Lord: Sequence Overlord

Chapter 196 The Soul Palette and the War Between Worlds
Chapter 195

Several days have passed since Amy woke up, and Rosen has noticed that Amy is a bit of a ditz.

Aside from smiling when facing machines, he's usually dull and can't unleash the power of a dreamer at all.

Between the mechanical race and the elves, Amy is actually more like a mechanical race.

Amy's memory is blank; strictly speaking, she was actually a newborn who was over ten thousand years old at birth.

Rosen had no choice but to entrust Amy to Alicia to raise and teach her the correct understanding of the world.

Alicia liked Amy very much, so she gave all her mechanical mounts to Amy and also handed over control of the mechanical city to Amy. After consideration, Rosen gave Alicia the Dragon Fang Dagger as compensation.

Ten days have passed in the blink of an eye, and the turmoil in the human world has begun to subside.

Rosen continued on his journey, teleporting directly to the City of Stars.

He used the Miracle Wish, which cost him 200,000 spiritual crystals, and saved him two days and tens of thousands of miles of travel. He easily teleported to the vicinity of the City of Stars, arriving at the holy land of all artists on this sacred continent.

After registering and receiving his identity card at the city gate, Rosen couldn't wait to enter the City of Stars.

Despite being the capital of the empire, there are very few pedestrians on the streets.

Like the Underground Kingdom, it is so crowded with superhuman beings that ordinary people simply cannot survive here. The divine aura emanating from the high-sequence instincts is enough to cause the spiritual collapse of ordinary people. Therefore, the ordinary people here also live in various spiritual realms.

So, on the surface, the City of Stars only has tens of thousands of extraordinary residents and hundreds of thousands of foreign artists.

Rosen arrived at the painters' section, intending to learn which painters from the City of Stars were particularly famous.

A painter who can make a name for himself here must be one of the best.

However, the result disappointed Rosen. The City of Stars was nice, but it wasn't home.

Therefore, most of the artists who came from all over the Holy Continent have returned home in recent days.

However, it became easier for him to acquire special painting skills, because the Star Empire officially issued a war warning. Those extraordinary beings who made sufficient contributions to the face of the threat from the Spirit Realm would be able to enter the Star Empire's official treasury and choose any treasure.

Moreover, playwrights have already predicted that within six days at most, part of the spirit world will merge with the City of Stars.

It could even be said that the City of Stars is the city where the fusion of the spirit world and the divine continent was first and most severe.

Because the entire city is the work of artists, from the stone benches by the roadside to the bricks underfoot, every blade of grass, every tree, and every stone is a masterpiece of art, imbued with spiritual power, it is a huge cake for the spirit world.

Rosen had anticipated this possibility before arriving in the City of Stars.

So after leaving the Painters' Guild, he went straight to a hotel to wait for the spirit world and reality to intersect and merge.

Before they had even been there for a day, good news came from the Painters' Guild.

As more and more artists left, the Star Empire had to open its Imperial Treasury ahead of schedule in order to retain them.

All artists who wish to remain can withdraw a treasure from the Imperial Treasury in advance based on their demonstrated strength and value. However, after receiving the treasure, they must sign a contract and cannot leave the City of Stars until they have repaid the equivalent of the treasure's value in contributions.

This is indeed good news for Rosen, and the news hasn't spread yet.

He was able to receive advance notice from the painters' guild thanks to the generous tip he gave to the receptionist.

Rosen rushed to the Palace of Stars, where the Imperial Treasury was located, where artists who had received the news had already lined up in advance.

There were dozens of people ahead of Rosen. After registering in groups of ten, they entered the Palace of Stars.

Rosen was in the sixth group. After registering, he followed the palace guards into the Sequence 3 Palace of Stars, which had been meticulously designed by the architect.

As long as the Palace of Stars does not fall, the City of Stars will not fall.

The Palace of Stars was filled with starlight, making all the buildings inside appear hazy and mysterious under the starlight.

After navigating through a maze-like corridor, Rosen and his group of ten finally arrived at the main gate of the Imperial Treasury.

