"This is the game space of the King's Game..."
The Scepter King pointed at the four thrones formed by stars and began explaining the King's Game to Rosen.
As long as one had entered the game space once, they could later descend into it directly—either by projection or by bringing their true body.
The four thrones each corresponded to one of the Fallen Tarot Cards of the King's Game.
All it took was for the four kings to sit on their respective thrones at the same time, and the game space would successfully activate the King's Game.
The white mist at the center of the game space would then form a mystical realm upon activation.
This mystical realm was extremely special, with a level at least on par with Immortal Gods and Demons.
It had already been confirmed—there were Immortal Gods and Demons inside the King's Game.
The entry conditions for the mystical realm were the same for everyone: each king could bring a queen, a knight, and a squire—fourteen people in total including themselves—into the game. Clones and pets didn't count toward the number and shared entry rights with the king.
Since the realm changed every time, the specifics could only be understood once inside.
After the explanation, the Scepter King teleported to his kingdom and sat on his throne.
Rosen followed suit and sat on his own. The stars forming the thrones were all actual, full-sized stars, making the throne itself tens of billions of kilometers high. Even the bodies of Immortal Gods and Demons couldn't reach such scale.
Not because it was impossible to grow that large, but because no one would maintain such a colossal body.
After all, the larger the form, the more hollow it would be; only the condensed was truly essence.
Of course, being large had its advantages—wider destructive range and correspondingly stronger control over energy and laws. Thus, true gods could materialize their Law Domains from intangible to physical, reshaping them into giants made from laws and energy.
Rosen spread his Law Domain, which began absorbing energy and materializing.
The surface of the Law Domain transformed into Rosen's form, and under his control, the giant body sat on the throne.
The moment all four kings were seated, the white mist at the center of the game space began to churn violently.
As time passed, Rosen used his Omniscient Magic Eye to observe through the transformed body made from the Law Domain. He saw that the real faces of the three true gods hidden inside their giant heads were all showing uncontrollable fear.
Yet Rosen couldn't see why they were afraid.
Because any information related to the King's Game was also under special protection and exceeded the recognition scope of the Omniscient Magic Eye.
It lasted several days before the violent turbulence of the white mist finally calmed down.
As the mist dispersed, it left behind a spatial vortex.
The moment Rosen's divine consciousness touched the spatial vortex, he received the basic information of the King's Game space.
[King's Game: Miracle Realm]
[Level: ???]
[Miracle Attribute: Generates a game world of matching level based on the strength of the four kings]
[Miracle Trait: Return of the King]
Rosen now understood why the three true gods, including the Star Coin God, were so afraid.
The creation of the game map was proportional to the combined strength of the four kings. The stronger the game world, the harder it was to generate. The fact that it took several days to form the map was something they likely had never experienced before—hence their instinctive fear.
This miracle trait, Return of the King, was critical—it granted a special authority to the kings.
As long as Return of the King was activated, one could return to this initial game space with all the gains obtained from the game world.
However, correspondingly, entering the King's Game required paying a price.
The more one paid, the greater the benefits they would receive at the beginning of the game world.
This price was the strength of one's divine source. Paying the price meant a permanent decrease in divine source strength.
Rosen hesitated—divine source strength was not easy to restore.
In the past, he had thousandfold time acceleration, the Flesh Secret Fruit, and the Origin Oil Lamp, but ever since becoming a god and ascending to a True God, these methods had become increasingly ineffective at restoring lost divine source. Now, he mainly relied on the Origin Oil Lamp and Eternal Plunder to recover divine source.
Due to the Ancient God Relic, his divine source possessed an immortal trait.
Any ability that permanently reduced divine source strength could only temporarily reduce it at most; they could not permanently lower his divine source limit. This gave him a major advantage in recovering divine source, but he wasn't sure if the King's Game could override the boost provided by the Ancient God Relic.
After all, for every spear, there is a shield—even Ancient God Relics had their own limits.
So Rosen had to weigh carefully just how much divine source to spend before making a decision.
His divine source was at 159, and his life source was at 160. The Ancient God Relic could boost both by 14 points.
