The issues on the Marvel side were basically settled, and of course, DC's affairs still needed attention. However, there weren't as many concerns there because the structure of the universe was more compact. Compared to a federated system, it was more like a centralized government where the Archangels of Heaven held a status above almost all beings—so much so that most of the so-called powerhouses could hardly make waves in their presence, let alone be used as stepping stones by some entities to boost their own power.
Aside from one instance where Lucifer was arranged to say in a plotline that even he couldn't see through the Sleep Demon, there hasn't been a major event where someone killed off beings like Lucifer or Michael to ascend to God's throne.
Moreover, Shiller had learned from Lucifer that the God of DC is the true God who, apart from being the sole deity in the Cartoon World, also holds immense controlling power over many universes similar to the real world, to an extent that is hard to imagine. Few dared to provoke Him.
God's most beloved son, Lucifer, also ranked just below Him and happened to be a shareholder of Battleworld. Sometimes, when Battleworld couldn't finish its work, he would take it back to Heaven for the angels to deal with—so there was no need to hold some sort of pyramid scheme conference. Just notifying the angels and recruiting them into Battleworld wouldn't cause any trouble.
The only slightly troublesome part was that, of course, the Demon King of Hell also saw this as a good opportunity and wanted to get involved. Luckily, since Lucifer was now both an Archangel and Hell Satan, he simply made a grand gesture and allocated a considerable number of slots to Hell.
Of course, on the DC side, getting the consent of certain individuals was necessary. Aside from angels and demons, the most challenging to deal with was none other than DC's own daddy, aka the Wishing Pond Lord Batman.
The Batman of the Prime Universe had already become involved. He was indifferent as long as it didn't interfere with his time in the real world. He had some reservations about Robin's participation, but lately, it had gotten better, and he'd even been covertly inquiring Shiller about when Battleworld would officially start. The Batman Family genuinely couldn't accommodate more crazed teenagers.
Apart from that, Shiller also contacted several familiar Batmen, including Bruce, those strange ones from the dark universe, Lord Batman, Bat Cat, and so on.
However, what Shiller found odd was that he had lost contact with Little Bruce for a while, the Batman who had an unclear relationship with Nya. After sending several messages without a reply and being unable to ascertain his status, Shiller felt there was something fishy.
Shiller wanted to contact Nya but found that Nya wasn't responding to messages either. Although one of his avatars was perched above Barbados's head, it seemed that the consciousness had gone off to do who knows what, which made Shiller suspect something was afoot.
There were about 28 days left until the restart of Battleworld. This time, it was a significant public beta test. Although not too many people were expected in the first batch, a conservative estimate showed thousands of participants. Including the comic story universe replicas that could be explored, there were thousands, and any slip-up could spell trouble.
The form of the public beta version of Battleworld is similar to the final stage of the internal beta—with not only original replicas but also allowing characters to explore different comic universes.
Of course, to prevent outsiders from wreaking havoc in the universes, the universes available for exploration are replicas pre-made by the managers. If a story develops compellingly and gains enough popularity, it could replace the original or even possibly become a separate series. If the storyline collapses, only the replica is affected, while the original remains unchanged.
This provided a great opportunity for many stories that had languished for years, that lacked appeal, and that had almost been forgotten, to revive. Some tales might seem mediocre or fleeting within a single universe and lack ideas for continuation, but by introducing elements from other worlds, they get a fresh twist and could potentially become popular with readers.
In this way, even without fresh ideas or lousy execution, there would at least be some exposure to keep the stories from being criticized too harshly. If a blockbuster was created, it would be a guaranteed profit.
So the managers of each universe, under the instructions of the big boss, had unearthed many old series—those that had been pushed to some unknown corner or had once shone brightly but were now stagnant due to a lack of popularity—and the managers were working overtime to create replicas of these universes.
There were also some niche consciousness stream comic universes or those that had crossovers with other IPs which, after very careful selection and confirmation of copyrights, were also included.
The mainstream and original replicas from the internal beta test were now used for competitive arenas, meaning comic replicas were mainly for exploration and exchange, while original replicas were for confrontation and combat, with the former primarily PvE and the latter focused on PvP.
Because Shiller didn't like box-stacking, he wasn't planning on arranging any PvP sections, but he knew that the cosmos was home to many innate war enthusiasts. To attract this group of participants, PvP dueling had to be offered.
This time, Battleworld didn't enforce team forming. Rooms and worlds were already prepared, just like gaming homes—each player had their own, and one could add friends and visit others' homes. Of course, if you preferred solitude, you could choose not to enable social mode.
Teams were mainly formed as alliances, akin to gaming guilds, not highly mandatory. You're free to join, and who calls the shots after joining is up to the group's internal decision-making—there's no forced structure.
Alliances provided activities and gathering sites, and members of the same alliance received bonuses for participating in the same replica. It's all been said before, but to Shiller's surprise, it seemed everyone planned to team up with their counterparts, like the Bat Alliance, which sounded quite appealing.
