Lord: Sequence Master

The Cat God Avatar explored the Maze Gallery but found no paintings on either side of the labyrinth. As it tried to figure out how to break through the Void Gallery, the floor of the maze activated countless traps, including spatial confinement and time dilation. These traps slowed the Cat God's movements, making Rosen faster in comparison.

In an instant, Rosen appeared in front of the Cat God Avatar using Void Blink, already activating his innate Mannequin skill. The medium for this skill was a small amount of powder he had scraped from the fake Cat God Statue after sacrificing Graymouse.

Collecting mediums for Mannequin had become a habit for Rosen, and this one proved to be useful. The Cat God Avatar froze under the influence of the Mannequin skill, unable to resist as Rosen projected the Ashen Veil toward its divine essence.

As the Mannequin locked the avatar in place, Rosen released its control, switching tactics. In his left hand, he wielded a bloody revolver looted from the Black Shark's first mate, while in his right, his Dragon King's Wrath transformed into a pistol. The Cat God Avatar, dual-wielding its own guns, opened fire at the same time as Rosen.

Supernatural bullets collided in midair, each barrage perfectly matching the other in speed and precision. From an observer's perspective, Rosen's shooting technique mirrored the Cat God Avatar's perfectly.

This was no coincidence. By using Mannequin in combination with his Mental Canvas, Rosen could sense the avatar's physical and spiritual state. This allowed him to mimic its movements and techniques almost perfectly. Though not ideal for long-term combat, it was a highly effective method of quickly learning an opponent's skills.

As the battle continued, Rosen's rapid-fire techniques improved, but the Cat God Avatar adapted, gradually destroying the surrounding traps. With the time dilation and spatial restraints weakening, its reaction speed began to surpass Rosen's.

Realizing the growing danger, Rosen stopped merely copying the avatar and began integrating its techniques with his own. Using Void Gun Dance, he blinked unpredictably around the avatar, firing from all directions and utilizing Void Stealth to catch the avatar off guard.

However, the Cat God Avatar was no simple opponent. Its reaction speed suddenly doubled as it recovered more of its power. It had been concealing its gradual recovery, regaining its full potential all at once and catching Rosen by surprise.

But Rosen had anticipated this through Time's Eye. Despite the avatar breaking through his bullet storm and hitting him several times, Rosen landed a critical shot in return.

The moment Rosen's bullet struck, the Cat God Avatar lost a thousand years of lifespan. This reduction in lifespan affected even the Cat God's main body. Although the Cat God was ancient, having lived over 20,000 years, the loss of a millennium was significant. Moreover, the memory of the battle became a distant, thousand-year-old memory, confusing the Cat God Avatar and causing it to falter.

Seizing the opportunity, Rosen activated a spatial trap that transported the Cat God Avatar to the Gluttony Furnace. Trapped within the furnace, the avatar struggled in vain as the Sacred Fire of Space and the devouring power of Gluttony began to break it down.

Though the Cat God Avatar had formidable combat skills, Rosen's abilities as a Painter far exceeded it. Had Rosen not been interested in learning its techniques, he could have ended the fight much sooner with Mannequin and Gluttony.

After several hours, the Cat God Avatar was completely broken down, leaving behind two orbs of loot, which entered Rosen's Scavenger Space. Cracking open the first orb, Rosen found a Fortune Cat Figurine, a Sequence 6 artifact that enhanced luck. The second orb revealed two Cat's Eye Gems, magical socketable gems that boosted reaction and movement speed by 100%. When embedded in the same item, they would unlock the supernatural ability Critical Strike.

While these rewards were valuable, they felt underwhelming compared to the effort required to defeat the Cat God Avatar, especially considering the loss of Graymouse's body.

As Rosen prepared to leave, the Main Computer of the Secret Library suddenly extended wires into the Void Gallery, tapping into the Gluttony Furnace. To his shock, Rosen saw the phantom of the Cat God Avatar, which he thought had been destroyed, still lingering in the furnace.

