Everybody looked at each other and finally decided to withdraw all cards from the event and regroup.
The main reason was that it was pointless to continue here. They had no means to deal with those four Skull Cards, almost all their character-preserving skills had entered cooldowns, and the monster still had 70% of its blood left. Even if they took a gamble, it was unlikely they would kill it in one hit. Continuing would only needlessly sacrifice their characters.
More importantly, since Shiller suggested a withdrawal, who would dare not to? Those who didn't would just be waiting to get swept up into a giant tangle of yarn.
After everyone withdrew, the round continued, but they no longer had the time to fight each other. They were either browsing the shop, healing their own cards, or engaging in late-game synthesis and releases to quickly enhance their cards' attributes.
It might seem simple, but in reality, it was much harder than fighting people because many Legendary Cards had very strict summoning conditions. Besides needing characters from their own deck, they also required characters from other genres.
Ten rounds passed by quickly.
The situation on the field was that Helada had not received any enhancements, but the players had prepared a formidable army.
Firstly, Iron Man did not manage to create the Iron Demon God because he lacked a Magic Stream deck. If Strange had been here playing, he probably could have managed the synthesis, but in his absence, Iron Man chose another path, which was the Mechanical Army.
Originally, without the Magic Core, Iron Man wouldn't have taken the path of the Iron Demon God. He doesn't use the Iron Demon God identity much anymore; he mostly relies on a vast amount of machinery to maintain the development plans for the Solar System. It suited him quite well.
He prepared dozens of Mechanical Cards filled with enhancement plugins and also synthesized the Execution of Justice Mecha Card.
Steve synthesized a card of the Eternal Captain America, by first summoning Eternity and then merging it with Captain America. The process was extremely complex, but this card was powerful, with the highest single-entity value on the field.
Spider-Man also created the Captain Universe Spider-Man, and Wanda not only prepared cards for Professor X and Magneto but had also become the Scarlet God herself.
On Eddie's side, he summoned the God of Symbiotic Body Nal and the planet inhabited by the Symbiont, spawning many offspring.
At S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick finally repaired the starship, enhancing it to its full form, and used cards to revive previously killed agents, organizing a very capable combat team.
Although they were all ready, there was one major problem: when the Skull Cards descended, it wasn't random. They would replicate the heads of all characters on the field without deducted cards. Although they only inherit 50% of the attributes, they can attack twice in one round, effectively equaling 100%.
In other words, the stronger the prepared characters now, the stronger the Skulls would be when they descended.
Moreover, most of the characters in this game have high power but low blood, meaning being able to attack once versus twice per round is a huge difference. Attacking twice could almost guarantee taking two people out, making the Skulls kill faster than normal characters.
Now that the rule was known, of course, it could be exploited. The most important point was that the characters to be replicated must be non-deducted.
This is where Schiller's genre came into play, for their main focus was on deducting cards. Among all Schiller cards, the most efficient in deduction was actually Arrogant, but this required acquiring Bruce's paper.
Arrogant's skill allowed all attacked characters to be deducted upon obtaining Bruce's paper.
This meant that as long as Bruce's paper was acquired, Shiller could manually control who would have their cards deducted.
In the early stages, there might have been concerns about being killed with a single hit, but at such a late stage, Arrogant's attack power wasn't significant, and deduction was virtually the only effect.
But how to obtain Bruce's paper?
It wouldn't work just on Shiller's luck; his luck was too bad. Continuing to draw cards this way, he wouldn't get it by the last round. Even with Arrogant attacking once per round, combined with other Shiller's deduction skills, there was no guarantee that the main forces could all deduct their cards.
So, in the first three rounds, everyone gave all their luck-related buffs to Shiller. They also spent a massive amount of Points in the market to buy many luck-enhancement items, forcing Shiller's luck to a full 100%.
This way, he didn't need to draw cards but could directly select from the deck. Naturally, Shiller chose Bruce's paper.
When he got the card, he noticed it really printed one of Bruce's papers, which he figured might have been obtained by Wanda or Jarvis while attending the Gotham Music Festival.
Thankfully, Arrogant wasn't around, or it was hard to imagine whether he would've snatched the card the moment he saw it.
The folks from Marvel didn't seem to care much; they thought it was part of a joke and didn't look closely at the card.
After obtaining Bruce's paper, Arrogant successively attacked the leading forces of various factions. This way, they could deduct their cards with minimal damage and prevent powerful cards from being replicated when the Skulls descended.
After ten rounds passed, the Skulls descended.
As Shiller expected, not only did the Skulls descend, but Helada also appeared, and right at the start, it lashed out with its tentacles, delivering group damage.
Shiller looked at Helada's card and saw it was striking every four rounds, with each strike's damage getting higher. Moreover, all Skulls had to be eliminated before Helada could be killed.
