Lord: Sequence Overlord

Chapter 175 The Historian and the Abyss

Chapter 174

Volcano City of the Blazing Shadow Principality is the second most prosperous city after the Blazing Shadow Royal City.

Volcano City sits atop the only volcano in the Blazing Shadow Kingdom, where endless wealth is contained within the ever-flowing lava.

The fact that Volcano City supports half of the Blazing Shadow Principality is absolutely no exaggeration.

This world is boundless and its size is unknown. The thickness of the Earth's crust is also astonishing. Naturally, the difficulty for magma deep underground to erupt is also higher. Usually, any active volcano will turn hundreds of thousands of miles around into a sea of ​​fire.

Without the strength of a demigod, there's no way you can even think about getting close to the active volcanoes of this world.

The volcano in the Blazing Shadow Kingdom is considered an extinct volcano. Some say that the island where the Blazing Shadow Kingdom is located was formed by the eruption of this volcano in the distant past, which is why the island has exceptionally rich mineral resources.

The volcano city is located in the crater, which appears to be only a few hundred miles in circumference from the outside.

However, once inside the crater, one discovers that the actual space inside spans at least tens of thousands of miles.

This is the true size of the volcano. The fact that it looks so small from the outside could mean two things: it was sealed by some powerful force, causing it to shrink, or the volcano naturally possesses spatial properties that cause it to shrink on its own.

There are various versions of the story, and the world government certainly knows the truth but hasn't made it public.

The World Government's office in the Principality of Blazing Shadow has remained hidden in Volcano City for 20,000 years.

To the World Government, the various kingdoms and principalities are essentially states within a state.

As long as it does not violate the laws of the World Government, the Principality of Blazing Shadow has sufficient autonomy.

However, the World Government cannot ignore this situation, so its offices scattered across various countries are all operating in secret, mainly responsible for monitoring whether these countries have violated the laws of the World Government or done anything that would harm the fate of humanity.

Since the primary function is surveillance, the power of the offices in each country is naturally not very strong.

However, Rosen could clearly sense that the person looking him over was definitely a Sequence 4.

This is very unusual; Sequence 5 is already considered quite high-end.

Suddenly a Sequence 4 appeared; Grand Duke Blazing Shadow's strength was only this level a few years ago.

Rosen opened his eyes and instantly flashed to the side; facing Sequence 4, his feigned unconsciousness was almost impossible to fool.

The masked assassin looked utterly bewildered. Behind the desk opposite him sat a well-dressed middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses.

This person is Gila's boss; in Gila's mind, there is only Badu Mendi, who is Sequence 5.

"To become a hereditary duke certainly requires extraordinary courage."

Badu put down his pen and clapped his hands.

“I can’t match your audacity; you even dare to scheme against a hereditary duke.”

Rosen retorted coldly.

"I am a historian."

Badu said confidently, adjusting his glasses.

Rosen's expression changed slightly; historians in the scientist branch were known as genius killers.

Historians become more insightful with age and are least afraid of young geniuses.

Because historians have a way to bind their own time with that of their opponent and then reverse it together. Being a genius means having a fast cultivation speed. Even though both are demigods, a genius who reverses a hundred years might be weakened to Sequence 9, while a historian's strength might still remain at the demigod level.

That's why historians call him a genius killer, but this ability isn't without its weaknesses.

While geniuses have a shorter training period, which is a disadvantage when facing historians, they usually also possess great fortune.

Historians who wish to temporarily reverse time for geniuses will have to pay double the price, depending on the extent of their good fortune.

"I've investigated you; you were just a mediocre talent in the past..."

Badu continued confidently, "But since you awakened your spirituality, you have made rapid progress. In less than ten years, you have become a Sequence 6 and even a hereditary duke. There must be an even greater opportunity hidden within you than Gila's."

"So you're targeting me, not Gila?"

Rosen asked in surprise.

"I've had my eye on you ever since you returned to the Blazing Shadow Duchy."

Badu nodded and said, "However, you are a hereditary duke after all. Without a suitable reason to kill you, I am not confident in dealing with the World Government's intelligence investigation. So when Gila came to me, I decided to sacrifice him to get rid of you after consideration."