At this moment, the main gate was wide open, and the artists who had selected their treasures were already at the door making the final contract.

You only have one minute to choose, which is short but enough.

Because the Imperial authorities had already put all the inventory below Sequence 3 in the Imperial Treasury onto the virtual network, Rosen had already selected what he wanted on his way to the Palace of Stars, so he went directly to the shelf displaying the corresponding treasures and picked up a skill crystal.

After signing the contract and returning to the hotel, Rosen couldn't wait to refine the skill.

[Ed's Palette: Capturing the Spirituality of Life and Transforming it into Paint]

Rosen has mastered five-dimensional painting, but he cannot create five-dimensional paintings.

Because conventional paints cannot complete five-dimensional painting, only paints transformed from spirituality can be painted on time, space, and energy.

Ed's Palette isn't the best among skills of this type, but it's definitely top-tier at Sequence 5.

After all, it's a special skill, and it can be easily mastered with skill crystals.

With five days left to prepare, Rosen arrived at the Divine Realm Territory to carry out the final modifications.

Rosen opened the Void Sketchbook and turned to a page with simple line drawings.

The simple line drawings were the most rudimentary things he could draw. All the simple line drawings were drawn casually when sealing the spirit of the giant beasts. He would not miss the ones that turned into trophy orbs of light, but he would not miss the ones that left behind corpses if he could extract their spirit.

Rosen infused the painting with his own divinity, and quickly transformed the spirit of the ethereal falcon in the painting into paint using Edward's palette.

This pigment is silvery-white and transparent because the Void Falcon possesses strong spatial power.

Therefore, this type of pigment is best suited for five-dimensional painting, which involves painting in space.

Rosen took out some time-attribute spiritual crystals, then extracted the divine power of the bronze dragon from them, and then extracted the spirituality of a pure, powerful beast without any attributes from the Void Album. The two spiritualities were then fused together to transform into time-attribute pigment.

Finally, the energy attribute pigments are easy to obtain; just gather any beast spirits with elemental attributes such as metal, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, thunder, light, and darkness.

Once all three types of paint were ready, Rosen took the magic brush and began to paint in the five dimensions of the divine realm.

Spatial painting is the simplest; it is essentially writing spatial spiritual runes in the void of the divine realm.

However, there are many of them, and a special sorting is needed to connect all the spatial spiritual runes to form a whole.

Time is more difficult to depict because space at least has length, width, and height, while time has no physical form.

Therefore, Rosen took out a large number of time-attribute spiritual crystals, then drew time-attribute spiritual runes on the crystals one by one, and finally sent these crystals to the corresponding spatial coordinates, and then simultaneously shattered them, allowing the divine realm to absorb the time-attribute spiritual runes within them.

In this process, the spiritual runes of time and space intertwine to form an invisible, three-dimensional canvas.

Finally, Rosen took out energy-attribute paint and began to paint the spiritual realm he wanted to create on this invisible canvas.

Once the unseen spiritual painting was completed, it began to merge with the time, space, and energy of the divine realm, ultimately forming a double-loop world similar to a Möbius strip.

Rosen, standing in the divine realm, appeared in the crater of a volcano burning with raging flames in the blink of an eye.

From then on, anyone who set foot in his divine territory could be instantly teleported to this spiritual world consisting only of volcanoes.

A single Dragon King Roar Bomb fired here could more than double its destructive power.

In addition to its already terrifying damage, it even has a slight chance of killing a newly promoted Sequence 3.

This will be his strongest trump card in killing enemies; everyone who knows about him before he reaches Sequence 3 will die.

Not content with that, Rosen continued to create new spiritual paintings in the volcanic spiritual realm using five-dimensional painting techniques.
Theoretically, there can be up to nine layers of space superimposed, but he can only draw three layers at most in a short time.

However, as long as there are three spaces, an infinite spatial loop can be created. Even if one space is destroyed, as long as all three spaces are not destroyed at the same time, the destroyed space can loop infinitely.

