Lord: Sequence Master

The skeletal giant crossed tens of thousands of miles with a single step, and in mere moments, it was already closing in on the floating mountain. Wherever it passed, the raging hurricanes did not harm it in the slightest. Instead, the hurricanes merged into its massive frame, further strengthening it.

Rosen was beginning to feel uneasy. He wasn't sure if the Mysterious Study Room could hold up against this skeletal giant. His initial curiosity about the giant's presence was quickly replaced by an instinct for self-preservation. He had no intention of staying and risking his life.

Even through the window of the Mysterious Study Room, he could sense the skeletal giant locking onto him in return. This was the first time Rosen had encountered a creature capable of detecting his presence while he was hiding inside the Mysterious Study Room. The level of danger the giant posed was clear, and Rosen decided it was time to leave.

However, before fleeing, he wanted to verify one last thing—what exactly had drawn the skeletal giant to him?

Rosen activated Data Transmission, first sending away the Ancient God's Holy Bell and then the sealed "plant-like" true god. If one of these two was the cause of the giant's pursuit, he would need to exercise extreme caution when handling them in the future.

Yet even after both items were sent away, the skeletal giant did not stop.

This time, Rosen left behind a divine avatar and teleported his true body to Paradise Island using Data Transmission.

The moment Rosen left, the skeletal giant abruptly halted, as though it had lost its target. It released a silent roar of fury, one that seemed to echo endlessly across the chaotic winds. This made Rosen suspect that the real reason behind the giant's pursuit might be his Ancient God Bloodline or his connection to the Ancient God Sequence.

To further test his theory, Rosen systematically transmitted all the treasures on his person back to the Mysterious Study Room.

The moment the Ancient God Ritual Tool was sent away, the skeletal giant began moving again.

Realizing this, Rosen teleported his true body back to the Mysterious Study Room.

Now he was certain—the skeletal giant was drawn to the Ancient God Ritual Tool.

Ever since obtaining the Ancient God Ritual Tool, the artifact had provided Rosen with three key benefits:

Increasing his spiritual strength by nine points.Stabilizing and protecting the destiny of his civilization.Gradually awakening his dormant Ancient God Bloodline.

However, aside from these, the ritual tool had shown no other abilities over the years. Rosen was convinced it had more untapped potential. After all, it was a ritual tool—a sacred artifact meant for conducting rituals.

Yet to this day, it hadn't revealed any powers related to its ritualistic purpose.

With the Ancient God Ritual Tool now hidden, the skeletal giant finally collapsed in defeat, its massive form breaking apart into countless fragments.

Rosen seized the opportunity. Using the God-Hunting Magic Eye, he locked onto several pieces of white bone tens of thousands of miles away. Activating the Void Eye, he created a small wormhole to retrieve the bones, then used the magic eye's abilities to seal them away.

This act, however, caused the previously subdued hurricanes to rage wildly once more. At the last moment, a small wisp of the hurricane seemed to attempt to blow through the wormhole and into the Mysterious Study Room.

Rosen hesitated but decided not to close the wormhole immediately. Instead, he extended the Main God Computer's network cable through the wormhole.

The cable intercepted the wisp of the hurricane, and the Main God Computer managed to absorb it. However, this minor interaction was enough to damage the indestructible network cable, wearing away nearly a centimeter of its length.

Though the process was risky, the gains were undeniable.

The Main God Computer quickly analyzed the absorbed wisp, revealing a startling truth: the so-called hurricanes weren't actually wind.

Instead, they were the chaotic, fragmented spiritual consciousness of a Great True God who wasn't fully dead. Somewhere in the vast expanse of the Floating Mountain Region, an immensely powerful True God still lingered, its mind shattered and scattered across the area.

The white bones Rosen had retrieved, however, turned out to be nothing more than the remains of demigods. Their only unique trait was their uncanny freshness.

"A living Great True God? Just what kind of True God is here?"

"And judging by the number of demigod remains… could it be that millions of demigods have died here?"

"Then there's the rescue effort. The True Gods who were supposedly sent to save the stranded demigods couldn't even locate them in the floating mountains. Is this because the region operates on multiple overlapping spatial dimensions? Or is it due to the Great True God's spiritual interference? Or worse… is the World Government lying, and they never sent any True Gods to begin with?"

Rosen was filled with doubts, but he resolved to uncover the truth.

Taking a segment of the white bone, he began analyzing its genetic structure using the World Gene Library. If he could determine its species, it might offer some clues about the events that had transpired.

Additionally, the freshness of the bones suggested they might contain traces of extraordinary bloodlines. If those bloodlines held ancestral memories, Rosen might even uncover fragments of the past.