"How to solve this?"

Rosen sneered.

"This one!"

Badu laughed confidently, "You plotted to harm the World Government employee Gila, and then I stopped you and captured you alive. How about that? Don't worry, I won't kill you. At most, I'll send you to prison for a few years, provided you hand over your opportunity."

"It seems you dare not kill a hereditary duke."

Rosen laughed sarcastically.

"Sometimes living is harder than dying."

Badu stopped smiling and stood up.

An hourglass instantly appeared in his left hand, and the sand inside began to flow upwards continuously.

In that brief moment, Badu did not become younger due to the reversal of time; instead, his face was covered in wrinkles, and he looked as if he were about to take his last breath.

The confidence I had just felt had completely vanished, replaced only by unbelievable terror.

Reversing time and age causes one's own lifespan to decline rapidly.

There is only one possibility: the life of the person in front of you is not flowing forward, but flowing backward.

To put it more simply, this Rosen is a monster who gets younger as he gets older.

Rosen immediately unleashed the Nightmare Shackles, instantly binding Badu and sending him, unable to resist, into the Void Prison.

The masked assassin beside him, seeing that things were not going well, tried to escape. However, in the shadow behind him, the self-portrait clone hidden in the void shadow, holding the portrait that had just been painted, used Death Judgment and entered the masked assassin's sea of ​​consciousness while wearing the cloak of death.

The Grim Reaper's scythe reaped the spirits, instantly killing the masked assassin without letting any survivors.

Rosen sat in Badu's seat, his hands supporting his cheeks as he fell into deep thought.

He was not surprised that Badu would fail, because he was very confident that his luck was stronger than Badu had imagined.

However, in his view, after Badu failed to reverse time and age, he was still unlikely to be Badu's opponent. It was already a remarkable thing that he was able to escape. In the end, he never expected that Badu would almost exhaust his lifespan and die of old age.

Now the trouble is even greater. How can we explain killing a historian to the World Government?
Although Badu plotted against him, didn't his plot fail?
The law can be so frustrating sometimes, especially since Badu's backing must be quite powerful.

Without sufficient background and connections, switching careers to become a historian is not so simple.

Many people believe that he must have been backed by a powerful demigod to become a hereditary duke.

Badu, however, had absolutely no scruples. How could he dare to do this if he didn't have a powerful backer?

Rosen sighed. It seems that if you don't want to be coveted, you either have to keep a low profile and not have anything to covet, or you have to fight your way out and pave a smooth road with blood. No wonder those powerful people in history were accompanied by endless killing throughout their lives.

The power of the Time Tower covered the Void Prison, and the imprisoned Badu began to suffer the torment of being unable to live or die.

Badu, who was already on the verge of death from unknown injuries, was simply unable to withstand the torment of the Void Prison.

So even after being tortured to the point of near death, they still couldn't convert Badu into a fanatical believer.

Even Badu's spirituality couldn't be weakened to Sequence 6, so Rosen couldn't control Badu through mind control.

Killing Badu, who is in a dying state at Sequence 4, is not difficult, but controlling him is impossible.

Left with no other option, Rosen had to execute Badu in the mysterious study.

They utterly reduced him to ashes, without even using a death sentence to reap Badu's spirituality.

The reason is simple: killing Badu is not as simple as killing Ford.

Ford, coveting the power of the demon god, deliberately erased all traces of himself. Moreover, Ford was the one who made the first move. Even though the matter was exposed, Ford deserved to die. Anyone who wants to rely on Ford to cause trouble for him is just seeking personal revenge.

But Badu is different; his position in the World Government is far higher than Ford's.

Moreover, with a deeper background, if someone were to seize upon evidence that he killed Badu, even the white could sometimes be mistaken for the black.

Therefore, Rosen chose to grind Badu to ashes in the mysterious study, making him disappear from the world completely.

Since the Mysterious Study is known to be able to isolate everything, even powerful prophetic methods cannot determine whether Badu is dead or alive; at most, they can only confirm that Badu has disappeared and cannot be found.

