Three months later.
The Battle-Chip Bazaar's popularity soon swept through the entire Player Faction.
Apart from the Against the Tide players, who had only acquired Player Qualification a year and a half ago and could still rapidly improve their strength simply by accumulating Sacrificial Power in the early stages, large numbers of veteran players stuck at bottlenecks they could not overcome anytime soon brought out their stockpiled Sacrificial Power to fund the Bully Legion's expansion.
The returns displayed on the Battle-Chip Bazaar's Light Screen did not look particularly impressive, but those were not annualized yields. They were dividends paid out directly after a single conquest ended.
Countless Research Enthusiast players buried themselves in the data, and all kinds of risk-allocation plans began appearing on the Forum.
Every plan had one thing in common.
They generally recommended portfolios, reducing risk through a greater number of investments to prevent an unexpected "Divine Descent strike" from wiping out a single investment.
As the player Du Shu Po Wan Juan analyzed in a post, the core risk behind the risk ratings the Forum had originally agonized over was actually the time cost of locking up resources.
As for the risk of a campaign ending in total defeat, the Bully Legion's Evil Spirits had already assessed that repeatedly before listing it for funding.
Of all the Dark Tide forces the players had encountered, the Bully Legion's Evil Spirit Warriors had always placed their own survival first in conquest.
As one Forum player put it: a leader shaped his subordinates. After long years of constant reinforcement, the survival philosophy Di Nian Bully believed in had become instinct for his subordinates.
That was also why the former Internet Café Alliance's casualty rate had consistently ranked among the lowest of the Pale Continent's Dark Tide Legions.
The Battle-Chip