"Placing the hope of destroying the Ancient God on me?" Rosen pondered, filled with suspicion and uncertainty. I have no way to verify the truth of the final words Apocalypse left behind in the Book of Fate Room.
If it's fake, there must be a deadly trap hidden in it.
What's worse is if it's a mix of truth and lies—one wrong step could lead to total ruin.
According to Apocalypse's message, the bookshelf in front of him was the Fate Bookshelf.
After opening the Book of Fate and Creation to read his own destiny, he would receive a duplicate of the Book of Fate and Creation. He could then use it to record his own fate. No one could view another's fate copy without permission—not even the Ancient God could see Apocalypse's.
The Fate Bookshelf was stacked with many fate copies, at least several hundred.
However, considering the rarity of discovering the Book of Fate Room throughout the universe, such a number seemed impossible.
So Apocalypse speculated that the fate copies on the bookshelf all belonged to lives brought into the Fate Room by the Ancient God himself—because Apocalypse had done the same, once bringing his subordinate deities into the Fate Room to generate fate copies.
According to Apocalypse's message, the only way to destroy the Ancient God was by using relics of the Primordial Lifeform.
Only the power of the Primordial Lifeform might be able to defeat and eliminate the Ancient God.
The Time Source Seed and Space Source Seed inside Blue Star were, in Apocalypse's eyes, the only hope of achieving that.
He went to all lengths to use the Mysterious Book Room to bring Rosen out of Blue Star, because Blue Star was not fertile ground for transcendent life. Only by leaving Blue Star and entering the Ancient God World could Rosen, with the help of the Mysterious Book Room, become an immortal god-demon.
Once he became one and returned to Blue Star, his natural affinity with the Time Source Seed would allow him to master it.
But then came the question—why had Apocalypse left his final message in the Book of Fate Room?
If Rosen had never found the Fate Room, wouldn't Apocalypse's entire plan have been in vain?
If Rosen was truly an anomaly beyond the control of the Book of Fate and Creation, as Apocalypse claimed, why not leave the message in the Mysterious Book Room or directly with Rosen himself? Why take such a convoluted path to leave it in the Book of Fate Room?
Rosen had many doubts. Perhaps opening the Book of Fate and Creation would clear them.
But Apocalypse's final message had warned him not to open the book before mastering the Time Source Seed.
As soon as he did, the fate he had narrowly escaped would once again fall under the book's control.
But what if Apocalypse's message was a trick meant to stop me from opening the Book of Fate? What if everything he said was a lie? If I don't open the book now, I might regret it for the rest of my life.
In this world, it's incredibly hard to tell truth from falsehood.
In the end, Rosen chose to leave the Book of Fate Room. If Apocalypse's message was true, opening the book now could trigger a life-threatening crisis. If it was a trick, then waiting wouldn't harm him.
Once he became an immortal god-demon, whether it was a trap or not, he would be much safer in dealing with it.
Entering the Book of Fate Room had been difficult, but leaving it was very simple.
By pushing open the Door of Fate, he could instantly return to any place he had previously visited.
Sure enough, after pushing open the Door of Fate, Rosen arrived at Blue Star—the place he had recently been unable to find.
He once again sensed the Root Insect Mother and Eternal Clone he had placed on Blue Star.
The Root Insect Mother had already spread and merged into all living beings on Blue Star.
The Eternal Clone, on the other hand, had been reduced to only one.
Incredibly, the Root Insect Mother and the last surviving Eternal Clone had been engaged in prolonged, intense conflict on Blue Star.
Rosen sent out his awareness to command the Root Insect Mother, and all of them immediately returned to his control.
But when he tried to sense and command the Eternal Clone, not only did it refuse to obey, it also severed its connection with Rosen unilaterally, completely sealing itself off. Clearly, the Eternal Clone he had once left behind had broken free of control for some unknown reason.
But Blue Star lacked supernatural resources, so this Eternal Clone couldn't possibly have grown very powerful.
Even after eliminating the other Eternal Clones, it would be no more than a Sequence 0 without a divine kingdom.
Rosen had thought he could easily capture it, but just as he was about to act, the Eternal Clone vanished.
After linking his Eternal Will to the Root Insect Mother, Rosen finally understood what had happened.