But due to creating an Eternal Clone, both sources had already dropped to 151 and could not be reduced any further.
Fortunately, his life source and divine source could be converted into one another. So, without dropping either source below the threshold of a True God, he could afford to pay a maximum price of 28 divine source points—the exact limit of the Ancient God Relic's bonus.
However, at the True God level, spending 28 divine source points wasn't something that could be easily recovered.
The issue wasn't just the cost—but whether the cost was worth it.
Was this King's Game worth such a hefty investment?
In the end, Rosen decided to take the gamble. He was already feeling how hard it was to improve his strength.
After becoming a True God, both divine and life sources grew at an incredibly slow pace.
A conservative estimate suggested that ascending to Great True God would take several thousand years.
Time acceleration was useless, since what he lacked wasn't time—but the resources needed to advance.
Creating a brand-new Law wasn't easy either.
Especially in today's era—the age of the potion sequence. If advancing from a god to a True God still had experience to draw upon, then ascending from True God to Great True God via potion sequence had no precedent—because no one had ever successfully done it before.
Those who currently possessed the Great True God sequence had all directly transformed their own extraordinary powers.
By comparison, the extraordinary sequences they held weren't truly complete.
If a True God could ascend to Great True God using the potion sequence—even just newly ascended—even if that True God hadn't stood out among other True Gods, after becoming a Great True God, their strength could rank among the top of all Great True Gods.
That was the advantage of the times. Longevity didn't necessarily mean strength for Great True Gods.
How strong one became depended largely on how well they aligned with the current era.
This was also one of the core reasons why the end of every extraordinary era would give rise to a new dominant civilization through a new extraordinary system. Even if powerful figures from the old system transitioned to the new one, their compatibility could never be perfect.
Rosen had a vast amount of resources at his disposal—enough to let another True God coast into the realm of Great True God.
But his foundation was simply too deep, and even his clone had the potential to advance to Great True God.
So, no amount of resources would ever be enough. Wasn't joining the King's Game precisely to reap greater benefits?
Rosen pinched the Holy Grail King's Fallen Tarot Card between his fingers and began channeling divine source into it.
A full 28 points—successfully activating his qualification to enter the game world.
Now, he needed to choose who to bring with him. Farrah, as the Holy Grail Queen, was definitely a must. The remaining twelve slots would go to the Holy Grail Squires and Knights—just picking the twelve strongest ones would suffice. Eight Holy Grail Knights and four Squires would be ideal.
Because Rosen had no prior experience, he spent the most time deliberating and making his choices.
Once he had selected everyone, he summoned them to his true body's side. The four kings seated upon the starry thrones vanished simultaneously. The vortex of white mist surrounded by the four kingdoms instantly collapsed into a massive white egg.
The teleportation ended, and Rosen appeared in the main hall of a castle.
Dust was everywhere. The tables and chairs had all rotted away, making it clear that the castle had been abandoned for several thousand years.
Rosen looked at the Holy Grail King card in his hand and noticed that its attributes had undergone a dramatic transformation.
[Holy Grail King: Miracle Tarot Card][Level: True God][Miracle Attribute: The Holy Grail King can create and command all Minor Arcana cards][Miracle Traits: Grail Crown, Royal Authority Sword, Primordial Grail, Grail Kingdom]
Creating Minor Arcana cards was easy to understand. The Grail Knights and Grail Attendants were both created and assigned roles based on these cards.
Now that the Grail Crown had become a miracle trait, it could lock both Life Origin and Divinity Origin. The Royal Authority Sword had been upgraded from controlling the power of kingship to commanding the Law of Kingship. The Primordial Grail could absorb all matter and convert it into Immortal Origin, while the Grail Kingdom trait resembled a divine domain.
Through the Grail Kingdom trait, Rosen's divine perception instantly blanketed the entire kingdom from a god's-eye view.
The entire Grail Kingdom covered a diameter of around 280,000 li (approx. 140,000 km). Excluding the royal capital, there were 28 ruined cities, which perfectly matched the amount of Divinity Origin he had invested. The larger the kingdom, the stronger the miracle trait's empowerment of the king.
Though the Grail Royal Capital was relatively intact, it was still, in essence, a ruin.
