Lord: Sequence Master

Rosen quickly refined the Transformation Badge, but he was still considering what extraordinary bloodline to fuse with his Self-Portrait Avatar. First, it needed to have high compatibility with the Feathered Serpent God bloodline. Second, it would be best if the new bloodline could complement it. Only then would the fusion of the two create a brand-new bloodline with greater potential, thereby driving the avatar's growth.

After carefully selecting from the World Gene Library for a long time, Rosen finally settled on the Phoenix bloodline. With the World Gene Library, he could synthesize an artificial Phoenix bloodline in a manner similar to how he created Shadow Fiends. However, artificially created bloodlines lacked inheritances.

The Feathered Serpent God bloodline obtained by his Self-Portrait Avatar already had some missing aspects in its inheritance. Therefore, the Phoenix bloodline he intended to use for fusion must be an original, complete one, carrying a full lineage.

However, even the weakest Phoenix could grow to Sequence 2, with even better potential than the Feathered Serpent God. Combined with its rarity and unique abilities, obtaining a complete Phoenix bloodline would not be easy. Even offering a high bounty on the Main God Network might not guarantee success.

Rosen decided to temporarily set this matter aside while putting out an additional bounty for any Phoenix leads. If he couldn't purchase one, he'd hunt one himself if necessary.

Turning his attention to the Glory Insignia, Rosen moved its spatial storage into his heart. He then gathered the scattered noble extraordinary essence within his body, directing it to envelop the insignia. This initiated the process of absorbing the insignia as a material to transform and enhance his Glory Imprint.

As the Glory Insignia merged with the Glory Imprint, the ubiquitous Law of Glory within the Glory Empire was subtly drawn toward him. Unsurprisingly, Rosen would soon be able to grasp the Authority of Glory, a privilege countless Domain Lords dreamed of obtaining.

The Glory Authority wasn't just about personal honor and achievements; it also encompassed societal status and fame. Mastering it would directly enhance the power of the Noble Sequence.

After several days of transformation, the Glory Imprint successfully completed its evolution.

[Glory Imprint LV7 (1/700)]

[Attribute: Engraves a noble bloodline crest onto spiritual paintings, thereby applying a crest lock to the painting. This increases compatibility between the painting and spiritual domains, and enhances the attributes of portrait paintings by at least 100%.]

[Authority Traits: Crest Engraving contains the power of the Sealing Authority.]

[Authority Traits: Crest Engraving contains the power of the Protection Authority.]

[Authority Traits: Glory Imprint contains the power of the Glory Authority.]

The successful transformation of the Glory Imprint granted Rosen mastery over three distinct rules of authority. However, only the Glory Authority was fully mastered. The Sealing Authority and Protection Authority would only function when paired with the Glory Imprint and spiritual paintings. Full mastery of these two authorities was just a matter of time.

Aside from the traits, the Glory Imprint's attributes had undergone a qualitative leap. Originally, it could enhance portrait paintings by up to 60%; now, the minimum enhancement was 100%, with no upper limit.

The removal of the upper limit stemmed from the Glory Authority, which could bestow a spiritual painting with the Glory Authority. With this authority, the more people who knew about the painting and the greater its fame, the stronger the painting's power would become.

Transforming intangible glory into tangible strength was the greatest advantage of the Glory Authority.

Rosen's next goal was to transition from an obscure, nameless painter to a world-renowned artist, known throughout the human world. His goal was to make his paintings increasingly valuable, elevate them to the status of coveted art pieces, and have them celebrated by the masses.

From this moment onward, Rosen was officially embarking on the road to fame as a painter.

To become a world-famous artist, the simplest approach was a combination of branding and marketing. Of course, he needed to have the skill to back it up, the output capacity to produce sufficient works, and a high cost-performance ratio. Essentially, it was about spending money to build a reputation.

As for the idea of producing subpar works at inflated prices after gaining fame? That was a surefire way to ruin one's reputation overnight.

The human world had no shortage of painters, and the competition was fierce.

This was also why Rosen only now considered becoming a famous painter. Most other painters usually waited until they were Sequence 3 to take this step, and even then, their need for fame was far less urgent than his. After all, not every Sequence 3 painter could grasp the Authority of Glory.

Rosen used the Spirit Web to contact various marketing agencies across empires, tasking them with crafting a tailored strategy for his rise to fame. While these agencies worked out his path to prominence, Rosen began furiously creating spiritual paintings.

