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"Don't panic, don't panic!" Danny Price massaged his own fingers while cricking his neck, so that anyone who didn't know better would think he was about to step into a boxing ring.
"I've got 5G network, plus sixty thousand units of stock in the online shops. Who could out-snipe me?"
"If I don't snag one, I'll eat this phone screen right here on the spot!"
Tick, tock.
Even though clocks were no longer in use, the moment the digits on the phone clock flipped, Danny and the others still felt as though the tick-tock of a clock hand had sounded beside their ears.
"Aooo!"
"Time's up, sons! Charge for your old man!"
Danny Price's enormous frame jolted as if electrocuted, his two big hands nimbly tapping left and right across the phone screen, and after two or three taps, he'd already jumped to the payment page.
Submit Order.
Get!
Order does not exist, please resubmit.
A merciless window popped up.
A bolt from the blue.
"How could this happen!?"
Danny Price slammed his phone onto the bed, clutched his head, and broke into disbelieving sobs.
At the same moment, wave after wave of wailing rose up throughout the dorm and the entire surrounding dorm district, as though a special collective ritual were underway.
"Holy crap! How did it sell out this fast! Are there scalpers in there or what!"
"Sixty thousand units online, and it got sniped clean in under a single second?"
"How could this happen?"
The campus instantly transformed into wolf-pack territory, and some people even ran out into the corridors to wail at the starry sky.
A scene like this could only be witnessed when the national team won the League of Legends championship or the men's soccer team made it into the World Cup.
"So noisy! Are you going to let people sleep or not!?"
Even the girls over in the neighboring women's dorm building couldn't stand it and lodged their protests.
Grief welling up from within, Danny Price ran out into the corridor to wail too. "All you've lost is sleep, but what we've lost is a mech!"
The chaos on-site didn't finally settle down until the dorm matron unleashed her thunderous lioness's roar.
Danny Price returned to the dorm hanging his head in dejection.
"Danny-son, don't be sad. We'll go try our luck at the city center during the day," a roommate consoled him.
The offline stock was distributed all over the country, and both the quantity and the styles were quite limited. There was no telling whether they'd still be able to buy the style they wanted.
Or being able to buy one at all would be plenty.
Danny Price sighed. "It's tragic. I never imagined I wouldn't even scoop up the chance to feed Scrapper and Crimson Typhoon a little engine oil."
At this point, Trey spoke up.
"Ahem. You all go over yourselves tomorrow. I won't be going."
The gazes of the other three in the dorm instantly converged on his face, staring at him until he grew a little flustered.
"I... I just snagged one a moment ago. The top-configuration Crimson Ty..." As Trey spoke, three dark shadows were already closing in around him, and he hurriedly rose to flee, but it was too late.
"Halt! Where does that lucky devil think he's running off to!"
"Eat my lance!"
"Salted-Fish Skewer!"
"Ah oh"
---
The next day, Trey, dark circles still under his eyes, was dragged by his three treasonous sons to the shopping mall in the city center, where there was a tiny official mech model retail booth.
Rumor had it five hundred models would be sold here today.
But when they arrived and saw the sea of people, the crowd packed shoulder to shoulder, they all fell silent despite themselves.
Some people on-site were holding long lenses and short ones, some wore homemade mech costumes, and among them were teenagers and young adults alike, all of them looking crazed.
Anyone who didn't know better would think this was a cosplay event.
For them to snatch those five hundred models out from in front of these people was simply impossible.
At the very least, they couldn't squeeze past the several big fellows up front who stood like bears rising to their feet.
---
Meanwhile, at the international tourism airport on the Redcliff Islands.
A fresh batch of travelers had only just gotten off the plane.
Jack, along with his two little companions and their accompanying families, excitedly followed the crowd out of the airport together.
They were three families who'd come here as a group to travel, and on the day before their return trip, Crimson Typhoon would carry out a sea test. It was precisely because of this that they'd chosen to come at this time.
The three families talked it over and planned to first take the international version of a ride-hailing app to the hotel they'd written down.
But no sooner had they walked out of the airport than Jack spotted a shop by the roadside packed with people, looking incredibly lively.
"Mom, is that a local specialty food shop? I saw a lot of introductions to this country's cuisine before boarding the plane!"
Jack adjusted the cap on his head and pointed at the shop with his left hand, and what emerged from his sleeve was a prosthetic of steel material, still bearing wind-and-fire painted patterns.
It was none other than a Triton-1.
Back when Triton-1 had just been released and was still under review and banned from sale, he and his mother had already come to the country to install a Triton-1.
The prosthetic could originally have had its paint job freely chosen, but he thought this factory paint scheme was extremely cool, so he'd given up on a lifelike finish.
Steven, the companion who'd come along with him, shook his head. "It's definitely not. That's definitely a shop selling mech toys, just like the toy shop Old Duncan runs."
"How would you know? Can you even read the local language?" the other companion, Jessica, asked.
Steven smiled smugly. "Didn't you see the big mech pattern on its outer wall?"
"Enough talk! Let's go line up too!"
Jack pulled his two companions and charged straight for that toy shop.
"Jack's gotten a lot livelier lately!" the neighbor, Uncle Sam, said to Jack's mother with relief as he watched the children's backs.
Jack's mother said devoutly, "Thank the heavens, thank Prism. Ever since he had the prosthetic installed, Jack has kept changing for the better these past few months."
The three families walked toward the shop in a relaxed mood, and only as they drew near did they hear a loudspeaker at the shop door hawking wares nonstop in English.
"Global first release, global first release! Crimson Typhoon, Scrapper, the first official licensed models! Not nine ninety-eight, not eight eighty-eight, just three eighty to take one home, take one home!"
The words that loudspeaker shouted out seemed to carry a kind of magical power, one that could make them pull out their wallets without realizing it and hand the money inside over to their children.
And then trade it back for a pile of plastic and posters.
Meanwhile their children were still beside themselves with excitement over these things, an excitement that, regardless of gender, seemed to knock several years off the children's ages the moment they faced these objects.
"This place really is amazing!"
Uncle Sam stroked his wallet, shrunk by half, and scratched his head, still not quite grasping what had just happened.
The first models of the two mechs, Scrapper and Crimson Typhoon, swept the market with ease, exactly as everyone had anticipated.
The first batch of a hundred thousand models, and three million posters.
In the span of a single day, the models sold out entirely, with a total goods value of twenty-three million, plus another ten million in goods value of posters.
In just this one day, Prism's net profit came to nearly ten million.
And afterward, more and more mechanical spin-off products would keep coming out.
The images of these two mechs were destined to become a long-term money-printing machine for Prism.
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