"The true era of chaos is approaching…"
Rosen sighed.
He actually liked the New World. The diversity of civilizations, nations, and races fascinated him. He was far from reaching the point of being weary of everything after experiencing it all. So, watching the world march toward destruction while being powerless to stop it left him with a tinge of regret.
Through the Painting Sequence Ancient Tree, Rosen issued an optional task to all Painter Sequence individuals.
As long as they created spiritual paintings depicting various regions, civilizations, and races, they could earn the right to exchange for various Painter Sequence abilities from him. Some could even gain access to Horror Paradise and Data Transmission, allowing them to travel to the Painting World Fruit for advanced studies.
At Rosen's command, the Brilliant Kingdom had already sent people to construct an academy for painters within the Painting World.
During his own Painter Sequence journey, he had received significant help from countless other painters.
Now, the best he could do was help as many painters survive as possible. He wanted them to preserve traces of the New World's civilizations in their art—even if the New World was doomed to perish, these paintings would serve as proof that it once existed.
Though chaos was approaching, the destruction of the New World was still years away.
The "deathmatch breeding" process would take time. It would take decades for demigods to ascend to godhood and for gods to slaughter each other to ascend to True Godhood.
During this period, demigods and gods could cause only limited destruction to the New World.
However, once True Gods began fighting to the death, the collapse of civilizations would be inevitable.
When two True Gods were evenly matched, what was the simplest way to determine a winner?
The answer: Destroy the opponent's civilization.
By obliterating their rival's civilization, a True God could strip them of their civilization's fate blessings and faith sources, drastically weakening them. The cost of this battle tactic? The complete annihilation of civilizations.
Once all the True Gods had slaughtered each other to ascend to Great True Godhood, the New World would finally be on the brink of total destruction.
True Gods could shatter civilizations and continents, but only a large number of Great True Gods would have the power to tear apart the entire New World.
In the end, a few victors would transcend, while the remaining ones would be nothing more than livestock for the ancient gods when they awaken.
However, Rosen recalled the final entry in the Doomsday Ark's navigation log—
"If transcendence is a lie, then all the struggles and resistance of every Great True God in history would become nothing but a joke."
Thus, before that moment arrived, he had to become stronger by any means necessary.
Rosen had decided to ascend to True Godhood—but not with his main body.
His avatars had not yet become gods, and his main body's foundation had yet to reach its peak state.
He planned to elevate his Miracle Sequence to True Godhood instead.
The Miracle Sequence was unique—unlike other paths, extraordinary essence did not affect its divine persona, nor would divinity essence be forced to ascend along with it. Instead, ascending the Miracle Sequence would only enhance its own abilities.
Rosen currently possessed several True God-level Miracle Artifacts, including the Chaos Coin Box, Greedy Wallet, Soul Hands, Kingdom Guardian, Holy Cross of Light, Magic Lamp, and Horror Paradise.
Some of these artifacts had already been distributed among his pets and avatars, while others were unsuitable for his purposes.
Thus, at the moment, Rosen could not find a perfect True God Miracle Artifact for the Miracle Sequence.
After some thought, he decided to completely eliminate the Nightmare Dragon Spider and see what kind of Miracle Artifact it would drop.
If it dropped something unsuitable, he would have to search elsewhere for a better True God Miracle Artifact.
And if he still couldn't find one—then he would have no choice but to hunt down a True God himself.
In the Mysterious Study Room's Omniscient Bookshelf, Rosen took out the biography of the Nightmare Dragon Spider and began erasing its avatars.
As long as he confirmed the avatars' locations, all he had to do was tap the illustration in the book, and a forbidden curse would be unleashed.
Before long, every single one of the Nightmare Dragon Spider's avatars was completely wiped out. Only then did Rosen approach the sealed Nightmare Dragon Spider and, with a single gunshot to the head, shattered its Sea of Consciousness. Without hesitation, he grabbed its divine persona and used the Dark Sun's Celestial Eye to corrupt the Divine Core within.
As the Divine Core became tainted, the divine essence within it began to dissolve and erode under the darkness of the Dark Sun.
It wasn't until the divine fire was extinguished, leaving behind only the intact divine persona, that the Nightmare Dragon Spider finally perished due to the collapse of its Divine Core.
Rosen crushed the loot orb and obtained an immense amount of divine essence crystals, a complete divine persona, a skill crystal, a True God Miracle Relic, and—unexpectedly—a supernatural artifact at the Great True God level.