Back when he had left the Root Insect Mother and Eternal Clone on Blue Star, as time passed, his connection to the planet faded. Without contact with the original, the unintelligent Root Insect Mother had obediently carried out orders, while the Eternal Clone, confident the original couldn't have perished, had no intent to take his place.
But as Blue Star's timeline progressed from the Ming Dynasty to modern times, one of the Eternal Clones went rogue.
That Eternal Clone lost all memory, its age regressing to infancy, and began to live Rosen's pre-rebirth life on Blue Star, using the same identity.
Like Rosen, it was an orphan.
Like Rosen, it eventually became a small-time manga artist.
And like Rosen, it vanished without a trace while working on commissions to complete the Hunter x Hunter manga.
After that, a nuclear war inexplicably broke out on Blue Star.
Blue Star's timeline began to reset, entering a new cycle of time.
After the reset, the previously vanished Eternal Clone reappeared. Lost memories and vanished powers returned, and it had somehow mastered the power of time that now enveloped Blue Star, single-handedly exterminating all the other Eternal Clones.
Only the Root Insect Mother, relying on its omnipresent parasitism, had managed to contend with the Eternal Clone until now.
Although time moved faster on Blue Star, it was only a few times faster compared to the Ancient God World.
However, starting from this new time cycle, the acceleration increased from a few times to a thousandfold. Thus, the timeline had quickly approached the modern era again. This sudden surge in time acceleration was clearly related to the unusual changes the Eternal Clone had undergone.
Just now, the Eternal Clone had suddenly disappeared—unsurprisingly, it had likely fled into another timeline.
Rosen released the Bronze Dragon Clone, which immediately traveled upstream through time to trace the past timelines.
Also possessing control over time, the true-god-level Bronze Dragon Clone far surpassed the Sequence 0 Eternal Clone.
In less than half an hour, the Bronze Dragon Clone had already captured the Eternal Clone and brought it back.
Rosen immediately began searching the Eternal Clone's memories. He didn't believe the Eternal Clone had betrayed him, because he had never implanted too many memories into them. No one understood better than Rosen himself just how powerful his original self was—how foolish would a clone have to be to think it could replace him?
Sure enough, the Eternal Clone was still just an Eternal Clone—but there were problems with its memory and self-identity.
Of the memories Rosen had implanted, only the extraordinary knowledge remained; nothing else.
That was why this Eternal Clone had mistaken itself for the original, even believing the other Eternal Clones were monsters stealing its memories. This change in memory and identity was entirely due to the power of the Time Source Seed.
Rosen had created Eternal Clones as expendable units—there was no way he would grant them the god-tier divine origin and Eternal Will of a great true god.
He would dilute his divine origin down to the demigod level and mass-produce Eternal Clones.
The same applied to Eternal Will, which was similarly diluted and weakened to the level of a demigod.
That level simply couldn't withstand the terrifying power of the Time Source Seed. As a result, issues arose with memory and identity. The clone lost all memories from after Rosen left Blue Star, while retaining all memories from before. It then mistakenly believed it was the original.
Rosen directly reclaimed the Eternal Clone and used it to make contact with the Time Source Seed.
His Eternal Will naturally merged with the Time Source Seed, allowing him to begin the fusion process with ease.
It seemed that in this regard, Apocalypse had been telling the truth. Over countless cycles of time, Rosen had indeed gradually adapted to the Time Source Seed's power, becoming more and more attuned to it. Only his consciousness hadn't yet been strong enough to merge with it.
That was exactly what had happened to the Eternal Clone—it lacked a strong enough consciousness, so not only did it fail to fuse, but it also suffered a backlash.
But with Rosen's original self, it was a different matter. Though he had yet to become an immortal god-demon, his consciousness had already evolved into Eternal Will—enough to successfully fuse with the Time Source Seed.
As the fusion progressed, he sensed the presence of other Source Seeds on Blue Star.
There was the Plunder Source Seed and the Space Source Seed, as well as the Compatibility Source Seed and the Star Source Seed.
Aside from the Time and Space Source Seeds, the others were most likely left behind by the Ancient God.
The Ancient God had been using these Source Seeds day after day, drop by drop, to forcibly chip away and gain control over the Space Source Seed.
Judging by its current state, he was already close to fully mastering it.
