I fell in Marvel with Essence Gacha but I’ve never heard of Marvel

Being the world leader came with quite a few benefits, one of which was that Lex no longer needed to use a Background Creation Card when summoning someone into this particular world. It wasn't that he had somehow lost the need for such cards; rather, since he was already the ruler of the Everhart Empire and had an entire government operating under his authority, establishing a legal identity for someone he summoned was hardly difficult. He could simply order the necessary documents to be made, have the relevant records entered into the system, and give the person a legitimate identity without having to fabricate an entire history for them.

It certainly made things more convenient.

So, when Lex tore a Summoning Card without using a Background Creation Card, an old man suddenly appeared in front of him.

The man looked tired.

Not merely physically tired, either. His eyes carried the exhaustion of someone who had lived through far more than Lex knew, and there was a strange sense of resignation in his expression as he looked around at his unfamiliar surroundings before turning his attention toward Lex.

"So, you are the one who fulfilled my wish..." the old man said. "But what do you want from this old man? I don't think I have anything left to give."

Lex blinked slightly at that.

He had no idea what the man was talking about.

The only reason he even understood that there was some kind of wish involved in his summons was because Sharon had mentioned it after Lex summoned her. Before that, he hadn't even known that the people he summoned had wishes associated with them, so he certainly had no idea what this particular old man's wish had been.

Still, there was no point dwelling on something he couldn't know.

"Well..." Lex glanced toward the old man before speaking casually. "I think your world has superheroes as well. This world needs some of them properly trained, so how about it? Interested in teaching them?"

Lex wasn't particularly keen on handing such an important position to just anyone, especially someone he had only just summoned. He knew practically nothing about this old man beyond the few lines of information that had appeared on the Gacha Card, but this was only meant to be a temporary arrangement. He could observe the man, learn what kind of person he was and decide what to do with him later.

His actual preference would have been to bring back someone like Sharon or Donna. They were people he trusted completely, people who were already his and who had plenty of experience as superheroes. Unfortunately, neither was available to him at the moment, so settling for someone else was the practical choice.

The old man seemed to think about the offer for a moment.

"Hmm... I see. Teaching is indeed something I'm capable of. It is also probably the only thing I would have accepted."

With that, he extended his hand.

Lex shook it.

"Bang, right?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go meet the team."

Lex took Bang with him, bringing him to the newly assembled superhero team.

By now, the team had already been decided. Starlight—Annie, as Lex still preferred to call her—was its leader, with Queen Maeve serving as her co-leader. Lex had chosen Maeve largely because, out of the six people who had made up the Seven, she was the only one he considered genuinely redeemable. Homelander was obviously beyond that point in Lex's eyes, Noir was dead, Translucent had been killed by Hela, A-Train was imprisoned, and the Deep had deteriorated so badly after everything that happened that he was currently receiving treatment in a mental health facility.

Maeve, on the other hand, had at least shown that she possessed a conscience.

She wasn't innocent, and Lex wasn't pretending otherwise, but she hadn't committed the kind of heinous crimes that made the others almost impossible to redeem. She still had enough of a decent heart left that Lex was willing to give her another chance.

The rest of the team consisted of Supersonic and several entirely new faces whom the public had never seen before. They weren't carrying the baggage of the old Seven, and for the moment, that was exactly what Lex wanted.

There had also been some discussion about reviving someone named Soldier Boy, or rather waking him from whatever deep sleep he had been placed into. Lex had taken the time to look through Vought's actual records before making a decision, and after reading enough of them, he decided that bringing Soldier Boy back was simply opening another can of worms that he didn't need.

He already had enough problems.

After introducing Bang to the others, Lex left him with the team. He still had plenty of work to do, after all, and Bang could get acquainted with everyone while Lex dealt with the other matters that required his attention.

In particular, there were some rebellious individuals who had been secretly receiving support from elements within the CIA. They had apparently decided that forming their own team of Supes was a good idea, and there were already rumors of people like Stormfront being involved.