Curious, Rosen picked up the skill crystal. It was rare for a skill to drop when the divine persona remained intact.
This was because the divine persona fused with Beyonder essence, containing the majority of the deceased True God's Beyonder sequence. Typically, acquiring a skill crystal required stripping the Beyonder essence from the divine persona and refining it into a skill crystal.
Even when a divine persona shattered, the chance of a skill dropping was low. With an intact divine persona, the probability was almost zero.
"A Miracle Skill?"
After carefully inspecting the skill crystal, Rosen decided to absorb this Miracle Skill.
His Limited Omniscience and Omnipotence were powerful, allowing him to simulate and cast skills from all Beyonder sequences.
However, there were certain skills even Limited Omniscience and Omnipotence couldn't replicate.
Miracle Skills were among them. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a "limited" prefix in his ability's name.
Thus, whenever he encountered a suitable and valuable Miracle Skill, Rosen had no hesitation in fusing it with the Beyonder essence inside his divine persona.
Moreover, due to the terrifying compatibility of the Root Sequence, the Miracle Skill he integrated could belong to any sequence outside of Noble, Painter, and Hunter. At Sequence 0, he could at most master nine different sequences' Miracle Skills.
However, most Miracle Skills weren't irreplaceable, so finding one that met his standards was already extremely rare.
[Faith Web: Miracle Skill]
[Passive Effect: Automatically filters and refines faith.]
[Active Effect: Can capture and invade faith networks through the Faith Web.]
[Miracle Trait: Faith Web.]
Every deity had their own private faith network.
The divine persona acted as the server, believers' faith functioned as the network cables, and the believers themselves were the computers. They continuously transmitted their faith to the server through the cables, where divine fire purified it and the divine persona converted it, ultimately producing faith crystals that could be transformed into divine power.
Each deity's faith network was a private server because no one wanted their faith stolen.
However, evil gods specialized in stealing faith.
They, too, had believers and stable private faith networks.
But the world's inhabitants were generally sane, and followers of evil gods remained a minority.
Moreover, evil gods weren't necessarily interested in pure, devout faith. Most of them preferred negative spiritual energies such as fear and despair, which formed negative faith. That was why evil gods were so eager to spread terror, despair, and death.
When a believer of a normal deity experienced fear upon witnessing the horrors of an evil god...
Was the faith they generated positive or negative?
The answer was both. The fear they felt toward the evil god created negative faith that unconsciously flowed toward the evil god. Meanwhile, their positive faith still went to their original deity. In such moments, the faith network of the normal deity and the faith network of the evil god would, in essence, become interconnected.
In history, there had been cases where an evil god corrupted all the followers of a deity, causing them to generate excessive negative faith.
Then, instead of absorbing this negative faith, the evil god blocked it, letting it flow back to the deity whom the followers originally worshiped.
As a result, the negative faith overwhelmed the divine fire, making purification impossible. In the end, the deity fell and became a subordinate god of the evil god.
Thus, almost every evil god had the ability to invade the private faith networks of true gods through faith.
The Nightmare Dragon Spider was no exception—in fact, it had an extraordinary talent for this.
Faith Web was a Miracle Skill designed specifically for invading faith networks. Not only could it infiltrate them with ease, but it could also use the Faith Web to brainwash the followers of the affected deity, quietly stealing their believers.
Ordinary evil gods, no matter how powerful, could only invade the faith networks of a few true gods at once.
The Nightmare Dragon Spider was stronger, but even it could only invade several times more than an average evil god.
After Faith Web became a Miracle Skill, it surpassed the Nightmare Dragon Spider, but even then, it could only simultaneously infiltrate a few dozen faith networks at most.
However, once Rosen mastered this Miracle Skill, he could integrate the Faith Web into the Main God Network, spreading it across the entire world and using the Main God Computer to invade every faith network at the same time.
And due to its compatibility and mimicry abilities, his Faith Web's intrusion would be nearly impossible to detect.
At least, no one below the level of an Eternal God or Demon could perceive the Faith Web's infiltration.
Rosen wasn't interested in stealing a mere trickle of faith to form faith crystals. What he truly had his eyes on were the gods behind those believers.
Through the Faith Web, he could transmit the Dark Sun's Celestial Eye's corruption into the deities' faith networks. When those gods absorbed faith, they would unknowingly take in faith tainted with the darkness and pollution of the Dark Sun.