It is impossible to confirm Badu's death, and it is not so simple for the forces behind Badu to use him to launch an attack.

Because he was secretly captured by assassins, no one knew that Rosen had been in contact with Badu.

Rosen dropped several spiritual purification bombs and disappeared from Badu's study. He then used the void phase teleportation of the Fairy Dragon Balls to return to the Blazing Shadow City, and then took Gila back to Volcano City through the Wizard Tower's teleportation array.

After submitting the mission to the Deep Web, it took quite a while before a Sequence 6 came to receive Gila.

It was clearly Badu's disappearance that forced the World Government's merit system to temporarily assign a deputy to take over the mission.

After handing over the half-dead Gila, Rosen returned to the Blazing Shadow Royal City with nothing to worry about.

He has already offset the forced conscription with his merits, and he has completed the disciplinary task.

In this situation, no world government has the right to force him to do anything.

However, after further investigation, Rosen discovered that it was difficult for him to cultivate in peace and quiet.

Because after purchasing relevant information from the Spirit Realm Deep Web, he discovered that Badu's background was indeed very deep. His family had a titled demigod within the last five generations, and there had been no break in kinship within those five generations. Therefore, Badu's backer was a Sequence 2 deity.

If such a being really has his eye on him, and can't make a move openly, can't he at least try to kill him secretly?
Rosen felt it wasn't safe to stay in the Blazing Shadow Kingdom, and after some consideration, he decided to return to the Thunder Empire. There was nothing left to miss in the Blazing Shadow Duchy anyway, and the relatively safer Thunder Empire was a better place to settle down.

However, just as he was preparing to leave, Volcano City was undergoing a tremendous change.

The volcano city is constantly expanding and growing larger. To be more precise, the volcano city, which was once sealed and shrunk, is now gradually being unsealed and restored to its true size. Soon, the Principality of Blazing Shadow issued a call for volunteers in the name of the World Government.

All extraordinary beings are forbidden from leaving the Blazing Shadow Duchy, and as compensation, the merit points gained by everyone will be increased tenfold.

Rosen quickly figured out what was going on through the connections he had made in the Blazing Shadow Royal City.

The volcano in Volcano City is said to lead directly to the abyss.

What flows out is not normal magma from deep within the Earth's crust, but magma originating from the Abyss Plane. Hidden here is a huge spiritual realm, and the World Government used the power of this spiritual realm to suppress this passage.

There are many similar abyssal passages in the human world, and almost all of them are in a state of perpetual sealing.

It's not that it can't be destroyed, it's just that the cost of destroying such a passage is too high.

Therefore, sealing it is better. The seal can filter the abyssal spirituality in the magma and then reap a continuous supply of extraordinary resources. Now that the seal under the volcano city has problems, it will not be easy to reinforce it again.

The simplest solution is to send extraordinary human beings into the spiritual realm beneath the volcano city.

Then slay the abyssal demons within the spirit realm. The more you kill, the less pressure there is on the seal side, and the easier it is to strengthen the seal.

Rosen considered one possibility: could the seal malfunction be due to Badu's disappearance?

He wondered why the World Government would send a historian to Volcano City. Perhaps Badu's other duty was to guard and reinforce the seal. But Badu had only been missing for a short time. Was the seal really that fragile?
Rosen seemed to be deep in thought. Even though Badu had quietly become a Sequence 4, he still chose to stay in Volcano City.

So, could it be that Badu used this sealed abyss passage to seek illicit gains, causing problems with the seal itself, and Badu's disappearance was just the last straw that broke the camel's back?

This explains why the seal malfunctioned at this exact moment.

A tenfold reward for merit points is honestly quite tempting.

The merits earned in the World Government are not only enough to offset frontline military service, but their greater value lies in their ability to be exchanged for almost all treasures.

No power possesses more treasures than the World Government, and the World Government has almost entirely mastered the painting skills he desires.

As for Badu's demigod backer, who has been granted a title for five generations, he can kill him in the mysterious study if he has the ability.