Frantically, the avatar struggled, but the Main Computer extracted its remaining divine essence, which was then channeled into Rosen's Potion Flask.

Rosen realized the Cat God had a secondary life—a phantom life hidden within the avatar. Cats, after all, were said to have nine lives. While the first life had been claimed by Rosen's Judgment Bullet, the second had been hiding in a ghostly state, only to be captured by the Main Computer.

With the Cat God's divinity now stored in the Potion Flask, Rosen secured it as valuable material for his future promotion to Sequence 5 Hunter.

Afterward, Rosen debated whether to destroy the Deathwood Forest spirit realm. Deciding to proceed, he unleashed his Ashen Queen Bees, which massacred the realm's extraordinary creatures. He then stripped the realm of its soil, plants, and stones, leaving it barren.

Once the realm was rebooted, Rosen accelerated the process using time-element spiritual crystals. Within ten cycles, the realm degraded from Sequence 6 to Sequence 9, and when it collapsed, it turned into space-element crystals instead of ash. This confirmed Rosen's theory: spirit realms tied to destroyed realities would burn to ash, while those with living counterparts broke down into elemental crystals.

Satisfied with his findings, Rosen gathered the space crystals to use for his spiritual artwork. Activating the Fairy Dragon Pearl's Void Phase miracle attribute, he locked onto the coordinates of the Blazing Shadow Kingdom and teleported back.

In the following months, Rosen split his time between painting in the Void Studio and sending his Self-Portrait Clone and pets to hunt Ashen Creatures. His Painter skills steadily advanced, and his clone's combat abilities improved significantly.

After six months, Rosen's hunt had earned him vast amounts of merit. He upgraded his spiritual artworks to Sequence 6, distributing the old ones to his domain's inhabitants. Just as he was about to immerse himself in further work, the Main Computer alerted him to good news.

The bounty he had posted in the Main Temple Network had finally been accepted.

Someone had offered to sell a rare Sequence 6 Curse-type skill painting.

Rosen eagerly paid 10,000 Main Temple Gold Coins to acquire the spiritual painting.

Although the skill wasn't particularly high-ranked, it came from a renowned source: Helati Borges, a Sequence 1 Painter who had passed away long ago. The painting was one of nine spiritual works Helati had crafted for his students. According to legend, Helati had created a masterpiece known as Helati's Vengeance, using his mastery of Cursed Art to kill a foreign deity.

Afterward, Helati sacrificed his life to create a spiritual realm painting in which he and his deceased student were reunited for eternity.

Rosen hung the painting on his wall, admiring the genius of Helati Borges and reflecting on the mastery he had yet to achieve.

The name of the painting was The Reaper's Hunt. It depicted a dark, cloaked figure wielding a scythe, towering over silhouettes of panicked people—both human and foreign races—fleeing in terror beneath its feet.

Curious, Rosen infused his spiritual energy into the painting, and his spirit entered the body of one of the fleeing figures. When he turned to look behind him, the towering Reaper swung its scythe down, killing him instantly. His spirit dissipated, only to reappear in another fleeing figure. But no matter how many times he tried to escape or avoid the Reaper, he always ended up at its feet, and the cycle of death repeated endlessly.

With each death, his spiritual energy weakened, and Rosen realized that if this continued, the portion of his spirit inside the painting would eventually be destroyed completely.

Watching from outside the painting, Rosen ate several Golden Apples to restore his spiritual strength and infused more energy into the painting. This time, he combined it with the divinity of the Feathered Serpent God, whose bloodline governed both Life and Death.

As Rosen experienced countless deaths, his affinity with death grew stronger. The only ways to master death were by killing or by being killed. Rosen, repeatedly dying, gained an intimate understanding of death's power. Eventually, his spirit was transferred into the body of the Reaper itself. As the Reaper, Rosen hunted the terrified beings below, but each kill warped his spirit with the grudges of those he killed. After reaping all life, the grudges twisted him until he was forced to take his own life with the scythe.

The cycle repeated over two months, and through endless deaths, Rosen's spirit grew strong enough to resist the corruption of the grudges. His affinity with death peaked, and the curse embedded in the painting, left behind by Helati, was finally revealed.

