Lord: Sequence Master

Rosen traveled to a secluded valley eight thousand miles southeast of Mountain River City, where a waterfall and a deep pool lay hidden. The pool connected to an underground waterway, which, if followed downstream, eventually led to an otherworldly space deep below the surface—a space formed from the merging of a demigod painter's divine territory into reality after their death.

Drawing on his past experience navigating underground waterways, Rosen smoothly advanced along the current. After about half an hour, he reached the end of the flow and passed through a layer of spatial distortion.

In front of him stood a mountain shaped like a massive tower. Each layer of this mountainous structure stood one hundred meters high, with five supporting columns—one in the center and four around the edges—holding up each level. The towering formation rose upwards, approximately 101 levels high.

Typically, the center of a divine territory is a mountain due to space limitations, with a castle on top, housing carved out of the mountain, and terraced fields for expanded farming. However, a hollowed-out mountain transformed into a tower packed with tombs was something Rosen had never seen before.

Rosen teleported to the bottom level of the mountain-tower, where countless graves, numbering in the tens of thousands, spread out densely before him. To his surprise, each tombstone bore a simple portrait and name on the front, while the back provided a brief biography. Judging from the portraits' quality, they appeared to be drawn by the demigod painter himself, and all the biographies described deceased residents of his domain.

If a demigod painter knew their end was near, they would typically pass down their divine territory to a successor, Rosen mused. In cases where they had no heir, they would at least release their people before letting the territory become their own resting place.

Yet, this demigod painter had evidently outlived all of his subjects.

Could this painter have met an untimely end? Rosen pondered. Perhaps his people perished first, possibly from some disastrous event, and he then altered the divine territory to inter his followers.

He teleported to the second level and found it, too, filled with the tombs of former residents. Ascending further, Rosen observed the hundreds of thousands of gravestones stacked across the 101 levels. Random checks of the inscriptions revealed that these people had been followers of the demigod. As for the painters who had not shared the same faith, it seemed that they either were buried elsewhere or perhaps hadn't died here.

Finally, Rosen reached the topmost level, where only one grave stood alone. Behind this grave grew a not-fully-withered ancient tree of sequence. A painting lay nestled within its branches—a likely Sequence 3 spiritual landscape.

But as he approached the ancient tree, his surroundings abruptly shifted, and he vanished.

When the spatial transition ended, Rosen found himself standing in an artistically vibrant city. Extending his Shadow Realm outward, he quickly enveloped the city's shadows, allowing him to view the entire city from below. Oddly, he felt a strange familiarity with the place.

The city teemed with people, likely numbering in the millions. Thousands of them had supernatural abilities, though oddly, they were all auxiliary types, with no combat-oriented sequences among them.

Seeing no sign of Misia or any other outsiders, Rosen watched as the city's inhabitants went about their daily lives, paying him no special attention beyond a few curious glances from passing women. His investigation revealed certain peculiarities.

In a divine domain, the lord does not simply provide for their followers—they work in return. Farmers work the fields, miners delve for resources, fishers raise and catch fish. Every citizen contributes wealth and, in doing so, fortifies the faith that sustains the divine territory. The lord, in turn, usually presents themselves as benevolent, as their people's faith strengthens the territory's power.

Rosen scrutinized the city through the Shadow Realm and noticed the absence of any industrial sector. Surrounding the city, however, lay vast stretches of farmland, suggesting that nearly all the inhabitants' primary occupation was farming. Many were supposedly miners or fishers, yet these people were also working the fields—a curious arrangement, clearly born of unusual circumstances.

Teleporting to the city's edge, he approached a fisherman working the soil. Using his Sixth Sense to read the man's thoughts, Rosen quickly pieced together the situation.

The fisherman had once lived in another divine domain. A few months ago, the lord suddenly ordered everyone to relocate to this domain. Since then, no one had heard from the lord, but the fisherman, with family to feed, was forced to take up farming to avoid starvation. Many believed their lord was locked in a fierce battle somewhere, explaining his prolonged absence.