If there are six layers of space, time can be cycled; if there are nine layers, even spiritual memories can be constantly reset.

Before the partial arrival of the spirit world, Rosen finally finished drawing the third world using the accelerated time-simplified drawing.

This time, I'm not painting a volcano, but a frozen world where everything is frozen.

Strictly speaking, ideally, five-dimensional paintings should be exactly the same.

There's no need for volcanoes or an ice-covered world; the two five-dimensional paintings should be complete replicas of the divine realm.

Rosen did this mainly because he possessed the miraculous painting, the Möbius strip.

Whenever needed, any one of the three spaces in the Divine Realm can be separated and transformed into the nine-layered space.

Rosen, seeing that there was still more than half a day left, simply hugged Alicia and slept together under the covers.

The next day, the flashing red light of the identity card successfully woke up Lawson.

Rosen picked up the identity card from the bedside table and looked at it. This identity card was both a personal identification document and a login device for the Star Empire's virtual network. The Star City officials had already assigned him the district he would be guarding.

After getting dressed and cleaning up the exciting battlefield, Rosen and Alicia appeared on the hotel rooftop via a teleportation.

What he needs to guard is this hotel, and what needs to be protected are the countless spiritual artworks within it.

The City of Stars is now completely different from what it was a few days ago.

All the buildings were disassembled like building blocks, and then all the buildings were separated by spatial distance.

The hotel and the adjacent shopping mall were originally only a hundred meters apart, but now they are tens of kilometers apart.

After all the buildings in the City of Stars were dispersed, the city's area expanded tens of thousands of times.

This has two advantages. First, it separates the areas where the spirit world descends.

The spirit world descends into reality because it is hungry and needs to replenish its spiritual energy.

Therefore, the more and stronger the spirituality, the stronger the power that the area where the spirits descend and merge will bear.

After the hotel merges with the spirit world, at most some Sequence 5s will appear, and at most a few Sequence 4s will appear.

However, a terrifying being of Sequence 1 will inevitably appear in the Palace of Stars.

If the City of Stars hadn't been split up, the hotel would definitely have been destroyed by the aftermath of the Sequence 1 battle.

So now the Palace of Stars has risen to a height of 100,000 miles directly above the City of Stars, precisely to avoid hindering the City of Stars. Suddenly, Rosen heard the sound of shattering glass. He looked in the direction of the sound and immediately saw that space itself had cracked.

The first thing that appeared in the spirit world was a mirage-like projection, which spread out and enveloped each building.

The hotel was instantly enveloped by countless giant trees. As time passed, the sound of shattering glass intensified, and the space continued to merge, the mirage-like projection of giant trees around the hotel began to appear more and more realistic.

Even in the gaps between the giant trees, Rosen saw giants whose bodies transformed from ethereal to solid.

The extraordinary individuals inside the hotel had already arrived on the rooftop by this time.

There are only a few hundred people, mostly Sequence 6, with only three Sequence 5 including Lawson.

One of them was a sculptor, and the other was a musician.

Let's get to know each other briefly!

The musician, dressed in a performance costume studded with shimmering scales, proudly declared, "I am Shadia, a hereditary marquis."

The sculptor nodded and said, "The hereditary Earl Toru."

"The hereditary Duke Rosen".

Rosen concluded.

The words "hereditary duke" silenced Shadia, who wanted to seize control of the situation.

"Toru, you're in charge of defending the base. Shadya, you'll come with me to launch an attack."

Rosen commanded bluntly, "The rest of you are free to choose whether to stay behind or attack, depending on your own situation. I can only guarantee the safety of those following me. As for those who are recklessly advancing, it may not be in time to rescue them."

After he finished speaking, he partially expanded his divine territory, releasing over a hundred metal slimes, ten thousand shadow demons, and a thousand wood elves.

Except for the Wood Elves, all the other troop types were at Sequence 6, leaving the other nobles present speechless.

They are all artists and nobles, and at the very least, they are all Lords of the Divine Realm at Sequence 6.

That's why they were all too aware of how powerful the troops Rosen had deployed were.