Because of its mimicry properties, the Dark Sun's darkness and corruption appeared indistinguishable from normal faith on the surface.
So when these gods absorbed and refined this faith without suspicion, their Divine Core would be effortlessly polluted by the Dark Sun's Celestial Eye and assimilated into the darkness—eventually turning them into Dark Sun's followers.
Previously, Rosen had been concerned about the threat posed by the Fate Slate. But now, that worry disappeared.
Through the Faith Web, he would disguise the Dark Sun's pollution as normal faith, quietly infecting those demigods who absorbed faith. The corruption would lie dormant, waiting for them to ascend to godhood.
Once they became gods, they would have no choice but to enter the Fate Slate's grand feast of mutual devouring—either consuming others or being consumed.
No matter whether they devoured or were devoured, the victorious ones would claim everything through fate's plunder. Unknowingly, the Dark Sun's corruption would spread into the bodies of those who survived. Over time, this cycle would continue expanding, until one day, all true gods would be unknowingly tainted by the power of the Dark Sun.
At that moment, with a single thought from Rosen, every true god would become a follower of the Dark Sun.
Wasting no time, Rosen immediately began implementing his Dark Sun Corruption Plan with the Faith Web at its core.
However, a new issue quickly arose.
The reason the Dark Sun's corruption was so terrifying that even Great True Gods feared it was because its core relied on the Eternal Essence of the Dark Sun. Without enough of this essence, the corruption would be ineffective and could even be easily dispelled by the new world's sunlight.
Therefore, a full-scale corruption through the Faith Web wasn't realistic yet. For now, he could only carry out targeted, selective corruption.
Rosen had no intention of making the entire world his enemy and exterminating all deities. Thus, the Faith Web should be aimed at gods who were his enemies.
He handed the Faith Web over to the Main God Computer for management, then picked up the True God Miracle Relic dropped by the Nightmare Dragon Spider.
[Nightmare Nest: Miracle Unit Structure]
[Level: True God]
[Miracle Attribute: Can merge into the dreams of living beings to produce nightmare units.]
[Miracle Traits: Nightmare Parasite, One with Heaven and Earth, Eternal and Indestructible.]
A unit structure of True God level was exceedingly rare across the entire world.
However, after examining it briefly, Rosen gave up on mastering it.
Nightmare units were nightmare creatures—they were weak when manifested in reality and could only unleash their true combat potential in the dream world. As for the types of nightmare units, for example, if a Nightmare Nest parasitized a Fire Dragon's dreams, it would produce Nightmare Fire Dragons.
But here lay the problem—how many true gods even dreamed?
If a true god didn't dream, how could the Nightmare Nest parasitize them? And even if it did, wouldn't the true god simply wake up?
Thus, the Nightmare Nest was somewhat impractical. Creating true god-level nightmare units would be extremely difficult.
Without hesitation, Rosen handed the Nightmare Nest over to the little dragon girl. Since she now wielded the Laws of Nightmares, she could parasitize the dreams of countless lifeforms in the Ancient Gods' True Realm, producing lower-tier nightmare units to help manage the original nightmare world within her divine kingdom.
With only one piece of loot remaining—the Great True God-level supernatural artifact—Rosen picked it up without much expectation.
But as soon as he saw its attributes, he couldn't take his eyes off it. The artifact's properties were unexpectedly powerful.
[Nightmare Theater: Extraordinary Artifact]
Level: Great True God
Attributes: Can forcibly pull the divine consciousness of beings having nightmares into the Nightmare Theater.
Law Traits: Nightmare Soul Capture, Nightmare Descent, Nightmare Arrival
Rosen looked at the attributes and thought it should be an extraordinary building, but this was indeed an extraordinary artifact.
Because the Nightmare Theater was very small, only the size of a marble, embedded in a pendant.
Rosen put the Nightmare Theater pendant around Little Dragon Girl's neck. This was the perfect fit for her, who controlled the Nightmare Law. Of course, he could take it back anytime if needed. With such an extraordinary artifact, it's no wonder the Nightmare Dragon Spider managed to deceive the Deceptive Evil God.
Perhaps the Nightmare Dragon Lake relied on this to pull the Deceptive Evil God into the Nightmare Theater and imprison it inside.