As long as this person doesn't make a move openly, sending any number of assassins is just sending him treasures.

Rosen packed his luggage and headed to Volcano City via the Wizard Tower teleportation array, which was now open for free in the Blazing Shadow Royal City.

The volcano city is now incredibly bustling, with 90% of the ordinary people having evacuated and temporarily dispersed to nearby cities.

But there are always some who are not afraid of death and stay behind to make a fortune.

Almost all of the hundreds of thousands of extraordinary sequences in the entire Blazing Shadow Principality, from sequence 9 to sequence 4, came to Volcano City.

Those who didn't come had other duties and were exempted from coming only because of the Grand Duke of Chiying's guarantee.

At this time, a demigod dispatched by the World Government was already investigating the specific circumstances of the seal and the detailed handling plan.

Surprisingly, the investigation results will likely be released soon.

Badu, whom the World Government dispatched to Volcano City, voluntarily relaxed the seal in order to trade with the Abyss Demons and obtain a large amount of extraordinary resources. After becoming a Sequence 4, he found it difficult to maintain the seal and caused a great disaster, so he fled to escape punishment and his whereabouts are unknown.

Rosen was stunned by the investigation results, which perfectly exonerated him.

As expected, the World Government members investigating the seal should be at odds with Badu.

Given the huge problem with the seal, it's obvious that the people investigating couldn't be the forces behind Badu.

It might be an enemy force that comes, because it's not so easy for an enemy force to bribe you.

Of course, this does not mean that hostile forces have the opportunity to frame someone; there may also be neutral forces responsible for cooperating in the investigation.

The investigation revealed that Badu had deliberately weakened the seal for personal gain. Under these circumstances, Badu's disappearance was naturally considered as an attempt to escape punishment, and it was even possible that he had fled into the abyss.

After all, the Abyss is shrouded in the eternal will of the Abyss, a terrifying existence that even the World Government cannot overcome.

Rosen watched as his troubles were resolved without him even realizing it, and his intuition told him that this was the power of luck.

The bustling activity in Volcano City lasted only a few days before quieting down, because the entrance to the Spirit Realm had been opened.

Those who entered first were all Sequence 4 and Sequence 5, and after several days of bloody battle, they all returned severely injured.

Next, Sequences 6 and 7 were introduced, and Rosen also obtained detailed information about the Spirit Realm.

It turns out that this spiritual realm is actually equivalent to a smaller, inferior abyss.

Therefore, it is divided into seven layers in total, with the highest layer capable of accommodating sequence 3.

Life within the Spirit Realm is not automatically reset and refreshed. Instead, each level has an abyssal rift that requires a human of the corresponding sequence level to transcend and kill all the abyssal demons within before the World Government's demigods can seal the abyssal rift.

In a sense, this spiritual realm can be considered a projection of the abyss.

It's like an outpost for the Abyss's invasion of various worlds, so Badu's crimes are truly serious.

There are over a hundred sequence 6s and more than three thousand sequence 7s. The higher the sequence level, the more precipitous the decrease in the number of people.

Rosen saw a dozen or so very old Sequence 6s, each of them looking extremely old.

However, he did not underestimate these dozen or so people. First of all, it was remarkable that they could live to the end of their lifespan. Secondly, after they completely gave up the idea of ​​becoming Sequence 5, they would break the limitation of learning three acquired skills per Sequence level.

These Sequence 6 creatures, which have lived for hundreds or even thousands of years, likely possess no fewer than ten fully-developed LV5 skills.

Even when fighting against ordinary Sequence 5s, these people have an 80-90% chance of winning.

So these are the main force hunting down the abyss demons this time; the rest are just responsible for clearing out the smaller monsters.

At the bottom of the crater, a gate to the abyss, tens of meters high, suddenly burst open.

After Rosen et al.'s sequence 6 entered the fourth layer, the subsequent sequence 7 also entered the third layer one by one.

Upon passing through the Gate of the Abyss, the first thing you feel is the scorching heat.

Rosen looked around and realized that, as expected, the random teleportation system prevented them from being pinpointed to a single location.

