Lord: Sequence Master

The bats and rats Rosen had painted were quickly annihilated by the various Zerg creatures within the Spiritual Domain. However, this gave him a rough estimate of the Zerg population within.

Between the Ancient God True Realm and the Spiritual Domain, Rosen opened a direct teleportation vortex.

From Gray Rat Island, an endless tide of low-level gray ratmen and ordinary rats poured forth like a flood.

Since the gray ratmen and rats reproduced in astonishing numbers, Rosen had long sent any surplus to the Dark Continent to be used as food for the dark creatures.

Now, he was doing the same—using bats and rats to feed the Zerg within the domain.

Because this was only a Sequence 4 Spiritual Domain, with the Psychic Broodmother being just a Sequence 4 creature, Rosen's goal was clear: to raise the domain's level to Sequence 3 by feeding it and its Zerg inhabitants without any reservations.

Billions of gray ratmen and hundreds of billions of rats, each no larger than piglets, were devoured endlessly by the Zerg.

In just a few days, the undead transcendents who had entered the Spiritual Domain noticed something unusual: no matter how many Zerg they killed, their numbers never seemed to dwindle.

Before they could realize the growing danger and leave the domain, Rosen tracked each of them down and enslaved them using Mind Control.

From that point onward, no matter what changes occurred within the domain, the undead transcendents outside—still lining up to enter—remained entirely unaware of the truth.

A month passed, and once again, all Zerg within the Spiritual Domain inexplicably perished.

The undead transcendents who had entered were also forcibly ejected back into reality.

The next day, the domain reset and reopened, welcoming a new group of 20 undead transcendents waiting in line.

During the reset period, while Rosen remained hidden in the Mysterious Study Room, he repeated the same process: enslaving the new batch of undead transcendents, all while continuing to feed the Zerg within the domain.

Because the domain's foundational essence grew stronger with each reset rather than weaker, the Zerg within also grew more powerful after every reset.

While Rosen's main body worked inside the domain, his self-portrait avatar stationed outside wasn't idle either.

Although Mind Control could effectively enslave undead transcendents, its limitations were clear: the number of targets he could control was finite, and maintaining the control required a massive consumption of spiritual energy.

To address this, every undead transcendent who exited the domain with the Mind Control effect still active was promptly escorted by the self-portrait avatar to the Void Gallery's Void Divine Prison, freeing up mental capacity for Rosen to control new targets.

Days turned into months, and then into years.

After 24 consecutive feeding cycles over two years, the domain finally began its transformation from Sequence 4 to Sequence 3.

Of course, those two years hadn't been entirely smooth sailing.

The continuous disappearance of undead transcendents had attracted unwanted attention.

In recent cycles, some of the undead transcendents entering the domain were specifically investigating the cause of these disappearances.

By this point, the self-portrait avatar outside no longer had opportunities to capture the mind-controlled undead transcendents, as their absence would immediately raise suspicions.

As a result, starting three months ago, Rosen had changed tactics: any undead transcendent entering the domain was swiftly eliminated, leaving no survivors.

In the past three months alone, many undead demigods had begun to camp outside the domain, waiting for an opportunity to act.

While it was difficult to discern specific changes within the Spiritual Domain from the outside, some methods still existed.

Many of the undead demigods had already determined that the domain was ascending in level.

However, none of them suspected someone might be feeding the domain intentionally.

Several demigods had personally stood guard through three full cycles, and during that time, the domain had been entry-only—no one came out.

If no one exited, how could anyone be manipulating events from within?

The concept of a power like the Mysterious Study Room, capable of remaining within the domain through resets, was far beyond the understanding of those demigods waiting outside.

To the undead demigods, the issue likely stemmed from the Psychic Broodmother itself.

Perhaps the domain was naturally nearing an upgrade, or maybe the Psychic Broodmother's unique abilities allowed it to overpower its peers within the same Sequence level.

No matter how powerful the Broodmother was, the undead demigods didn't believe it posed a real threat.