It was indeed a comprehensive enhancement.
Now, the main cards of each faction had been played and temporarily couldn't be selected, but that wasn't a solution. As soon as Helada arrived, their first move was to use the items or skills in hand to flip the cards back over.
The first step of their plan was very successful. Although there were many Skull Cards copied, none were particularly powerful. Since they had prepared in advance, most of the powerful Character Cards that had been played face-down were flipped back over in the first round.
But it was still a fierce battle, for each Skull could attack twice, and the target was random. Without any protection, by the time the attack was over, there would basically only be a few powerful cards left on the field.
"Proceed with the original plan," Shiller said.
Everyone immediately started operating, giving all their support and shield skills to Shiller on the field.
Because summoning the Tower of Thought required all Shiller cards to be present in the play area.
Shiller didn't use these few turns to play all his cards, mainly to guard against Helada, in case he arrived with a high-damage single target spell or a fatal curse that happened to fall on a Shiller card, dooming the deck to never be complete.
It would take Shiller roughly two turns to play the remaining cards. To ensure the Skulls' random damage didn't directly kill a Shiller, the others had to use all their defensive and support skills on him.
Meanwhile, the Mecha Army summoned by Stark greatly diluted the odds. With the number of attacks constant, the more targets there were, the lower the chance for Shiller to be hit.
As expected, when the Skulls began to attack, they continuously activated in quick succession. But most of the attacks fell on the robots, and even though many robots were destroyed, Helada converted them into Skulls as well.
But not a single Shiller card was lost.
After two turns, Shiller finally placed all of his Shiller cards, and the Tower of Thought arrived.
A massive High Tower descended upon the swamp, filled with sludge and Skulls, followed by countless Shillers.
"The Infinite Event has begun," Dream Power Doctor Strange announced.
The field instantly transformed into a mysterious expanse of cosmic space, with the tower at its center, all Shiller Character Cards surrounding the High Tower, and the grey and white Skulls grimly encircling everything.
Another round of concerted attacks ensued, Character Cards around the tower began to fall, but inside the High Tower, the various Shillers seemed endless. After the Skull Cards acted, it was Shiller's turn.
Shiller's Character Card attributes and skills were much more diverse than the uniform Skull Cards, and many had skills akin to causality. Many of them were animated characters who might seem to have low killing power, but their skills always hit their mark.
For example, some could ignore all obstacles and drag a character to the front row, directly extracting Helada's true form from among a mass of Skulls. Others could make an opponent fall over directly, and regardless of whether Helada could fall or not, it meant being immobilized for a turn. Some could exchange attributes, swapping their own health with Helada's.
Innumerable Skulls were still snarling around the giant moon monster, but their momentum was steadily weakening. With each passing round, Helada's speed of collecting Skulls simply couldn't keep up with the rate at which Shiller was dispatching them.
About five rounds later, all the Skulls had been cleared, and Helada, now pulled to the front row and having swapped health, couldn't withstand the final strike. This terrifying event had finally come to a complete end.
But the game was not yet over. After Helada was defeated, the situation turned into the Six Great Sects besieging the Bright Summit, more accurately, several factions attacking the Tower of Thought.
Unsurprisingly, they simply couldn't beat Shiller.
Many of the Shillers who emerged during the Infinite Event were essentially invincible. With Tom and Jerry running for hundreds of episodes, Jerry could never kill Tom Cat; expecting these people to kill them in a few rounds was a bit too much.
Regardless of the low damage of these Shiller moves, those annoying skills stuck once they hit, and a countless number of Shillers kept emerging from the High Tower, inexhaustible and endless.
In the end, Shiller used an umbrella to deplete the Scarlet God's last bit of health. Amid Wanda's lament, the game ended.
Shiller felt incredibly refreshed.
But the others were rather frustrated. Actually, losing a game was not a big deal; everyone occasionally played Monopoly or Ludo, and winning and losing were both normal.
The key question was, why was today's loss so frustrating?
On the one hand, the game had been extraordinarily unlucky. No one managed to draw the cards they wanted, and they weren't even average cards—it was bad card after bad card. Who could enjoy playing like that?
On the other hand, the purpose of playing the game was to escape reality, yet they were presented with a reenactment of reality. It was Shiller who silently dragged everyone through the main event and then dominated all the players.
Most importantly, Shiller's champion position had been hoisted up by everyone else. Otherwise, with the strict summoning conditions of the Tower of Thought, any of the late-game characters could easily kill a Shiller Character Card and break the formation.
The more they thought about it, the more frustrated they became.
Watching their frustrated faces, Shiller was absolutely delighted.
However, before he could enjoy his victory for long, as soon as he fell asleep that night, he saw the slightly resigned expression of Dream Power Doctor Strange in his dream.