All of his spiritual paintings were portraits, each carrying the crest seal generated by the Glory Imprint.

Although Rosen could speed up his painting process 150 times, even such accelerated production was insufficient to meet the demand of nations across the human world. Solely relying on hand-drawn originals would never be enough to achieve global fame. For a painter to truly establish themselves, high-quality printed reproductions were essential.

The goal was for printed works to become coveted items among low-level transcendents and for hand-drawn originals to be sought after by nobles across various nations. Only by achieving this could one truly become a renowned painter.

Initially, Rosen planned to purchase a high-level extraordinary artifact capable of printing artwork. But at that moment, the Main God Computer offered him a new option. The computer's built-in printer, which had been immensely helpful during the early stages of creating virtual spiritual realms, resurfaced in his plans.

Over time, the printer hadn't seen much development and had been forgotten in a corner. According to the Main God Computer's suggestion, both the printer and the camera it housed could be fused with abilities or extraordinary artifacts to enhance one another.

If Rosen fused the printer with his Nen abilities, he could develop a specialized ability for printing spiritual paintings. The resulting prints would possess extraordinary properties—far more valuable than commissioning a high-level extraordinary artifact specifically for printing.

Rosen unplugged the printer, dismantled it, and used his spiritual nen energy to envelop it. As his energy seeped into the printer, its solid form began to dissolve and gradually fused with the nen. Once fully integrated, he used a combination of materialization-based and specialized nen techniques to manifest the printer anew.

With just a thought, Rosen summoned a size-adjustable spiritual printer, now fully materialized through nen.

His sixth Nen ability wasn't limited to printing two-dimensional artwork—it could also integrate materials to produce three-dimensional recreations of everything depicted in a painting.

Rosen didn't rush to print immediately. Instead, he took out a blank sheet of paper and began painting a portrait.

A few days later, he completed a Sequence 4-level spiritual painting. It depicted a rabbit-eared girl from the Chef Sequence at Sequence 4, diligently cooking in a kitchen. To ensure the quality of the piece, Rosen had purchased extraordinary essence from the Chef Sequence at great cost and infused it into the painting.

With a simple activation, the painting came to life. From the canvas stepped a rabbit-eared girl at Sequence 4, her ears twitching as she obediently looked up at Rosen.

Satisfied, Rosen sent the painting into the Universal Printer.

He fed prepared paper and special inks into the printer. Soon, lifelike reproductions of the rabbit-eared girl were rolling out. Astonishingly, even though they were merely printed copies, they retained the extraordinary power of the Painter Sequence.

Rosen picked up one of the prints and examined it. Its quality had reached Sequence 7.

This meant that as long as he had enough paper, ink, and spiritual nen energy, Rosen could mass-produce Sequence 7-level printed paintings.

However, Sequence 7 was too high a level for widespread printing, and the process wasn't particularly fast. Rosen immediately began modifying the Universal Printer ability, integrating the powers of Spiritual Embedding, Psychic Canvas, Drawing Technique, Glory Imprint, and Time Sketch—five Painter Sequence skills. This significantly enhanced and expanded the printer's capabilities.

Although its maximum output level didn't increase, the printed artwork became even more lifelike, and the printing speed was boosted by 75 times.

Additionally, the Universal Printer gained a new function: mass printing.

Rosen tested the mass-printing feature and found that it could only produce Sequence 9-quality spiritual paintings. However, the efficiency was staggering—it was 10,000 times faster than the regular printing mode.

While printing a Sequence 7 spiritual painting required one minute, the mass-printing mode could churn out 10,000 Sequence 9 spiritual paintings in the same amount of time.

This meant that, given sufficient materials, Rosen could print 1.44 million Sequence 9 spiritual paintings in a single day. Over the course of a year, he could theoretically produce 5.256 billion prints.

The sheer numbers stunned even Rosen. The built-in printer from the Main God Computer, combined with Nen abilities, is terrifyingly powerful!

After printing for just half an hour, Rosen realized that theory and reality diverged in one critical aspect: his spiritual nen energy couldn't sustain such long-term production.

Even with techniques like Gluttony to accelerate nen recovery, he calculated that—without eating, drinking, or resting—he could only produce around one billion Sequence 9 spiritual paintings in a year.

Not bad, but still ridiculous, he thought. Flooding the market with that many spiritual paintings would surely attract the attention of researchers eager to slice him up for study.

