Lord: Sequence Master

Several days had passed since Amy woke up, and Rosen discovered that Amy was a bit of an airhead.

Except when interacting with machinery or himself—where she would show a gentle smile—she usually remained in a daze, unable to fully unleash the power of a Dreamer.

Between the Mechanical Race and the Elves, Amy was, in fact, more like a member of the Mechanical Race.

Amy's memory was a complete blank. Technically speaking, she was a newborn with a thousand-year-old soul.

Rosen had no choice but to entrust Amy to Alicia, tasking her with teaching Amy how to properly perceive the world.

Alicia adored Amy and even transferred her mechanical mount to her, along with control over the Mechanical City. As compensation, Rosen gifted Alicia the Dragonfang Dagger.

In the blink of an eye, ten days passed, and the turmoil in the human world gradually settled.

Rosen continued his journey and teleported directly to the City of Stars.

Using a miracle wish and consuming 200,000 Spiritual Crystals, he skipped tens of thousands of miles in just two days and effortlessly arrived near the City of Stars—a holy land revered by every artist on the Sacred Continent.

After registering at the city gate and obtaining an identity card, Rosen eagerly stepped into the City of Stars.

Despite being the imperial capital, the streets were surprisingly sparse.

Similar to the Underground Kingdom, the overwhelming presence of extraordinary individuals made it impossible for ordinary people to survive here. The divine aura naturally exuded by high-sequence beings could easily crush the spirituality of ordinary humans. Therefore, most commoners lived within various spiritual realms.

On the surface, the City of Stars had only tens of thousands of extraordinary residents and over a hundred thousand visiting artists.

Rosen visited the Painter's Guild, hoping to learn about the renowned painters of the city.

Anyone who could make a name for themselves here was undoubtedly a top-tier artist.

However, the result was somewhat disappointing. Although the City of Stars was exceptional, it wasn't home.

Many artists who had traveled from across the Sacred Continent had begun returning home over the past few days.

Yet, gaining access to specialized painter skills became easier for Rosen because the Star Empire had issued a war warning. Any extraordinary individuals who contributed significantly against the threats from the Spirit Realm would be allowed to select treasures from the Imperial Treasury.

Playwrights had even prophesied that within six days, parts of the Spirit Realm would merge with the City of Stars.

In fact, the City of Stars was the most severely affected city on the Sacred Continent in terms of Spirit Realm fusion.

The entire city was a masterpiece crafted by artists—every stone bench, every brick on the street, every blade of grass and stone radiated spiritual power. To the Spirit Realm, the city was an irresistible feast.

Rosen had anticipated this scenario before his arrival.

After leaving the Painter's Guild, he checked into a hotel, patiently waiting for the fusion of the Spirit Realm and reality.

Before even a day had passed, good news arrived from the Painter's Guild.

As more and more artists fled the city, the Star Empire had no choice but to open the Imperial Treasury ahead of schedule.

Artists willing to stay could choose a treasure from the treasury based on their demonstrated skills and contributions. However, they had to sign a contract, barring them from leaving until they had repaid their debt in equivalent contributions.

This was undoubtedly good news for Rosen, and he received it early thanks to the generous tip he had given the guild's receptionist.

Rosen hurried to the Star Palace, where the Imperial Treasury was located. A line of artists had already formed.

He was in the sixth group and followed palace guards into the meticulously designed Sequence-3 Star Palace.

As long as the Star Palace stood, the City of Stars would not fall.

The palace was bathed in starlight, and every corridor was shrouded in a mysterious glow.

After passing through labyrinthine hallways, Rosen and his group arrived at the treasury's entrance.

The gates stood wide open, and artists ahead were finalizing their contracts after selecting their treasures.

With only one minute to choose, time was limited but sufficient.

The Imperial Treasury's Sequence-3 and below items were listed on a virtual network. Rosen had already selected what he wanted during his journey to the palace.

He walked straight to the designated shelf and picked up a skill crystal.

After signing the contract and returning to the hotel, Rosen eagerly refined the skill.

[Ed's Soul Palette: Able to capture the spirituality of life and convert it into paint.]

Rosen had already mastered five-dimensional painting, but he couldn't execute it.

Traditional pigments couldn't create five-dimensional artwork; only paints derived from spirituality could etch across time, space, and energy.

While Ed's Soul Palette wasn't the best among such skills, at Sequence-5, it was undeniably top-tier.

It was a rare skill crystal, easy to grasp and powerful to wield.

