As 6 o'clock arrived, all players who had responded to the invitation and registered an account saw a line of large characters appear before them.
"Welcome to Battleworld—life never ceases, transcendence never ends. Leave your name in the ever-changing cosmos, write new stories, create new legends. Now, let us begin!"
The text vanished in an instant, and a white light appeared before everyone's eyes. As the white light slowly dissipated, blue skies and white clouds reappeared. A neutral electronic voice sounded in everyone's ears.
"Welcome to Battleworld - New Earth. After the official version is launched, all players will be randomly assigned a base, with an initial location of 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers on the Earth's coordinate system. Players can freely build their base within this territory, recruit teammates, complete quests, and enjoy every day in Battleworld."
"Every player entering Battleworld will receive 1,000 initial points through email, which can be used to purchase items from the store or select dungeons. Points can also be earned later by completing dungeon quests or winning arena battles."
"The store option has been opened..."
"The dungeon interface has been opened..."
"The internal team communication channel has been opened..."
"The explanations for all other functions are listed in detail in the function interface. Please check them out at your convenience. Now, enjoy your journey in Battleworld."
When Shiller's vision returned, he found himself standing at the edge of a cliff, surrounded by lush forests, but the types of plants suggested this was not modern Earth.
Battleworld adopted a base mode similar to the last time, where all squads were on the same Earth rather than in some independent space. This time, however, there was a limit to the base size of only 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers, though it seemed there was potential for expansion later on.
The base location was assigned randomly, and Shiller thought the best would be to be assigned in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere; subtropical and tropical zones would be fine as well. His luck this time wasn't bad; it seemed he was in a jungle in the subtropical region.
The moment Shiller turned his head, he saw a bird of strange shape and color, confirming that this was probably not modern Earth and that there might even be dinosaurs here.
The immediate priority was to meet up with his other personas. Even though teams were formed in advance, the system only scattered pre-formed team members evenly across the 10-kilometer by 10-kilometer area, and they still had to meet up on their own.
Shiller looked around and saw a very tall tree not far behind him. He felt that climbing up there should give him a view of whether there were people around, so he walked towards it while opening the Battleworld interface to check.
The system update this time was significant, and compared to before, it could be said to be a very complete game system now.
The core gameplay of Battleworld was simple: participating in dungeons. So, as soon as Shiller opened the system interface, the big characters "Dungeon" appeared. However, Shiller's interface currently showed "Available dungeons: 0."
Shiller clicked on the mail icon at the top. Without even looking at the various greetings and introductions, he hit "Receive All," and a large number of gifts burst onto the screen.
Shiller received 1,000 points, one random purple dungeon, 10 limited dungeon lottery tickets, 3 ordinary item exchange coupons, 50m of cross-region chat data, and a server-opening limited title.
First, the points, which were essentially like the diamonds in many games, basically a universal currency. They could be used to buy items, enter lotteries, purchase skins, or exchange for a variety of things, making them quite precious.
A random purple dungeon prop was equivalent to opening a random epic dungeon. The ranking of dungeon levels was not based on how exciting the story was but on the difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the better the rewards.
All dungeons were divided into ordinary and limited. As mentioned before, the administrators of the two universes had offered a number of these universes' dungeons as competition venues to enhance the popularity of some universes or inspire new stories.
These dungeons, however, were less common compared to original creations and due to the nature of universes, they couldn't allow everyone to rush in at once, so all dungeons were categorized into ordinary and limited dungeons.
All dungeons obtained through props were ordinary ones, created by Transcendents, Walt Disney, Shiller, and Lucifer, just like last time's Battleworld. Limited dungeons, on the other hand, were stories already existing within the Cartoon World.
The rewards for limited dungeons were much higher than ordinary ones, and once a story was revived, the participating characters could potentially gain additional popularity, making them naturally more prized.
Shiller didn't even look at the free purple ordinary dungeon he received. He went straight to the dungeon lottery interface, set up his desired dungeon, threw in all 1,000 points for a 10-consecutive draw, reasoning more points would come from completing quests later on.
Unfortunately, he did not draw any limited dungeons, because the pool for the limited dungeon was mixed; it contained ordinary dungeons, prop exchange vouchers, regular items, and even traffic.
Moreover, there was no guaranteed threshold—300 draws in a well meant spending 30,000 points to complete 300 draws and then being able to redeem a limited dungeon from the pool with fragments.
