Lord: Sequence Master

In the painted space, Rosen set the background as Golden Sand Beach—a serene paradise masking the tension between him and Delia. Rosen reclined on a beach chair, his eyes fixed on Delia, whose expression was a storm of conflicting emotions.

Her spirit had been forcibly drawn out from her soul, igniting a surge of self-awareness that threatened to shatter the role she had played. Her true memories, sealed away before she entered the role of Rosen's loving companion, flooded back in an instant. But the remnants of the false love she had acted out had seeped deep into her spirit, binding her with conflicting emotions. Now, Delia existed in two states: one part of her filled with hatred for Rosen, and the other part madly in love with him. This mental contradiction created a spiritual state akin to schizophrenia.

Over time, the part of Delia consumed by hatred became imprisoned within the painting, while the Delia who deeply loved Rosen emerged from the artwork, standing before him.

"Tell me about your past. Who are you really?" Rosen asked as he stepped closer, his voice soft but firm.

"I am the real Delia," she confessed, her voice laced with guilt. "The Delia you knew before was the fake."

What followed was a long, painful conversation that revealed a shocking truth. Rosen carefully pieced together the fragments of her story, finally seeing the full picture.

Delia had been an actress in her previous life. Her biological father, Vittore, was the younger brother of the current king of the Dungeon Kingdom. Though Vittore hadn't inherited the throne, he had been born with a non-hereditary earldom. Talented beyond measure, Vittore reached Sequence 3 long before his older brother, the king.

Delia was born as the result of a beautiful love story between Vittore and her mother, a witch who had been fascinated by the demon sealed deep within the Dungeon Kingdom. Delia's mother, blinded by her obsession with the demon, underestimated its power and was eventually corrupted by it after experimenting with its blood. Delia's birth ultimately cost her mother her life.

Delia herself had been born frail, her body unable to withstand the demonic blood that flowed through her veins. By the age of fifteen, she was near death, overwhelmed by the demonic backlash.

Vittore, having already lost his wife, couldn't bear to lose his daughter as well. In his desperation, he used a rare skill from the Actor Sequence, extracting Delia's spirit and soul and infusing them into her mother's body, granting Delia a second life through this miracle of rebirth.

But even in her new life, Delia was never truly free of the demon's curse. The demonic bloodline still held her captive, slowly eroding her health.

As time passed, Vittore uncovered the terrible truth—his wife's corruption had been orchestrated by his brother, the king. The king had assisted the demon in corrupting Vittore's wife out of jealousy. Devastated, Vittore descended into madness. His grief turned into a plan to release the demon, and he used his Actor Sequence powers to manipulate his brother, slowly orchestrating his revenge.

Delia had fled the kingdom before fully understanding her father's plans. The Delia Rosen had met before was ignorant of her true past because Vittore had sealed her memories. He had feared that unsealing her memories would destroy her and drag her into the deadly plot he had woven. Vittore had kept her in the dark, hoping she could live a free life, untainted by the curse of the demon and the bloodshed that followed.

Delia's memories from her past life only began to awaken after Vittore's death. In her search for answers, she discovered that the demonic power she had been destined to inherit had somehow been transferred to Rosen. Realizing this, she had sought to frame him, thinking he had taken something rightfully hers.

But Delia was only a Sequence 7 Actress, not powerful enough to execute the framing herself. A secret faction had approached her, providing her with resources and tools, including the spirit realm master tape, which they had used to frame Rosen by murdering the heir to Duke Amos. Their plan was to use the duke's influence to trap Rosen and force him to reveal the powers he had stolen. Delia thought she would corner Rosen by leveraging the spirit realm massacre.

However, the evidence she had meticulously prepared to frame Rosen had vanished.

Seeing her plan fall apart, Delia had been ready to find a new opportunity to confront Rosen. Yet, for reasons unknown, she had inexplicably shown up and pulled Rosen into her fabricated reality without understanding why. It became clear to Rosen that Delia had been manipulated by the secret faction. They had used her as a pawn to advance their schemes, though the full extent of their plans remained a mystery.

Rosen sealed Delia's true body inside the painting prison, and her self-portrait, holding half of her spirit, fell into a deep slumber.

Next, Rosen turned his attention to the Holy Grail Knight tarot card and the spirit realm master tape.