For several days, Rosen scoured the city for clues but found no trace of Misia or the others, as though they had never come here at all. However, his investigation yielded one significant insight: there was clearly an anomaly in the time flow within this spiritual domain.

Given that the demigod painter had been dead for thousands of years, it didn't make sense that the fisherman's memory dated back only a few months, to just after the lord's disappearance. The more he probed the city, the stronger the feeling of familiarity grew, leading Rosen to suspect he might have experienced multiple cycles of this time loop already, with each cycle resetting his memory.

If this is a temporal trap, it seems to be capable of resetting memories as well. Rosen concluded that his resistance to the memory-resetting effect stemmed from his mastery over time-related powers.

Now aware of the nature of the loop, Rosen refrained from attempting an immediate exit. It could be that leaving the domain is one of the conditions that triggers the time reset, he mused. If I fail to find a way out, I'll undoubtedly use my Lazy Foot to teleport myself away.

However, he had clearly already failed multiple times, leaving him caught in an indefinite cycle of time resets.

If this loop was indeed a trap, then where are Misia and the others? he wondered. Or perhaps this domain's time loop isn't just cyclical but has spatial layers as well.

He opened the Mysterious Study Room and approached the Main God Computer.

As expected, a journal labeled Time Loop Diary lay on the desk. While the domain's reset had affected his memories, it had left the Mysterious Study Room untouched.

Flipping through the diary, he found that there had already been six recorded resets. Since he had been unaware of the loop initially, it was unclear how many earlier resets might have occurred without his knowledge.

In the six recorded attempts, he had tried using the Dragon King's Roar Bullet to destroy the domain, deployed the Shadow Realm to cover the entire area, and used the Void Phase of his Fairy Dragon Pearl—all to no avail.

Brute force clearly isn't the answer, each entry concluded. Every previous iteration of himself had speculated that the solution lay in the paintings throughout the city.

While the entire city wasn't constructed from paintings like Mountain River City, it was indeed filled with an array of spiritual artworks—all created by the same hand, likely containing secrets about this domain.

Each painting contained a different set of spiritual glyphs. In previous cycles, he had deciphered almost ninety percent of these symbols. However, given that the time reset occurred at most every three years, he had never managed to decode the final ten percent before being forced to start over.

Rosen left the Mysterious Study Room and began searching for the remaining spiritual paintings and their hidden glyphs. Every painting in the city bore a number in the lower-right corner. Some were framed in homes, some adorned the exteriors and interiors of buildings, and others were even crafted from flowers, trees, and crops.

It took him two full years to uncover the last, and most elusive, of the spiritual artworks. This Painting Zero did not exist in the physical realm but rather as a memory within a young girl's mind.

With all the glyphs gathered, Rosen analyzed the thousands of symbols and mastered nearly all of them, barring a handful of unique symbols he had never encountered. The final painting, Painting Zero, contained not individual glyphs but a structural diagram of a three-dimensional spiritual glyph.

Arranging all the symbols according to the diagram and the paintings' sequence, Rosen found that they formed a mysterious skill. Digging deeper, he realized it was an unknown painter skill, clearly the most intricate one he had ever encountered.

At a minimum, this is a Sequence 3 painter skill, he surmised. To escape this domain, I may need to utilize it.

However, as a Sequence 5 painter, he could not handle the power of a Sequence 3 skill, nor did his extraordinary essence possess the capacity to support such a skill.

If he were forced to his limits, Rosen had other ways to escape the spiritual domain. The simplest approach would be to hide in the Mysterious Study Room and fire the Dragon King's Roar Bullet at the domain itself. While the domain's time reset couldn't affect him within the Mysterious Study Room, his Dragon King's Roar Bullet would continue to damage the domain, forcing it to reveal a vulnerability over time. Eventually, escape would be achievable.

But with a demigod painter's legacy right in front of him, slipping away quietly wasn't Rosen's style.

