Lord: Sequence Master

Rosen pulled out the ticket from his space ring and examined the details printed on the back.

[Spiritual Realm: Spiral Sea Battle]

[Sequence Levels: Sequence 9 – Sequence 7 (Sequence 5)]

[Realm Description: The Spiral Sea Battle was one of the pivotal moments in the war that led to the founding of the Flaming Shadow Principality. During this battle, the precursor to the principality, the Flaming Shadow Pirate Alliance, captured the last stronghold of the native Grey Rat People, Spiral Port, effectively annihilating their naval forces...]

Rosen had studied the history of the Blazing Shadow Principality extensively and knew of this infamous battle.

The Grey Rat People were the island's indigenous inhabitants, once rulers of a prosperous and intelligent civilization. However, their dominance was shattered by the Blazing Shadow Pirate Alliance, whose naval prowess and strategic precision obliterated the Grey Rat People's defenses. Using their naval superiority, the pirates systematically crushed the Grey Rat civilization after breaking their naval capabilities.

This defining moment in history was captured in the Spiritual Realm, manifesting as the Spiral Sea Battle.

Originally, the spiritual realm had a power ceiling of Sequence 5, but after thousands of years of continuous raids by extraordinary sequences, the realm had degraded to Sequence 7. The Grand Duke of Blazing Shadow, unable to fully exploit the realm's diminishing resources, opened it to the public, selling access to various adventurers and extraordinary sequences.

Ironically, upon entering this spiritual realm, human participants took on the form of Grey Rat People. The objective for participants was to fight off pirates for valuable resources while killing Grey Rat People yielded no rewards at all.

Despite several attempts by the Grand Duke to dominate this realm, the core of the spiritual realm was rooted in the bitter resentment and hatred the Grey Rat People harbored toward the humans who destroyed them. As a result, the realm's structure remained unstable, and it was impossible for any one faction to fully control it.

When the time arrived for the realm's activation, a massive vortex appeared on the ceiling of the teleportation chamber. All the extraordinary sequence participants were instantly sucked into the vortex and disappeared into the realm.

When Rosen's vision cleared, he found himself standing in a dimly lit underground cavern, surrounded by glowing stones that radiated low-level Nen energy. He instinctively checked his body and noticed that, while he appeared human to himself, he had transformed into a Grey Rat People in the eyes of other inhabitants of the realm.

Spiral Port, unlike traditional ports, was an underground harbor. The Grey Rat naval forces did not sail on the ocean's surface but operated sophisticated submarine-like vessels and commanded extraordinary sea creatures. The Grey Rats, being a subterranean and underwater species, had mastered the art of concealment.

Yet, even with their advanced hiding techniques, they couldn't escape the ruthless Blazing Shadow Pirate Alliance. In the original Spiral Sea Battle, the pirates had boiled the surrounding seas, turning the ocean into a deadly soup. They drained the superheated water into the tunnels of Spiral Port, effectively cooking the Grey Rat forces in their own underground lairs.

That strategy was possible at the peak of the pirate alliance's power, with extraordinary forces reaching Sequence 5. However, the realm had since degraded, and such overwhelming strategies were no longer feasible. Instead, the battle between the Grey Rats and the pirates had reached a stalemate, with human participants sometimes tipping the balance in favor of the Grey Rats.

The most prized loot from this spiritual realm was the opportunity to claim an extraordinary pirate ship. While outdated compared to modern ships, these vessels were coveted by knights who couldn't afford newer models. There were also rare resources dropped by extraordinary sea creatures, but finding and hunting these creatures in the vast ocean presented a serious challenge.

Had the realm retained its original abundance of resources, the Grand Duke would never have opened it up for public access.

Rosen wasn't particularly focused on gaining spiritual crystals from this venture. Instead, he had a different objective in mind: to leverage the vast population of Grey Rats to help materialize the second virtual realm in his Main God Computer.

Over the last few months, Rosen had diligently injected his naturally restored spiritual energy into the Main God Computer, slowly accumulating over 500 units of energy—just enough to activate the virtual realm he had his eyes on.

Rosen entered his Mysterious Study Room and approached the Main God Computer, settling into the chair in front of the console. He navigated to the entertainment program and spent the required 500 units of spiritual energy to activate Nightmare on Elm Street 1.

Once the movie was charged with spiritual energy, the previously frozen file began to play smoothly.

Nightmare on Elm Street 1 had a runtime of 91 minutes, composed of 24 frames per second, which totaled 131,040 static images.

Although the total number of frames was fewer than the Saw 1 realm he had previously materialized, Elm Street posed a greater challenge.

The film Saw 1 was confined mostly to a single indoor setting, allowing Rosen to reuse backgrounds with the help of digital painting tools. Elm Street, however, involved sprawling town scenes, dreamscapes, and a larger cast of characters, making it more complex to recreate.

But Rosen had grown since then. With his Mind Canvas skill, his efficiency had vastly improved.

He reduced the playback speed by 24 times using the Main God Computer's video player and began carefully replicating each frame on his Mind Canvas, rendering the images in vivid detail with his Divine Brush.

Though it was impossible for him to recreate an image every second, Rosen had devised a strategy. He focused on painting only the first frame of each second, and for the remaining 23 frames, he infused them with spiritual energy and Nen to animate the scene briefly. The scene only needed to come alive for a moment, long enough for him to imprint it onto his canvas and lock it into 24 static frames.

At this pace, Rosen could generate one second of static frames every second, meaning he would finish the 131,040 frames in roughly 36.4 hours.

After a day and a half of continuous work, Rosen completed the final frame and collapsed in exhaustion.

He slept for twelve uninterrupted hours before waking to the sound of the Main God Computer's timer.

Still groggy, Rosen gazed at the dense collection of images stored within his Mind Canvas. While he could print these images using the Main God Computer's printer and distribute them within the realm, he had no intention of doing so this time.

This spiritual realm was far more dangerous than Redstone City.

Back then, he had risked public exposure to obtain his first pot of gold, but now, there was no need to attract attention in a realm filled with hunters and extraordinary sequences. Doing so would spread the word of a spiritual painter with mysterious powers, drawing the attention of Sequence 7 painters or higher, which could lead to dangerous consequences.

Instead, Rosen kept the static frames stored safely within his Mind Canvas, formulating a new plan. His goal was to broadcast these frames directly from his consciousness into the minds of the Grey Rat People, plunging them into the terrifying dream world of Freddy Krueger's Elm Street, where Freddy would hunt them one by one.

(End of Chapter)