After a thorough analysis, Rosen finally confirmed the origin of the demigods:

They were all members of the Ancient God Race.

The Ancient God Bloodline within these bones was thin—far thinner than the Ancient God Bloodline Rosen possessed. This further highlighted just how remarkable the Ancient God Ritual Tool was for awakening his bloodline to its current level.

At first, Rosen didn't pay much attention to these bones with diluted Ancient God Bloodlines. However, it didn't take long for him to realize their value.

The World Gene Library contained the genetic blueprints of all known life forms, but having blueprints didn't mean he could manufacture any extraordinary bloodline he desired. Beyond the technology, critical materials were required.

The Ancient God Bloodline, even in its diluted form, couldn't simply be fabricated—not without the resources of the Ancient God civilization at its peak. Many of the materials required to mass-produce such bloodlines had gone extinct in the current era.

Creating something from nothing, especially something of this level, was akin to scaling an impossible mountain.

That said, when it came to extraordinary bloodlines, the hardest part was going from zero to one.

Because the bones retained some vitality, Rosen theorized he could potentially use them to create diluted Ancient God Bloodline "seeds." Even such diluted bloodlines could easily nurture a demigod at Sequence 3. Under his command, this could be the strongest Sequence 3 combat unit he would have for a very long time.

Although Rosen had the ability to modify the genetic blueprints in his unit buildings, these modified units could only produce extraordinary beings up to Sequence 4. From Sequence 3 onward, factors such as soul quality, spiritual origin, and rule authority became significantly more important than genetic blueprints.

Even if Rosen used Soul Gems to enhance the unit buildings—thereby solving the issues of soul creation and spiritual origin—he would still need extraordinary materials imbued with rule authority to produce Sequence 3 units. Without all these conditions met, mass production was impossible.

The bones he had just collected were a game-changer. Not only did they contain the "seeds" of diluted Ancient God Bloodlines, but they also retained remnants of the rule authority from when their owners were alive. Together, these fully met the requirements for producing Sequence 3 units.

Unfortunately, the bones he had on hand were limited in quantity and wouldn't suffice for large-scale production. If he wanted to create more, he would need to collect additional bones.

The problem was that retrieving more bones would likely damage the Main God Computer's network cable. The one-centimeter of wear and tear it had sustained earlier was already concerning, and Rosen had no idea how much divinity it would cost to repair.

As he hesitated, the Main God Computer delivered some good news.

While the cable had sustained damage, it had also absorbed a trace of thought-storm—a fragment of the Great True God's chaotic spiritual consciousness. By anchoring the captured thought-storm at the cable's interface, the computer could temporarily deceive the surrounding thought-storms in the Floating Mountain Region, rendering Rosen's activities harder to detect.

The key was to avoid getting greedy. As long as he didn't try to harvest large quantities of bones in one go and frequently changed locations, the risk of being caught would remain low.

Carefully following this advice, Rosen opened small Void Eye wormholes one by one.

Each time, he would "snap a photo" with the God-Hunting Magic Eye to seal a few bones. When the thought-storms began to surge toward the wormhole, Rosen would use the network cable's interface—now wrapped in the captured thought-storm fragment—to deceive the incoming spiritual consciousness, tricking it into dispersing before the wormhole collapsed.

In just half an hour, Rosen managed to collect nearly 2,000 fresh bones.

However, the thought-storm fragment captured earlier had been almost completely consumed by this point. With each use, part of the thought-storm fragment was reclaimed by the external thought-storms.

Rosen briefly considered sacrificing part of the network cable to gather more bones but abandoned the idea after calculating the cost of repairing the cable.

Instead, he sent a portion of the bones to Paradise Pharmaceuticals and another portion to a biological research lab in the Ancient God True Realm. The rest he stored away, choosing to let specialists handle the next steps.

Now, all he had to do was wait. Some things were best left to experts.

For the next few years, Rosen stayed inside the Time Domain.

Although the stranded demigods had been dragged into this situation because of him, they had no idea of the truth.

From their perspective, Rosen had saved them at the critical moment of life and death. Their survival now hinged on the Time Domain's ability to endure for the next century.

As a result, all the demigods were exceptionally polite and friendly toward Rosen. Each of them acted like a model citizen in his presence.

At first, Rosen had debated whether to interact with them as his true self or under the guise of his alias, Richard Phoenix. Ultimately, he chose to reveal his true identity.

He had already decided to abandon his holdings in the Chaos Sea, so there was no point in continuing to hide.

The reasoning was simple: apart from Chaos City, the Chaos Sea severely lacked extraordinary resources.