The surrounding environment is full of erupting volcanoes and lava. The volcanoes here are of normal size, at most a few thousand meters in diameter. Soft, coral-shaped plants live in the rolling lava. These should be lava coral grass that can absorb high temperatures.

Rosen took out a special thermometer; the ambient temperature was less than 90 degrees Celsius.

For Sequence 6, this temperature should feel like a gentle breeze.

However, he felt extremely hot, which meant that the high temperature here could directly affect spirituality.
This information doesn't mention it, which means that something abnormal has happened here.

Rosen activated Void Shadow Escape and disappeared into the shadows, simultaneously releasing the Hunter's Eye from his right eye, which had also disappeared into the shadows.

Their eyes surveyed the surroundings from high above and quickly spotted many dangerous abyssal demons.

There were at least a hundred Sequence 6 creatures within a radius of several dozen miles: lava snakes darting through the magma, fire demons drawing energy from the volcano, abyssal bone demons running across the flames, and hordes of abyssal stone demons flying in the sky.

Rosen found no trace of other humans within this area, which is not the size of the fourth level that should exist.

Moreover, one person has to face so many Sequence 6s. Are we just going to send them in to their deaths?

He activated Lazy Feet to try to leave this spiritual realm, but Lazy Feet was completely unable to penetrate the surrounding space.

It should be noted that his Slothful Feet can freely travel to spiritual realms below Sequence 2. The spiritual realm sealed under the volcano is only Sequence 3. Although there is a World Government seal outside, even if the Slothful Feet cannot leave, it is not so that it cannot even shake the space.

Rosen suddenly realized that there might be something wrong with the abyss gate he had passed through.

He immediately tried to sense the ancient tree of the noble lineage in the spirit realm, but unsurprisingly, he couldn't detect it at all.

This means that the place he is currently in does not have a spirit world at all.

"This is the abyss, the true abyss..."

Rosen was telling the truth that even he himself couldn't believe.

At the same time, chaos erupted in front of the Abyss Gate in Volcano City.

The World Government's special envoy, Sequence 3 demigod Erwin Kevin, has discovered that all Sequence 6 beings who entered the Abyss Gate have lost contact. No one but the Sequence 0 Abyss Lords could accomplish this under his very nose.

The good news is that the power that the Abyss Lord can secretly infiltrate through is limited due to the seal.

Therefore, the missing Sequence 6 was probably randomly teleported to a certain level of the abyss.

The abyss is extremely chaotic. Unless one is an abyss demon god who can control part of the abyss's will, it is difficult for ordinary abyss lords to find those Sequence 6s scattered across different levels. Therefore, they do not need to directly confront Sequence 0.

The bad news is that those Sequence 6s who fell into the abyss have almost no chance of coming back.

This time, such a huge blunder has occurred, and the world government will likely punish him severely afterward.

Rosen tried various means of communication and found that the God's computer was completely unaffected and could log in to the God's network and the Spirit Realm Deep Network at will. In addition, the hereditary duke's Star Emblem could also contact the Spirit Realm Deep Network, although the network connection was intermittent.

Basically, it can be understood as a shift from gigabit broadband to the old dial-up internet.

Even sending a single sentence into the deep web of the spirit world requires a delay of several minutes.

Fortunately, they could still make contact. Rosen logged directly onto the World Government's official website to inquire about the Abyss Gate of the Blazing Shadow Principality.

Two hours later, Rosen finally understood what was going on.

Since it turned out that the Abyss Lord had intervened, he now had no choice but to find a way back to the main world on his own.

As compensation, the World Government awarded him exceptionally high merit, and if he could rescue some Sequence 6s, he would receive an additional substantial reward.

However, even if a person has merits in the Abyss Plane, they cannot use them. If they unfortunately die here, all those merits will be nothing but empty promises.

The only good news right now is that, according to the location provided by the Spirit Realm Deep Network, he is currently located on the outermost layer of the 99th plane of the Abyss, which is the 99th layer. As long as he is on the 98th layer, the Star Emblem cannot receive signals from the Spirit Realm Deep Network.

(End of this chapter)