Chapter 2763: Battleworld Countdown (Part 3)

The things on the Marvel side were basically handled. Of course, the DC side still had to be handled, but there were no such scruples here, because the structure of the universe was more compact. Compared to a federal system, it was more like a centralized government. The status of the archangels in Heaven was higher than almost all existences, and the so-called powerhouses in front of them couldn't turn over any waves, and were rarely taken as stepping stones for the strength of certain existences.

Except for one time when Lucifer was arranged to say in a plot that he couldn't see through Morpheus, there hadn't been any major event where someone killed Lucifer, Michael, etc., and ascended to the throne of God.

And Shiler also learned from Lucifer that DC's God is the real God. Besides being the only God in the comic world, he is also the only God in many realities similar to the real world. His control over a certain universe is unimaginable, and few people would touch his bad luck.

And God's most beloved eldest son, Lucifer, also belongs to being under one person, and is also a shareholder of Battleworld. Sometimes the work that can't be finished in Battleworld is taken back by him for the angels in Heaven to help handle. So there is no need to hold any pyramid scheme conference there. Just tell the angels, and pulling people into Battleworld won't cause trouble.

The only thing that was a bit difficult to handle was that the Demon Lords of Hell naturally saw that this was a good thing, so they also wanted to intervene. Fortunately, Lucifer is now the Archangel and the Satan of Hell, so he simply waved his hand and gave Hell quite a few quotas.

Of course, the DC side also needed to obtain the consent of a part of the people. Besides angels and demons, the hardest to deal with was naturally the DC biological father, AKA the wish-granting turtle, Batman.

The Batman of the main universe participated before. He didn't express his opinion on this, as long as it didn't delay his time in the real world. He had complaints about Robin also participating, but it was better recently. He had even been secretly asking Shiler when Battleworld would

Besides this, Schiller also contacted several familiar Batmen, including Bruce, those eccentric Batmen from the Dark Multiverse, Lord Batman, and even Bat-Cat, among others.

However, what Schiller found somewhat strange was that he had been unable to contact Little Bruce for a while—that is, the Batman who had an unclear relationship with Nyarlathotep. He had sent him several messages without a reply, and he could not detect his current status either.

Schiller wanted to find Nyarlathotep, only to discover that Nyarlathotep was not replying to messages either. Although one of his avatars was still squatting on top of Barbatos, it looked as though his consciousness had gone off to do who knows what, which made Schiller feel that something was amiss.

There were only about 28 days left until the Battleworld rebooted. This public beta was very important. Although they probably wouldn't let too many people in for the first batch, conservatively estimated, there would be tens of thousands of participants. Combined with the thousands of comic book universe instances available for exploration, it would be troublesome if something really went wrong.

The public beta version of Battleworld adopted a format similar to the final stages of the closed beta. In addition to original instances, it also allowed characters to enter different comic book universes for exploration.

Of course, to prevent outsiders from making a mess of the universes, these universes for exploration were instances prepared in advance by the administrators. If a story developed brilliantly and gained high popularity, it would replace the original and might even become a standalone series. If the timeline collapsed, only the instance would collapse, while the original would remain unchanged.

This provided a great opportunity for stories that had been stagnant for years and were on the verge of being forgotten to turn things around. Some stories might seem mediocre or like a flash in the pan when viewed within a single universe, with no clear follow-up, but if factors from other worlds were added to this universe, they would have a different appeal and would very likely attract readers' interest.

In this way, even without coming up with new ideas or doing sloppy work, one could stir up some novelty from leftovers and at least maintain some exposure without being criticized. If a real hit was produced, it would be a guaranteed win.

Therefore, under the instructions of the Big Boss, the administrators of various universes basically dug out many old, dusty titles—the kind of universes that had been pushed into some unknown corner, or those that were once glorious but had now stagnated completely due to a decline in popularity. During this time, the administrators were working overtime to create instances of these universes.

Of course, there were also some niche stream-of-consciousness comic universes or universes that had collaborated with other IPs, which were also added after very careful screening and copyright verification.

As for the mainstream and original instances from the closed beta, they were now used for competitive arenas. In other words, comic instances were mainly for exploration and communication, while original instances were for confrontation and combat—the former being primarily PvE, and the latter focusing on PvP.

Because Schiller did not like "stacking boxes," he actually did not intend to arrange PvP segments, but he also knew that there were many natural warmongers in the universe. To attract this portion of participants, PvP duels still had to be opened.

This time, Battleworld did not force team-ups. Rooms and worlds were already prepared, equivalent to the homesteads in games where everyone had their own. You could add others as friends to visit their homes, but of course, if you liked being alone, you didn't have to turn on social mode.

This time, team-ups were primarily in the form of alliances, which were equivalent to guilds in games. They were not very mandatory; you could join if you wanted to, and who was in charge after joining was decided within the group, with no mandatory requirements.

Alliances also provided activities and gathering spots, and members of the same alliance received bonuses for participating in the same instance. This was all old news, but what surprised Schiller was that it seemed everyone intended to team up with their own variants this time. A "Bat-Alliance" or something similar sounded quite cool.