While the Ancient God had spent countless years failing to fully assimilate the Space Source Seed, Rosen had effortlessly taken control of the Time Source Seed.
It was true—being born at the finish line was worlds apart from starting at the beginning.
Now, Rosen began to believe in Apocalypse's final words. Apocalypse had indeed chosen him as the hope to defeat the Ancient God because of how attuned he had become with the Time Source Seed through countless temporal loops.
Through the Time Source Seed, Rosen carefully examined every detail of Blue Star inside and out.
Soon, he discovered that even without the Time and Space Source Seeds, Blue Star itself was unusual.
Normally, if a supernatural star had fused with the Time and Space Source Seeds, it would have rapidly evolved into an Eternal-level transcendent star. Yet despite merging with two Source Seeds over countless years, Blue Star struggled to even reach Sequence 9 in quality.
Its time loops and limited acceleration were simply not enough.
Such minimal acceleration couldn't possibly deplete the vast origin energy drawn by the Time and Space Source Seeds from the Cosmic Origin Sea.
The key lay deep within Blue Star's core, where something resembling the shell deep within the Dark Sun was located.
Nearly all of the origin energy had been absorbed by this shell.
Rosen began to suspect—could there be an unhatched Primordial Lifeform inside that shell?
Even an Eternal being like the Ancient God couldn't absorb that much eternal temporal and spatial origin.
Rosen tried to probe the interior of the shell, and his Eternal Will easily infiltrated it.
He saw a sea—a sea resembling the Cosmic Origin Sea.
The inside of this shell wasn't nurturing a Primordial Lifeform; it was nurturing a nascent universe.
To control the Time Source Seed was to control half of this proto-universe's power.
Though still a mere prototype, it already possessed power surpassing that of Eternal beings.
Rosen believed that even if the Ancient God entered this place, he could use the proto-universe's power to trap and destroy him.
Of course, that was assuming the Ancient God had not yet refined the Space Source Seed. If he did, he would then control the other half of the proto-universe, and a struggle for dominance would follow. In that case, Rosen's current strength would be no match for the Ancient God.
Using the Time Source Seed's power, Rosen cast a thousandfold time acceleration on himself.
As his power increased, the boost provided by the laws of time had gradually diminished.
And when dealing with Eternal lifeforms, even doubling time had become difficult through time laws alone.
Now that the thousandfold acceleration had returned, the corpse of the Eternal Soul-Binding Wolf could be harvested at any moment.
Rosen was now certain—there were no Eternal-level corpses on Blue Star.
Though the Book of Fate's Library was an independent world, it clearly wasn't the resting place of any Eternal lifeform.
The only remaining possibility he could think of was the Dark Sun. The eggshell deep within the Dark Sun was too similar to the one beneath Blue Star, making it very likely a replica created by the Ancient God based on Blue Star's design. The corpses of the Eternal lifeforms were very likely inside.
Rosen carefully extracted a Time Source Seed from Blue Star and discovered that there weren't just nine of them.
Even the Plunder Source Seeds only ever came in groups of nine, yet the Time Source Seeds came in groups of ten.
Nine was the number of limits; ten represented perfection. It seemed that the true upper limit of innate Source Seeds was ten.
Only, the perfect innate Source Seeds had not been directly left to the Eternal lifeforms by the Primordial Lifeform.
Rosen suddenly had a thought—could he use the Time Source Seed to gain control over the Space Source Seed?
The Time and Space Source Seeds within Blue Star were independent yet complementary to each other.
The Time Source Seed, due to an overwhelming level of compatibility, had willingly submitted to him. Could it be that the Space Source Seed held no affinity for him at all?
Besides, he also had one Compatibility Source Seed. Perhaps he could steal the fruits of the Ancient God's efforts in refining the Space Source Seed.
Rosen immediately began manipulating the Time Source Seed and the Compatibility Source Seed. He used his own Compatibility Seed to communicate with the one being held by the Ancient God. By temporarily merging the two kindred Compatibility Seeds, he used this link to slowly inject his Eternal Will into the Space Source Seed.
His idea succeeded—but most of the Space Source Seed had already been refined by the Ancient God.
He couldn't seize the parts the Ancient God had already assimilated, but he could refine the remaining portions the Ancient God hadn't touched.