If in doubt, post a reward. Rosen immediately logged into the Main God Network and the Abyssal Web, offering a high-paying anonymous bounty. While waiting for results, he took the opportunity to analyze the mysterious skill again in the Mysterious Study Room.

Sure enough, a hefty reward quickly brought answers. One higher-sequence painter provided a solution:

Apparently, a Sequence 0 deity's first-generation offspring, also known as divine descendants, can sometimes inherit the skills of their Sequence 0 parent if they follow the same sequence path. In rare cases, a Sequence 9 divine descendant might even wield a Sequence 0 skill, albeit in a limited capacity.

While a Sequence 9 couldn't fully wield a Sequence 0's skill, they could still unleash power comparable to that of a Beast King at the same level. Naturally, researchers were drawn to the ability of divine descendants to wield high-sequence skills at lower levels.

Though few dared to conduct such research on divine descendants within the World Government, the same restraint did not apply among other races. It so happened that a mysterious individual responding to Rosen's bounty possessed a "good item" that would allow a Sequence 5 painter to wield a Sequence 3 skill. However, they refused to provide further details unless the transaction was guaranteed by the Main God Hall.

Rosen suspected a trap, but it was currently his only option.

Through the Main God Hall, he spent one hundred million spiritual crystal coins to acquire a unique extraordinary essence. After using the Miracle Pouch to confirm its authenticity, he learned that it was indeed worth the price.

For a deeper analysis, however, he would need to place the item inside the pouch. Upon doing so, Rosen learned that it was indeed the extraordinary essence of a Sequence 5 painter, and the owner had been a divine descendant.

An extraordinary essence starts transforming into a divine core upon reaching the demigod level, absorbing faith and law authorities as it evolves. By Sequence 1, it fully becomes a divine core, embodying all essential power of that sequence. However, a divine descendant's essence naturally contains divine core qualities, allowing it to hold and channel law.

This is why a divine descendant of Sequence 9 might wield higher-sequence skills. If his own extraordinary essence were to consume this one, it would increase its foundational strength, grant him a higher-sequence skill, and even potentially inherit one of this essence's existing high-sequence skills.

However, this method was not without drawbacks; it risked tainting his own extraordinary essence. Moreover, since this essence belonged to a divine descendant, at least one parent was a Sequence 0 deity. If Rosen absorbed this extraordinary essence, there was a real possibility the Sequence 0 parent would come looking for it.

While this essence was indeed worth the price, it was undoubtedly a risky gamble.

After some thought, Rosen connected the Main God Computer's Ethernet cord to the essence, and while the cable showed no response, the Main God Computer offered a solution.

Previously, he had consumed a Sequence 2 Golden Apple, which, aside from bolstering vitality, possessed a powerful purification effect that nullified all curses and negative influences. Since the Golden Apple couldn't be fully digested even with Gluttony, it had left traces of unactivated vitality and purifying power within him.

Rosen could perform the essence fusion inside the Mysterious Study Room, using Miracle Kindling to ignite the Kindling Pile. By placing the Kindling Pile and his own painter essence into the Potion Flask, he could safely fuse the divine essence with his own. Afterward, he could further cleanse his essence using the purifying force left by the Golden Apple.

This method would make it nearly impossible for a Sequence 0 deity to trace him, but the entire process would have to occur inside the Mysterious Study Room.

After careful consideration, Rosen decided to proceed with the fusion. This would not only resolve his need for Sequence 5 skills but also grant him two powerful higher-sequence skills.

After carefully preparing his various miraculous artifacts, Rosen began the procedure. Following each step, he ultimately sent his Miracle Pen and Mind Canvas into the Potion Flask. Under the flames of the Miracle Kindling, the divine essence did not merge with the Miracle Pen but instead fused with the Mind Canvas.

Once Rosen reclaimed his painter's two-part extraordinary essence, he immediately activated the Golden Deity's Purifying Force. For five days, he worked tirelessly until the essence settled, now purified and stabilized.