The domain could only accommodate 20 entrants at a time, and 20 demigods working together were confident they could handle a freshly ascended Sequence 3 creature.

As the 20 demigods waited outside, the domain began its final transformation.

The Ancient God True Realm under Rosen's control housed thousands of spiritual domains, many of which had been captured and repurposed. However, this was the first time Rosen had witnessed a domain ascend in rank. His curiosity kept him glued to the changes outside the window, unable to look away.

Rosen had seen spiritual domains reset countless times before. The process was essentially a refresh: resetting creatures and resetting environments.

However, during the ascension process, he observed something entirely different. The entire spiritual domain—every creature, every material—was completely annihilated, dissolving into pure spiritual essence. That essence, in turn, began to stir the World Rules omnipresent in all creation. Among them, Creation Rules were invoked, reshaping the domain into its new form through the power of spiritual essence.

Rosen felt a nearly instinctual urge to open the window and release his spiritual awareness to sense the omnipresent World Rules and Creation Rules.

These were two rules he already wielded, and he knew that by sensing them directly, he could dramatically enhance his mastery over their power.

Yet, just as he reached for the window, the Ancient God Sacrificial Artifact on his body trembled violently, almost shattering his Ancient God Heart in the process.

In that moment of searing pain, Rosen regained his clarity and quickly activated the Main God Computer's network cable, using it to bind himself tightly and restrict his movements.

Moments later, he lost control again, but this time, he was unable to break free of the cable's restraint.

Meanwhile, the Ancient God Sacrificial Artifact continued to quake, sending shockwaves that battered his Ancient God Heart over and over. Fortunately, the Ancient God Core held a vast reserve of Ancient God Blood, which not only mitigated the damage but even tempered and strengthened his heart through this ordeal.

The spiritual domain's transformation lasted a full seven hours. By the sixth hour, Rosen had finally regained complete control over himself.

"This is no ordinary rule or law... this is a fundamental rule," Rosen muttered to himself, still shaken as he gazed out the window at the remnants of the transformation.

From demigods to deities, rules and authorities were their tools. For true gods, laws formed the foundation of their strength. And for Great True Gods, they could create new laws altogether.

Yet above all of these stood the fundamental rules.

Laws were born from the world itself and the phenomena within it, but fundamental rules represented the very fabric of the world.

All fundamental rules originated from the will of the Ancient Gods, for the Ancient Gods were the creators of the world. Their thoughts and intentions superseded all else.

If an Ancient God decided that "death" or "hunting" should not exist, then all laws tied to these concepts—like the Law of Predation or the Law of Death—would collapse entirely.

The Ancient God Blood was so powerful because it could manipulate these fundamental rules. This was why it conferred an almost godlike invincibility to anyone of the same Sequence.

Rosen had thought that what lay outside the window were merely laws or rules, but in reality, he had encountered the remnants of a fundamental rule.

With his current level of spiritual strength, attempting to directly interact with fundamental rules without the protection of Ancient God Blood was tantamount to suicide.

Both rules and laws possessed a natural quality of domination and assimilation.

For example, the Law of Flame naturally dominated and assimilated lesser flame-related rules.

His World Authority and Creation Authority, ingrained within him, instinctively reached toward the fundamental rule outside, trying to connect.

Had the Ancient God Sacrificial Artifact not jolted him awake, he would have already been assimilated into the fundamental rule, losing himself entirely.

As for why he was no longer affected, it was because the fundamental rule only manifested briefly during the domain's ascension. Once the ascension process began, only faint traces of the fundamental rule lingered, gradually fading with time.

Now, six days later, those traces had completely vanished, leaving behind only the standard rules.

Rosen opened the window and began using his spiritual senses to carefully study the World Rules and Creation Rules still active within the transformed domain.

The rules lay openly within reach, accessible to any demigod who wished to comprehend them.

However, understanding them was one thing—utilizing their power effectively was another.

