In the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen used the God's Palette to transform the various Eternal Sources at hand into divine paints.
Then he unfurled Terror Paradise and began painting a mystic domain within the artwork, relying on the game permissions of the King's Game.
As the mystic domain took shape, the Black Iron, Silver, and Gold Kings gradually merged into this newly birthed mystic domain.
And that wasn't all—Rosen's avatars began dismantling the royal capitals of the three kingdoms.
Of course, these weren't the human-populated cities outside, but the capitals filled with Black Iron, Silver, and Golden androids.
The moment this mystic domain was born, Terror Paradise began to evolve and ascend.
[Terror Paradise: Miracle Painting]Level: Forbidden God-DemonMiracle Trait: Can create mystic domains using Eternal Sources and paintingMystic Domain: King's Amusement ParkMiracle Feature: Mystic Rules
Utilizing the mystic domain painted with Eternal Sources, Rosen merged all previous mystic domains into it.
The King's Amusement Park was shaped like a triangle, with each corner housing a massive, magnificent royal capital.
All residential buildings in these cities were torn down and replaced with various game scenarios extracted from mystic domains.
At the very center of the King's Amusement Park stood the terrifying royal city containing the in-game shop.
This Terror Royal City had two faces—on the surface, it served as the only safe zone in the entire Amusement Park.
But on its other side, it gathered all the mystic rules from the King's Amusement Park's various domains. These rules combined to form Terror Paradise's most powerful rule: one may not disobey any order from the King.
Unless one finds the single "path of survival"—successfully killing the Kings of the Black Iron, Silver, and Golden royal capitals.
This survival path was extremely difficult to achieve, so logically, the mystic rules should have been weaker.
But because the "King's Command" rule was forged by merging all other mystic rules, it did not weaken due to the difficulty of the escape route. Anyone who defied the King's orders would be suppressed, stripped of all transcendental powers, and imprisoned within Terror Paradise.
As usual with such an upgrade, Rosen burned the entire piece with Eternal Divine Radiance.
Now that the World-Only and Eternal-Undying traits had been removed, the Miracle Sequence's control over Terror Paradise had qualitatively improved.
He had obtained the finest essence of three entire kingdoms. Aside from the King's Game permissions, the Fire of Civilization, and three special metals, everything else was merged into Terror Paradise. Now, even when facing an imperial king, Rosen was fully confident he could take them down.
So he no longer intended to hold back. He would sweep across the Continent of Kings in the shortest time possible.
Only after grasping a fragment of the game permissions did Rosen finally realize the true nature of the King's Game.
This wasn't a real world. A real world couldn't support so many kingdoms, nor allow all kings to become Great True Gods. Only a spiritual-based game world could—one like the Spirit World, where matter played a secondary role.
The core of the King's Game was the Source Seed of the Eternal Game Origin. That seed had been divided into five parts—one large and four small.
The four King Cards each held a small portion. The remaining large part had been carved up by all the kingdoms and empires.
If all kingdoms and empires were destroyed, the Eternal Game Source Seed could be fully mastered.
Then there was the Eternal Corruption Source Seed, now lost in the forbidden zone formed after the Fall of the Corrupt Empire.
Because this Seed was still intact, it had continued to erode and pollute the King's Game. All things corrupted by it had become taboos. If not for the King's Game holding home-field advantage, it would have already been fully corrupted.
The so-called GM currently holding game permissions was, in fact, one of the emperors who survived the war with the Corrupt Empire.
Now that Rosen knew the inner workings of the King's Game and possessed some permissions himself, he no longer had to fear being targeted by a permissions tyrant.
Rosen immediately ordered the Holy Grail Empire to mobilize for war, commanding the Holy Grail Legion to march out. Meanwhile, he focused on subduing the nobles of the Black Iron, Silver, and Golden Kingdoms.
Thanks to the help of the princes from the Black Iron and Silver Kingdoms, merging them into the Holy Grail Empire was effortless.
Only the Golden Kingdom was troublesome. Its only prince refused to submit no matter what.
Rosen had no other choice—he had to capture the prince alive and then use a clone symbiosis to replace him.
Half a month later, the five legions—Holy Grail, War Chess, Black Iron, Silver, and Gold—completely surrounded the Sky Kingdom layer by layer. As for the Golden Lion Legion, which had originally submitted, it had already been wiped out by the reset game script after the reset.
