Chapter 187: Ancient God Sequence and the Origin of Life
"A Sequence 5 Stone Golem," Rosen murmured.
He signaled the Storm Thunderbird to release a vortex, which instantly sucked away the black smoke blanketing the area for miles.
There, a thousand-meter-tall Stone Golem sat within a lava flow, clutching the remains of an airship. Streams of lava continuously poured from its body and into the vessel, until, with a mighty pull, it tore open the hull and withdrew a cracked, head-sized red stone.
"The Stone Golem's Core?"
Seeing the stone, Rosen quickly pieced together why the airship had been relentlessly pursued.
This particular Stone Golem must have held significant status before its core fractured, likely sparking its vengeance against those who dared try to steal it.
Though, as far as he knew, the Golem's core wasn't typically that valuable.
Dragon King's Rage shifted to sniper mode, and with the Time Scope set, Rosen fired. The shot traveled across a few seconds into the future, hitting the Stone Golem just where its core would be, bypassing the supernatural energies with a Suppressor Bullet. He followed with a second shot, piercing its left abdomen—the hidden location of its core.
Without destroying the core, killing it would be nearly impossible.
With the Suppressor Bullet negating its supernatural defenses, the Golem's weakest spot was right at its core.
The Stone Golem toppled, its cracked core swept up by the Storm Thunderbird's controlled whirl and placed on its back.
Upon closer inspection, Rosen realized why the airship's crew had risked so much.
The core was not an ordinary Stone Golem core but a troop structure that produced Stone Golems. At Sequence 6, this was no minor prize and would have been a costly acquisition for the airship crew.
However, he had no need for it himself. Stone Golem troops weren't exactly what he was looking for.
Still, he was sure it would fetch a high price among Divine Domain Lords in Sky City; after all, in a volcanic environment, Stone Golems excelled at mining and were a consistent source of income.
Starting the day with such a find was a pleasant surprise. In three days, Storm Thunderbird had carried him across thousands of miles, and they finally arrived at Sky City.
Along the way, they encountered airships by the dozens—some hunting Stone Golems, others scavenging the lava flows for rare minerals.
Before he could reach Sky City, a beam of golden light scanned over Rosen.
Apparently, it was some kind of entry inspection. Once completed, the beam directed Storm Thunderbird to a designated port at the city's edge, one of several where airships constantly arrived and departed.
Storm Thunderbird landed at the nearest port, shrinking down to the size of a sparrow and perching on Rosen's shoulder.
The port's external temperature was well over a thousand degrees, yet the interior was a cool, controlled thirty degrees, keeping the sweltering heat at bay. Soon after, a middle-aged man holding a red crystal tablet approached him at a brisk pace.
"Honored sir, as a visiting Transcendent, you must be registered before entering Sky City for the first time."
Rosen nodded and extended his right hand, bearing his family's insignia ring.
The tablet in the man's hand had a rotating crystal eye in the corner, which scanned the ring, projecting basic information about Rosen's family and noble title.
Seeing the words Hereditary Duke, the man's hand trembled slightly. After a moment, he pulled out a second, smaller red tablet.
"Your Grace, this is the network access device for Sky City. It's preloaded with a city map," he said, handing it to Rosen with care.
"Smart thinking."
Rosen accepted the tablet and handed the man a thousand Spiritual Crystals as a tip.
The man gratefully pocketed the crystals and discreetly withdrew.
It didn't take Rosen long to figure out the tablet; it functioned similarly to a tablet computer, enabling him to access Sky City's network for non-confidential information. Beyond the Kingdom of Divine Weapons, however, it would become largely useless.
Still, it would save him from wandering about aimlessly.
Following the map's directions, he made his way to the city's best hotel via the electric bus.
On the way, he noticed a massive mall that spanned several square kilometers, so he hopped off the bus to explore.
The complex was like a small city, with an underground level and three floors above ground.
Each floor's height was about five hundred meters. Using the red tablet, Rosen downloaded a floor map of the mall.
The basement housed the black market, the ground floor catered to civilian goods, the second floor offered supernatural materials, and the third floor sold various transcendent-grade artifacts.
At the entrance, Rosen used a portal leading directly to the third floor.
From a distance, he could see a dazzling display of steampunk-inspired mechs, airships in various styles, and all kinds of technological spiritual weapons. It seemed one could spend weeks browsing this floor alone.