To illustrate, if rules were akin to iron ore, some might only craft crude iron tools, while others could refine the ore into steel, alloy it with other elements, and build an automobile.

The rules themselves didn't change. What varied was the skill and ingenuity of the user.

If rules formed the framework of skills, then skills in turn became the method to magnify the potential of those rules.

For an entire day, Rosen meditated, analyzing the countless ways the rules had been applied to reshape and recreate the domain.

Finally, the spiritual domain completed its metamorphosis, birthing a Sequence 3 Psychic Broodmother, alongside millions of Zerg creatures ranging from Sequence 9 to Sequence 4.

Due to the domain's renewal and the Broodmother's inexperience in wielding its newly acquired authority, the Broodmother was unable to conceal itself.

Seizing the perfect opportunity to strike, Rosen acted without hesitation.

In an instant, he drew his gun and began charging for a fatal strike.

As various skills were charged and compressed into the bullet, the Miracle Skill Aura Domain's miraculous property, Miracle Halo, began transforming the loaded skills into miniature halos that encased the bullet. Finally, Rosen used the special skill Psychic Bullet to perfectly inject his spiritual consciousness into the bullet.

Since preparing the Fatal Strike had already taken considerable time, Rosen chose not to use the Future Silencer to send the bullet into the future.

Instead, the bullet was fired immediately. Upon leaving the chamber, the spiritual consciousness within the bullet became the "paint," and Rosen used the 5D Painting skill to draw a straight line in the void as it traveled, further accelerating the bullet's speed by 75 times during the "painting process."

The Psychic Broodmother, who had just begun to familiarize herself with her newly acquired authority, was struck by the bullet in an instant—its speed was simply too fast to evade.

At the moment of impact, Rosen unleashed the Divine Critical Strike property of the Holy Lion Cloak.

The heavily armored Tiger Beetle King, which the Psychic Broodmother had parasitized to bolster her defenses, was instantly blasted to bits by the critical damage from the Divine Critical Strike. Immediately after, the God-Hunter Authority inflicted true damage directly upon the Broodmother's spiritual essence.

Yet, despite the devastating strike, the Psychic Broodmother did not die—not even sustaining visible injuries.

Instead, over half of the millions of insectoids in the spiritual domain instantly perished. These insectoids, connected to the Broodmother through her psychic network, absorbed the spiritual-level damage on her behalf.

Realizing that her opponent was far too powerful to resist, the Broodmother instinctively attempted to conceal herself and observe the situation. Through the psychic network, she could instantly transfer her consciousness into the spiritual essence of any insectoid to lay low.

However, in the next moment, the Broodmother froze in shock.

Her main body remained rooted in place, continuing to endure the residual damage from the Divine Critical Strike. While she could still transfer her injuries to her subordinates, she found herself unable to descend into the spiritual essence of the insectoids through the psychic network.

Rosen had anticipated this tactic, so he had Main God Computer preemptively infiltrate the psychic network.

The Main God Computer was unique. Rosen suspected it might possess authority over the Law of Networks.

As long as something was networked, the Main God Computer could infiltrate and seize control. This naturally included the Broodmother's psychic network.

Unable to escape through her psychic network, the Psychic Broodmother had no choice but to attempt to flee as a spiritual entity, soaring toward a nearby insectoid. However, one bullet after another struck down insectoids in rapid succession, reducing them to a growing pile of corpses.

From low-sequence to high-sequence, the insectoids fell one after another. Within mere seconds, every insectoid in the domain had been obliterated, serving as sacrificial pawns to absorb the damage meant for the Broodmother.

Rosen then fired the final bullet, its surface now wrapped in the World Domain.

All accumulated damage erupted the moment the bullet struck the Psychic Broodmother, yet the World Domain contained the explosion within a confined area, preventing the damage from spreading.

With no subordinates left to absorb the impact, the Broodmother's divine essence suffered direct true damage, and she was instantly slain by the final shot.