If not for this scarcity, the board members of the three major factions in the Chaos Sea wouldn't have remained stuck at Sequence 3 for so long.

With his wealth continuing to grow, the value of the three major factions in the Chaos Sea to Rosen was steadily diminishing.

Moreover, as he had secretly taken control of the three factions, he began to notice in recent years that the World Government was starting to pay attention to the Chaos Sea.

If he continued to remain hidden, the truth of his identity as Richard would eventually be exposed.

While the World Government could likely be reasoned with, Chaos City would almost certainly not tolerate his ongoing control of the Chaos Sea.

Particularly if the identity of "Richard" was linked to the large-scale theft of chaos currency from Chaos City, many factions there would stop at nothing to take revenge on him.

Thus, withdrawing before the situation escalated was the best option.

Of course, he wasn't going to leave empty-handed. He planned to take the core assets of the three major factions with him:

The doctors and medical equipment of Paradise Pharmaceuticals.

The mechanical technology and production equipment of Titan Heavy Industries.

The farmers of the Glory Foundation.

Once these core assets were relocated to the Ancient God True Realm, rebuilding even stronger versions of the three companies would not be difficult.

However, the Chaos Sea base itself would only last another century, so Rosen needed to consider where his new base of operations should be located.

He had little desire to remain in the human world. The World Government was too powerful, and places like the Chaos Sea, where its influence was limited, were exceedingly rare.

Rather than hiding from the gods' overt and covert machinations in the human world, it was better to leave temporarily and develop for a few centuries in foreign lands.

Furthermore, many activities that would be frowned upon or outright banned in the human world could be conducted freely in the territory of other races.

After careful consideration, Rosen set his sights on the Dragon Realm.

Through his investigations, Rosen had come to realize that while the Ancient God Civilization had fallen, not all of the Ancient God Sequence's powerhouses had perished.

The Abyssal World, for instance, was highly likely to have been transformed by one of the Ancient God Sequence's powerhouses.

Similarly, realms like Paradise, the Dragon Realm, Hell, the Undead Realm, and the Heavenly Realm—all of these long-standing subsidiary worlds of the Main World—could very well be related to the Ancient God Sequence, potentially created as internal worlds within the bodies of Ancient God Sequence beings.

Among all these realms, the Dragon Realm was perhaps the weakest.

The dragons faced severe reproductive challenges. The stronger an individual dragon was, the lower the chances of producing pure-blood offspring.

In their heyday, this flaw was masked by the immense power of the dragon race's top-tier fighters.

However, once these top-tier dragons fell in battle, the race was left without successors.

If not for their ability to easily produce dragonborn offspring with other species, the dragons might not have even been able to hold onto the Dragon Realm.

Currently, excluding the Holy Light Dragons of the Dragon Continent, the Dragon Realm had only two true gods left.

The dragon race was now only marginally stronger than the Beastfolk.

Another critical reason for choosing the Dragon Realm was Rosen's extensive knowledge of it, which would make it easier for him to search for Ancient God relics.

To operate effectively in the Dragon Realm, the best approach was to adopt the identity of a pure-blood dragon.

With his Ancient God Body, Rosen could flawlessly disguise himself as a pure-blood dragon on a genetic level.

However, at the spiritual level, his disguise was far from seamless.

Thus, his next step was to enhance his Role-Playing Skill, focusing on spiritual concealment.

More than a decade passed.

One day, the Magic Eye Intelligent Lifeform brought Rosen good news: a perfect material for enhancing his Role-Playing Skill had been found after years of searching.

It was the Psychic Broodmother, a rare variant of the Broodmother Zerg.

The Zerg race had once been a dominant civilization, peaking as a Five-Cataclysm Civilization.

During the Sixth Cataclysm, the Zerg overlord—also the leader of the nine Zerg True Gods—attempted to use the catastrophe's power to ascend to the level of a Great True God.

The details of their failure were unclear, but it was known that all nine True Gods perished.

The Zerg, being a highly hierarchical race, were doomed by their loss. The Zerg True God Broodmothers self-destructed, wiping out their entire race.

Only a handful of Zerg, tainted by the Abyss, managed to survive.

However, it was said that these Abyssal Zerg were confined to a secret Abyssal Plane.

Historians in Historical Realms speculated that these Abyssal Zerg were bred as weapons of war.

Unless the Abyss launched a full-scale war against the outside world, the Zerg were unlikely to reappear.

But a few months ago, a Zerg-related Spiritual Domain appeared on the Death Continent, a territory occupied by the Undead Race.

