The Global Dungeon Era!

[Welcome to the difficulty-class dungeon: the Battle of the Imperial Sea!]

[The dungeon has finished loading...]

[Transporting challengers to the Virtual Battlefield, deployment count 2000/2000...]

[The dungeon has opened! Entering the countdown phase.]

Accompanied by the system prompts continuously ringing in his head, the world before Lin Ye's eyes gradually grew clear.

The ropes on the mast up high swayed slightly, and beneath his feet was the cold deck, rising and falling with the waves.

At this moment he was aboard an ironclad warship!

Beside him were over a hundred other dungeon challengers just like him.

Their skin tones varied, their hair colors differed, but without exception they all wore expressions of trembling panic.

Floating above their heads were level markers, most of them like Lin Ye being Level 0, with a portion at Level 1, and a sparse few at Level 2.

At this time, a Level 0 Black brother suddenly pressed his palms together, shaking his thick lips as he muttered in front of Lin Ye.

"god!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"Why was I teleported into such a difficult dungeon! fuck."

"bro. It's my first time entering a battlefield dungeon, you must carry me, M3."

Lin Ye had no time to bother with this dark-skinned fellow. Now was the pre-battle preparation time, and what he needed to do was not chat and talk nonsense, but strive to search for all kinds of information within the dungeon.

Only then would he have a chance to clear this dungeon in the end.

It had already been three days since Lin Ye transmigrated to this world. In his past life he had been a technical expert at a national defense research institute, and for some inexplicable reason he had been transported to this world.

Through these three days of continuous exploration, he had gradually gained an understanding of this world.

The overall condition of this world was actually completely identical in appearance to the Earth of his past life.

Yet the core constituting the world was entirely different!

Because from the very beginning of its formation, this world had been accompanied by the birth of something called the Firmament.

If interpreted according to Lin Ye's understanding, this so-called "Firmament" was actually a higher civilization's control over this world.

Or rather, the world itself was a Truman Show.

Under the absolute control of the Firmament, this world had not experienced a single true sense of war from its inception until now, and could be said to be an absolute planet of peace.

Without war, there naturally was no concept of a so-called country; the entire planet had only a single allegiance: the Azure Federation.

There were only countless races of different skin colors and appearances, such as the Great Xia people, Irish people, Great He people, Southern Korean people, and so on.

More ridiculously, although this world possessed no real wars, it greatly worshipped war, and so the Firmament concocted a mechanism named dungeon creation.

All wars existed in a virtualized manner inside Firmament dungeons, and all technological and military advancements were likewise realized by relying on dungeons.

For the people of this world, the things they needed to do every day were eating, sleeping, and playing dungeons...

Succeeding in challenging dungeons allowed one to obtain points, thereby raising one's level.

As long as one upgraded to Level 1, they could unlock the authority for dungeon creation, after which they could independently create dungeons for others to challenge, earning more points.

And if one failed to challenge dungeons consecutively and their points hit rock bottom, the Firmament would directly wipe them out!

Therefore, this was an era where everyone created dungeons, and at the same time an era where dungeons determined life and death!

[It seems all the challengers have finished transporting.]

Right at this moment, the first bullet comment floated across Lin Ye's eyes.

Besides the challengers directly deployed into the dungeon, other people could also watch the conditions inside the dungeon through the form of livestreams.

And the words of these viewers would also be fed back into the game dungeon in the form of bullet comments.

[This bunch of people are truly unlucky, actually getting deployed into such a difficult dungeon.]

[Do you guys know who the creator of this dungeon is? That is the top dungeon design genius of the Great He people: Itō Hidetaka!]

[Itō Hidetaka? Is that the genius designer who only took one day to upgrade from lv0 to lv2?!]

[That's right, this dungeon the Battle of the Imperial Sea is his latest work, and it's one of the few naval warfare dungeons in the entire Azure Star. This time it looks like quite a few people are going to suffer and go through hell.]

Lin Ye glanced over the bullet comments. They were basically all bullshit, lacking much useful information.

He stood calmly at the very front of the deck and looked left and right.

Flanking the warship he was on were nearly twenty other vessels of varying styles.

There were large wooden ships, Spanish-style galleons, and ironclad warships similar to the one beneath his feet, with around 100 people on each ship.

People at Level 2 and above possessed the ability to bring their own military equipment from their personal dungeons into the dungeon, and these various kinds of ships ought to have been brought in by Level 2 big shots.

And on the distant coastline lay a row of large cruisers flying the Rising Sun flag!

A dark mass of them was slowly sailing toward the challengers.

Without a doubt, those were the "enemy forces" in this instance.

As Lin Ye pondered, further information about the instance finally appeared before him.

[Battle of the Imperial Sea: A hard-level naval battle instance designed by the Great He Clan's Itō Hidetaka. It takes place in a stretch of water called the Imperial Sea. The enemy forces consist of 10 protected cruisers: Yoshino, Akitsushima, Matsushima, Chiyoda...]

[Optional Mission 1: Keep your head down and survive!]

[Players may hold out for two hours or flee to Weihaiwei Naval Port in the depths of the Imperial Sea. Upon completion, personal points will neither increase nor decrease.]

[Optional Mission 2: Sink the flagship Matsushima!]

[Players may sink the enemy flagship Matsushima by any means. This counts as mission completion and awards 30 personal points!]

[Mission failure penalty: 50 points deducted!]

[The Firmament instance detection program has detected challengers entering an instance for the first time. It will therefore provide all players with beginner tips:]

[1. The enemy protected cruisers are extremely powerful, representing the highest level of naval weaponry in Azure Star instances. Players are advised to choose their response carefully. Perhaps, once the instance officially begins, heading straight to Weihaiwei Naval Port at top speed is the best way to complete the mission.]

[2. All military weapons have weaknesses. None are invincible.]

[3. Every move made by challengers will be watched by audiences outside the instance. They may offer you helpful tips in the bullet comments, but there's also a good chance they'll sabotage you. After all, this is the age of global instances...]

Seeing these instance tips, Lin Ye let out a long breath.

"Hmph... just as I thought."

Over the past three days, he had accumulated 70 points by clearing several instances, large and small. If he cleared this one, his points would reach 100.

Then he could advance to LV1 and gain the authority to create instances.

So he had to clear this instance.

Also, after observing things over the past few days, Lin Ye had noticed something interesting: Azure Star's overall understanding of military affairs was actually quite poor.

If he had to compare it to anything, it was basically at the level of World War I in his previous life.

And in the instance he was in now, seeing those cruisers flying the Rising Sun flag, Lin Ye could easily recognize it as a major naval battle from his previous life, one sparked by the Shorties picking a fight.

The Yellow Sea! A naval battle!