Only then could it force the Deceptive Evil God to become its subordinate god. However, the Nightmare Dragon Spider was overconfident and didn't expect to be deceived by the Deceptive Evil God using lies. So, while the Nightmare Theater was useful, it shouldn't lead to arrogance.
If the Nightmare Dragon Spider hadn't taken the Deceptive Evil God as a subordinate god, it would have been able to kill it using the Nightmare Theater.
This artifact forcibly pulls away divine consciousness, which could have a lethal effect on true gods.
Of course, the premise was that the true god had to be having nightmares. Making a true god have nightmares wasn't easy.
While the Nightmare Theater wasn't considered a powerful artifact at the Great True God level, it was highly suitable for Little Dragon Girl and perfect for dealing with true gods. As for how to make a true god have nightmares, that would require other auxiliary methods.
After checking the spoils, Rosen took out the Hunter's Map and exchanged it for the Curse Law of the Nightmare Dragon Spider.
However, he didn't directly absorb the Curse Law because it was tied to the Evil God's Source, which was also key to the Nightmare Dragon Spider becoming an evil god. After weighing the options, he decided to fuse the Curse Law into the Horror Paradise, further strengthening the power of the Horror Paradise.
Lastly, Rosen exchanged the memories of the Nightmare Dragon Spider. Its long memories were invaluable.
The Nightmare Dragon Spider had lived for at least hundreds of thousands of years, making it one of the oldest evil gods. It also had countless avatars spread across the world, parasitizing the dreams of various beings. After hundreds of thousands of years, the secrets it knew were numerous.
While the Omniscient Magic Eye could gain information, the more it knew, the higher the consumption.
So, it could only answer specific questions and couldn't truly expand its knowledge.
Rosen directly fused the Nightmare Dragon Spider's memories into the Omniscient Bookshelf, allowing the endless memories to be refined and presented to him in text form. He quickly read through the refined texts, totaling trillions of words, to learn all the secrets the Nightmare Dragon Spider knew.
With time accelerated by a thousand times, Rosen spent an entire year in reality before putting down the book.
His Secret Copper Book recorded many unknown secrets, and his Eternal History Book recorded countless histories that had already vanished.
But these weren't the greatest gains. Rosen's biggest discovery was a secret.
This secret had been deeply hidden by the Nightmare Dragon Spider, and it even encrypted it within its own memories.
Without reaching certain conditions, the Nightmare Dragon Spider itself couldn't recall this part of the memory.
If not for the Omniscient Bookshelf, Rosen wouldn't have been able to extract this secret from the vast memories of hundreds of thousands of years.
The Nightmare Dragon Spider had the ability to ascend to the level of a Forbidden Evil God, but it had remained stuck at the True God level without advancing further.
Because the Nightmare Dragon Spider discovered something— the entire New World was a pasture formed by the ancient gods' manifestation of all things. This was a well-known secret among the gods. But since it was a pasture, what kind of livestock would be considered suitable for slaughter?
For giants, eating an ant would clearly not fill them up or be nutritious.
The same was true for the ancient gods. Only the Forbidden Gods and Immortal Gods were truly qualified livestock for slaughter.
As for true gods and deities, they were just young creatures not yet ready for slaughter.
The Nightmare Dragon Spider discovered a secret deep within the Spirit Realm. Some civilizations in the depths of the Spirit Realm had never appeared in its memory. Yet, the recorded existence time of these civilizations was clearly within its own lifespan.
This meant that after living for hundreds of thousands of years, the Nightmare Dragon Spider had discovered an unknown civilization that had been destroyed tens of thousands of years ago.
For a civilization to be revived in the Spirit Realm, at least one true god had to exist.
And for a civilization with a true god to exist, the Nightmare Dragon Spider couldn't have possibly never heard of it. There should have been some impression.
What was even more frightening was that the Nightmare Dragon Spider secretly inquired with other true gods. It found that while it had no memory of certain civilizations in the last few hundred thousand years, other true gods and evil gods clearly had memories of them. This meant that there was an issue with its own memory or the memories of others.
The Nightmare Dragon Spider clearly believed that it was fine. If it was fine, then there must be something wrong with others' memories.
It would be impossible for even a Great True God to make so many true gods' memories go wrong.
In the end, when the Nightmare Dragon Spider probed further and found that the Great True Gods' memories from the past few hundred thousand years had some discrepancies with its own, the Nightmare Dragon Spider dared not investigate any deeper. It knew that even the World Will couldn't do such a thing.
(End of Chapter)