So sometimes, luck really matters. The Golden Lion Legion took one wrong step and was gone.
Five kingdoms ganged up on one, bulldozing their way straight to the Sky King's capital.
By the time the Sky King awakened again, the entire kingdom had been reduced to just the royal city.
The Sky King didn't attempt to reset the game again. The game authority he held was already quite limited. The previous reset had already used up a lot, and at the moment of his awakening, he sensed the death of three clones, clearly aware that part of the authority he controlled had been seized.
With just this clone alone, he had no chance of winning. It was better to use all remaining game authority to awaken the kings of other nations.
Originally, according to the main storyline, the holders of the four King Cards were supposed to rely on the Flame of Civilization to grow into Great True Gods. Only then would all the kings awaken and wage kingdom wars. But no one expected the Holy Grail King to grow so fast and become so powerful.
If this continued, the other three King Card holders wouldn't have time to catch up.
By the time they matured, the Holy Grail King would have already conquered the entire King Continent.
So the Sky King had to advance the game process at all costs—to let the Holy Grail King taste what it meant to be the enemy of the world.
Even though doing so would lead to most of his game authority being reclaimed by the King's Game, at this desperate moment, he couldn't care anymore.
With a single thought, the Sky King used his authority to alter the main storyline.
At that moment, all the still-slumbering kings across the King Continent awakened. Some hadn't even reacted yet when several well-prepared kingdoms had already joined forces to attack their neighboring countries.
As for the Sky King, he was instantly devoured by the King's Game for forcibly altering the main plot.
Just like deleting a character, the Sky King was erased completely, leaving nothing behind.
Rosen arrived at the place where the Sky King vanished and began capturing the Sky Kingdom's Flame of Civilization.
Inside the Flame of Civilization, he discovered a special miracle treasure:
[Chaotic Pointer: Miracle Treasure]
[Grade: Great True God]
[Miracle Attribute: Can neutralize the power of Order]
[Miracle Traits: Order Breaker, Only One in Heaven and Earth, Eternally Indestructible]
Now Rosen understood why, even with the same game authority, the Sky King was able to awaken early.
Because the Chaotic Pointer could counteract the restrictions imposed by the game rules on oneself. Although it couldn't fully neutralize them, it still allowed the Sky King to awaken ahead of time. As for the unique miracle trait "Order Breaker," it could permanently destroy the game's rules.
After refining the Chaotic Pointer, Rosen led his legions to attack the nearby kingdoms.
Since the kings had all awakened, the difficulty of annihilating kingdoms had also increased.
At first, he could still destroy a kingdom every ten days. But after sweeping through several in a row, the more distant kingdoms received word and immediately ceased all internal conflicts, turning instead to rallying a coalition army to expel the Holy Grail Empire.
It only took one day to gather the coalition forces—an alliance of 75 nations now surrounded the Holy Grail Empire.
Such swift mobilization was possible because all the kings had incorporated their legions into their domains, and then marched alone with the strength of a Great True God. The advantage of doing this was that they could travel quickly without fear of interception; the downside was that they couldn't gather energy from the world along the way.
But to these kingdoms, that so-called downside was insignificant.
Because all the kingdoms had been preparing for this war on the Continent of Kings for 23,000 years.
So each kingdom had amassed oceans of spirituality crystals and divinity crystals. Their legions didn't even need to draw energy from the natural world to reduce consumption—they could directly burn spirituality crystals to increase the energy density of the environment.
Tens of millions of arcane mages brought out mountains of spirituality crystals.
Then, using war magic, they vaporized those crystals, letting the spiritual power disperse and merge into the surroundings. Due to the extremely high energy density of the environment, all Beyonders could easily draw more energy to unleash stronger attacks.
Countless arcane mages—numbering in the billions—formed dozens of mage legions and began casting war magic.
Dozens of enormous-scale war spells almost completely blanketed the vast territory of the Holy Grail Kingdom, which had expanded over a million square kilometers through conquest.
As these war spells descended, the Holy Grail Empire turned into a land of ten thousand miles of ice and flame. Some regions became swamps; others were annihilated by deadly toxins. After just one round of magical warfare, only the Holy Grail Imperial Capital remained standing.