With five days remaining, Rosen headed to his Divine Territory to make final modifications.

He flipped open his Void Sketchbook and turned to a page featuring a simplistic doodle.

These doodles were the most basic sketches he had ever created, drawn casually while sealing the spirituality of giant beasts.

Infusing divine power into one sketch, he used Ed's Soul Palette to transform the Void Falcon's spirituality into paint.

The resulting paint was a transparent silver-white, reflecting the falcon's spatial power.

It was the perfect paint for five-dimensional spatial art.

Next, Rosen extracted the divine power of a Bronze Dragon from time-attribute Spiritual Crystals, merging it with the raw vitality of a powerful beast, creating time-attribute paint.

Finally, for energy-attribute paint, he used the essences of elemental beasts from gold, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, thunder, light, and darkness.

Once all three paints were ready, Rosen began his five-dimensional painting in the Divine Territory.

Spatial painting was relatively simple, involving the etching of countless spatial spiritual runes into the void.

Time painting was more challenging, as time lacked a physical carrier.

Rosen carefully embedded time spiritual runes onto time-attribute Spiritual Crystals, placing them at specific spatial coordinates before shattering them and allowing the Divine Territory to absorb the time runes.

The interwoven spatial and temporal runes formed an invisible four-dimensional canvas.

Using energy paint, Rosen began constructing a spiritual artwork on this invisible canvas.

When the artwork fused with the Divine Territory's space, time, and energy, it formed a Möbius loop—a self-sustaining twofold cyclic world.

With a single thought, Rosen could now teleport intruders into a volcanic world of roaring flames.

In this world, a Dragon King's Roar Bomb would have double its normal destructive power.

With its devastating damage, it might even have the chance to kill a newly ascended Sequence-3.

This was Rosen's ultimate trump card for battle—anyone who knew about it had to die.

But Rosen wasn't satisfied yet. He continued layering new spiritual artworks in the volcanic realm.

In theory, a nine-layered spatial painting was possible, but for now, Rosen could only manage three layers.

However, even three layers created an infinite loop—so long as not all three layers were destroyed simultaneously, the destroyed layer would endlessly regenerate.

If six layers of space are achieved, time loops can occur. If nine layers are achieved, even spiritual memory can be reset indefinitely.

Before the partial arrival of the Spirit Realm, Rosen finally completed the third layer of the world under the accelerated time of his Time Sketch.

This time, he did not create another volcanic world but rather a frozen world capable of sealing everything.

Strictly speaking, true five-dimensional paintings should be entirely uniform.

There was no need for volcanoes or frozen worlds; ideally, both five-dimensional paintings should perfectly replicate the Divine Domain.

Rosen did this because he possessed the miracle painting Möbius Loop.

If necessary, any one of the three layers of space within his Divine Domain could independently expand into a nine-layer space.

Seeing that he still had half a day left, Rosen casually pulled Alicia into his arms and slept soundly.

The next day, the red glow of his identity card successfully woke Rosen.

He picked up the card from the bedside table—it served both as identification and as a login tool for the Star Empire's Virtual Network. The City of Stars authorities had already assigned him the district he was to guard.

After dressing and tidying up the room—which resembled a battlefield—Rosen took Alicia and teleported to the hotel rooftop.

The district he had been assigned to guard included this hotel, specifically protecting the countless spiritually infused artworks within it.

The City of Stars had changed drastically in the past few days.

All the buildings had been disassembled like pieces of a puzzle, each shifted apart and spaced far away from one another.

Previously, the hotel and the nearby mall were separated by just over a hundred meters; now, they were several dozen kilometers apart.

This rearrangement expanded the city's area by tens of thousands of times.

This served two purposes: first, to disperse the arrival zones of the Spirit Realm.

When the Spirit Realm descends into reality, it does so because it is 'hungry' and needs to absorb spirituality.

The stronger and denser the spirituality, the more powerful the entities that descend.

The fusion zone around the hotel would likely see only Sequence-5 entities, at worst a few Sequence-4 beings.

But around the Star Palace, it was inevitable that a terrifying Sequence-1 entity would appear.

If the City of Stars hadn't been split up, the hotel would have been destroyed in the aftermath of such a high-level battle.

Currently, the Star Palace had already ascended to a height of 100,000 li above the city to avoid dragging the City of Stars down with it.

Suddenly, the sound of shattering glass echoed in Rosen's ears. He turned toward the sound and saw space cracking apart.

The Spirit Realm first descended as a mirage-like projection, wrapping around individual buildings.

