Lord: Sequence Master

Rosen sat in front of the Main God Computer, staring at the progress bar refining the severed hand of the Great True God.

After waiting for three hours, the progress bar was complete. From the screen, three drops of pure golden Ancient God origin bloodlines emerged.

Rosen carefully stored them away and picked up one drop to begin absorbing and refining it.

The bottleneck at 49% Ancient God bloodline awakening was instantly broken. His bloodline awakening soared to 59% before finally stopping.

Rosen felt the Ancient God blood within him boiling. A terrifying surge of life essence was being activated, which was quickly transformed into soul essence and fused into his sea of consciousness. This soul essence was then further converted into spiritual essence.

As his spiritual essence ascended and transformed, whispers from the Ancient God emerged in his spiritual consciousness.

For every Ancient God Sequence, when the bloodline awakening reaches 50%, and both the Ancient God's Divine Body and Ancient God Divinity are acquired, the individual inevitably hears whispers from the Ancient God. From these whispers, they obtain a unique Ancient God inheritance specific to their Sequence. To date, no two Ancient God Sequences have received the same inheritance.

Moreover, the inheritance granted to each Ancient God Sequence can only be used by the recipient and cannot be conveyed to any other being.

Nine years passed in total before Rosen's spiritual essence transformation was fully complete.

The fragment of the Pale Spear embedded in his heart, clinging to him like a malignant growth, was finally completely extracted.

The previously reduced 9-point cap on his spiritual intensity was now fully restored to 66 points.

However, the current 66 points no longer placed him at the mid-levels of Sequence 4 but instead returned him to the very beginning of Sequence 4. This was because the maximum cap for each Sequence had been adjusted to 13 points, meaning it now required a total of 65 spiritual intensity points just to reach the starting threshold of Sequence 4.

Rosen turned his attention to the aristocratic extraordinary essence. He discovered a newly unlocked ability: Ancient God Divinity.

[Ancient God Divinity: Spiritual essence can be converted into Ancient God Divinity at will. Ancient God Divinity holds the highest priority in law authority.]

The most valuable aspect of Ancient God Divinity lay in its highest priority in law authority.

Laws are omnipresent; they and matter form the foundation of the world.

However, laws are not evenly distributed. During the day, the laws of light are dominant; at night, the laws of darkness prevail. In snowy regions, the laws of ice and snow are more potent. Those who fully master laws become True Gods, while those who wield partial fragments of laws—known as authority—become demigods.

In battles between demigods, the key factor determining victory often comes down to their control over authority.

For instance, a demigod wielding authority over ice and snow will naturally have the upper hand in a snowy environment because they can tap into the ambient ice and snow laws. However, if two demigods wield the same ice and snow authority, the deciding factor lies in whose divinity grants higher priority over those laws.

This is why golden Sequences like Artists often surpass silver Sequences like Hunters.

Once golden Sequences ascend to demigod status, their divinity is naturally of a golden grade, inherently granting them higher priority in controlling authority compared to silver Sequences like assassins. This superiority also extends to clashes involving different laws.

Normally, a Sequence 0 cannot match a True God. A True God could easily contend with ten Sequence 0s.

But in the case of humanity's four golden Sequences, it would take only three Sequence 0s to rival a Hunter Sequence True God.

This demonstrates the sheer power of law priority.

Without question, Ancient God Divinity possesses law priority that surpasses even golden-grade divinity.

At this moment, Rosen could distinctly feel that his grasp over authority had undergone a qualitative transformation.

Rosen continued to probe the aristocratic extraordinary essence. This time, he uncovered a unique Ancient God inheritance that had integrated into the aristocratic Sequence. He was curious about the specifics of the ability he had gained.

[Ancient God's Heart: Miracle Skill]

[Passive Attribute: Your heart transforms into the Ancient God's Heart. For every Sequence level, it will produce one drop of Ancient God True Blood.]

[Active Attribute: By forcing the Ancient God's Heart to beat intensely, life essence and spiritual essence can be interconverted.]

[Miracle Properties: Ancient God Aperture, Heaven and Earth Uniqueness, Eternal Indestructibility.]

Rosen turned his focus inward to examine his heart. Sure enough, his heart was already undergoing a gradual transformation into the Ancient God's Heart.

It was estimated that this transformation would take ten years to complete.

By that time, he would gain one drop of Sequence 4 Ancient God True Blood. Combined with Tenfold Annihilation, this meant he would receive two drops of Ancient God True Blood for each Sequence level. This alone made the miracle skill more than worthwhile.