The only structure in the royal capital that remained intact was the very castle he currently stood in—the Grail Castle.
The exterior of the castle resembled a giant Holy Grail, and the castle itself was a miracle-grade structure at the True God level.
[Grail Castle: Miracle Architecture][Level: True God][Miracle Attribute: Can consume Immortal Origin to construct auxiliary buildings][Miracle Trait: Relics of the King]
Rosen first checked which auxiliary buildings he could construct and discovered that the core components didn't need to be built.
Because the core auxiliary buildings were all contained within the castle itself, they only needed repairs.
The structures that needed to be built were external ones—residential houses, farmland, and other basic livelihood buildings, along with city walls and defense towers. However, these were not the current priority. The most urgent task was to repair the core structure: the Holy Grail Altar.
Once the Holy Grail Altar was repaired, the citizens of the Grail Kingdom could be resurrected through it.
As long as the king was still alive and the Grail Castle still stood, the restoration of the Grail Kingdom was only a matter of time. Every soul of the fallen inhabitants slumbered within the Grail Castle, waiting for the Holy Grail Altar to bring them back.
Rosen checked and saw that repairing the Holy Grail Altar would cost nearly 10,000 units of Immortal Origin.
He had no clear concept of Immortal Origin yet, so he experimented by trying to use crystallized Divinity Origin. That worked. But when he tried to bring a death-row prisoner from the Ancient God True Realm into the game world, the prisoner died instantly—though the corpse remained.
Evidently, aside from the thirteen companions, his clone, and his pets, no other living beings could be brought into the game world.
But dead things could. Rosen immediately took out a mountain-sized pile of Divinity Origin Crystals and activated the miracle trait, Primordial Grail. A palm-sized golden grail appeared in the void. Its mouth pointed toward the pile, and all the crystals instantly shrank and were sucked in.
Soon, the Divinity Origin Crystals were converted into Immortal Origin—at a conversion rate of roughly 10,000 to 1.
Rosen's face turned dark instantly. Ten thousand units of Immortal Origin meant one hundred million Divinity Origin Crystals. That amount was enough to nurture several True Gods. And yet, it could only barely repair a single Holy Grail Altar?
Something was clearly off. The Star Coin True Gods couldn't possibly produce that much resource.
So, the materials needed to repair the Holy Grail Altar would likely have to be found within the territory of the Grail Kingdom itself.
Rosen's first thought was the 29 ruined cities. Perhaps they contained enough resources to be converted into Immortal Origin.
With his Eternal Clone Technique, he instantly created a hundred clones.
This number still wasn't enough to drop his Divinity Origin below the True God threshold.
Each Eternal Clone was a Sequence 3 demigod and capable of altering the spatial anchor of the Mysterious Study Room. With these clones searching the ruins of each city, they could use world-traversing gates to send any found resources directly to the main body.
As for Rosen himself, his top priority was to restore his own Divinity Origin and Life Origin as much as possible.
The moment he realized what kind of situation the King's Game actually was, Rosen regretted sending out ten thousand Eternal Clones.
But he didn't truly regret it—most of those Eternal Clones had already reincarnated as godspawn.
Early investments yield early returns. In life and action, one always has to make choices.
Since he'd already made his decision, there was no point in regretting it. He might as well hurry up and recover the essence he had consumed.
The Eternal Clones were responsible for exploring the other city ruins, but as for the ruins of the royal capital, Rosen decided not to handle them alone.
He had eight Holy Grail Knights who had been cultivated to Sequence 1, and he ordered them to spread out and explore the entire royal capital.
As for the four Holy Grail Servants—they were all maids, and were just right for cleaning up the Holy Grail Castle.
Rosen also tried to take out some spiritual paintings and discovered that the people materialized from spiritual artworks could exist, but those who already existed within the paintings could not be brought out. Still, that was enough. He quickly painted a batch of servants to assist the Holy Grail Servants.
Only then did he light the Origin Oil Lamp. The lamp was fueled by divine source oil refined from Seven's divine essence.
The Origin Divine Lamp floated in his sea of consciousness, and the flame continuously burned away at the Eternal Divinity.