Though he had been reborn for several years and had a solid grasp of contemporary technology, the sight was still impressive.
Civilian technology was indeed refined and precise, but the technology geared toward the transcendent sequences was comparatively simple.
The simpler the design, the harder it was to disrupt or destroy, whereas overly sophisticated equipment often proved fragile.
Though some high-sequence artifacts were indeed complex, they required extraordinarily rare transcendent materials, which rendered widespread use impractical.
Rosen scanned the merchandise, carefully photographing and virtually replicating each item with his Void Eye and Divine Hunter's Sight for future study. He planned to recreate these high-level artifacts in his paintings.
Yet after days of browsing, one item caught his eye.
The Bloodline Awakening Capsule could perfectly replicate the user's blood, then stimulate and accelerate the activation of latent transcendent genes.
Despite being Sequence 6, it cost an astronomical ten billion Spiritual Crystals for a single unit.
Without hesitation, Rosen ordered one and returned to his hotel to await its delivery.
As soon as it arrived, Rosen transferred the Bloodline Awakening Capsule to the Mysterious Study Room and climbed inside.
Immediately, he sensed his normal blood being replicated within the capsule and infused back into him, mingling with a blend of potions designed to hasten the awakening of his bloodline.
At this rate, his Ancient Divine Bloodline would be fully awakened in three months, tops.
Meanwhile, he used this time to search for an alchemist capable of upgrading Dragon King's Rage.
He posted bounties across all the professional guilds in Sky City.
Soon, he received responses from numerous high-ranking alchemists, though Sky City had few of the Essence Equipment caliber of Dragon King's Rage. After careful vetting, he finally found the best candidate.
Early one morning, he sent his Self-Portrait Clone to the largest wizard tower in the city.
Its owner, the Sequence 3 demi-god Davin Gaines, was already waiting outside.
"Is it true this is an Essence weapon from a Bronze Dragon?" Davin asked, leading Rosen toward his alchemy workshop.
"Absolutely."
Rosen summoned Dragon King's Rage and handed it to Davin.
With a single spell, Davin teleported them both to the workshop.
The moment they arrived, Davin's demeanor changed from warm to fervent as he inspected Dragon King's Rage. He studied its attributes and the underlying Spiritual Runes embedded within, meticulously analyzing every detail for nearly a month.
With Davin's permission, Rosen spent the month reading the alchemist's extensive studies on Spiritual Runes, further refining his Human Body Drawing skills.
"I'm confident I can strengthen Dragon King's Rage to Sequence 4."
Davin reluctantly set down the weapon. "But that would not unleash its full potential. After researching the Time Dragon Nest in the Empire of Thunder, I've confirmed this artifact has the potential to reach Sequence 3 at the very least."
"What would be needed to bring it to Sequence 3?" Rosen asked with a frown.
"Trying to push it directly to Sequence 3 would destroy it."
Davin shook his head. "Although powerful, the Bronze Dragon is no Beast King. Every Beast King's essence undergoes unique transformations that grant evolution potential to their Essence Equipment. My suggestion: use Dragon King's Rage to slay a Sequence 5 Dragon Beast King. The materials from that would allow you to evolve the weapon to Sequence 4 while embedding the potential to reach Sequence 3 or possibly Sequence 2."
"A Sequence 5 Dragon Beast King is not an easy find," Rosen said with a frown.
"That's for you to deal with. I refuse to waste this artifact's potential."
Davin sent Dragon King's Rage back to Rosen, his intense pride evident.
If he didn't see a Beast King material, he would rather walk away from the commission than compromise his work.
Back at the hotel, Rosen scoured all possible sources for information on Dragon Beast Kings—be it in reality, the Spirit World, or spirit realms—leaving no stone unturned.
His substantial bounty eventually turned up a valuable lead.
Legends suggested a Dragon Beast King might dwell somewhere within the volcano of the Kingdom of Divine Weapons.
However, it was said to be Sequence 4 or even higher.
Ordinarily, the discovery of a Beast King would trigger a frenzy of elite hunters.
But this particular Dragon Beast King possessed such high intelligence that it had evaded capture for centuries, hiding deep beneath the volcano below Sky City itself. A confrontation in that environment would require Sequence 3 power at the very least.
However, publicly, Sequence 3 demi-gods couldn't hunt a Sequence 4 Beast King.
