controlled truth.

Enough honesty to retain legitimacy with those cured.

Enough containment to deny the Exchange a clean target too early.

The guard left at once.

Dawnbinder then looked back at Lucien and the others.

"We act now," he said. "The moment rumors break past my control, every hostile node near Aurion will either entrench or flee. We need the region quieter than truth can travel."

Lucien nodded.

That was right.

The settlement network had to be cut before the Exchange learned that the cure has finally appeared in the West.

Timing was now part of the weapon.

They would not announce the cure first and then fight the response.

They would remove the nearest claws first and let the news break only after the enemy’s local hand had already been severed.

Dawnbinder then handed each assigned people one crystal droplet of his authority.

Up close, the droplets were even stranger. They did not merely shine. They seemed to contain compressed direction like paths folded into crystal memory.

"With this," Dawnbinder said, "you may enter the hidden routes without me. Follow the flow when the drop responds. Do not force the path. If you walk against its logic, it will refuse you."

He tapped the route-lines on the map again, imprinting the first sequence into each droplet.

The ancient beasts accepted them with varying levels of curiosity.

Noctryn examined his with the suspicious air of something old enough to distrust any object that seemed too useful.

Xianru accepted hers with a quiet nod.

Astraea merely said, "Convenient."

Dawnbinder did not accompany them.

If Aurion’s ruler vanished at the same moment the cure began causing unrest in his clinics, suspicion would concentrate immediately.

He had to remain behind, stabilize the city, shape the first official narrative, contain information leaks, and make sure the affected population saw governance, not panic.

He would release just enough truth to justify temporary restrictions, just enough care to keep faith intact, and just enough uncertainty to delay the Exchange’s confidence in what had happened.

In other words—

He would make Aurion look occupied, concerned, and cautious.

That would buy them time.

And time, in a campaign like this, was worth more than pride. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

By the end of the meeting, everyone in the hall understood the shape of what came next.

The cure existed.

The roads existed.

The targets were marked.

And the first strike would not be announced.

It would simply begin.