The transformation of the Ancient God's Heart was not yet complete, so its active attribute could not yet be fully experienced.

Rosen continued to examine the miracle properties. The Ancient God Aperture property allowed a spatial domain to open within his heart.

This aperture, like a sea of blood, could continuously store his body's blood. The stored blood could replenish lost vitality at any time, just like a vial of healing potion. It could also undergo quantitative changes to produce qualitative transformation, further enhancing his bloodline awakening. Finally, it could merge with the Ancient God's Divine Body.

Although Rosen possessed the Ancient God's Divine Body, his height remained that of a normal human.

However, with the Ancient God Aperture, his divine body could grow indefinitely—100 meters, 1,000 meters, or even 10,000 meters tall with ease. By controlling the infusion of blood stored within the aperture, the size of the Ancient God's Divine Body could be adjusted at will.

While larger sizes would sacrifice some agility, the destructive power would increase proportionally.

Rosen had already made up his mind: for the next two months, he wouldn't let go of his Divine Brush.

After casually creating spiritual artworks for two months, and with the Time Sketch ability accelerating time by 75 times, his heart successfully transformed into the Ancient God's Heart.

Rosen immediately tested its active attribute. He felt the heartbeat of the Ancient God's Heart accelerate.

He fully converted his life essence into spiritual essence, causing his Ancient God's Divine Body to dissolve into the Ancient God Aperture. The Ancient God's Heart then merged with his soul, entering his sea of consciousness.

Even without a physical body, Rosen found his spiritual intensity doubled.

Of course, this didn't mean his spiritual intensity of 66 points turned into 132 points—it simply meant he could maintain two separate sources of 66 points each.

Even so, this effectively doubled his power. Although the base multiplier wasn't very high, this transformation ensured rapid recovery from any permanent damage to his essence.

Rosen began to suspect that being pierced by the Pale Spear and having his heart impaled might have been a blessing in disguise, leading to him obtaining this Ancient God inheritance.

When he activated the Ancient God Relic, its spiritual amplification now applied to both sets of spiritual essence simultaneously.

As he wielded the Divine Brush and began to paint, the Time Sketch acceleration unexpectedly increased to 150 times. The spiritual essence converted from life essence now also boosted the acceleration effect of Time Sketch.

From this point on, his painting speed would be at least 150 times faster than before.

After disabling the essence conversion, Rosen's Ancient God's Divine Body reformed. The moment it did, he felt an unprecedented hunger.

He immediately consumed a large quantity of golden apples, but it wasn't nearly enough.

Thankfully, he carried an entire Ancient God True Realm, and the reserve of extraordinary lifeforms' blood and flesh began flowing steadily into his Gluttony Stomach, where it was digested and transformed into vitality. This vitality was then infused into the Ancient God Aperture, gradually filling its bottom with a layer of blood.

Only at this point did the terrifying hunger finally subside.

Yet there was still a faint sense of hunger lingering—evidently, unless the Ancient God Aperture was completely filled, this hunger could not be entirely eliminated.

To address this, Rosen returned to the Chaotic Seas after many years. Both Paradise Pharmaceuticals and the Glory Foundation immediately began operating at full capacity.

Although he had fallen out with Sonia, Daisy still stood firmly by his side.

While issuing commands at the Glory Foundation to mobilize its reserves, Daisy was stunned and overjoyed when Rosen suddenly appeared beside her. Overcome with emotion, she threw herself at him. Though they had occasionally kept in touch during his absence, she had still worried about him.

She wasn't in love with Rosen but knew that they were on the same boat.

What Rosen could offer her far exceeded what Sonia, who had turned against them, ever could.

"Your essence injuries have healed?" Daisy asked, her tone serious and concerned.

"They're healed. I won't let any of them off," Rosen said coldly, his killing intent surging as he recalled the hardships he had endured over the years.

"I'll stand by your side," Daisy promised earnestly.

With Daisy's help, the vast reserves of the Glory Foundation were split in half. One half was sent to Paradise Pharmaceuticals to produce vitality-replenishing potions, while the other half was directly funneled into the Gluttony Stomach, digested, and then used to nourish the Ancient God's Divine Body and generate more Ancient God True Blood.

After several months, the Ancient God Aperture was only half-filled.

Fortunately, the hunger had completely disappeared. Otherwise, Rosen wouldn't have known where to find more food.

Standing beside the World Tree, Rosen fused the Ancient God Aperture with the Ancient God's Divine Body.

His body instantly expanded to a height of tens of thousands of meters.

In terms of sheer size, he was now comparable to Titan deities. Each movement of his massive form unleashed devastating destructive power. It was no wonder that even now, some Titans still clung to the path of physical dominance.