Under the amplification of the God-Hunter Authority, the Scavenger Space suddenly manifested three glowing spheres.

Rosen eagerly crushed the first sphere, revealing extraordinary essence—precisely what he had most desired from the hunt. It hadn't transformed into an extraordinary artifact, which was the best possible outcome.

The second sphere contained a Skill Crystal, a Sequence 3 ability named Psychic Network.

The third sphere contained a black egg, which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a Broodmother Egg.

However, this egg clearly wasn't the offspring of the Psychic Broodmother. Instead, it radiated an incredibly unique death energy. Considering the Broodmother's appearance on the Continent of Death, it seemed highly likely that her objective had been to acquire this special Broodmother Egg.

With all life in the spiritual domain exterminated, the domain should have begun its reset process at this point.

However, Rosen wasn't about to let the twenty demigods waiting outside the spiritual domain go unpunished.

He immediately unleashed the World Domain, encapsulating the entire spiritual domain and temporarily suppressing its reset process using his World Authority.

Moments later, a spatial vortex appeared within the domain, and from it emerged twenty heavily armed demigods of the Death Race.

The first to step through was an Undead Knight, mounted atop an undead warhorse, wielding a shield in one hand and a gun in the other. The moment he sensed danger, he raised his shield in an attempt to block, while simultaneously deploying his domain to suppress any incoming attacks.

However, Rosen's bullet was simply too fast, capable of teleporting across the void mid-flight.

Furthermore, the bullet was enveloped in a microdomain, where only the essence of his power remained after compression. The bullet effortlessly pierced through the Undead Knight's domain, teleporting directly to the side of his head and detonating with Divine Critical Strike, obliterating his skull.

In rapid succession, eight more demigods fell to Rosen's bullets the moment they stepped through the vortex, each killed in an instant.

The ninth, however, managed to survive the first shot.

This was a Skeleton Lord, who possessed the ability to transfer damage to his massive army of skeletons.

Yet as he sensed half his skeleton army perish in an instant, the Skeleton Lord recoiled in fear, retreating so abruptly that he crashed into the demigod stepping in behind him.

In the next moment, both were engulfed by Rosen's World Domain, where they were incinerated into ashes by the volcanic flames of a Blazing Dragon's Breath.

Though Rosen's assault continued to dominate, by the time he reached the sixteenth demigod, he realized that stealth and sniper tactics could no longer suffice for the remaining targets.

Because the opponent was a Lich, even though the God-Hunter Authority could directly harm the divine essence, Sequence 3 Liches usually stored their Phylacteries, which housed their divine essence, in the divine kingdoms of higher gods. Killing a Sequence 3 Lich would inevitably alert a deity.

Rosen decided not to be greedy. He immediately used data transmission to leave the Continent of Death.

The best environment for evolving the Impersonation Skill was undoubtedly the Spirit Realm.

After arriving on the Thunder Continent, Rosen entered the Spirit Realm through one of its gateways. This particular section of the Spirit Realm was dotted with many fragments of shattered divine kingdoms, which attracted numerous Spirit Realm creatures from the depths.

Rosen selected one of these fragments and deployed his Divine Domain, preparing to lure his prey.

In his domain, he piled up a mountain of divine crystals, an irresistible delicacy for any Spirit Realm creature at the demigod level. As expected, an increasing number of Spirit Realm creatures began converging on the desolate and lifeless fragment of the divine kingdom.

Rosen unleashed all his extraordinary troops, beginning an intense hunt to slaughter every Spirit Realm creature that approached.

While Rosen led his troops in a frenzy of hunting, his self-portrait clone held the Psychic Broodmother's extraordinary essence and began gradually fusing it into the body painting that represented the Impersonation Skill. This was intended to push the skill toward Level 7 evolution.

However, the fusion process was fraught with difficulty.

Since Rosen had indirectly acquired the Impersonation Skill through his body-painting technique rather than as a proper Actor, the process was especially unstable. Even for legitimate Actors, completing this level of upgrade was a daunting challenge—let alone for someone like Rosen, who was essentially an amateur in this field.