Whether PvP or PvE replicas, both individual and team battles were available—solo or squad play. However, squad play seemed more profitable regardless, and it was no wonder superheroes wanted to team up with their counterparts. They could face a lot of squad play situations later, and it's better to have teammates who understand you better.
Shiller was also considering this because even Lucifer planned to join in the fun. He would certainly participate, but he and Lucifer both faced the same biggest issue: they were unique entities without counterparts. Such singular entities were not that common in the cosmos, making it almost impossible to form alliances.
Shiller had to seriously consider Peter's proposal, whether it was possible to clone himself several times and form a team with himself? By the time he did, he wouldn't tell others that they were clones, and others would simply treat them as identical entities.
It wasn't that Shiller particularly wanted to team up with himself; the key issue was that he really didn't want to team up with Lucifer. Lucifer had been holding back his Angel's Descent for a long time, and Shiller truly didn't want to see him flaunting those broken wings in front of ordinary people every day anymore.
Since he had to consider teaming up with himself, he needed to find a way to create a duplicate. The previous Skrull duplicate was an accident. With just over a month's time, although it would still be feasible to capture some Skrulls and brainwash them, considering they were an alien race, they were somewhat different from the human race, and Shiller still preferred using human bodies.
With this in mind, Shiller couldn't help but remember past events. Amanda had created a multitude of clones, intending to solve the problem of those assassins with a deluge of test subjects, but of course, it failed.
The reason for the failure was not that the strategy itself didn't work, but rather that the clones produced by Amanda had issues; they had natural defects, and not only could their appearance not perfectly imitate humans, but their internal aspects were even worse off, each with personality settings resembling an over-heroic caricature, too easily identifiable.
But if only the technology for physical cloning was needed, that wouldn't be a problem. Moreover, Shiller wasn't cloning in the real world. He could utilize the enhanced projection technology of Battleworld, employing both physical and magic methods to sculpt bodies that suited each of his personality traits perfectly.
No sooner said than done, Shiller approached Amanda and obtained the corresponding cloning technology in exchange for agreeing to teach at her newly established DC version of the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization.
After producing the clones in Battleworld, due to the different age ranges of many of Shiller's personality traits, further adjustments to the body's physical quality and appearance were necessary, along with endowing them with abilities they originally possessed.
As a result, although their appearances remained Shiller's, the abilities of each Shiller closely resembled those from his past life, slightly surpassing those of ordinary humans, such as enhanced strength, emotional perception, and the unique perspectives brought by mental illness, but no particularly excessive powers.
Gray mist had no plans to follow anyone; he wasn't truly dependent on a symbiosis to survive. He planned to go out and play on his own, initially planning to join the small animal alliance that Rocket Raccoon and others intended to form. However, Venom also invited him to join the Symbiont team, and he had yet to decide which to join.
It's worth mentioning that the system's energy was given to the personality traits of the magic side, and the one who got Sophocles' body was the leader of the magic side personality traits, "Bishop," who had been the main one directing this body beforehand.
After testing for a while, the Shillers found that, after all, personality traits are just that, not truly separate personalities, which caused them to be unable to leave the Tower of Thought for too long, and they couldn't actually dismantle the Tower.
So now, all personality traits had limited time to move within their own bodies and were confined within the scope of Battleworld. Leaving Battleworld for any real-world realm of Marvel or DC would render them incapable of functioning due to the lack of a system within the individual bodies that could run such a personality trait model.
In simpler terms, Shiller's personality traits were currently able to act independently by streaming into the Tower of Thought via the terminal system characteristic of Battleworld; away from this system, they would crash.
However, this was already tremendously good news, especially for the morbid ones. Although it wasn't very polite to compare them to a Monkey pressed under Mount Wuzhi for five hundred years, the analogy was somewhat apt.
And there was another piece of good news: since consciousness was streamed rather than rooted in the body, and was projected instead, the death of the body didn't affect consciousness. Once the body died, the corresponding personality trait would return to the High Tower, and another body could be prepared.
But this was fair because other participants of Battleworld also had the opportunity to revive, though with increasingly longer cooldown times for revival.
In this game environment of frantic espionage, intelligence gathering, and exchange of information technology, dying often essentially meant falling behind, which also meant that the cosmos you belonged to would miss out on an era of inbound technology surge.
It is for this reason that superheroes like Iron Man have also chosen to collaborate; this is not just a simple game of competition, but a frantic race for plunder, where the strong only get stronger.
Shiller spent roughly ten days adjusting all the bodies, but since all of this was done in the lab without real combative opportunities, Shiller couldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be problems.
But he was lucky, just as a sleepyhead was given a pillow, with 13 days left until Battleworld began, Little Bruce suddenly showed signs of activity, and a message sent by Shiller was answered.
But it didn't contain any specific content, only coordinates somewhere on Earth.
After confirmation through Battleworld's maps, the coordinates were precisely in Gotham on Little Bruce's Earth.
Shiller knew the chance for real combat had come, and a body lying in the life support pod opened its eyes, it was Dr. Naoge Sophocles.