This fell under World Government law, which prohibited demi-gods from freely hunting beings below demi-god rank, as the gap between Sequence 4 and Sequence 3 was vast and transformational.
Hunting a Sequence 3 Transcendent is far more challenging than hunting a hundred Sequence 4 Transcendents.
However, the cumulative rewards from the latter can actually surpass those of the former.
Without restrictions, every Sequence 3 demi-god would simply hunt Sequence 4 Transcendents who pose little threat, and humanity's own Sequence 4 Transcendents would struggle to compete with demi-gods. The result would be an extreme scarcity of resources, leaving Sequence 4 Transcendents with almost no means of becoming demi-gods themselves.
Thus, under current law, a demi-god can only hunt Transcendents below demi-god status if they pose a clear threat to human safety on a massive scale.
When the law was first introduced, some demi-gods looked for loopholes, manipulating Transcendent beings to approach human cities, then slaughtering them under the guise of "rescue."
It might have worked once or twice, but repeated incidents soon became indefensible. Some events escalated to significant human casualties, and those responsible demi-gods were made into cautionary examples, facing tragic ends.
Since then, any demi-god hunting below their rank has been done in secret.
And once discovered, the penalties are steep enough to bankrupt them.
Thanks to laws set by the World Government, human civilization has only grown stronger over the last twenty thousand years.
Because of recent events in the Sacred Tree Empire, Rosen had also been studying World Government law.
The current unrest within the World Government hinges on a growing demand for increased privileges among the powerful. Some laws now feel restrictive and burdensome to them, and their numbers keep growing. This trend, if it continues, will leave fewer rights for the common people.
It's like a snake devouring an elephant—a never-ending hunger for more. If the World Government were compared to an ancient Blue Star nation, it began with power concentrated at the top, united under the alien threat, with all parties content with the distribution of benefits.
But as time passed, human civilization grew stronger, the population expanded, and more nobility emerged. Yet the expansion of civilization met the barrier of alien resistance, leaving newer nobles dissatisfied and the original elites greedy for even more.
Gradually, that sense of unity began to fade. Ordinary people may not have noticed, feeling instead that their high productivity made everything stable.
But, in truth, opportunities for the common folk to rise have been narrowing.
The clearest sign of this is that fewer and fewer Transcendents of common birth advance from Sequence 7 to Sequence 6.
Rosen used to think the World Government's protections were good, but now even he felt some dissatisfaction.
After all, it impacted his own interests. Without such protection, he could simply hire a demi-god to hunt down that Beast King.
On the other hand, if there were no protections, that Beast King likely wouldn't be alive for him to hunt in the first place.
A Sequence 4 Dragon Beast King was no trivial opponent. Without the Dragon Blood Flask, Rosen wouldn't even dare to entertain the thought of defeating such a creature; even with it, the Dragon Beast King wouldn't be easily dealt with.
Rosen decided to gather more information first, at least to understand the true nature of this Dragon Beast King.
After increasing his bounty, he soon acquired a valuable piece of intel.
The report was extremely detailed, suggesting that those who gathered it likely had intentions of hunting the Dragon Beast King themselves but ultimately failed and were now selling the information to recover some of their losses.
"A Sequence 4 Volcanic Fire Dragon—an Elemental Dragon..."
Rosen's expression darkened. Did elemental dragons even have dragon blood?
Without dragon blood, the Dragon Blood Flask was as good as useless.
To hunt a Sequence 4 Beast King typically required at least ten Sequence 4 Domain Lords.
And with the natural defenses of the deep volcanic environment, it might take even more.
The risk-to-reward ratio was unfavorable. Given that the Volcanic Fire Dragon had stayed quietly within its domain without troubling humanity, it was little wonder that, despite being known of for over a thousand years, it still survived as a legend.
For now, he had no other ideas and reluctantly decided to put the matter on hold.
With little else to do, Rosen spent his days exploring Sky City.
During this time, he sold off some obsolete Mechanical Metropolis knowledge, initially assuming it would be worthless but discovering that some of it was unique to his metropolis and fetched a fair price.
Rosen also invested in newer knowledge to eventually upgrade his Mechanical Factory.
After all, unlike Ferris, he was no mechanical inventor and couldn't maximize the factory's productive potential.
Three months passed in the blink of an eye, and Rosen returned early to the Mysterious Study.
Reintegrating his spiritual awareness with his body, he immediately noticed that only a faint reddish hue remained in his blood; the rest had transformed into pure gold through the combined effects of the Ancient God's Relic and the Bloodline Awakening Capsule.