The Holy Grail Knight wielded powers connected to fate, allowing Rosen to track distant strangers with a fateful connection to him. Since the master tape had come from the secret faction, and they had tried to frame him, the condition of a fate connection was fulfilled.

Moreover, because Rosen had never met the individuals involved, the stranger condition was also satisfied.

Rosen's only concern was that the Holy Grail Knight was merely a Sequence 7 replica. If the secret faction members were powerful enough—at Sequence 5 or higher—there was a chance the knight's divination could fail.

Through his spiritual flame, an image began to form. It was blurry and fragmented, like a mosaic, but Rosen used his artistic skills to refine and clarify the picture.

To his surprise, the secret faction members were closer than he imagined.

Rosen had been traveling across Mysterious Island with Delia, staying in different hotels each night. That day was no different—the faction members were in the room directly below his.

Were they bold, or simply underestimating him?

Rosen didn't act rashly. He amplified his extraordinary hearing, trying to eavesdrop, but their room was soundproofed. Next, he attempted to sense any dreams, but no one below was sleeping.

Forcing them into a dream would alert them. Instead, Rosen activated his Void Vision, using the Void Realm to infiltrate the hotel's local area network.

Through their virtual reality devices, Rosen quietly observed the room below, finding three men. One wore glasses and held a fate script, likely from the Scriptwriter Sequence. Another had a pipe in his mouth, probably from the Doctor Sequence, and the third, dressed in black, seemed to be from the Assassin Sequence.

"Damn it… another fate black hole," the scriptwriter, Ford, cursed, staring at the fate script in frustration.

Scriptwriters could manipulate fate scripts, but they weren't omnipotent. Fate was a fluid thing, and the people they tried to manipulate often resisted, creating fate black holes—gaps in the plot that the scriptwriter could no longer control.

Rosen knew he needed to act fast. Once the scriptwriter reworked the plot and found that Rosen had escaped their fate, things would get dangerous.

Rosen pulled out Dragon King's Wrath, aimed the Time Scope at the floor below, and activated Future Silencer.

He loaded a Dragon King's Roar bullet, compressing its power into a Time Elemental Quad-bullet. As he stacked buffs—from Grey Mouse's bloodthirsty assault to the Morning Star Authority of the Feathered Serpent God and his Mechanical Steed's Divine Judgment—he primed for a lethal strike.

Rosen squeezed the trigger. The bullet vanished into the future, set to strike the scriptwriter in a few seconds.

He wasn't finished yet. Rosen fired three more rounds—Space Elemental Quad-bullets—each loaded with dual-sided trap paintings from his Artist's Magazine.

These bullets weren't just ordinary rounds—they were projections from his Spiritual Canvas, manifested through the Artist's Magazine, and each carried a dual-sided trap painting.

Though Rosen fired the four bullets at different intervals, the Future Silencer synchronized their impacts, ensuring all four struck their targets simultaneously. As Rosen mentally counted down, the moment of attack neared.

When the countdown reached zero, Rosen shadow-stepped into the room below.

At that exact moment, the four bullets hit their marks.

Both the doctor and the assassin had automatic defense items that activated and blocked the bullets. However, the bullets then transformed into paintings, releasing the traps depicted within them.

Each painting unleashed dual-elemental traps of frost and thunder, layered with space-binding traps and time-dust traps. These traps combined to form a triple-layered effect, ensnaring the targets. Even for Sequence 5 beings, escaping such traps would take precious seconds.

Meanwhile, the scriptwriter was hit by the Dragon King's Roar bullet. As the bullet struck, he frantically activated all his defensive skills. However, defenses that should have lasted for several seconds, or even minutes, were instantly nullified by the time-eroding effects of the Dragon King's Time Breath. With his defenses stripped away, the Space Elemental Quad-bullet struck him directly.

This particular space trap wasn't a binding one but a transfer to the Void Gallery. In an instant, aided by time-dust acceleration, the scriptwriter was teleported into the Void Gallery before he could react.

Simultaneously, Rosen activated Grey Mouse's Scamper skill, boosting his speed tenfold. Combined with shadow-step, his movement was enhanced to twenty times normal speed. He darted toward the corner of the room, plunging the Dragon Tooth Dagger into what seemed like thin air.