Within that Spiritual Domain, traces of a Psychic Broodmother were discovered.

The Undead Race has three True Gods. Using the Pantheon Network for data transmission to appear directly in front of one would be suicidal.

However, the Undead Race also has a number of Fate-Blessed Individuals, who can link to the Main God Network. Through this network, Rosen's true body quickly appeared beside a Sequence 5 Fate-Blessed Lich.

Thanks to the Wolf Totem's concealment effects, the Sequence 5 Lich hadn't even noticed that someone had appeared next to him.

Rosen acted instantly. He drew his gun—Dragon King's Fury—equipped with the futuristic silencer and pressed it against the Lich's temple.

The trigger was pulled, firing not a physical bullet, but a spiritual-qi bullet formed by his psychic energy.

Using the special skill Mind Bullet, he injected his spiritual awareness into the bullet, directly attacking the Lich's mental sea and its spiritual awareness.

The Hunting God divine nature within the bullet severely injured the Lich's spiritual core, and through Mental Domination, Rosen enslaved the Lich's spiritual essence entirely.

With just one shot, the Sequence 5 Lich became Rosen's puppet.

Of course, leaving the Lich in this damaged state was not ideal. Rosen took out a variety of rare potions to help the Lich recover.

Damage to the spiritual essence came in different degrees. Complete obliteration would be a severe injury, but if the core had only been fragmented, then re-fusing the broken pieces would be sufficient to heal lighter damage.

Rosen anchored the Mysterious Study Room to the Lich and ordered him to ride his Bone Dragon toward the Spiritual Domain.

Passing through one Undead city after another along the way, they encountered no obstacles and soon arrived at a ruined city on the Desolate Plains.

The Desolate Plains were barren, devoid of any extraordinary resources. Other than dirt, rocks, and weeds, there was nothing.

Even the soil lacked any extraordinary materials, making the region uninhabitable even for the Undead.

The ruined city had originally been used to imprison humans. However, after a World Government raid rescued all the captives, the city was abandoned, and the Desolate Plains became devoid of activity.

This time, a group of fleeing Undead, while hiding in the ruined city, unexpectedly discovered the emergence of a Spiritual Domain.

The news was sold, drawing the interest of some Undead transcendents.

Since the Spiritual Domain was only at Sequence 4, no demigods had appeared in the ruined city so far.

The domain remained unmanaged and open.

Rosen, through his Lich puppet, easily obtained access to the domain after waiting two days.

Passing through the swirling spatial vortex marking the domain's entrance, he found himself in the domain's version of the Desolate Plains.

Upon arrival, Rosen landed on a thick carpet of Zerg mycelium and slime.

It was immediately clear that the extraordinary resources of the Desolate Plains had been completely drained by the Zerg in ancient times.

Under normal circumstances, the Zerg wouldn't engage in such practices.

Depleting an area entirely would provoke the Main World's hostility, causing other races to unite and wipe out the Zerg.

Though the Zerg had the capability to strip a region bare, they rarely went to such extremes.

Furthermore, the Death Continent, where the Desolate Plains were located, was far from what had once been Zerg territory.

This indicated that the Psychic Broodmother in question was likely a lone entity that had infiltrated deep into enemy territory.

Through the window of the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen observed his surroundings, mulling over the intelligence he had gathered over the past few days.

The Spiritual Domain was explored monthly by Undead transcendents and had already been searched several times.

Yet, no one had discovered what had eradicated the Psychic Broodmother in this domain.

What was known was that at the end of each month, all Zerg in the domain would inevitably perish.

Normally, a domain would feature at least two factions:

The faction that had been wiped out.

The faction responsible for their destruction.

Only in rare cases would there be just one faction, and even rarer were domains where the cause of the eradication couldn't be identified.

Rosen directed the Lich to collect samples of the mycelium and send them to the Ancient God True Realm for analysis.

Next, he took out two paintings and activated them.

From the first painting emerged countless bats that soared into the sky.From the second painting swarmed hordes of rats, which burrowed into the ground beneath the mycelium.

The bats and rats were not tasked with searching for the Psychic Broodmother but rather with locating all other life forms in the domain.

Almost all Zerg were physical, biological entities.

The Zerg were the quintessential flesh-and-blood lifeforms.

However, the Psychic Broodmother was different.

It was a unique spiritual lifeform born from the mutated soul of a deceased flesh-and-blood Broodmother.

This entity could hide within the soul of any other living being, silently consuming and parasitizing their spiritual core.

Thus, the only way to capture the Psychic Broodmother was to kill every living thing in the domain, leaving it no place to hide and forcing it to reveal itself.

(End of Chapter)