The sheer number of those one hundred Sequence 6 metal slimes alone was enough to make the hotel virtually impenetrable.

The moment the giant trees surrounding the hotel became a reality, Alicia commanded all the wood elves to unleash the war magic, Nature's Wrath. Within a radius of dozens of miles, all the plants came to life, binding the giants and restricting their movements.

All the Shadowfiends dispersed, and wherever they went, the Void Shadowlands spread out.

Gradually, all the Sequence 5 giants were enveloped by the Void Shadow Realm beneath their feet.

"That's it?"

Rosen unleashed his divine power, alternating between light and darkness, pulling all the Sequence 5 giants into the Void Realm and causing them to disappear.

Inside the Void Realm, six Sequence 5 giants were already being ganged up on.

The Storm Thunderbird entangled one, the Nightmare Slime entangled another, Amy faced off against one, and the Miracle Fairy Dragon dealt with another. The last two were no match for the high-speed barrage of psychic projectiles from the Self-Portrait Clone's Dragon King's Wrath.

In the end, apart from the Storm Thunderbird being a bit overwhelmed, the rest of them dealt with these giants quite easily.

However, Rosen was not careless. At this stage, those falling from the spirit world were all ordinary giants from the surface of the spirit world.

As time goes by, giants of higher orders from the depths of the spirit world will also descend one after another.

If a divine giant or an exceptionally rare giant king were to appear, Rosen wouldn't find it easy to deal with it.

With the toughest prey, Rosen, dealt with, the rest are no longer a problem for Toru and Shadya.

However, the two were not idle. Toru wandered through the giant tree forest, integrating the spiritual wood carvings he had made into each of the giant trees. When needed, the spiritual wood carvings could control the giant trees to come alive and fight.

Shadya stayed on the rooftop, but instead deployed her divine domain and released the Void Stage, a building within her domain.

Then he summons his own personal band, sits in front of the devil's piano, and is ready to play his highest level of symphony at any time.

Toru and Shadya both knew very well that Rosen's instantaneous elimination of six Sequence 5 giants was a display of his strength.

This shows that he is not only a hereditary duke, but also far surpasses the two in terms of strength.

Only after Toru and Shadia gave up their ambitions of vying for power and profit were they truly willing to follow Rosen's reasonable commands.

While everyone else was busy hunting giants, Rosen found himself with some free time.

However, he soon had a headache because he discovered that the spirit world was slightly rejecting him.

Rosen quickly understood what was going on. He discovered that the spoils other artists obtained after hunting giants were not exactly nonexistent, but rather pitiful. The value of what they gained from hunting a Sequence 6 giant was less than that from hunting a Sequence 9 spirit being.
The giants he hunted were all in the Void Realm, within the territory of the Gods, and the spoils he obtained were not diminished in the slightest.

After a moment's thought, Rosen understood what had happened: the spoils of war had all been intercepted by the spirit world.

According to his understanding, the spirit world is very likely related to the ancient gods of the present day. It may be the sea of ​​consciousness or dream of the ancient gods. Now the spirit world is starving and desperately in need of filling, so it merges with reality and plunders spirituality from reality to make up for the emptiness of the spirit world.

If the spirits sent down all drop normal spoils, this is not a disaster but a windfall.

Therefore, after the spirit beings who descended to the spirit world died, the spiritual matter that constituted their lives was recycled by the spirit world.

He intercepted the spiritual matter that the spirit world was trying to reclaim, so he was naturally rejected by the spirit world.

Only now did Rosen truly understand why this descent of the spirit world was a catastrophe for humanity.

Because the number of spirit beings that descend upon the spirit world is countless, no matter how many are killed, they cannot be eliminated. Because no matter how many are killed, it is a loss for humans. To put it bluntly, humans are feeding the spirit world. If the spirit world is not fed, the spirit world will not let humans go.

Rosen deployed the Void Realm, throwing out the giant's corpse and all its debris.

As expected, as the item disappeared and was recovered by the spirit world, the spirit world's rejection also disappeared.