Lex had been intending to take care of them himself.

He rose into the sky, preparing to fly toward their location, when something suddenly changed within his awareness.

Lex stopped.

There was no voice.

No screen appeared before him.

There was simply knowledge.

The arrangement his father had made had been fulfilled.

The Boys Universe had been conquered.

Lex remained suspended in the air for a moment, processing that information. The rebellion apparently hadn't mattered. He had achieved sufficient control over the world's Supes and physical threats, while Kom had finally established the level of control over global politics that was necessary for the conquest to be recognized as complete.

Then another realization occurred to him.

The reward had been classified as a Universal Conquest.

Lex looked down at the Earth beneath him.

If the conquest was truly being counted as the conquest of the entire universe, then perhaps this universe really was that simple. Maybe Earth was genuinely the only inhabited world with a civilization worth conquering. There might be planets, stars and other celestial bodies scattered throughout the universe, but apparently there wasn't another civilization comparable to Earth that he needed to deal with.

In that case, conquering the planet really was equivalent to conquering the universe.

And considering that this was his first Planetary Conquest as well as his first Universal Conquest, Lex had a feeling the reward was going to be something special.

The information entered his mind almost as naturally as any other knowledge provided by the mysterious arrangement.

Essence of the Player's Handbook

• You gain access to the Player’s Handbook. A magical artifact that cannot be transferred, damaged, stolen, modified, interfered with, or lost and will show you your status and abilities. Its size and shape are similar to that of a passport and have an interface comparable to a smartphone. When not in use, the handbook will be stored within your soul and summoned with a thought.​

• The handbook has an encyclopedia section where all information you have gathered will be stored for later use. Information is automatically gathered through the use of your senses, even if you are not paying attention to the source or unconscious. You may simply touch a book or open a computer and you will immediately download the contents of it into your encyclopedia. In addition, it will create a transcript of any conversation you’ve heard that you can play back at a later time. The encyclopedia also includes a dossier section where the profiles of important and/or noteworthy individuals or groups are listed in detail. The handbook can also analyze this information to look for flaws or contradictions before running simulations to provide only the most accurate information. It is also possible to ask the handbook to make predictions based on relevant information. Finally, the handbook will keep track of any objectives that you have agreed to do and show a progress report filled with every detail that is relevant to the task. If you dislike viewing information on such a small screen, the handbook can project a 3D holographic display instead.​
  • The encyclopedia acts also as a secondary memory bank for your entire life’s experience. In the event that you suffer irrecoverable amnesia or insanity; the handbook will upload a copy of your ego, personality, and memories from prior to your breakdown directly into your mind. Optionally, you can choose to relive past experiences as if it were your first time.​

• By completing tasks issued by other people, defeating enemies, learning new & relevant information, discovering secrets & locations, or performing an action related to one of your skills/stats; you gain experience points. The amount of experience points gained is directly proportional to the difficulty of completing a task.​

• When you gather enough experience points, you will level up; which is an overall increase in all of your current abilities & base stats, and restore your body of any damage or weaknesses prior to the level-up.​

• In addition, you will receive skill points that can be spent on acquiring new powers & abilities from multiple massive skill trees (see Path of Exile, but way bigger), each based on an archetype, with powers/abilities sourced from your current world and other (even fictional) worlds as major nodes. Finally, each time you level up, you get a dozen attribute points that be used to increase your base stats in any way you like.​

• Your base stats are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Magic, and Resistance. You start off with 10 points in each base stat, which is the equivalent of an average adult human. Once you hit 100+ points is when you become superhuman.​
  • Strength is a measurement of physical power, physical defense, quality of your bones & muscles, speed, and endurance. A high strength eventually allows for you to overclock your physical and magical abilities at the cost of increased strain on your body. When paired with constitution or magic, you will be able to damage foes that are normally immune to raw physical strikes such as ghosts, slimes, and gods.​

