To be honest, Ling Ke didn't know whether the Player One System had set the single pull price at 280 points because he was in the HI3 world. If he had crossed into Genshin or Star Rail or ZZZ, would it drop to 160 instead?
The thought came and went, because it didn't matter. This world had plenty of people and points would not be lacking.
A cold-blooded way to think about it. But the current him only thought this way, because he had already become the World-Destroying Player and since he chose the path he would not be half-hearted about walking it. Even if he was the villain, the antagonist, he would do it better than anyone.
The system had no pity mechanism, so there was no reason to save. Accumulate 280, pull immediately, use early and maximize the return. He willed the system interface open and operated it without hesitation.
What came back was a robot gunslinger from Zenless Zone Zero named Billy Kid. Physical damage dealer, Attack-type, with a kit built around full-auto gunfire at range, a theatrical dodge he probably enjoyed too much, a dashing special called Starlight Judgment, and a counter styled as a Fair Duel. His official designation read as a High-Intelligence Tactical Android for Firepower-Based Area Suppression, though his actual personality was closer to a self-aware machine obsessed with a tokusatsu show called Starlight Knight.
Ling Ke skimmed the background and dismissed it. He didn't need knight spirit. As long as it could fight and kill, the rest was irrelevant.
Then the system offered him something useful.
Anby and Billy both originated from ZZZ, which meant both carried the Character Switching trait. Up to three templates from the same game could form a party, and forming a party activated additional operational space.
This was actually good news. While the 999 puppets had been working through the base, Ling Ke's main body had not been idle. He had spent the time mapping the Player One System's mechanics, and one of the first things he discovered was that switching game character templates could normally only be performed inside the Dominion Theater. A limitation pulled directly from how most games handled roster management.
But templates that natively carried Character Switching bypassed that restriction. Multiple templates from the same game could be loaded at once and swapped freely outside according to that game's original rules. Genshin templates could eventually form a five-person party. ZZZ templates like Anby and Billy could form a three-person squad.
Which meant that every one of the 999 Dominance Puppets operating outside the Theater could now shift between Anby and Billy at any time. Close quarters, switch to Anby and her blade. Distance opens up, switch to Billy and his guns. Back and forth with no cooldown, because unlike Genshin's swap timer, ZZZ allowed free switching.
The combat implications stacked fast. Where before the puppets could only dodge incoming attacks at close range, now they could parry, that rhythmic clash of steel that punished predictable opponents. And the constant switching between a melee bladefighter and a ranged gunslinger created a combat style where the rhythm and distance and moveset changed without warning. Ordinary opponents would struggle to adapt before it killed them, a kind of first-time killer that worked on anyone who hadn't seen it before.
On top of that, the support attack mechanic native to ZZZ's party system became available. One puppet engages while another cuts in with an assist, layering pressure that a single template could never generate alone.
Ling Ke smiled in satisfaction as he activated the Billy template across all puppets and formed the party with Anby. The upgrade propagated instantly, every Dominance Puppet in the base synchronously receiving the new combat capability.
Then something caught his attention through the link.
Inside the Dominion Theater his expression froze for a moment before an extremely wide smile spread across his face.
'Already running into an acquaintance.'
'Lucky me.'
Somewhere in the corridors of the West Asia Branch, one Dominance Puppet had been intercepted by three girls. The Silver Lotus Squad, all three members present, and standing at the front with a pair of ring blades in her hands and her chest out like she was posing for a portrait was their captain.
Edelweiss Even.
From the surface she looked heroic, dashing even, the picture of a Valkyrie who knew she was stronger than whatever stood in front of her. The arrogance sat on her face like it had been born there.
But Ling Ke knew what lived underneath that.
Edelweiss Even's preferences ran toward women, which by itself was unremarkable in this world. The difference was in how she acted on them. She did not court. She did not ask. She took, and what she enjoyed most was the taking, the resistance before the submission, the conquest of girls who fought back hardest. Privately she had already turned the squad she commanded into her personal collection, and whether any of them had consented was a question she had never considered worth asking.
Right now, through the puppet's synchronized senses, Ling Ke could see exactly how Edelweiss was looking at Anby's face.
"Surrender obediently, intruder. You are not my opponent."
Her voice carried the particular warmth of someone already deciding what to do with something she liked.
"This face is still quite cute. I don't want to hurt it."
Ling Ke smiled from behind the scenes and sent one instruction through the link.
The corridor erupted with space doors. Every direction, every angle, portals tearing open in rapid succession as reinforcements poured through. In less than a few seconds a full hundred Dominance Puppets materialized and formed a perimeter around the three members of Silver Lotus Squad, each one wearing Anby's face and holding Anby's blade.
The color drained from all three of them at once. Edelweiss Even's arrogant posture collapsed into something rigid while her two subordinates pressed their backs together and stared at the identical ring of faces surrounding them.
"Teleportation? The Herrscher of the Void isn't supposed to be at the Anti-Entropy Salt Lake base?"
"What the hell are you?"
They shouted the questions like volume would compensate for the fear leaking through their voices, fierce on the surface while everything underneath it crumbled.
Ling Ke felt disdain settle in his chest as he watched through the link. This West Asia Branch base's intelligence transmission was pathetic. He had already killed over two hundred people across multiple floors and these three still didn't know that more than one Anby existed. In a real war, the personnel responsible for information relay would be dragged out and shot.
Then a report came through the entanglement link. The base's main control room had been suppressed.
He paused on that for a moment. From the first Anby breaking out of the underground prison cell and encountering the initial wave of tactical operators until now, not even ten minutes had passed. The assault on the control room must have started almost immediately, which explained why intelligence flow through the base had collapsed so completely.
Of course if the people in charge had been competent there would still have been time to react. But the situation made it obvious enough.
'A base full of people holding positions they never earned and were never fit to sit in.'
He returned his attention to the Silver Lotus Squad and issued the order through the hivemind, clean and specific. Kill the two beside her. Leave Edelweiss Even.
Then he added one more detail.
'The banquet only needs hands and mouth. Chop off the legs so she doesn't run.'
A hundred confirmations rippled through the link at once, felt as a single tremor of obedience passing through his awareness before settling into silence.