At that precise moment, the assassin escaped the space trap and teleported to the same corner of the room.

As the assassin materialized, Rosen's dagger pierced through his Sequence 5 armor and struck his heart. The dagger's spirit-disrupting power temporarily blocked the assassin's control over his body, leaving him momentarily incapacitated.

Nearby, the doctor broke free from his trap and, with a flick of his wrist, sent five scalpels flying through the air. The scalpels darted with deadly precision—one aimed at the assassin, the other four at Rosen. As the scalpels neared Rosen, they vanished, only to reappear millimeters from his skin.

These scalpels, capable of short-range spatial jumps, made dodging impossible at such close range.

Rosen could have used shadow-step to escape the attack, but doing so would allow the assassin to break free. With the doctor present, the assassin could be instantly healed—even grievous injuries like a pierced heart or severed head would be restored. The opportunity to finish off both Sequence 5 opponents would slip away.

Instead, Rosen activated his Void Domain, transforming his vital organs—heart, brain, spine, and kidneys—into lifebars. The scalpels pierced his body, delivering lethal poison into his organs, but the lifebars absorbed the damage, keeping him alive.

Three of Rosen's water clones, each wielding a Dragon Tooth Dagger, appeared and attacked the assassin simultaneously. The assassin, his spiritual power sealed by Rosen's Golden Divinity, struggled to evade the lethal blows but couldn't fully protect his vital points.

Desperately, the assassin grabbed Rosen's hand, attempting to deliver a devastating knee strike to Rosen's groin.

In a rapid escalation, the doctor attacked Rosen's organs while the assassin prepared to land a critical blow.

Pushed to the limit, Rosen activated the Storm Chase ability from his Hunter's Boots. With a powerful twist, he drove the Dragon Tooth Dagger upward, stabbing into the assassin's neck. At the same time, he summoned a water shield, blocking the assassin's knee strike.

Although controlling the Sea God's Ring was difficult, Rosen tapped into the divine power of his Bladefin Shark followers, channeling enough power to invoke the Sea God's authority. Using this divine energy, Rosen had learned several abilities from the Frost Naga, one of which he used to create the water shield.

Under the relentless assault from the four Dragon Tooth Daggers, the assassin, with his spirit sealed and unable to counterattack effectively, was ultimately decapitated by Rosen. In his weakened state, Rosen captured the assassin's image and uploaded it into the Void Realm.

With the assassin dead, Rosen turned to face the doctor, completely ignoring the damage his body had sustained from the scalpels.

Locking eyes with the doctor, Rosen activated his Spiritual Canvas.

Suddenly, the room was bathed in a radiant, multi-colored light—an image Rosen had painted depicting a natural wonder of vibrant light emerging from the darkness. This natural wonder had the power to disrupt all spiritual senses.

Disoriented, the doctor lost his ability to perceive the world around him, leaving him reliant on instinct and hearing alone.

Rosen, anticipating this, cast Extraordinary Five-Sense Sealing, temporarily blocking the doctor's hearing. Due to the difference in their Sequence levels, this effect would only last two seconds, but that was all Rosen needed.

Rosen transformed Dragon King's Wrath into a handgun and unleashed a rapid-fire barrage.

The Godslayer Crossbow, previously limited to nine shots per day due to Rosen's psychic ability constraints, had been fused with Dragon King's Wrath, a physical weapon. As a result, the ammo limitation no longer applied.

Rosen wasn't short on resources—his Artist's Magazine was filled with a variety of Sequence 7 transcendent bullets.

This barrage consisted of strong acid bullets, which quickly approached the doctor. In response, the doctor conjured a cloud of blood mist to shield himself, but the bullets, reinforced by the Deathblow ability, pierced through the mist, aided by their ash-piercing properties.

While Rosen attacked from the front, his three water clones flanked the doctor from behind.

Realizing he was about to be surrounded, the doctor stomped on the ground, shattering the floor and dropping into the hotel room below.

But Rosen had foreseen this with his Time Eye—his self-portrait clone had been waiting in the room below, having prepared a vast array of traps in advance.

At this moment, the doctor, trapped within Rosen's intricate series of traps, was instantly transferred to the Void Gallery through layers of space traps.