Within half a day, the last trace of red faded from his blood.
Rosen felt the hidden memories within his bloodline stir, his spiritual power jumping directly to 48 points, even skipping the usual accumulation phase to a perfect 48-point cap.
After two days, Rosen began to process the flood of inherited memories.
First, he learned the origin of his Ancient God Bloodline.
The Ancient God was the World itself. The main world inhabited by humans and aliens was, in essence, a living Ancient God.
The Ancient God Civilization arose from the remnants of a fallen Ancient God.
The Ancient God Bloodline represented the World's Gene Pool.
The secrets of life lay within these genes. Humans, for instance, shared over ninety percent of their DNA with pigs.
Many species shared highly similar genetic makeup with humans.
Thus, theories of life's origin in ancient times posited that all life stemmed from a single ancestral creature, or that the gods used a common genetic template when creating life, tweaking it slightly to form different species.
Today, the origins of species are no longer a mystery.
Life emerged only after the birth of a world, and life born from the same world shares a high degree of genetic similarity.
The so-called World's Gene Pool is, in fact, the genetic repository within a fallen Ancient God's world, encompassing the genetic records of all former species.
By awakening their bloodlines, members of the Ancient God Civilization could theoretically transform into any life form that had ever existed within that Ancient God's world.
Ancient Gods may perish, but they never truly die.
Today's main world exists within the fallen Ancient God's world, reborn.
Moreover, the gene pool now surpasses its origin, containing the genetic blueprints not only of humans but of dragons, elves, demons, angels, and every other sentient species.
In a strict sense, one could say that all intelligent life with flesh traces its origins back to humanity.
With this understanding, Rosen had some plausible theories on the destruction of the Ancient God Civilization.
The first Ancient God Civilization was likely a human society that grew from remnants of an earlier Ancient God.
As the World's Gene Pool was awakened, some humans transformed into elves, others into demons, and others into angels, leading to a potential division that eventually gave rise to today's numerous sentient races.
Having now unlocked the Ancient God Bloodline and access to the World's Gene Pool, Rosen could theoretically alter his species.
But such a change was unnecessary since humanity remains the most powerful race.
Thus, the World's Gene Pool didn't hold much inherent value for him, aside from easing his control over the powers of the Seven Deadly Sins and Feathered Serpent God, though it wouldn't fundamentally transform his strength.
The most significant inheritance he obtained from his bloodline was knowledge of the Ancient God Sequence.
Rosen now realized that the first discovery of sequences didn't come from the World Government but from the Ancient God Civilization.
The World Government's true achievement may have been developing the Potion System and other sequences based on the foundation laid by the Ancient God Civilization.
Much like how the Flame Nation constructed a complete system of Civilization's Flame based on its core ideas.
Unlike modern sequences, which center on spiritual power, the Ancient God Sequence focused entirely on genes, aiming to cultivate the body to greater heights and ultimately transform into a world capable of sustaining life.
Rosen even speculated that some of today's worlds might be remnants of Ancient God Civilization's powerful figures who transformed into worlds themselves.
For instance, The Abyss and many affiliated worlds might be products of Ancient God Civilization figures turned worlds.
Rosen examined the Ancient God Sequence and found that its cultivation would inevitably lead to transformation into a world.
At the highest levels, the Ancient God Sequence posed too great a threat to the main world, which would restrict its practitioners. Such a Transcendent would either have to leave the main world and the Ancient God's world or transform into a world and become an affiliate of the main world.
Ancient Gods who turned into worlds might survive but would fall into a slumber of self-awareness.
The only ways to awaken would be if their world were destroyed, allowing them to reincarnate, or to grow powerful enough to withstand the main world's suppression, reawakening their self-awareness.
If this were true, the Will of the Abyss could very well be the closest Ancient God Sequence entity to reawakening self-awareness.
Rosen delved further into the Ancient God Sequence and concluded that mastering it wasn't necessary.
He realized that many aspects of the Noble Sequence closely resembled those of the Ancient God Sequence.
A fully developed Divine Domain is essentially a world of its own.
Nonetheless, the Ancient God Sequence wasn't without value. In the end, everything converges toward The Authority of Rules, and many Ancient God Sequence skills could be adapted into his current sequences, further strengthening his three sequence paths.
(Chapter End)