After finishing all tasks, Rosen finally had time to examine the Miracle Trait "King's Relic" of the Holy Grail Castle.
By activating this Miracle Trait, he could obtain relics left behind by the previous Holy Grail King.
The more Immortal Essence he consumed, the more precious the relic he could obtain.
No matter what he did, he couldn't avoid needing Immortal Essence. He wondered whether the Star Coin True Gods were also suffering from a headache now.
Rosen activated the Omniscient Magic Eye to try to spy on the situation of the Star Coin True Gods.
The Omniscient Magic Eye didn't disappoint him—but what it revealed was far from good news.
The Star Coin True God's kingdom only had a territory about 150,000 miles in diameter. In contrast, the Scepter True God and Sword True God each had a kingdom of around 200,000 miles in diameter. Moreover, they had already repaired their altars and begun reviving their citizens in large numbers.
Such large-scale territories, such vast amounts of resources—there was no way the Star Coin True Gods could manage that alone. Clearly, more than one Great True God was backing them. The hidden value of the King's Game was far greater than Rosen had expected; otherwise, it wouldn't be worth such heavy investment from multiple Great True Gods.
But why are they only investing now? Why not in the past?
The reasons behind this, Rosen couldn't figure out for now.
But he had to pick up the pace—and maybe even consider using his own resources to repair the Holy Grail Altar first.
If even the Great True Gods were willing to invest so much, there was no reason for him to be stingy.
Rosen nearly emptied out his entire fortune to finally scrape together ten thousand units of Immortal Essence—just enough to repair the Holy Grail Altar.
The Holy Grail Castle had two parts: the upper half located within the golden cup, and the lower half forming the base. The base housed the public administrative hall, and at the center of this hall was the Holy Grail Altar.
As the Immortal Essence was consumed, the cracked Holy Grail Altar rapidly returned to its pristine state.
The altar had only one function: resurrection. It didn't bring any other surprises.
Rosen checked through the Holy Grail Altar and found that reviving every lifeform required Immortal Essence. The subjects awaiting revival in the Holy Grail Kingdom were all at least Sequence 9 Beyonders, and the strongest were merely Sequence 1. Not a single subject was Sequence 0.
After observing for a while through the Omniscient Magic Eye, Rosen decisively used the remaining few dozen units of Immortal Essence to revive several thousand miners.
Then, he dispatched them to mining sites throughout the kingdom to extract extraordinary resources.
This was his first time playing the King's Game, but the Star Coin True Gods—this wasn't their first rodeo.
Even if each round of the King's Game differed, they clearly had far more experience. The resources in the city ruins were finite and decreasing. There wasn't a single living being left in the kingdom. The best way to acquire resources now was clearly to dig.
Rosen took out dimension paper and his divine brush, and began continuously drawing miners that could be materialized.
Since it had become a matter of resource competition, it all came down to who could mine faster.
The Great True Gods behind the Star Coin True Gods clearly provided only limited support. In terms of Immortal Essence, he wasn't far behind them. And in terms of ongoing resource acquisition, he had a clear upper hand. He was sure that the reconstruction speed of the Holy Grail Kingdom would be the fastest.
Since Rosen himself was now busy, neither his Clones nor pets could be idle.
The Dark Sun Slime had already begun producing ordinary slimes. He had merged the Slime Nest with the Dark Sun Slime—meaning the Dark Sun Slime itself now served as the Slime Nest. That troop-producing structure was evolving into a Dark Sun Nest.
The Golden Divine Ox had gone out to scout for resources, while the Void Pufferfish was responsible for transporting them.
The Calamity Apostle handled the investigation of dangerous areas, while the Lamp God was assigned to leave the Holy Grail Kingdom and explore the world outside.
Meanwhile, three Clones headed to the kingdoms of the three Star Coin True Gods.
Though the distance seemed vast based on his perception, with the spatial coordinates obtained from the Omniscient Magic Eye, infiltrating through a cross-world gate wasn't difficult. With the Miracle Traits of Soul Symbiosis and Flesh Symbiosis, they could perfectly replace the citizens revived in those kingdoms.
(End of Chapter)