From his body to his spirit, Rosen had reached a peak state in every way.

However, moving forward with his cultivation, he found himself facing significant difficulties.

At 66 points of spiritual intensity, other paths would already be approaching the peak of Sequence 4, but for him, this was just the beginning of Sequence 4. He still needed an additional 12 points of spiritual intensity to fully complete Sequence 4.

By now, Rosen had figured out why advancing his spiritual intensity was so much harder than for others in the same Sequence.

The reason was simple: although he was only Sequence 4, based on the 10-point spiritual intensity threshold per Sequence level for the Silver Sequence, 60 points of spiritual intensity were already enough to reach the demigod level. This meant that, from 60 points onward, the growth difficulty was equivalent to that of Sequence 3.

For the Gold Sequence, each Sequence level required 11 points of spiritual intensity growth. For divine offspring (Godborn), each Sequence level demanded 12 points of growth.

At 13 points per Sequence level, Rosen's growth difficulty was even more challenging.

It was easy to imagine how much harder it would get the further he progressed. While the jump from 66 to 70 points of spiritual intensity wasn't too daunting, the leap from 70 to 78 points would already be as difficult as advancing within the Silver Sequence at Sequence 2. That was when the true meaning of "difficult" would set in.

To reduce the difficulty, he needed more methods to accelerate his spiritual intensity growth.

For example, mastering the Authority of Painting could enhance the spiritual feedback he received from creating spiritual artworks. Similarly, mastering the Authority of Hunting could increase the feedback gained from hunting extraordinary lifeforms.

But these methods were akin to drops of water accumulating into a lake—too slow to alleviate the immense pressure brought on by the 13-point spiritual intensity threshold.

After much thought, Rosen finally considered a darker path.

Some heretical gods wielded methods that could grant extraordinary individuals explosive growth in spiritual intensity within a short period of time.

However, such methods often came with severe costs, such as polluting the spiritual essence and cutting off future advancement.

But Rosen had the Ancient God's Heart, which allowed him to freely convert between life essence and spiritual essence.

As long as his spiritual essence wasn't too severely damaged, he could use the Ancient God's Heart to recover quickly.

Whether this path would work or not, he would have to try to find out.

From the first Magic Eye to the newly added Magic Eye No. 50, a total of 50 intelligent entities began scouring the web for information about such skills. Soon, relevant data was uncovered on the Deep Web of the Spirit Realm.

Roughly 5,000 years ago, a Sequence 3 Hunter's entire family was massacred.

This demigod Hunter knew who the culprit was but lacked the evidence to prove it.

Seeking revenge seemed impossible—the culprit was a Sequence 2 Scientist protected by the World Government, far beyond the Hunter's ability to contend with. Normally, this blood feud would have been left unresolved.

When even the World Government didn't stand on his side, the demigod Hunter became disillusioned with humanity.

He turned to a heretical god and disappeared for several centuries.

When he reappeared centuries later, his extraordinary rank was still Sequence 3, but his spiritual intensity had reached levels comparable to the peak of Sequence 2. With this near-Sequence-2-peak combat power, he successfully dragged his enemy down with him in mutual destruction.

Subsequent investigations by the World Government revealed that the demigod Hunter had acquired a terrifying skill with the help of a heretical god.

This skill allowed him to hunt down his own kind and strip away their spiritual essence.

The stolen spiritual essence would then be burned as fuel, leaving behind purified remnants that could be devoured by his own spiritual essence. This process enabled rapid, explosive growth in spiritual intensity over a short period.

However, spiritual essence enhanced through this method was extremely unstable, and the success rate of advancing to Sequence 2 with such a foundation was virtually zero.

Despite such massive drawbacks, for extraordinary individuals stuck in their advancement, the skill was pure gold.

Even the World Government recognized its potential, secretly cultivating a thousand death warriors using forbidden means to elevate them to Sequence 3 while granting them spiritual intensity equivalent to the peak of Sequence 2. These death warriors wreaked havoc on the battlefield, becoming a significant threat to alien races.

Without hesitation, Rosen placed a bounty through the Main God Network, offering a reward to alien races for obtaining the extraordinary source material of these death warriors.

Given the battles and losses on both sides, it was highly likely that alien races had captured some of these Hunters' extraordinary source material.

By analyzing it, Rosen hoped to uncover this special skill.

As expected, the bounty was quickly fulfilled, and Rosen obtained the source material.

Eagerly, he began researching the extraordinary source material in his possession.