Whether it was PvP or PvE instances, they were divided into individual battles and team battles—meaning you could queue solo or queue as a team. However, no matter how you looked at it, the returns for team queuing were greater. It was no wonder the superheroes all wanted to team up with their variants, because they might face a large number of team-queue situations later, and it was better to find teammates who understood them better.

Schiller was also thinking about this matter, because this time even Lucifer intended to get down and play, and he would definitely have to go too. But he and Lucifer both faced a major problem: they were both unique copies with no variants, and such unique copies were not very numerous in the universe, making it basically impossible to form an alliance.

Schiller had to seriously consider Peter's suggestion: could he split off a few more of himself to team up with himself? When the time came, if he didn't say they were split off from himself, others would just treat them as variants.

It wasn't that Schiller wanted to team up with himself so much; the key was that he really didn't want to team up with Lucifer. Lucifer had been holding back to play "Angel Descent" for a long time, and Schiller really didn't want to watch him show off those lousy wings of his in front of ordinary people every day.

Since he had to consider teaming up with himself, he had to find a way to get avatars. The previous Skrull avatar was an accident. There was still more than a month left; although it would be in time to go catch some Skrulls and brainwash them, they were an alien race after all and were somewhat different from humans. Schiller still preferred using human bodies.

Thinking of this, Schiller couldn't help but think of what happened before: Amanda created a bunch of clones, intending to use a "sea of questions" tactic to deal with this group of assassins. Of course, it failed.

The reason for the failure wasn't that the "sea of questions" tactic didn't work, but that the group of clones Amanda created had problems. They had natural defects, and even their appearance might not perfectly imitate humans, let alone their internal makeup. Each personality was set up like a "super-male," making them too easy to be identified.

But if only body cloning technology was needed, then there was no problem. Furthermore, Schiller was not cloning in the real world; he could use Battleworld's enhanced projection technology to use both physical and magical means to shape bodies most suitable for each of Schiller's personality traits.

No sooner said than done, Schiller approached Amanda and exchanged the corresponding cloning technology for the condition of teaching at the new DC-version S. H. I. E. L. D. agency she had established.

After producing the clones in Battleworld, because Schiller's many personality traits were at different age stages, he had to further adjust their physical fitness and appearance, while simultaneously endowing them with the abilities they originally possessed.

In this way, although the appearance was still Schiller's appearance, basically every Schiller's abilities leaned closer to his past life—that is, having some abilities slightly exceeding ordinary people, such as greater strength, emotional perception, and the peculiar perspectives brought by mental illness, but without any particularly outrageous abilities.

Gray Mist didn't intend to follow anyone; anyway, he didn't really need a symbiont to survive. He planned to go out and play on his own. He initially planned to join the "Small Animal Alliance"—the group Rocket Raccoon and the others intended to form—but Venom also seemed to invite him to join the Symbiote team. He hadn't decided which one to join yet.

It is worth mentioning that the system's energy was given to the magic-side personality trait. The one who got the body of Nyarlathotep was the leader of the magic-side personality traits, "The Bishop," and it had always been him leading this body before.

After testing, the Schillers discovered that personality traits were, after all, just traits and not truly independent personalities. This resulted in them being unable to leave the Tower of Thought for too long, and they couldn't really tear down the Tower of Thought either.

Therefore, the time all personality traits could be active in their respective bodies was limited and confined to the scope of Battleworld. After leaving Battleworld and going to any real world in Marvel or DC, they would be unable to function because the individual bodies lacked the system that allowed the personality trait mode to run.

Simply put, Schiller's personality traits were currently relying on the characteristics of Battleworld, streaming into the Tower of Thought via the terminal system to be able to act independently. Leaving this system would cause them to crash.

However, this was already great news, especially for the "pathological ones." Although it might be impolite to compare them to the monkey pressed under the Five Elements Mountain for five hundred years, it was roughly the same.

And there was another piece of good news: because it was streaming consciousness and not rooted within the body, but projected over, the death of the body did not affect the consciousness. After the body died, the personality trait would return to the tower, and one just needed to get another body.

But this was also fair, because other Battleworld participants also had resurrection opportunities, only the resurrection cooldown time would get longer and longer.

In such a game environment of racing against time to spy on intelligence and exchange information technology, dying too much basically meant falling behind, which meant that the universe you were in would miss an era of explosive foreign technology.

Precisely because of this, superheroes like Iron Man chose to join forces. This was not just a game of purely competing for victory or defeat, but a race of plunder against time; the strong would only become stronger.

Schiller spent about ten days adjusting all the bodies, but all of this was done in the laboratory. Because there were no opportunities for actual combat, it was difficult for Schiller to guarantee that there wouldn't be problems.

But his luck was very good—just as he was sleepy, a pillow arrived. Just 13 days before Battleworld opened, Little Bruce suddenly showed signs of activity, and a message Schiller had sent was responded to.

But it had no specific content, only the coordinates of a certain place on Earth.

After confirmation by the Battleworld map, the coordinate location was exactly on the Earth where Little Bruce was, somewhere in Gotham.

Schiller knew the opportunity for actual combat had arrived. A body lying in the life-support pod opened its eyes; it was Dr. Nyarlathotep.