Rosen then shifted his attention to cleaning up the scene. He planted a spiritual purification bomb in the room before retreating to his own quarters. The bomb detonated immediately, wiping out all traces of spiritual energy from the battlefield.

Although Rosen had sniped the scriptwriter from his room upstairs, the Future Silencer ensured that the bullets materialized directly in the future at the target's location. They hadn't needed to pierce through the floor. However, the chaotic battle downstairs had caused severe structural damage, cracking the ceiling and rendering the hotel a hazardous environment.

The entire hotel was now in turmoil. The Sequence 8 security officer, drenched in sweat, was overwhelmed by the intense spiritual pressure from the battle. He was terrified, knowing that any one of the combatants could have easily demolished the entire building. In his mind, both parties had likely fled after their clash.

No one suspected Rosen. In fact, the hotel staff even offered him a new room in another location, but Rosen declined. He exited the building and slipped into a nearby alley, disappearing into the Book of Secrets.

So far, the only one Rosen had completely eliminated was the assassin. The scriptwriter and the doctor were still causing chaos inside the Void Gallery. Rosen knew he had to act quickly to prevent them from tearing the gallery apart.

He decided to target the doctor first. The gallery, submerged in seawater, continued freezing over, forcing the doctor to cut through the ice with scalpels, storing the chunks in his ring as he tried to stay afloat.

Rosen set up Dragon King's Wrath in his studio, aimed at a blank canvas, and opened fire. The bullets vanished into the canvas and reappeared through the picture frames lining the walls of the gallery. No matter where the doctor moved, the bullets adjusted to his trajectory, leaving him no room to escape.

Despite the two-sequence difference, Rosen's attacks were lethal even to a Sequence 5 like the doctor. Dragon King's Wrath, a Sequence 5 transcendent artifact, dealt threefold amplified damage thanks to the Paladin skills from his mechanical steed, and Rosen was channeling divine power instead of ordinary spiritual energy. With Rosen safely in the studio, he could concentrate entirely on his offense without worrying about defense.

As the fight continued, the doctor accumulated more and more bullet wounds. Though he could heal himself, the barrage was relentless, and he struggled to keep up. Finally, a Dragon King's Roar bullet shattered his last remaining defense, reducing its duration to zero. A subsequent volley tore through his limbs and vital points, leaving him collapsed and helpless.

Rosen immediately teleported into the Void Gallery, securing the doctor with Nightmare Shackles.

With the doctor neutralized, Rosen turned his attention to the scriptwriter.

The scriptwriter, Ford, was faring better than the doctor. As a member of one of the four great civilizations, Ford had far more resources and resilience. Rosen knew this wouldn't be a quick victory, so he continuously sent traps through the gallery's paintings, harassing Ford and blocking his escape into his domain.

Though Ford possessed formidable spiritual power and a variety of recovery methods, he began to feel increasingly trapped as time went on. He realized that Rosen's Void Gallery was more dangerous than he had anticipated. How could a Sequence 7 painter like Rosen maintain such a prolonged battle without running out of spiritual energy?

As his alchemical puppets took heavy losses, Ford knew he had no way out. Desperate, he activated a special skill.

As a scriptwriter, Ford excelled in manipulating fate from behind the scenes, not in direct combat. His domain skills and control over his alchemical puppets had only delayed the inevitable. Now, facing a powerful foe and backed into a corner, he gambled everything on his last resort.

A scriptwriter could treat others as characters in a story—but they could also make themselves the protagonist. Ford tore a page from his Fate Script and ignited it with spiritual energy, activating a special skill: Fate Stage Play.

Fate Stage Play was an extension of his domain power, capable of manifesting a transcendent stage within the domain, where the rules of the script took effect. With the Fate Script, Ford stepped onto the stage, and at that moment, a replica of Rosen materialized across from him.

Though this wasn't the real Rosen, he immediately felt the danger—if the replica died on the stage, he would suffer severe damage. Furthermore, if he didn't take his place on the stage soon, his true self would begin to experience continuous harm.

Rosen quickly teleported through the maze of the Void Gallery, using shadow-step to appear on the grand Fate Stage.

He understood the workings of Fate Stage Play. For it to have such a strong binding effect, the scriptwriter had to have made himself a character in the play as well. This was the only way to fully unleash the power of the Fate Stage.

(End of Chapter)