"So this is how the skill works…" Rosen frowned as he carefully studied it.

Previously, he had been puzzled. A Sequence 3 capable of dragging a Sequence 2 into mutual destruction should have been a weapon the World Government would want to mass-produce. Similarly, alien races who had obtained such extraordinary source materials on the battlefield should have developed their own versions of such death warriors.

The reason was simple—this skill came with other significant drawbacks.

First, after acquiring the skill, one's luck (fortune) would continuously decline. Although this decline wasn't permanent, the rate of recovery couldn't keep up with the rate of consumption, resulting in increasingly bad luck for anyone using the skill.

Second, the cost of cultivating such death warriors was too high. Cultivating a few for specialized missions might make sense, but mass production would do more harm than good.

Most alien civilizations had strict hierarchies and no shortage of expendable warriors, so they had no need to cultivate this kind of death warrior either.

Rosen hesitated on whether to learn the skill. Then he remembered that his Ancient God's Heart was still nurturing a drop of Ancient God's True Blood. If he used the Ancient God's True Blood to enhance this skill, he might be able to offset its negative effects.

Ancient God's True Blood took ten years to mature. Rosen immediately spent a month on Paradise Island creating spiritual realm artworks. When the Ancient God's True Blood was ready, he used it to enhance the skill crystal he had extracted from the extraordinary source material.

To successfully extract the skill crystal, Rosen contacted a Sequence 2 geneticist through the Main God Network. The geneticist helped him isolate the crystal.

Once the Ancient God's True Blood fused with the skill crystal, the crystal was immediately transformed and enhanced according to his will.

Gazing at the now golden skill crystal in his hand, Rosen wasted no time in refining it and integrating it into his Hunter source material.

[Primordial Oil Lamp: Miracle Skill]

[Passive Attribute]: Construct a Primordial Oil Lamp using your own essence.

[Active Attribute]: Hunt lifeforms and use the Authority of Hunting to harvest their essence into the Primordial Oil Lamp.

[Miracle Traits]: Primordial Lamp Oil, Universal Uniqueness, Eternal Immortality.

Rosen consumed a portion of his life essence, soul essence, and spiritual essence, quickly condensing a golden oil lamp. It looked somewhat similar to the Eternal Dark Oil Lamp he had acquired before, though the Eternal Dark Oil Lamp was silver-white, while this one was golden.

At a thought, the Primordial Oil Lamp materialized in his hand.

He could also hang the oil lamp on the Sequence Tree constructed from spiritual essence in Ash Castle, ignite the lamp oil within, and use the flames to fuel the Sequence Tree, enhancing its ability to absorb spiritual essence from the lamp oil.

To test its power, Rosen went to the Void Prison and casually killed a Sequence 4 dragon beast specialized in resource production.

The dragon beast instantly disintegrated into ash. Its life essence, soul essence, and spiritual essence were all absorbed into the Primordial Oil Lamp. Through its miracle trait, these were converted into Primordial Lamp Oil—a pure and flawless substance that was a potent restorative for life essence, soul essence, and spiritual essence.

Of course, there were trade-offs.

The original skill could elevate a Sequence 3's spiritual intensity to the peak of Sequence 2.

The Primordial Oil Lamp, however, had limits. While Rosen was currently in Sequence 4, it could only accelerate growth up to a maximum of 78 points of spiritual intensity. Beyond that, the lamp would no longer provide accelerated growth—unless he advanced to Sequence 3.

At that point, he could hunt Sequence 3 lifeforms and harvest Sequence 3-grade Primordial Lamp Oil.

Because the Primordial Oil Lamp was fundamentally tied to his essence, it couldn't surpass his current Sequence level.

Still, by mastering the Primordial Oil Lamp, Rosen had simultaneously gained mastery over the Authority of Hunting.

All of his Hunter skills were significantly strengthened due to the Authority of Hunting.

Now, he only had one remaining skill slot for Sequence 4 in the Hunter path. But at this point, he was no longer interested in ordinary skills—only exceptional ones.

During his time in the Abyss, his numerous Magic Eye intelligences had collected a vast library of Hunter-related skills.

Now, it was just a matter of selecting the right one.

Before long, Rosen had set his sights on a unique skill.

However, this particular skill had no existing learning materials or skill crystals for sale. The only way to acquire it was to enter a special spiritual realm and hunt a certain type of alien species that had already gone extinct in the outside world.

Even in this spiritual realm, the drop rate for the skill crystal was exceptionally low.

Throughout history, any Hunter who had managed to obtain this skill crystal had refined it on the spot—none were willing to sell it.

(End of Chapter)