The Key to Spending Is Getting Hooked

"Waaah... No, ah! I want Blazing Warriors S! Buy it for me, ah—"

Drogo was awakened by the shrill screeching of a brat. Ever since learning the Illusion School's inscriptions, he had been like a child discovering video games for the first time, utterly obsessed.

His biological clock had become a complete mess. He would fall asleep only when he could no longer stay awake, then wake up at random times.

Seeing that crying and making a fuss did not work, the brat unleashed another signature move: rolling around on the ground.

"Waaah—" As he cried, he wildly pounded the floor with all four limbs. "Buy it for me, just buy it for me..."

"You already have a Firepower Warrior." The young mother beside him looked somewhat at a loss.

"That's different!"

"I'm telling you, Drogo loves eating disobedient children. Keep making a fuss, and he'll come take you away later!"

"Pfft—"

Aisha could not hold it in any longer.

Perhaps Aisha's laughter wounded the brat's pride. He scrambled up from the ground and ran off dejectedly.

The dragon in question was deeply dissatisfied. He could tolerate being blamed for things like kidnapping princesses and tearing down palaces, but what was this nonsense about eating children?

"The first batch of blind boxes has all been packaged." Seeing that Drogo was awake, Aisha reported on their progress. For the past two weeks, the dragon had seemed possessed, constantly muttering about making a game.

"Good. Once the display stand outside is set up, start the ball-drawing event."

As the plot of Blazing Teens progressed, all the protagonists' second-generation balls had appeared.

As the first new product released since Drogo's Toy Store opened, it naturally needed an event to build hype.

Drogo had decided to show the residents of Twin Towers City the evil invention of mobile game companies.

Gacha.

The first batch of second-generation balls all carried serial numbers, distinguishing them from the second-generation balls that would be produced later.

These balls could not be purchased directly. Instead, they were special prizes in the blind boxes.

Each blind box cost ten copper coins and could yield accessories, a random first-generation ball, or a special prize.

Every draw also accumulated one prize ticket. Collect eighty tickets, and you could exchange them for any second-generation ball.

This was the key to the event's design. Without an eighty-draw guarantee, the toy store would have to pay taxes as a gambling house, at a much higher rate. But with a guarantee, it became a fun toy raffle.

In fact, drawing a first-generation ball meant a small profit, while drawing a second-generation ball meant a huge windfall. Even accessories were not entirely useless, so customers were all eager to try.

But everyone knew that while customers drew blind, sellers put the items in with their eyes open.

Customers might make a small profit, but Drogo would never lose money.

Before long, the display stand was packed tight with people.

People were animals easily swept up by the atmosphere, and drawing blind boxes was an activity that could easily get addictive.

So when people watched you pull gacha, the odds of getting hooked rose exponentially.

Before long, a strange yet fervent atmosphere had formed around the display stand.

Whenever someone began opening a blind box, the crowd would collectively cheer, "Ooh—," gradually raising their voices until they peaked at the instant the box was opened.

Then, just from the sound, everyone could tell what had been drawn.

"Aww—" meant accessories.

"Ooh?" meant a first-generation ball.

"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" meant a second-generation ball. Then the winner would rush into the crowd to celebrate, and a whole group would jump around together as if they had all won.

Of course, there was also, "You're a plant hired by the toy store, aren't you?!"

That was when someone pulled second-generation balls several times in a row.

Suddenly, the crowd parted to form a passage, and someone shouted, "Young Master Craig is here!"

Amid the crowd's envious yet fearful gazes, Craig sauntered up to the display stand.

He thoroughly enjoyed being the center of attention.

Especially when he heard people whispering, "He's the one who invented Craig's Arcane Storm, right?"

He pretended not to care, but the corners of his mouth had already curved high enough to catch fish.

"Quick, quick, quick!" Drogo hurriedly called to Aisha. "Get this kid a clerk dedicated to opening boxes for him, and add a ten-pull option."

It had to be said that although Craig was only a little over ten years old, he had already mastered the noble art of putting on a show.

Whenever he accumulated a batch of accessories, he would toss them all into the crowd.

If he drew a first-generation ball, he would give that away too. But he would carefully pick out the poorest-looking child in the crowd, or a disabled child, hand them the ball, and pat them on the head encouragingly.

What? That child had been disabled in an accident while working as child labor at his family's harbor and had never received compensation?

What did that matter? He could still enjoy the crowd's cheers.

In the end, Craig left with eight second-generation balls after five hundred and fourteen draws.

Before leaving, he even asked Aisha whether there would be a sequel after Blazing Teens was finished, and if so, whether they could arrange a role for him. The price was negotiable.

Because the customers' enthusiasm was simply too high, the toy store extended its business hours by two hours.

Naturally, the clerks received overtime pay for that time. Drogo was a boss with moral standards; he would never pull something like voluntary overtime.

By the end of the day, the toy store's total revenue had surpassed ten gold coins, the highest figure apart from the day Craig had thrown money around.

But Drogo had no interest in counting money for now. His first little game project had reached a critical stage.

Drawing gacha in the store could only harvest one city. Once he truly made the game, not even the entire continent could limit his harvesting spree.

There was just one small problem: he could not quite understand the inscriptions he had written before going to sleep.

He had discovered another major drawback of the current method of constructing spell models.

There was nowhere to write comments in the damn thing.

Perhaps some people believed programmers understood the programs they wrote very well and were confident about them.

That gave this profession far too much credit.

Without comments, who could remember what the hell they had written?!

Of course, some people born with the innate physique of a coding saint might be able to do it, but Drogo definitely could not.

An exceptional memory could only help him remember what he had done, not why he had done it that way.

Before using Illusion Mimicry on the results of the past two weeks' labor, he did something that a materialist warrior would not normally do.

He prayed.

As the saying went, a twitching left eye meant wealth, while a twitching right eye meant superstition. For pragmatic reasons, he would temporarily believe in the gods of this world.

He poured magic power into the model, and the mimicry began.

Dots of light rose one after another, forming a monochrome screen in midair. As its brightness flickered, the image appeared.

A chess piece stood atop a square box. Another box sat diagonally above it, and at the very top was a number, currently zero.

Drogo extended the tip of his claw and lightly tapped the screen. The chess piece compressed bit by bit. When his claw withdrew, the piece sprang diagonally upward, landing on the second box as the number increased by one.

It worked!

"What spell is that?" Aisha had also noticed the light screen before Drogo.

"A spell for playing. I call it Jump Jump."

It had no sound effects, was monochrome, low-resolution, lacked art assets, had no online connection, and was the ultimate bargain-bin version of Jump Jump.

But Drogo still had a lot of fun playing it.

It had originally been a small game developed by Ketchapp under Ubisoft, and after Penguin "borrowed" it, it had once sparked a wave of mini-program promotion.

It might not necessarily have been a good game, but it was easy to get hooked on, cheap to make, and easy to spread. It was definitely good business.

Though Drogo could not spread it yet.

"A spell for playing?" That certainly fit Drogo's style.

The more Aisha looked at it, the more complicated it seemed. She asked again, "How many inscriptions did this spell use?"

"A few thousand, probably."

"A few thousand?!" That many could form quite a few fifth-circle spells, yet this was merely for playing.

"What, want to learn? I can teach you."

"What's fun about just poking it and making it jump?"