As time goes by, a batch of spirit beings will inevitably descend upon the spirit realm, sometimes within a few hours and sometimes within a day.

At first, there were giants, but later even giant beasts and elves began to appear one after another.

These are all extraordinary beings who died in reality. After death, their spirits were captured by the spirit world and they were reborn as spirit beings. However, only a very small number of spirit beings possess intelligence, and none have descended to earth so far.

At this moment, everyone on the hotel rooftop except Lawson looked grim.

The drastic reduction in spoils was just the beginning; gradually, some people discovered that their divine realm was drawing less and less spiritual energy from the spirit world.

The divine realm has two sides, existing simultaneously in the sea of ​​consciousness and the spirit world.

The divine realm must continuously draw spiritual energy from the spirit world to sustain its development.

However, the spirit realm is now hungry, and it has unilaterally cut off the divine realm's access to spiritual energy.

Therefore, the Lord of the Divine Realm can only rely on the stored spiritual crystals to sustain the consumption of the Divine Realm territory.

Even the energy consumed by hunting spirit beings can only be replenished by using its own reserves.

It might work in the short term, but in the long run, many people's savings won't last.

If this continues, what will superhuman beings do when they are driven to the brink of despair?
A better approach is to hunt down extraordinary beings in the real world and seek out spiritual resources to nourish the spirit world.

Those who are less capable and more ruthless can only prey on ordinary people.

Rosen sighed; he was starting to regret getting himself into the City of Stars quagmire.

Fortunately, it wasn't all for naught. Hunting spirit beings earned merit points, which could be exchanged for resources from the Star Treasury and even titles from the World Government. So the situation could hold on until the Star Treasury collapsed.

Several years have passed in the blink of an eye, and now the number of spirits descending from the spirit world is as high as dumplings being dropped into a pot.

The hotel rooftop, which originally housed over a hundred people, now has more than two hundred.

Because not every area in the vicinity has a powerful figure like Rosen, and not every area can easily hunt down all the descending spirit beings, some areas simply couldn't hold out and were eventually completely assimilated by the spirit world, having all their spirituality drained.

The fact that all the artists from the surrounding area fled to other areas led to an increase in the number of people on the hotel rooftop.

However, the more people there are, the more delicious they seem to the spirit world, and the more spirit beings descend upon them.

On this day, as usual, Rosen continuously teleported through the void to hunt down spirit beings that approached the hotel.

Suddenly, he sensed that a Shadow Demon had died.

Although Shadow Fiend's direct combat ability is not top-tier, his stealth, survival skills, assassination abilities, and burst damage are extremely strong. The fact that Shadow Fiend couldn't even escape indicates that a truly dangerous prey has arrived.

Rosen teleported directly to the vicinity of the vanished Shadow Fiend, but found no trace of his prey.

He immediately ordered all artists to evacuate.

Because he used his death perception, he was unable to detect any trace of his prey.

Clearly, the prey is an intelligent spirit being with exceptional stealth capabilities; an ordinary Sequence 6 artist has stumbled into a dead end.

Rosen's notification was timely, but a Sequence 6 gourmet was still killed.

A single, instantaneous blow can be fatal; there's no time to even use any trump cards to save one's life.

Fortunately, the spirit was only severely damaged and still has a chance to be resurrected in the divine realm.

After returning to the hotel rooftop, Rosen immediately entered the gourmet's divine realm through a void portal.

In recent years, to prevent potential casualties, all the lords of the divine realm have left teleportation portals on the hotel rooftops.

If someone suffers a severe spiritual injury, others can step in and offer assistance.

Rosen took out some Life Spring Water. Nourished by the Life Spring Water, the Gourmet, who would normally have taken at least ten years to recover his spiritual injuries and complete his resurrection, was resurrected under the Sequence Tree in just a few days.

For the past few days, everyone has been holding their ground on the rooftop, using ranged area attacks to clear out the surrounding giant trees.

However, the murderer was still not found until the resurrected gourmet recounted his ordeal.

(End of this chapter)