So they started to lower their attention and care towards Karoline, ending up mobilising even half of their forces fighting my ex-girl.
Lily was worried, but I told her to not do anything out of normal. I knew what was going to happen, and in a few more weeks, what I expected did indeed happen.
Karoline gave me the impression that she wouldn't stop until she'd control the entire world. So when the other races dropped the heat over her side, she used this chance to push forward and expand.
The other half the other races left behind got screwed badly, and they lost tons of lands and even entire continents in the process. As this happened, and coupled with my forces acting low and conserved, not attacking anyone other than the ongoing battle for months, the other races decided to return and hit Karoline hard.
They felt how extremely dangerous she was. And I got the news that even the Hescos took part in this grand operation.
Like this, the two grand enemies remaining in this world were going to clash against each other for a long time. I estimated that such a grinding battle would last for months, and even after one year, no side would emerge winning.
But there was something quite annoying about Karoline. After two months of fighting brutally like this, she didn't show any sign of losing forces or growing weaker like many other races did.
In fact, her forces seemed to grow bigger the more she fought. This was against all logic. And yet I didn't have the time or mood to deal with her.
During these two months, I finished my tour around the continents I could access, collected everything I needed, received a really grand and generous batch of tokens, and let all the warriors there upgrade their stats to the max level.
During which I noticed something that I accidentally missed. I thought we were all fighting on the same ground, with level five being the cap. Yet when these warriors came, they used a hellish lot of stat crystals, reaching level one hundred directly!
It hit me like thunder! The level cap was removed without anyone getting notified about it! Or to be more precise, I didn't get notified by it.
That changed literally everything! And it also explained lots of things that puzzled me for a long time.
It was clear that my enemies came prepared, knew more intel than I did, but that didn't explain why they were kicking my forces as*yes, everywhere they met.
At the beginning days of this merge, we lost tons of great warriors and generals without a proper reason. And now I realise what went wrong all this time!
The enemies had increased their levels higher than my forces. Even if we didn't get enough time to accumulate lots of stat crystals to fill our levels to the max, they still got much higher levels than any of my forces, even higher than myself.
Damn! I felt quite enraged towards those bastards from the system higher ups. Why didn't they just inform me about this?
When I realised this, I hurriedly opened the market and checked the current prices of the stat crystals. Indeed they went off the roof, getting at least ten folds of increase in price.
Yet I found seemingly endless supply there. When I checked my current wealth, I couldn't help but grin.
"You thought you could trick me? Hahahaha! Ok, let me show you how truly powerful and resourceful I am, hahahaha!"
If it was the issue of coins, then it wasn't a problem at all! Just with a few clicks, I bought tons of stat crystals, almost emptying the entire market of its stocks.
And that didn't cost me one hundredth of my current wealth. Wasn't that funny?
I didn't close the market interface, just kept refreshing it until the goods got replaced again. They got an increase of almost one hundred percent, but that didn't stop me.
I emptied the market again of all the stat crystals there, and waited. I kept doing this until I spent half of my wealth. Not to mention I didn't stop idle and waited for the market to refresh its stocks.
I opened my inventory, took all the useless gears and weapons, monsters cores and materials, and sold them in batches. As this was a deep pocket war, I sold everything in auctions.
So far I didn't get how the market really worked. But it felt like it wasn't just limited to my apocalypse. There were low grade weapons and materials that got sold like hot cakes, not quite logical at all.
At this stage of the apocalypse, where we were this close from ending it up, there was no need to buy a single material at all. As for weapons, gears, arrays, war supplies, they would be sold if they were in high grade only.
But selling equipment of level five or something, white trash grade on top of that, at such high prices was indeed weird! It was insane!
That made me realise this market wasn't just limited to my apocalyptic trial like I initially thought. And that also explained how I emptied the entire stock of the market stat crystals, ending up getting them refilled in a few minutes later!
But that wasn't bad news for me, not even close! Like this, I got my entire wealth doubled in no time, ending up spending half of all that in the next few days.
After I depleted half of my wealth, I stopped. I didn't know if I bought stat points to cover up my people's needs for a century or what! But it was worth it.
I wasn't just trying to satisfy my people's needs, I was also making it impossible for my enemies to match my forces' upcoming sudden rise in power thanks to filling their levels to the top.
Right now, and compared to when I checked the market prices, the prices have increased by thirty folds!