Around the hotel, towering trees materialized out of thin air. As time passed and the sound of glass shattering intensified, the space began to merge completely, and the mirage of the trees became increasingly solid.

Through the gaps between the massive trees, Rosen could see giants gradually materializing from ethereal forms into physical ones.

The hotel's extraordinary residents had all gathered on the rooftop by now.

There were only about a hundred of them, mostly Sequence-6. There were only three Sequence-5 individuals, including Rosen.

The other two were a sculptor and a musician.

"Let's introduce ourselves quickly!"

The musician, wearing a shimmering outfit adorned with glittering scales, proudly declared, "I am Shadiya, a hereditary Marquis."

The sculptor nodded and said, "Hereditary Count Toru."

"Hereditary Duke Rosen," Rosen finally said.

The words "Hereditary Duke" immediately silenced Shadiya, who had been eager to assert dominance.

"Toru, you'll stay and defend the hotel. Shadiya, you'll come with me on the offensive," Rosen commanded bluntly. "The rest of you can choose freely whether to stay or fight. I can only guarantee the safety of those who follow me. Anyone who recklessly charges ahead may not receive timely aid."

With that, Rosen partially activated his Divine Domain and unleashed over a hundred metallic slimes, ten thousand shadow demons, and a thousand wood spirits.

Apart from the wood spirits, all the other units were Sequence-6, and their combined power left the other nobles speechless.

As artists and nobles themselves, with most being Sequence-6 Divine Domain Lords, they understood very well the sheer combat strength of Rosen's summoned forces.

The hundred Sequence-6 metallic slimes alone were defensive powerhouses capable of rendering the hotel nearly impregnable.

When the massive trees around the hotel fully materialized and merged with reality, Alicia commanded the wood spirits to unleash the war spell Wrath of Nature. All the surrounding plants came alive, entangling the giants and restricting their movements.

Meanwhile, the shadow demons dispersed, spreading the Void Shadow Realm wherever they went.

Gradually, all the Sequence-5 giants found themselves surrounded by the shadows of the Void Shadow Realm.

"That's it?" Rosen sneered, activating his divine authority Interchange of Light and Darkness. All the Sequence-5 giants were pulled into the Void Shadow Realm and vanished from sight.

Within the Void Shadow Realm, six Sequence-5 giants were being overwhelmed.

A Storm Thunderbird entangled one, a Nightmare Slime another, Amy took on one head-on, the Miracle Fairy Dragon faced another, and the last two couldn't withstand the relentless barrage of Dragon King's Wrath from Rosen's painted avatars.

The giants were swiftly eliminated, with only the Storm Thunderbird looking slightly worse for wear.

However, Rosen remained cautious. The giants descending now were only surface-level entities of the Spirit Realm.

As time passed, higher-sequence giants would begin to emerge.

If a Divine Giant or an exceptionally rare Giant King appeared, even Rosen would struggle to handle them.

With the biggest threats eliminated, there was little left for Toru and Shadiya to do.

Toru roamed the forest, embedding his spiritual wooden carvings into the giant trees. These carvings could animate the trees for battle at a moment's notice.

Shadiya remained on the rooftop, activating her Divine Domain and summoning her Void Stage.

She summoned her personal band and sat at a devilish piano, ready to perform her most powerful symphonies.

Both Toru and Shadiya understood that Rosen had intentionally demonstrated his overwhelming strength by clearing out the six giants in an instant.

It was a statement: he was not only a hereditary duke but also vastly more powerful than the two of them.

With their ambitions crushed, Toru and Shadiya were now fully willing to follow Rosen's orders.

While the others busied themselves with hunting giants, Rosen found himself with a rare moment of peace.

But soon, he noticed something strange—the Spirit Realm was slightly rejecting him.

He quickly realized the reason: when other artists hunted giants, their loot was meager, barely worth the effort.

However, Rosen's Divine Domain and Void Shadow Realm preserved every bit of loot without any losses.

It dawned on Rosen—the Spirit Realm was intercepting the spiritual essence of defeated giants.

The Spirit Realm was likely tied to the ancient gods, possibly their dreamscape or consciousness. Hungry and hollow, it sought spirituality from reality to fill its void.

If every Spirit Realm creature dropped proper loot, this wouldn't be a disaster but a windfall.

But the Spirit Realm intercepted its creatures' spiritual essence after death, leaving others with scraps.

Rosen, who had intercepted that essence, was naturally being rejected by the Spirit Realm.