  • Dexterity is a measurement of your agility, reflexes, flexibility, reaction time, and balance. High-level dexterity allows your body to perform simultaneous independent actions at once. This means that you can deflect a sword with your index finger and immediately shoot lightning from your pinkie even if your mind is suffering from intoxication.​

  • Constitution is a measurement of your health and stamina. This is also the stat that determines how much life force you have, how easily you can manipulate it, and how fast it recovers. Constitution also increases the rate at which you recover from injury and a high constitution can even allow you to recover from fatal injuries or regenerate from nothing. A high constitution stat will also halt your aging and revert you back to your bodily prime. Finally, your constitution increases the power and efficiency of bloodline traits.​

  • Intelligence determines how easily you can learn, conceptualize, analyze, visualize, solve problems, and reason. Increasing intelligence also increases your thought speed, increases mental processing, allows for multiple parallel thought processing, and reduces the cooldown of abilities. High intelligence can also allow you to analyze and predict the future based on available data. Finally, a high intelligence will eventually grant you psychic powers and eventually reality warping.​

  • Wisdom determines willpower, pain tolerance, common sense, empathy, awareness, enlightenment, and intuition. With wisdom, there is a metaphysical sphere around you that can detect & identify anything within or enters your sphere. The higher your wisdom, the greater the range and more clarity on what that something is (such as killing intent or a flying arrow). Finally, wisdom determines the strength and manipulation of your soul (and adjacent traits/powers).​

  • Charisma is a reflection of your personality, controlling the flow of a conversation, personal magnetism, leadership ability, and appearance. High-level charisma is not mind-control unless outside factors, such as intoxicants and magic, are involved. You normally cannot convince someone to do out-of-character actions unless they already had traits, experiences, or thoughts that would lead them to commit it. For example, you cannot convince someone to sleep with you unless they already had some form of affection for you. As your charisma increases, you will be able to apply it against entities that are normally immune to charisma or have alien mindsets.​

  • Magic is the stat that determines how much mana your body has, how easily you can manipulate mana, and how powerful your supernatural abilities are. In addition, a higher magic stat will result in higher magical resistance and an increased rate of mana generation. (Mana is a catch-all term for every supernatural energy source that isn’t life force).​

  • Resistance is a measure of your ability to combat every abnormal or negative condition such as poison, toxin, infections, diseases, panic, fear, insanity, hypnosis, illusions, psychic attacks, corruption, soul attacks, conceptual attacks, forced transformation, memetic effects, emotional manipulation, fate/destiny manipulation, parasites, addiction, loss of senses, amnesia, possession, temperature, pressure, and radiation. Anything that is weaker than your resistance is automatically nullified and destroyed.​

• Base stats can also be trained, but will suffer diminishing returns until it becomes useless if your training method stops being a challenge. However, the amount earned is always less than the amount gained from leveling up.​

• You also have no growth limit and an automatic shoo-in for any requirements needed to wield any power, ability, or item.​
  • You will also not suffer any backlash from using and hosting conflicting powers.​

  • It is also impossible for your stats & powers to be stolen, sealed, copied, drained, or weakened regardless of circumstance and you will never lose control and cause accidental collateral damage.​

  • If you so desire, you are able to enter into a passive mode where you can selectively choose to disable or limit stats to the point where you are indistinguishable from a mortal. Passive mode will immediately be disabled should you come into surprise danger or desire it.​

  • Your base stats also stack with other power systems such as Falna, Cultivation, Essences, the Gamer, and Generic Isekai World System.​

  • If you gain a power that comes with an unwanted caveat; it is possible to eventually remove it from the system with high enough base stats. This means that you can eventually acquire the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan without sacrificing a sibling or become a Hadou God without your craving consuming the universe. You will instinctively know when you have reached that threshold.​

• When you sleep, you will immediately fall asleep; you can choose the exact time you wish to awaken and will be fully rested (minimum: 1 hour).​

