The promotion had worked even better than Li Wei had expected. In barely half a quarter-hour, the newly opened Hogg Alchemy Supermarket was already packed shoulder to shoulder.
As one of the three most renowned port cities on the entire Sword Coast, Water-Drawing City's wealth and foundations, accumulated over a thousand years, were not to be underestimated. Its residents—even excluding the wretches struggling and sinking in the dock district—still had at least some savings in hand, however modest.
In that regard alone, it was already far stronger than the poverty-stricken Silvermoon Federation.
That meant this was a market broad enough to let Hogg Mining put on airs all the way until spring after next year's [Midwinter Festival].
By then, once the frozen earth thawed and the port entered its bustling season as well, the market would swell alongside a more than fivefold increase in foot traffic and merchants.
But that was a matter for next year. If they wanted to carve off a bloody chunk of meat from Water-Drawing City's tangled market, long since divided up among the major local powers, they first had to carry out the plan before them successfully.
At the very least, their modest goal of a booming opening had been achieved.
Most intelligent surface-dwellers, humans especially, had developed a general herd mentality through their long evolution as social creatures. Seeing this newly opened alchemy shop doing such roaring business naturally piqued their curiosity.
Once they saw fine-quality goods genuinely being sold to the public at discounts so steep they seemed like a joke, the spectators could no longer hold themselves back. They flocked into Hogg Alchemy Supermarket in droves.
Two elderly men who had arrived together held membership application forms as they calculated aloud.
"It says on the membership application that from today until the