However, since dungeons could be shared within a team, and a team usually had at least a dozen members, the chances of drawing one increased significantly.
Even so, points could not be traded or gifted, and everyone's guarantee was independent, so it was possible for every member of a team to have spent 29,000 points and still not have drawn anything; it could be considered the darkest of pits.
Greed was actually well aware of these rules; one could say he had a hand in setting them. Therefore, he wasn't angry when his batch of ten consecutive draws came up empty, while other teams were already cursing loudly.
Spider-Man had superpowers and was especially adept at moving through the forest, so he was also assigned to the Spider squad in the forest, which assembled in just a few minutes.
"God, did any of you draw it?!" Gwen Spider-Man exclaimed anxiously; she said, "I spent all my diamonds but only drew a bunch of junk. I'm really going crazy!"
The Amazing Spider-Man from the rebooted 616 Prime Universe said, "I only spent half of my points on five single draws, and as expected, got nothing."
"Speaking of which, which limited dungeon did you all choose? I have no clue about any of these worlds," said a Spider-Man whose style clearly differed from the others, hailing from a Spider-Man cartoon.
The others all looked toward one Spider-Man, known as the lucky guy, Peter Parker, the Spider-Man from Shiller's universe.
They all knew that this Spider-Man from the Central Universe had more information than the others, and some even speculated that he might have been involved in the development of the Doujie System, putting him in a position of advantage, and perhaps he had some different intel.
"We need to boost our combat capabilities in the shortest possible time," Lucky Spider-Man said. "There are two ways, one is to find Iron Man..."
"We can rule out that approach," the Amazing Spider-Man stated. "He knows us too well, and there's no advantage in fighting him."
"Wait, why do we need to fight?" the Movie Spider-Man, also known as Holland Spider-Man, interjected. "Can't we just ask him...?"
"You can go and ask him if you want, but we won't," shrugged Toby Spiderman. "We're not that close with him."
The Amazing Spider-Man redirected the conversation back on track, saying, "We don't even know where Iron Man is right now, and cross-regional communication uses limited traffic. We can't just use the Exhaustion Method, can we? It's not too late to collaborate technically after we find him."
"What I mean is, we could go to a universe that has Iron Man and get some technology from him. However, I don't recommend doing so," Lucky Spider-Man shook his head and continued, "For one thing, we have people here with some of Iron Man's technology already. With that as a base, we can develop something better suited for ourselves, so there's no rush to get new tech."
"On the other hand, I think Batman might be a better choice than cooperating with Iron Man. I have some understanding of his technological path; he's not as specialized in mechanical engineering as Iron Man, but he's more versatile. I think he can fill in our gaps very well."
"Like what?" another younger Spider-Man leaned in and asked, the rest making way for him. Clearly, they had all learned from Nick about this young Spider-Man's uniqueness—he was the first Spider-Man born across all universes, the original Spider-Man.
"We have strong combat abilities, but we lack recovery powers," Lucky Spider-Man pointed out incisively. "The battlesuit provides some defense, but it's not enough. Once we're injured, we still need a long time to recover."
"Could it really be that dangerous?" The Amazing Spider-Man grew concerned. "I think you're right, but obviously, we weren't prepared with any good healing items. Are there any in the shop?"
"I suggest we don't rely too much on the shop." Lucky Spider-Man offered another piece of intel, "You've all seen the damned probability of the lottery. If we don't pour all our points into it, with so many Spider-Men, we might have nowhere to go, completely wasting our numerical advantage. So, it's best to get items from dungeons."
"Makes sense," Gwen Spider nodded her head in agreement, "Then let's do that. With so many of us contributing points to the draw, we should at least get one limited dungeon, so we should choose one with Batman in it."
Lucky Spider-Man seemed to be scrolling through the dungeon list; he said while browsing, "I'm not very familiar with most of these universes, and these brief descriptions don't tell much... wait, I think this one looks good. What do you think?"
He sent the dungeon he fancied to the team's chat channel, and all the Spider-Men began to read through it. Each dungeon had a few brief descriptions, but the one he selected had a particularly intriguing blurb.
"The City of Sin remains wicked, but the Dark Knight is no longer in the flush of youth. Can the aging superhero once again defeat the Devils' minions and restore peace to the city?"