Every failed fusion resulted in a lethal backlash.

Fortunately, his Divine Avatar possessed Time Authority and Correction Authority. Whenever he suffered a backlash, he reversed time to undo the damage. If he made a wrong move, he corrected it immediately. In dire cases, the Holy Grail Crown provided its extraordinary healing abilities. Lastly, the Ancient God's Heart continually converted its primordial essence, granting him countless opportunities to learn from his mistakes.

With each attempt to evolve the skill, his domain absorbed the spiritual essence of the Spirit Realm creatures he had slain.

Finally, after suffering hundreds of backlashes and enduring hundreds of failures, the Impersonation Skill successfully evolved.

[Impersonation LV7 (1/700)]

[Ability]: Allows you to perfectly disguise yourself as any living being.

[Divine Authority]: Spiritual Assimilation – Grants you the authority to assimilate different spiritual essences.

[Divine Authority]: Spiritual Parasitism – Grants you the authority to parasitize different spiritual essences.

Thanks to the Ancient God Physique, Rosen no longer needed to rely on physical-level impersonation.

He directed all the power of the skill toward spiritual-level evolution.

With Spiritual Parasitism and Spiritual Assimilation, it would now be exceedingly difficult—even for a true deity—to uncover Rosen's disguises.

After dismantling his Divine Domain, Rosen left the Spirit Realm. Once the divine crystals ceased drawing in Spirit Realm creatures, he waited until the remaining creatures had been hunted to extinction, tidied up the battlefield, and returned to Paradise Island. There, he began secretly orchestrating the gradual transfer of the most critical assets of Paradise Pharmaceuticals.

This covert relocation process lasted over ten years, during which Rosen completely emptied the core foundations of the three major corporations of the Chaotic Seas.

After finishing the task, Rosen immediately traveled to the edge of the Ten Thousand Gods Mountain Sea Region.

Previously, in order to hasten the Insectoid Spirit Domain's evolution, he had moved the Mysterious Study Room to the Continent of Death. However, this decision meant that when the hundred-year cycle concluded, the Study Room would no longer return to its original location beneath the floating mountains. If Rosen were to directly transport the hundreds of trapped demigods out of the sea region, it would raise unanswerable questions about how he had managed to escape.

Thus, during the years he was relocating corporate assets, Daisy was the only figure who ever appeared publicly, ensuring that no one connected him to the situation.

Now, Rosen's priority was finding a way to return the Mysterious Study Room to the floating mountains.

Exiting the sea region through data transmission was easy, but reentering was far more challenging.

The moment he set foot in the Ten Thousand Gods Mountain Sea Region, the cognitive hurricanes spawned by the lingering consciousness of the great deity would tear him apart.

However, Rosen had long anticipated this challenge and prepared accordingly.

He gathered some of the bones he had collected from the sea region and assembled them into an airtight suit of armor. He then used ground-up bone fragments to seal any gaps before donning the armor.

With his preparations complete, Rosen crossed through the spatial barrier separating the Ten Thousand Gods Mountain Sea Region from reality.

The moment he reentered the sea region, the cognitive hurricanes surged toward him.

Though the hurricanes didn't immediately damage the bone armor's exterior, they quickly began infiltrating it, drawn toward the Ancient God Relic hidden within. The hurricanes tried to take control of the armor to uncover the relic.

Rosen, prepared for this scenario, activated the Void Eye and opened a miniature wormhole within the floating mountain.

Using the wormhole as a medium, he anchored the Mysterious Study Room to the walls of the floating mountain.

Finally, he abandoned the bone armor and used data transmission to transport himself back into the Study Room.

The moment Rosen disappeared, the bone armor, fully infiltrated by the cognitive hurricanes, disintegrated into individual bones. Surprisingly, even the pulverized fragments used to seal the gaps reverted to their original, pristine state.

(Chapter End)