AutumnXd
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CHAPTER 10
🕑 Added 2025-04-29 12:21:01 +0000 UTC“Waaahhh... nooo! Aah! I want the Firepower Warrior S! Buy it for me—Aaaahhh!!”
Zhuo Ge was jolted awake by the screeching banshee cry of a bratty kid. Ever since he’d learned the runes of the Illusionist School, he’d become like a child discovering video games for the first time—completely addicted.
His sleep schedule was now a mess. He’d crash from exhaustion and wake up at completely random hours.
Now, in front of him, the little gremlin saw that crying and screaming weren’t working, so he deployed his ultimate move—rolling on the floor.
“Waaahhh!!” The kid howled while thrashing his limbs against the ground. “Buy it for me! Buy it for meeee!”
“You already have a Firepower Warrior,” said the young mom beside him, clearly at her wit’s end.
“It’s not the same one!”
“Listen, if you keep this up, Zhuo Ge’s going to come eat you. He loves naughty kids!”
Pfft!
Aisha couldn’t hold back her laughter.
Maybe the giggle wounded the boy’s pride, because he scrambled to his feet and ran off in shame.
Zhuo Ge, the dragon in question, was deeply offended. Being accused of kidnapping princesses or demolishing castles was one thing—but eating children? Come on.
“The first batch of mystery boxes is all packed,” Aisha reported as soon as she saw him awake. For the past two weeks, Zhuo Ge had been possessed—muttering about “making a game” like a man obsessed.
“Great. Once the booth outside is ready, we’ll start the gacha-ball event.”
As Firepower Youth King's plot progressed, the protagonists had all switched to second-generation yo-yos.
This was the first new product launch since Zhuo Ge opened his shop, so naturally, he needed hype.
It was time for the citizens of Twin Tower City to witness the cursed brilliance of mobile game monetization.
Gacha mechanics.
Each second-gen yo-yo came with a numbered ID to distinguish it from future batches.
You couldn’t buy these directly—they only came as rare prizes in the mystery boxes.
Each box cost ten copper coins and could yield accessories, a random first-gen yo-yo, or the special second-gen ones.
But here was the genius part—every pull also earned you a voucher. Collect eighty, and you could exchange them for any second-gen yo-yo of your choice.
That was the legal loophole. Without a pity system, this would count as gambling, subject to heavy taxation. But with the pity system? It's just a fun toy raffle.
In truth, pulling a first-gen yo-yo was already a decent deal. A second-gen yo-yo? Jackpot. Even accessories weren’t entirely useless, so customers were itching to try.
Of course, everyone knows—mystery boxes might be blind draws, but the seller? Their eyes are wide open.
Sure, the customers might win a bit... but Zhuo Ge never loses.
Soon, the booth was mobbed.
People are creatures of crowd psychology, and mystery boxes are addictive.
Surrounded by a crowd and opening boxes? That was basically performance art. The high hits faster than you'd think.
In no time, the air around the booth became electric.
Every time someone opened a box, the crowd would let out a synchronized “Oooohhh—” that swelled in volume and peaked the moment the box opened.
You could tell what they got just from the sound:
“Awwww...” meant an accessory.
“Oh?” meant a first-gen yo-yo.
“OH! OH! OH!!” meant a second-gen, and the winner would jump into the crowd like a rock star, bouncing around with strangers as if everyone had won.
And then there was the classic line: “You’re a plant from the shop, aren’t you!”
That was for when someone pulled two second-gen yo-yos in a row.
Suddenly, the crowd parted. Someone shouted, “Young Master Craig is here!”
People stared with a mix of admiration and fear as Craig strolled toward the booth like he owned the place.
He lived for this. For those admiring whispers in the crowd: “Isn’t he the one who invented ‘Craig’s Arcane Tempest’?”
Craig acted nonchalant, but his smirk curved so high you could fish with it.
“Quick!” Zhuo Ge whispered to Aisha. “Assign a staff member to help him with the pulls—and add a ten-draw option. Now.”
Say what you will, Craig was only ten, but he’d already mastered the noble art of public relations.
When he got too many accessories, he tossed them into the crowd.
Pulled a first-gen yo-yo? He’d gift it to the poorest-looking kid—or one with a visible disability—then pat them on the head like a saint.
What? That kid lost a leg working child labor at Craig’s family dockyard and hasn’t received compensation?
Doesn’t matter. The cheers still felt amazing.
In the end, Craig walked away with eight second-gen yo-yos after five hundred and fourteen pulls.
Before leaving, he even asked Aisha if there’d be a sequel to Firepower Youth King, and whether he could buy his way into the cast. Negotiable price, of course.
The shop had to extend hours due to overwhelming enthusiasm.
Naturally, the staff got paid overtime. Zhuo Ge wasn’t the kind of boss who preached “voluntary overtime.” He had some morals.
By day’s end, revenue exceeded ten gold coins—the second-highest day since Craig’s big-spending debut.
But Zhuo Ge wasn’t counting coins. He was at a critical point in his mini-game development.
Gacha at the store only let him milk one city. But if the game worked? He’d milk the whole continent.
Only issue: he couldn’t quite read the runes he wrote before bed.
He’d just discovered another massive flaw in current spell model structures.
There was nowhere to write comments.
Some people think programmers always understand their own code.
They are so wrong.
Without comments, who remembers what they wrote?
Sure, Zhuo Ge’s draconic memory let him recall what he wrote—but not why.
Before testing the last two weeks of work via Illusionist Mimicry, Zhuo Ge did something a strict materialist like him rarely did.
He prayed.
Right eye twitches? That’s just superstition. But hey, if praying gave him luck, he'd take it.
He channeled mana into the model—illusion activated.
Light nodes rose and converged midair, forming a grayscale interface that flickered faintly.
A game piece appeared, standing on a square box. Another box sat at a slant above it. A number—currently zero—floated above.
Zhuo Ge touched the screen. The game piece compressed slightly. He let go. The piece bounced up onto the next box. The number ticked up.
Success.
“What kind of spell is this?” Aisha noticed the screen.
“A spell for playing,” Zhuo Ge said. “I call it Bouncey-Bounce.”
Sure, it had no sound, was grayscale, low-res, ugly, and offline—the most budget version imaginable.
But he still had fun.
The original was a mini-game by Ketchapp, later "borrowed" by Tencent, and became a WeChat sensation.
Maybe not a great game, but low-cost, high-addiction, and viral? Definitely a great business.
Zhuo Ge couldn’t spread it yet, though.
“Just for fun?” Aisha asked, surprised—but it tracked with Zhuo Ge’s style.
The more she looked, the more baffled she became. “How many runes did that spell use?”
“Few thousand, I think.”
“A few thousand?! That’s enough to make a fifth-circle spell, and you used it for this?”
“What? You wanna learn? I’ll teach you.”
“What’s the point? It’s just a dot... jumping.”