Using the one Time Source Seed he had already separated out as a medium, Rosen fused it with the Space Source Seed through the Compatibility Seed. Since Time and Space were originally of the same root, the fusion went smoothly, and soon one-tenth of the Time Seed merged with one-tenth of the Space Seed.
Under the balance provided by the Compatibility Seed, the two merged into a single Space-Time Source Seed.
Through this Space-Time Source Seed, Rosen gained 55% control over the nascent universe.
Rosen wanted to separate another Time Source Seed and try to fuse it again with one-tenth of the Space Seed through the Compatibility Seed.
However, he failed this time, because the Ancient God's Eternal Will had nearly fully penetrated the remaining nine Space Source Seeds.
And because Rosen had extracted one from the group, the original tenfold-perfection of the Space Source Seeds had been broken. With the Space Seed's power weakened, the Ancient God's refinement process had clearly accelerated significantly.
Rosen used the Space-Time Source Seed in his hand to open an Interdimensional Gate, whose power was now massively amplified.
ThMysterious Study Room of Fates hadn't fused with any Source Seeds, and the Interdimensional Gate had previously only incorporated space laws at the immortal level. Now, having merged with a Space-Time Source Seed that surpassed both law and eternity, the Gate could access anywhere in the universe at will.
Even the Book of Fate's Library—Rosen could now open a gate and walk straight in.
Crossing the Interdimensional Gate, Rosen arrived on the surface of the Dark Sun, then began stealthily approaching the eggshell within.
He placed his hand on the surface of the shell, and the Interdimensional Gate immediately melded into it, opening a door.
Looking through the gate, Rosen didn't see any Eternal corpses. Instead, he saw endless streams of life origin and divine origin, and, faintly emerging from within the life origin, a human-shaped infant with a snake's tail.
From this infant, Rosen sensed the aura of the Eternal Serpent Mother.
So it was true—all the corpses of Eternal lifeforms, like the Eternal Serpent Mother and the Eternal Dream Fiend, had been relocated here by the Ancient God.
But this wasn't a simulated cosmic shell nurturing a proto-universe like under Blue Star—this was cultivating a newly born Eternal lifeform. Though the infant had not yet reached the time of birth, Rosen could already sense that it was inherently attuned to the Time Source Seed.
Clearly, the Ancient God, like Apocalypse, intended to create a being naturally attuned to the Time Source Seed.
Only, the Ancient God chose to artificially construct one, while Apocalypse had accidentally discovered Rosen—a naturally compatible being.
In this aspect, Apocalypse had won—Rosen had gained mastery of the Time Source Seed ahead of time.
Still, he couldn't afford to let down his guard, because the Plunder Source Seed was best at seizing anything and everything.
To stop the Ancient God from stealing the Time Source Seed, the best method would be to eliminate this newborn Eternal lifeform before it awakened.
But he couldn't do that on his own—Rosen had no doubt this child was the Ancient God's prepared clone.
If he dared to enter the shell, the Ancient God's clone would immediately awaken.
Though Rosen didn't dare enter, siphoning off some of the egg fluid through the Interdimensional Gate was no issue.
This egg fluid contained not only life origin but also divine origin—it was absolutely the best nutrient for the Root Insect Mother to bear fruit.
Rosen continuously extracted egg fluid, then released the roots formed from the Eternal Soul-Binding Wolf's corpse.
The roots absorbed more and more egg fluid, and finally progressed beyond flowering into fruit-bearing.
With the thousandfold time acceleration, it took less than five years for the root fruit to fully mature and detach on its own.
Rosen sensed inside the Root Fruit and found it filled with endless egg fluid.
This egg fluid was nearly identical to the egg fluid inside the Dark Sun's shell. While it wasn't enough in quantity to make Rosen an Eternal being, it was more than enough to make him an immortal lifeform. Even the leftover peel of the Root Fruit still had special uses.
Rosen put away the Interdimensional Gate and stopped stealing more egg fluid from inside the Dark Sun's shell.
To keep taking more would risk provoking the Eternal clone inside to awaken.
His success in stealing from the shell had relied entirely on the Space-Time Source Seed's ability to freeze time and space within it. Now, with the seal lifted and the gate closed, the entire Dark Sun began to quake violently. The Ancient God's clone, still not yet at its hatching phase, nearly awoke.
(End of Chapter)