• The Handbook will also display your vital signs. Showing you exactly what issues you are suffering from, even if the issue is metaphysical like damage to your soul or a conceptual loss of identity. By expending magical energy, the handbook can repair or remove negative conditions. You may also use this feature to cure others by using the handbook’s camera to analyze and assess others. This section of the handbook also features the option to evolve yourself and assimilate bloodlines.​
  • If you don’t have enough magical energy to outright repair/remove a negative condition, you may instead choose to pay the amount in installments.​

  • In the event that you lose the function of both hands and/or are unable to interact with the handbook; the artifact will automatically expend magical energy to recover the use of a hand.​

• On the back of the handbook is a small camera that can record and take the highest quality photos and videos with audio. In addition, the camera comes with an analyzer program that can scan and analyze the target. The camera’s lenses are able to see in multiple different spectra; allowing for the visualization of magical residue, ethereal entities, body heat, necrotic energies, specific chemicals, and more.​

• The handbook comes with a mapping system that can detect hidden pathways. Should you come across a landmark, the handbook will record it and will be able to use it to quickly teleport to and from that location. The map is able to register vehicles that you own as possible landmarks. This method of teleportation is instantaneous, undetectable, and bypasses teleportation prevention methods. You can teleport party members with you.​
  • Any location where you are given the exact coordinates will be considered a landmark, even if the destination is another world.​

  • You will be automatically teleported in the event that you are sealed, trapped, or imprisoned with no way of escaping on your own.​

• Another application of the handbook is its own infinitely pocket storage space. You can store the items you want by looking at them and releasing them in any spot you are staring at. Anything stored within this space will be perfectly preserved while inside. When you equip an item onto your person, it will automatically appear on your body without you needing to manually change into them. In addition, you can choose 10 items within your inventory that you can quickly summon and swap to, whenever you want with a thought. Finally, any living creatures that you have tamed, formed a contract, or befriended can be stored within Treasurebeast Orbs.​
  • When inside, the sealed creature will fall into slumber and will slowly increase in strength as you level up. They will also not age, not die, not starve, no existing complications will worsen, and will heal themselves. Creatures inside can evolve into a stronger form and can help choose how they evolve by showing their evolutionary line. Each evolution is both qualitatively and quantitatively superior to the previous form.​

  • If a bonded creature would suffer a fatal injury or risk being instantly killed; they would immediately be teleported back to their Treasurebeast Orb.​

  • If a Treasurebeast dies, you are able to revive them by expending magical energy directly proportional to their strength. You are also able to pay this amount in installments if you aren’t able to do so outright. This option is always available, even if the Treasurebeast was erased from space/time or conceptually.​

  • Optionally, you can equip three Treasurebeasts; gaining their race traits, bloodlines, and abilities. However, equipped Treasurebeasts cannot be summoned and must be manually swapped using the handbook.​

  • You can summon and recall a Treasurebeast with thought and are connected to them via an unhackable telepathic network.​

  • Finally, the handbook can fuse up to three Treasurebeasts to create a creature that is greater than the sum of its parts. This transformation is temporary and lasts only five minutes.​

• Your inventory comes with some starting equipment.​
  • Multiple sets of climate-appropriate clothing​

  • Basic iron armor​

  • High-Quality Steel Spear and High-Quality Steel Short Sword​

  • Five Healing Potions, Four Antidotes, Three Cure Disease Potions, and Two Panacea Potions.​

  • Ten thousand dollars equivalent to local currency​

  • One Week Worth of Military MREs and a flask of unlimited purified drinking water.​

  • Advanced Camping Equipment​

  • Wilderness Survival Guide, Local Cuisine Cookbook, and Local Wildlife/Monster Encyclopedia​

  • Fortune Compass – A compass that points in the direction of a lucky opportunity. It won’t tell you what that opportunity is, only a general area of where it is, but it will ultimately be a net gain for you.​