Rosen finally understood why the arrival of the Spirit Realm was considered humanity's great calamity.

The Spirit Realm was flooding reality with countless entities, an endless stream that could never be fully exterminated. No matter how many were killed, it was ultimately a loss. In essence, humanity was feeding the Spirit Realm. Unless the Spirit Realm was sated, it would never stop devouring humanity.

Rosen expanded his Void Shadow Realm, throwing the corpses and loot of the giants out into the void.

As expected, when the items disappeared and were reclaimed by the Spirit Realm, the sense of rejection vanished.

Days passed. The Spirit Realm descended in cycles, sometimes every few hours, sometimes once a day, bringing waves of Spirit Realm creatures.

At first, it was just giants, but soon massive beasts and ethereal spirits began to emerge as well.

These creatures were all once extraordinary beings that had died in reality, their spirituality captured by the Spirit Realm and reborn in this twisted form. However, only a tiny fraction of these Spirit Realm entities retained intelligence, and so far, none of them had descended.

At this point, everyone on the hotel rooftop, except Rosen, looked increasingly grim.

The severe reduction in loot was just the beginning. Gradually, people started noticing that their Divine Territories were drawing less and less spirituality from the Spirit Realm.

Divine Territories existed simultaneously in the mental sea and the Spirit Realm. They relied on an endless supply of spirituality from the Spirit Realm to maintain and grow their territories.

But now, the Spirit Realm was starving. It had unilaterally cut off the flow of spirituality to Divine Territories.

As a result, Divine Lords had to rely on their reserves of Spiritual Crystals to maintain their territories.

Even the cost of hunting Spirit Realm creatures had to be covered by their personal reserves.

In the short term, this was manageable. But over the long term, many would be unable to sustain it.

And when humans are pushed to desperation, what would they do?

The better ones would hunt extraordinary beings in reality, scavenging spirituality to feed the Spirit Realm.

The worse ones, lacking strength or resources, would start preying on ordinary people.

Rosen sighed deeply. He was starting to regret getting trapped in the quagmire of the City of Stars.

But it wasn't all loss. Hunting Spirit Realm creatures earned him merit points, which could be exchanged for resources in the Star Treasury or even noble titles from the World Government. As long as the Star Treasury didn't collapse, the situation was still sustainable.

Years passed in the blink of an eye, and now the Spirit Realm descended like an endless storm of falling rain.

The number of people on the hotel rooftop had grown from just over a hundred to more than two hundred.

Not every district had a powerful guardian like Rosen. Many districts couldn't fend off the Spirit Realm creatures and were eventually consumed entirely, drained of all spirituality.

Artists from those fallen districts fled to safer zones, leading to the overcrowding of Rosen's rooftop.

However, the more people gathered in one place, the more appetizing it became to the Spirit Realm, attracting even more creatures.

One day, Rosen was flickering through the void, continuing his relentless hunt of the Spirit Realm creatures surrounding the hotel.

Suddenly, he felt one of his Shadow Demons die.

Although Shadow Demons were not the most powerful combatants, they excelled in stealth, survival, assassination, and burst damage. For one to die without any chance of escape indicated an extremely dangerous predator.

Rosen teleported directly to the area where the Shadow Demon had disappeared, but found no trace of the enemy.

Immediately, he issued an order for all artists to evacuate urgently.

Despite using his Death Perception ability, he couldn't sense any trace of the predator.

Clearly, this enemy was an intelligent Spirit Realm creature with exceptional stealth capabilities—one that could effortlessly kill Sequence-6 artists.

Rosen's warning came swiftly, but still, one Sequence-6 Gourmet was caught off guard and slain.

It was an instant kill—so swift that the artist hadn't even had time to activate their life-saving cards.

Fortunately, their spirituality was only severely damaged, and there was still a chance for revival within their Divine Territory.

Rosen returned to the hotel rooftop and immediately entered the Gourmet's Divine Territory through a Void Gate.

Over the years, all Divine Lords had set up teleportation gates on the hotel rooftop in preparation for potential casualties.

If someone's spirituality was critically injured, others could enter their territory to offer assistance.

Rosen took out some Life Spring Water. Under its nourishment, the Gourmet—who would have needed over a decade to fully recover—was able to revive under the Ancient Sequence Tree in just a few days.

During these days, everyone fortified the rooftop, using long-range area attacks to clear away the surrounding massive trees.

However, the predator remained elusive, even as the Gourmet finally regained consciousness and shared his experience.

(End of chapter)