Through this transformation, his extraordinary essence could now convert faith into divine energy, permanently elevating his spiritual energy to the level of divine energy. Additionally, his extraordinary essence could now hold one Law. Rosen didn't hesitate to integrate the Law of Creation.

If the prior use of Creation Law cost ten units of power, it would now cost only one.

Finally, during the essence fusion, Rosen retained a single high-sequence skill from the divine essence:

Soul Painter: You may capture and seal the spiritual essence of a target in your hand.

Rosen was perplexed—This is a high-sequence skill? Logging into the Abyssal Web through the Main God Computer, he activated Invasion Mode and searched for information on Soul Painter in the Painter's Guild archives, where he discovered it was actually a Sequence 1 skill.

Upon reaching the demigod level, painters face significant difficulty in advancing further, as each successive level brings them closer to uniqueness. A Sequence 7 painter might use a Sequence 7 Hunter as a model, creating a spiritual portrait that summons the Hunter's likeness to fight alongside them. However, a Sequence 1 painter would find it nearly impossible to create a portrait of a Sequence 1 Hunter due to the challenge of replicating the Hunter's Law.

Consequently, most painters had to specialize as demigods. For example, a painter adept in Horror Law would likely focus on horror paintings. Yet some painters resisted the constraints imposed after reaching the demigod level. Previously, they had painted freely, only to find their creative scope narrowing. Out of this frustration, the Soul Painter skill was born—a way to manipulate other Laws by harnessing the Soul Painter's Soul Law.

With Soul Painter, a painter who lacked Horror Law but wished to create a horror painting could capture a demigod who wielded Horror Law, drawing their essence into their hand. They could then use the demigod's essence to apply Horror Law to their paintings, simplifying the process immensely.

Rosen saw the skill's true value—it was coveted by demigod painters universally. Ordinarily, acquiring it would require mastery of Soul Law.

Although he lacked a demigod-level essence to use Soul Painter to its full potential, he shifted his focus to the mysterious Sequence 3 skill.

Rosen began creating an unbroken chain of spiritual glyphs, each flowing directly into the Ashen Veil. When he embedded the final glyph, a new skill emerged within his essence:

Five-Dimensional Painting: Enables painting within five-dimensional space.

Reading the description made Rosen's heart race. In the dimensional framework of this world, zero-dimensional space is a point, one-dimensional is a line, two-dimensional is a plane, three-dimensional is a physical space, four-dimensional includes time, and five-dimensional adds energy.

Painters elevate two-dimensional paintings to a three-dimensional form; by expending divine power, they can create five-dimensional spiritual landscapes. Yet Five-Dimensional Painting would allow him to paint directly within a five-dimensional space.

The true power of this skill was profound. Spiritual landscapes worked by capturing real-world five-dimensional spaces within the painting. Five-Dimensional Painting, however, would seamlessly blend the spiritual work into the actual five-dimensional structure of reality.

Typically, entering a spiritual landscape requires stepping inside the world of the painting, but Five-Dimensional Painting could create a painted scene directly within reality. This would allow Rosen to set traps in reality itself, creating an imperceptible snare even for demigods.

With Five-Dimensional Painting, he could freely manipulate the time, space, and energy within his spiritual works.

Now equipped with Five-Dimensional Painting, Rosen looked out over the domain with a fresh perspective, noticing that layered over the five-dimensional structure of the domain was a second painting controlling its time, space, and energy, effectively creating a nesting-doll of layered landscapes.

Destroy one layer, and you'd immediately fall into another, while the destroyed layer would reset in time, space, and structure.

Now seeing the truth of this world, Rosen knew escape was simple.

Leaving the Mysterious Study Room, he summoned the Miracle Pen and painted a door on thin air—a portal constructed through five-dimensional painting.

Pushing open the door, he stepped out of the domain, reappearing by the ancient tree.

Leaning down, he picked up the spiritual landscape, infusing it with his spiritual energy to begin refining it.

(End of Chapter)