The painting contained a cursed Painter skill called Death Verdict. To acquire it, Rosen needed to use his soul as the canvas and the grudges from countless deaths as the paint. He would have to paint the Reaper's Cloak and Reaper's Scythe onto his soul, thereby creating the skill within his supernatural source.

In his Mind Sea, Rosen's soul manifested. With the Divine Brush in hand, he used the grudges and death energy from the Reaper's Hunt as paint, carefully drawing the Reaper's Cloak on his soul. Each thread of the cloak represented a life taken, intricately woven with spiritual runes. The process was so complex it took several months, even within the accelerated time of the Tower of Time.

After months of work, the Reaper's Cloak was complete, and Rosen moved on to painting the Reaper's Scythe. Having mastered the technique, he finished the scythe in under two months.

The moment the Reaper's Scythe was complete, Rosen unlocked the Death Verdict skill:

[Death Verdict (0/∞)]

[Attributes: Summons the Reaper's Cloak and Scythe, enabling them to traverse the target's Mind Sea through spiritual paintings.]

[Divine Trait: Reaper's Blessing—Grants immunity to death curses below Sequence 3.]

With the Reaper's Cloak, Rosen's spirit became immune to death curses. The cloak could also materialize in the real world, protecting his real body or Self-Portrait Clone and granting him the ability to travel freely through any spiritual painting or Mind Sea.

To test Death Verdict, Rosen painted a portrait of the Old Redstone Baron, using Kayden's memories as reference. In half a day, he created a detailed, lifelike depiction of the Baron, which became the medium for the skill. His Self-Portrait Clone, cloaked in the Reaper's Cloak, entered the painting and passed into the Baron's Mind Sea.

At that moment, far away on the frontier, the Old Redstone Baron, engaged in private activities, suddenly felt a chill. He sensed danger but couldn't pinpoint its source. Then, in his Mind Sea, he saw a cloaked figure with a scythe approaching his Sequence Tree, cutting through all his spiritual defenses.

With a single stroke, the scythe cleaved the Sequence Tree in two, draining the Baron's spiritual essence.

In the real world, the Old Redstone Baron collapsed, his body reduced to a vegetative state, devoid of spirit or soul. But Rosen wasn't finished. Through the collapsing Mind Sea, he noticed a landscape painting on the Baron's wall. Using it as a medium, he stepped out from the painting into the real world, decapitating the Baron with the Reaper's Scythe.

No blood flowed from the Baron's body. Instead, it crumbled into dust as the scythe drained his life force completely.

Rosen, as a final act, killed the Baron's lover, looted the estate, and burned it down with the Ashen Veil. He then stepped back into the Baron's portrait and returned to his studio.

It had been effortless to kill the Baron from miles away, and Rosen even briefly manifested physically through the painting.

The Death Verdict skill had proven its worth as a terrifying ability created by a Sequence 1 Painter.

When Rosen checked the skill again, it now read (37/∞), corresponding to the spiritual energy harvested from the Baron.

Rosen separated the Baron's essence from the Reaper's Scythe and infused it into the Baron's portrait, bringing it to life. The Baron's spirit, realizing it was trapped in the painting, panicked. But Rosen quickly bound the Baron's spirit using the Mental Canvas and enslaved it with Mind Control.

Through the Baron's memories, Rosen uncovered the long-hidden secrets of the Redstone Family. It turned out that, for generations, the Howard family had been targeted by a god, with the Redstone family serving as watchdogs. The Bloodline Compass, originally a Howard treasure, had been stolen by a Redstone Baron through deceit.

In the end, the Redstone Family had been mere pawns, serving a dead god who had backed the wrong side and been eliminated by the World Government.

The Old Redstone Baron, having realized too late that Rosen was the last living Howard, had fled in fear, abandoning his title and fleeing to the frontlines.

Ironically, it was that fear—and his cowardly decision to flee—that led to his eventual demise at Rosen's hands.

(End of Chapter)