The Holy Grail Empire was practically steamrolled in one wave. Yet among the 75 allied kings, nearly ten of them looked grim.
Because while they were besieging the Holy Grail Empire, their own kingdoms had come under attack.
And in a short amount of time, they could no longer sense their respective Civilization Sparks.
The Holy Grail Emperor hadn't chosen to make a last stand—he had made the same choice they had: abandoning defense and launching a counteroffensive.
"We must strike together and flatten the Holy Grail Imperial Capital…"
"Our kingdoms were destroyed—our losses must be compensated by the coalition…"
"We can't give the Holy Grail Emperor time to return."
The 75 allied kings quickly reached a consensus: they would work together to destroy the Holy Grail Imperial Capital.
Only this time, destruction wasn't the main goal—they intended to invade the city personally.
Because pure destruction would hurt others without benefiting themselves. This was why, even though arcane mages had far greater area-of-effect destruction than bloodline knights, the core of every national legion was still composed of bloodline knights. After all, the purpose of war wasn't destruction—it was conquest.
If the Holy Grail Empire hadn't been so strong, the kingdoms wouldn't have mobilized billions of arcane mages for an annihilation-level assault.
Now, with only the Holy Grail Imperial Capital remaining, the empire looked like a fish on the chopping block to the kings—completely at their mercy.
However, just as all the kings charged toward the capital, it suddenly collapsed into nothingness and transformed into a painting.
Rosen reached out from the Window of the World and grabbed the painting, taking the Holy Grail Capital with him.
Then, without hesitation, he used the Interplanar Gate to teleport to the rear of those kingdoms and continued destroying their now-defenseless nations.
From the beginning, he knew the Holy Grail Empire couldn't be defended once it was besieged.
Destruction was far easier than defense. In ordinary wars between mortals, the worst consequences were heavy casualties and damaged cities—land remained intact, and rebuilding was just a matter of time.
But wars between Beyonder kingdoms weren't like that. A duel between two Great True Gods could annihilate an entire nation.
And not just destroy it—utterly erase it, even its land crushed into nothingness.
Even though the rules of the King Game on the Continent of Kings would gradually restore damaged environments, the speed of restoration was nowhere near the speed of destruction.
So the Holy Grail Empire was impossible to defend. The only choice Rosen had was to fight offense with offense—trading homes with the enemy.
As long as he was alive, the Holy Grail Empire still existed. As long as the Holy Grail Capital, the heart of it all, remained intact, the empire could always be rebuilt.
Of course, only Rosen could pull this off. For most, losing territory meant a sharp decline in power, a severe weakening of the Civilization Spark. But Rosen had ways to counter all of that.
The Civilization Spark had already been fused with the Miracle Spark, so losing territory no longer meant weakening.
As for losing the empire's empowerment and thus having his strength drop from Great True God level—even without the power boosts from the King Sequence, Rosen still had the ability to directly slay any king. That was the absolute advantage of personal strength over external forces.
With the Interplanar Gate granting him unpredictable mobility, Rosen launched surprise attacks on various kingdoms.
These kingdoms, now hollowed out, stood no chance of resisting the Holy Grail Empire's nationwide assault.
On the Holy Grail Empire's side, the war had ended in less than an hour. The allied forces destroyed the Holy Grail Empire but gained nothing from it.
Watching the Holy Grail Emperor continue attacking their own kingdoms, the allied kings couldn't sit still any longer and began to return to defend.
But even when the kings returned with their legions, a single kingdom's power still couldn't stop Rosen's campaign of annihilation.
Now that the Holy Grail Empire had lost its territory, it had no more weaknesses—and unleashed even more terrifying destructive power.
In the end, all the coalition kingdoms could only watch helplessly as the Holy Grail Empire grew stronger with every battle.
Although war brings casualties, killing enemies also grants experience from the King's Game.As long as the number of enemies killed far exceeds the number of casualties, one can grow stronger through battle.
If it's always "kill a thousand but lose eight hundred," then the Hundred Kingdoms War will only lead to mutual destruction.
Especially since soldiers of the Holy Grail Empire can still be resurrected through the Holy Grail Altar even after dying in battle.
The kingdoms of the four King Card holders only had True God-level strength at the beginning. How did they catch up to kingdoms that had developed for tens of thousands of years in just over a decade?They relied on the resurrection from the altar, and on gaining levels by killing monsters—growing stronger through battle.