  • The Great Space Mall Invitation – This is a portal that will take you to an extra-dimensional mall where you can purchase anything or service imaginable in the omniverse. They don’t accept outsider currency, instead, purchases are made using tokens earned from completing missions issued on a job board. When you arrive at the mall, a fairy will be your guide to allow you to quickly find anything you may need. Travel to and from the mall is undetectable, so no worrying about local gods finding out.​

• Finally, the handbook features an internal workbench that can craft anything so long as you have the recipe and materials stored within the inventory (it can even cook). The workbench also allows you to enchant items or break them into raw materials. When something is broken down, the production method and specifications are all stored in your encyclopedia. The workbench can also disassemble the corpses of your enemies into useful materials and synthesize bloodlines. You can ask the handbook to create new recipes by experimenting with the materials and recipes within its inventory and database.​
  • There is no limit to what can be crafted; the only restriction is knowledge and resources.​

• You may also invite others to a party and share some of the handbook’s benefits, but they only gain access to the ability to level up, access to basic stats, and are limited to just one archetype to spend skill points on. When your party member earns experience, 50% of it is also gifted to you as well and vice versa. Finally, they are not able to grow endlessly like you are able to, they instead have a level cap that’s decided by you. If you kick an individual out of the party, they keep whatever stats and abilities they had earned. But they will not be able to level up, increase their stats, or spend any skill points. You are also able to erase all knowledge of the handbook from the minds of kicked party members.​
  • Party members do not need to use the handbook itself to allocate base stats and spend skill points. Instead, they are able to do so via a dream but awaken with no recollection of interacting with the system, only knowing that they are stronger and possess new abilities. Subconsciously, they will know the reason behind their growth is you and will show some positive level of respect and loyalty towards you.​

  • Party members that die can be revived if you choose to sacrifice the equivalent amount of base stats that the companion is worth. This method of revival bypasses circumstances that may impede the resurrection such as soul destruction and conceptual eraser. If the revived party member was using their soul to act as a seal or power source for a continuous ritual, rest assured that the seal/ritual will not break with the soul’s absence; the sacrificed base stats are used as collateral instead.​

• In the event that you die, the handbook will immediately capture your soul and reincarnate you away from danger (even if the safe location is a completely different world). If your soul is in danger of being erased or destroyed and you have no way of surviving it; the handbook will trigger the reincarnation process early.​
  • You keep everything that you’ve earned prior to your death and everything within your inventory will follow you to your new life. This also includes biological traits such as bloodlines, blessings, and cybernetics; however, you may choose whether to apply them to your new body. Anyone or thing connected to a Treasurebeast orb will also go with you when you reincarnate. Any possessions that were outside the inventory will be instantly collected upon death.​

  • Your memories and personality will awaken when you become your race’s equivalent of eight years old. You will perfectly merge with your new memories & experiences and can choose whether to selectively assimilate your new personality as well. You may also choose to forgo hibernation and be conscious at the moment of birth.​

  • You can set preferences for what kind of body you wish to reincarnate into and the handbook with modifying your embryo to have those traits. In addition, the handbook by default looks for potential parents that offer you the best possible traits & bloodlines that eugenics can ask for.​

  • You can also assign a list of potential worlds that you wish to reincarnate into and the handbook will prioritize looking for those worlds as possible destinations before jumping to a generic world.​

  • This method of reincarnation is undetectable and unstoppable. But, if you have any methods of revival available, the handbook will prioritize and use those first.​

• Any children you have will be born perfectly healthy and be in the top one percent of talent and potential of their race. The race of the child will always be the same as that of the mother and can be considered purebred unless you choose for the child to be a hybrid. You can assign what bloodline traits you wish for your children to inherit.​

• If you somehow gain ownership of a property, world, afterlife, dimension, or reality marble; you can manage everything about it using the handbook.​
  • This is also true if you somehow become a god; you can manage your religion or domain using the handbook.​