Ch.486″The game economy is cold.”

Before exploring the trading market, there was something I needed to do first.

“Commander, exploring the trading market is fine, but…”

“Hm?”

“You still haven’t paid the mercenary commanders you hired during the second battle.”

“Oh right, I almost forgot.”

I suddenly realized I could have had my head chopped off by angry mercenary users if I’d gone exploring the market without paying them. I hurriedly gathered resources and began sending payment to all the mercenary users who had participated in the war.

—

<Tannhäuser Mercenary Network Official Chat Room>

<Notice: Currently distributing payments. If you haven’t received yours, message me (Icarus) directly>

-[Oh, paying quickly]

-[Sweet]

-[You have over 20 million resources, so you should have plenty left after paying us]

-[Above comment, with barely over 20 million resources, it’ll be tight just paying us]

-[Received mine ^^]

-[I haven’t gotten mine yet]

-[Payments just started, of course more people haven’t received theirs yet, be patient]

-[Yeah]

-[If he doesn’t get resources next week, won’t Icarus go bankrupt? lol]

-[A one-week exemption won’t matter much, he still gets resources from his bases, outposts, and resource mining fleet]

-[Even considering that, he’s running 4 mercenary units himself]

-[Well, that’s his business]

—

‘My, aren’t they interested in other people’s affairs.’

Though in the process, I received an oddly intense level of attention that felt like being in a retirement home or senior center.

I felt that if I paid any more attention to it, things would get extremely weird. So I decided to just think “let them talk!” and move on.

“Now, it’s time for our exciting trading market exploration.”

“Yay~”

My current priority was exploring the trading market and focusing on my journey to obtain a proper big-fucking-armor-ship.

—

The problem was that when I opened the trading market and searched for the “large ships” category in the pure tank style that I needed…

—

<Trading Market Search Results for “Large Ships”, “Pure Tank”>

-<Warsaw-class Battleship, Price: 98,510 gold (negotiable)>

-<Antonius-class Heavy Cruiser, Price: 100,115 gold>

-<King Edward-class Heavy Cruiser, Price: 100,009 gold>

-<Rodney-class Battleship, Price: 90,156 gold>

-<Helgoland-class Heavy Cruiser, Price: 99,853 gold>

-<Bayern-class Heavy Cruiser, Price: 92,566 gold>

—

“Umm, Commander?”

“…”

“I don’t think we should buy at those prices.”

“I agree.”

Ships equivalent to the now-destroyed Bayern-class were priced at a minimum of 90,000 gold each.

Compared to when I first browsed cruisers and battleships in the trading market, prices had nearly tripled. I couldn’t help but tilt my head, wondering if this was right.

Of course, as is typical with search results, it might be showing the most expensive items first. I continued scrolling through pages while checking the community to see if this situation was normal.

What I actually needed was a “dreadnought” or “shield generator ship” that could withstand fleet-level bombardment for extended periods. I wasn’t interested in heavy cruisers similar to or below the Bayern-class, or regular battleships.

But after about 20 minutes of checking…

—

Title: Why the f*** are auction market prices like this

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Image showing dreadnoughts and shield generator ships priced at minimum 150,000 gold]

Is this for real?

Even at their most expensive, they used to be 100,000 max

Why the f*** are prices going up?!

Why are they doing this when they know users don’t have gold!

Comments:

-[Resellers lol]

-[Look at these vicious prices, damn]

-[Rank 8 sold their base for 150,000 gold recently, and that would all be gone buying just one dreadnought here]

-[They should sell at reasonably high prices, but what is this;;]

-[This is crazy]

—

There were numerous complaints about the “excessively high” prices in the auction market.

According to the screenshot in that post, the fleet-level tanking “dreadnoughts” I needed were priced at a minimum of 150,000 gold and above.

Posts criticizing the serious price inflation were appearing everywhere. It wasn’t just something I had to search for—the complaints were increasing by the minute, showing that other users also considered this a serious problem.

However, some users began providing solid explanations for the trading market situation…

—

Title: The reason trading market prices are f***ed up

Author: Invisible Hand

Content: [Image showing the amount of “gold” distributed in recent events]

It’s simple

Remember how users’ gold reserves suddenly decreased drastically due to hoarding and other reasons?

That caused gold value to plummet, freezing the trading market

Users stopped spending gold and resorted to bartering

So the admins tried to normalize gold by distributing it through events

The problem is that when this gold was evenly distributed to all users

The total amount of gold in the market temporarily increased dramatically

It’s literally inflation

As a result, everyone’s spending gold freely, and this directly impacts popular ship classes like battleships and above

Those who have them raise prices to earn more gold

And users rush to buy them before prices rise further, driving prices even higher

I don’t know the details since I’m not an economics major

Anyway, that combination of factors created this price disaster

Now there are two options:

Either admins recover gold from users to control inflation

Or users and sellers engage in a standoff until prices drop lol

Comments:

-[Either way, it’s division?]

-˪[If it’s the former, it’s not really division]

-[Bro my head hurts, can you summarize in 3 lines?]

-˪[I have nothing to say to someone who can’t understand even this](Author)

-˪[What a man;;]

-[Since admins don’t intervene carelessly, some people will keep inflating the bubble while the rest of us wait it out]

-˪[Is the trading market bubble about to burst?]

-[Wah, baby doesn’t understand economics]

—

“The situation seems quite complicated.”

“Urghhhh.”

‘Please don’t talk to me about these complex political and economic issues.’

While I found it hard to understand, I also sensed something ominous in that post. At this point, I decided to abandon my original plan and turn toward finding an economically viable evasion tank instead.

‘No matter how you look at it, there’s talk about bubbles bursting for large ships. Why would I spend a fortune on that? Am I asking to get screwed?’

Of course, it might seem quite hypocritical to now be looking for evasion tanks after singing the “evasion tanks are meaningless!” song earlier.

But since I had only thought about this to myself and never mentioned it to anyone, nobody could object to my search for SSS-grade mobile destroyers.

However, there was one problem—I wasn’t the only one with this idea…

—

Title: Where did all the evasion tank destroyers go in the trading market

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Image showing SS-grade and above destroyer search results for “evasion tank” – either empty or with transactions in progress]

Comment

Where did my noble evasion tanks go?

Comments:

-[Since pure tank prices went insanely high]

-[The limited supply of evasion tank destroyers, which have a practical price ceiling due to performance limitations, sold out instantly]

-˪[Is this for real? f***](Author)

-[They’re expensive for destroyers, but they haven’t tripled in price like pure tank battleships and above]

-[But that’s old news, now they’re starting to sell at double the price because supply is so low]

-˪[Ah, these bastards]

—

‘Damn it.’

I could only pound my knee in frustration upon learning that all the stock had already been cleared out.