Rosen began experimenting with ways to further lower the quality of his printed paintings. Even though they were reproductions, the paper and ink used were of Sequence 9 quality. Transcendents who could afford such high-quality materials would rather buy originals, while ordinary people couldn't afford even these low-quality reproductions.

He realized that to achieve his goal, the quality of the prints needed to be further downgraded, and production costs had to drop to a level where the average person could afford them. If he could accomplish this, no matter how many prints he released into circulation, as long as their quality didn't reach the extraordinary Sequence 9 level, he could plausibly claim that the volume came from a high-quality, reproduction-focused extraordinary artifact.

Though it would still make people envious, it wouldn't be enough to get him dragged into a lab for dissection.

Most importantly, if the volume of prints reached enough households, Rosen would undoubtedly become the most famous painter in the human world within a short time. This fame would provide tremendous feedback. At that point, even if he painted something as simple as A Chicken Pecking Grain, it could become a high-level spiritual painting.

The Artist Sequence was unique—its reliance on fame only grew as one advanced through its ranks.

If a Sequence 3 painter remained unknown, producing a Sequence 3-level spiritual painting might cost 10,000 in resources. But if their fame was sufficient, the same painting could cost as little as 1.

This was similar to how mundane painters operated. An unknown painter's masterpiece might be worthless, while the scribbles of a world-renowned artist could be hailed as a masterpiece.

Extraordinary painters, however, had an even more magical twist. In an extraordinary world of faith and spirituality, a painting of A Chicken Pecking Grain could transform into A Chicken Pecking Divinity.

This was why high-level painters were so eager to host exhibitions worldwide, inviting transcendents and ordinary people alike to view their works for free. It was all about accumulating fame and gathering the unique faith derived from it.

Enhancing the printing capabilities of the Universal Printer was challenging, but downgrading its output quality was surprisingly simple.

Rosen calculated that he could produce about 10 billion low-quality Sequence 9 spiritual paintings per year. These "defective" prints retained some of the properties of spiritual paintings but would lose their spiritual energy within a year.

After much deliberation, Rosen decided to mass-produce and sell two specific spiritual paintings.

The first was Rabbit-Eared Chef, and the second was The Farmer's Garden.

The Farmer's Garden carried faint spatial and life attributes, allowing it to grow a small quantity of vegetables containing trace amounts of spiritual energy.

Rabbit-Eared Chef, on the other hand, could manifest a Sequence 9 chef-level rabbit-eared girl capable of cooking.

With spiritual vegetables and an extraordinary chef in hand, even an ordinary family could prepare meals imbued with spirituality. These meals would not only enhance their happiness but also improve their health and potentially increase the chances of awakening spiritual potential.

Rosen firmly believed that any family with the means would spare no expense to purchase these two paintings. After all, everyone had to eat, everyone wanted to enjoy good food, and everyone dreamed of becoming a transcendent.

However, after carefully calculating the costs, Rosen realized that even low-quality prints might still be out of reach for ordinary households. Most families rarely handled gold coins, let alone the spiritual crystals required to purchase the materials for printing spiritual paintings.

If he wanted his paintings to be affordable for the average family, he would lose roughly 70% on each sale.

Printing an even lower-quality version wasn't viable either, as such prints would lack any extraordinary properties. Without tangible benefits, ordinary people would have no reason to buy them. For most, art was worthless compared to a full stomach.

Rosen sighed. It became clear why other painters primarily focused on exhibitions and only sold limited prints to low-level transcendents. The world was vast, and no matter how deep one's pockets were, they couldn't sustain losses simply for publicity.

Unless there was a way to recoup those losses through other means.

The only truly valuable resource he could extract from ordinary people was faith.

Rosen thought of the Seven Deadly Sins. If his prints could absorb the sins from ordinary people, converting them into faith and subsequently into divine crystals, it might offset the 70% loss. However, such a move would undoubtedly cross the line with the World Government.

Using the Seven Deadly Sins to make the lazy diligent or the arrogant humble could indeed be beneficial. But it also involved manipulating emotions and distorting human will—a practice the World Government would never tolerate. While they might turn a blind eye to a kingdom exploiting its own citizens, targeting the World Government's foundational population would undoubtedly result in annihilation.

There really is no such thing as a perfect plan, Rosen thought. If mass-printing spiritual paintings were this straightforward, someone else would've done it long before me.