As for the other kingdoms outside of the four major ones, while they can also level up by killing monsters, they don't have the trump card of resurrection altars.
As more and more kingdoms were destroyed by Rosen, the remaining ones began forming a second allied army.
Since destroying the Holy Grail Empire itself didn't work, they decided to directly destroy all of its military forces.
They completely abandoned defense, gathering all their troops to engage in mobile warfare against the Holy Grail Empire.
As for which unfortunate kingdoms might be ambushed and destroyed by the Holy Grail Empire during this period—that was considered their bad luck.The other kings promised that after the Holy Grail Empire was eliminated, the destroyed kingdoms would have priority in picking the spoils of war.
However, the allied army soon discovered that destroying the Holy Grail Empire's military was easier said than done.
Even if every king personally carried their legions in their own domains, they still had to be able to corner the Emperor of the Holy Grail.
The problem was, the Grail Emperor was as slippery as an eel. Every time the kings locked onto his position and chased after him, he would detect it early and retreat ahead of time. Sometimes he was just moments away from destroying a royal capital, but would still choose to retreat rather than take a risk.
Rosen fully utilized the "retreat when the enemy advances" strategy, combining it seamlessly with the Gate of Realms and the Omniscient Magic Eye.
Seeing that they couldn't corner Rosen, the allied forces, driven to desperation, began deeper collaboration.
All royal capitals of all kingdoms were opened to each other, and teleportation gates were established.
Every king stood guard at their own royal capital. If the Holy Grail Empire attacked any one kingdom, the others would instantly teleport reinforcements through the gates.This finally curbed the momentum of the Holy Grail Empire and gave the surviving kingdoms a chance to breathe.
Seeing that there was no more opportunity to destroy the remaining 62 kingdoms, Rosen prepared to target other prey he had long set his sights on.
Aside from the current alliance of kingdoms, there was another alliance led by the King of the Sky.
Both alliances were tough nuts to crack—if anything, the Sky King's alliance was even harder to deal with.
So Rosen didn't plan to provoke either of them. Instead, he was going to destroy the three kingdoms of Star Coin, Scepter, and Sword first.
In fact, over the past few days, the King of the Sky hadn't attempted to fish in troubled waters precisely because he was attacking those three kingdoms.Clearly, the Sky King also wanted to seize a King Card. After being delayed by the main alliance for a few days, the True God of Star Coin was already on the verge of collapse.
Although the Sky King only commanded a small number of kingdoms, there were still over a dozen in total.
Destroying the Star Coin Kingdom, which hadn't had time to develop, was no challenge for the Sky King.
Just as Rosen had abandoned the Holy Grail Empire's territory, the True God of Star Coin was also forced to abandon his kingdom's land.Now, he had fled with his royal capital toward the Scepter Kingdom.But facing the inescapable net laid by the Sky King, the True God of Star Coin had no hope of reaching the Scepter Kingdom.
While darting rapidly through the forest, the True God of Star Coin suddenly sensed himself being enveloped by a domain.
Startled, he turned and saw Rosen. The heart he had just relaxed instantly tensed again.
The Sky King was terrifyingly strong—falling into his hands would surely mean a miserable end.
But in his eyes, Rosen was even more terrifying. Falling into Rosen's hands wasn't any better.
"I'm willing to become a subordinate god... Can you spare me?"
The True God of Star Coin lowered his head and yielded.
"I'd like to spare you... but unfortunately, I can't."
Rosen sighed.
Through his King's Game authority, he discovered that apart from himself, the others—including the True God of Star Coin—were too deeply bound to their King Cards.To strip a King Card from them, he had no choice but to kill them.So even if they surrendered, there was no way for them to survive.
The True God of Star Coin still tried to resist and struggle, but the Horror Park had already descended through the Canvas Realm and merged with the domain.
There was no chance of escape. He had already been pulled into the King's Amusement Park and transported to Black Iron Royal City.
The True God of Star Coin exhausted all his strength and used every trump card he had, barely clearing one eerie game scene after another.But what awaited him in the end was the Black Iron King, who retained the full power of a Great True God.He could only collapse in despair in the Black Iron Royal City. After death, everything he had was devoured by the King Card.
(End of this chapter)