Rosen reconsidered his approach, realizing he might have been too ambitious. The idea of giving every person in the human world a copy of his printed paintings was, in hindsight, a ridiculously impractical and overly arrogant notion.

If everyone had a copy of my paintings, they wouldn't be worth anything.

What is most valuable is often what is unattainable. World-renowned paintings, if mass-produced to the point of ubiquity, might make the artist famous, but the negative reputation might outweigh the positive. The saying "A favor of rice, a hatred of a sack" wasn't just a joke.

The proper approach, he decided, was to limit the availability to one painting for every hundred or thousand people.

This way, those who managed to purchase a printed painting would feel grateful for their unique acquisition. Those who couldn't would still envy and desire his works, ensuring Rosen's name spread far and wide. Even if he lost 70% on each painting sold, the fame he'd gain would make up for it and more.

Other artists could theoretically do the same, but they didn't have Rosen's Universal Printer, which allowed him to drive costs so low that even ordinary people could afford his work at a fraction of the price. Nor did other painters have access to the mountains of divine crystals from a true god's inheritance to fund such a venture.

Through the Spirit Realm's deep web, Rosen contacted marketing agencies across various nations and shared his vision with them. However, as the agencies began mapping out the logistics, he remembered something else—selling the paintings also incurred marketing costs.

Factoring in those additional expenses, he realized that selling each print would cost him an 80% loss, not just 70%.

And that didn't even account for transport costs—though he could circumvent those by using data transmission to deliver the prints worldwide.

Even with all my advantages, it's this hard. No wonder other artists don't dare attempt anything like this.

In Frostsnow City, Thunder Empire, a new gallery silently appeared overnight—Glory Gallery, specializing in selling spiritual paintings.

At first, passersby paid it no mind.

The spiritual paintings of the Painter Sequence were famously unattainable for ordinary people. Just walking inside to browse would only remind them of what they couldn't afford. If the gallery didn't at least offer some free eggs, most people wouldn't bother setting foot in the place.

But soon enough, the area outside the gallery was packed with people.

The cause? A projected advertisement outside the gallery boldly displayed the prices—mere silver coins.

Buying a spiritual painting for silver coins? Whether or not they actually intended to buy, such a shocking offer had already piqued the curiosity of the city's ordinary residents.

And curiosity was free. Increasing numbers of ordinary folk ventured into the gallery, returning with joyful faces, clutching two spiritual paintings as if they'd just won the lottery.

One painting, Rabbit-Eared Chef, summoned a bunny-eared girl with Sequence 9-level cooking skills, while the other, The Farmer's Garden, produced a small amount of spiritually infused vegetables.

For ordinary people, this was an unimaginable luxury. Now, they could bring it home and enjoy meals imbued with spirituality. And if even one person in the family awakened spiritual abilities—even as a cook or farmer—such a shift would be nothing short of miraculous, transforming the family's fortunes.

Out of Frostsnow City's six million residents, sixty thousand managed to buy the two paintings. Those who succeeded celebrated with their families, while those who missed out were left with bitter regret and self-recrimination.

Before long, the gallery announced good news for those who missed out. The two spiritual paintings, Rabbit-Eared Chef and The Farmer's Garden, were a gift from world-renowned painter Rosen Howard to Frostsnow City—a city he had once called home.

Since the prints could only retain their spiritual properties for one year, the gallery would supply two hundred thousand new prints annually, on a first-come, first-served basis. Each family would be limited to one painting per year. Families that had already purchased in one year could not buy again the next.

For the next year, families who had missed out could only envy their lucky neighbors, who dined on spiritually infused meals every day. Whether or not anyone in these families awakened spiritual abilities, their improved health and strength were benefits that everyone could see. Stories of children awakening spiritual powers and advancing to transcendents began to circulate, further fueling envy.

Rosen Howard's name quickly became a household one in Frostsnow City.

Although the annual distribution of paintings later shifted to one set per thousand people instead of one per hundred, most residents bore no grudge against Rosen. They understood that only a painter with ties to their city would dare lose money just to help their community.

In fact, whenever someone publicly cursed Rosen for not supplying enough paintings, other residents would often band together to teach them a painful lesson in gratitude. It didn't take long for Rosen's reputation in Frostsnow City to grow overwhelmingly positive.

In just a few short years, Rosen Howard had become a beloved figure in Frostsnow City, his name celebrated as both an artist and a benefactor.