novelslam Chapter 120 [God's Bug Report]
Chapter 120 [God's Bug Report]
In the heavens, on the throne of the God of Magic, Thea sat at the very center.
She was working, her fingers moving through the void, countless virtual windows made up of the Heavenly Dao System popping up, closing, and reassembling before her eyes.
In the Ashem as revealed by Thea, or rather, by the Heavenly Dao, there are no secrets in this world, only lines of rigorously operating rules.
She is not only the goddess of magic, but also the system administrator of this supercomputer named "Asem".
Although the previous disaster, known as the "Crimson Plague," had been resolved by mortals, it left behind a large number of red problem messages in Thea's Diary of the God of Magic.
"Recalling data from sector A-72, backtracking the timeline: three days ago, at dusk."
Thea gave the command, and the light screen in front of her distorted, reconstructing the image.
The battlefield in the valley is presented from an overhead perspective, with the image frozen in one moment.
Anya, the human female leader, knelt on the ground and drew a simple triangle symbol with her blood.
That's not included in the Arcane Codex. In the magical rules written by Thea, mortals must go through three steps to manipulate magic:
First, send a request to the magic network (chant an incantation/draw a talisman).
Second, the review authority of the Magic Network Central Hub (Thea).
Third, unleash the magic, build the model, and produce the effect.
This is a standard interaction process between the god and the seeker; everything should be under her control.
But Anya's actions that time were unusual.
Thea zoomed in on the image and discovered that... this woman named Anya had not followed the previously set rules in making her request.
"Analyze energy level reactions."
System feedback: [High-dimensional energy intervention.]
In the image, Anya's runes light up.
It wasn't the standard magical blue light approved by Thea, but rather a domineering pale gold glow.
At that moment, the magic network's inspection records went blank; there were no requests, and she herself hadn't been able to review them.
The new spell bypassed Thea, the administrator, and forcibly issued a command to the world.
The instruction was simple: Purify.
Thus, the rules were rewritten, and the once invincible plague vanished in the blink of an eye.
Thea's finger froze in mid-air; she felt an unknown tremor.
In this world, she should be the only one with the authority to modify the world's underlying rules, but why...?
How come that human girl named Anya is holding the highest-level "master key"?
No, that wasn't Anya's power; someone had put it in her hand.
Thea retrieved the backend permission table of the Heavenly Dao.
[Administrator: Thea (Current Status: Online)]
[Access Level: Level 1.]
Everything seemed normal, but she wasn't giving up. So Thea began trying to simulate Anya's spell model.
Thea raised her hand and, following the triangular trajectory recorded in the book, mobilized her divine power.
"Reconstruction." The Heavenly Dao System reported an error.
Error: Unable to execute.
[Reason: The user holding this command has higher privileges than the current user.]
[Higher authentication privileges required]
Thea leaned back on her throne, staring blankly at the bright red pop-up window.
Higher-level privileges than level one?
She is the goddess of wisdom, and the logic of her past and present lives being a fusion of divinity tells her one fact: in the house of Ashem, she is merely a housekeeper who holds the keys.
The true owner is someone else.
That master usually doesn't show his face or speak.
But he would occasionally slip a note or two through the crack in the door, the orders written on them taking precedence over all the house rules she, the housekeeper, had established.
The girl named Anya was the one who received the note.
"Beep—! Beep—! Beep—!" The urgent beeping interrupted Thea's thoughts.
At the bottom of the virtual celestial system panel, the green indicator lights that originally showed a stable geological structure suddenly turned completely red.
[Alert: Unregistered physical structure intrusion detected!]
[Coordinates: Assam crust, depth 3200 km.]
Threat Level: Unable to be estimated.
Another bug? Thea frowned, and with a wave of her hand, she forcibly pulled the surveillance camera's view underground.
Layers of rock, magma, and ancient sediments... the line of sight penetrates layer by layer.
Finally, she saw it: deep in the dark, dark earth, the rock strata had broken open into a perfectly round hole.
Unlike a natural collapse or a monster's excavation, it resembles some unimaginably precise craftsmanship, directly "cutting" a hole in the base of the world.
Through that opening, Thea felt an unfamiliar aura, both extremely cold and full of order, that she had never seen before, continuously seeping into this world.
Thea saw the human exploration team that was instantly shredded.
The murderous creature emerged from the cave, its silvery-white metal tentacles tipped with a single red eye.
There are no magical fluctuations; it operates purely mechanically, resulting in simple physical slaughter.
This thing isn't in her database.
There is no record of this creature in the Arcane Codex, nor in the original evolutionary history of this world.
They are like garbage that has been "dumped" in from another world.
"Seal off the area." Thea reacted instinctively; she was the protector of this world, and any foreign intruders had to be eliminated.
Divine power was mobilized, and the laws of the earth responded.
"Command: Earth's crust heals."
Millions of tons of rock were compressed underground, trying to plug the hole, and a rumbling sound echoed underground.
However, the next second, Thea's divine power was forcibly repelled, and a line of error messages from the Heavenly Dao System scrolled before her eyes.
[WARNING: Illegal operation!]
[A top-level administrator (Owner) has been detected performing "expansion work" in this area.]
This area has been marked as a "system protection zone".
Your access request has been rejected.
Please do not interfere with the construction process; otherwise, it will be considered "malicious program" and will be formatted.
Thea stared at the last line of text, which was full of threatening meaning.
construction?
This is not an intrusion at all.
This is the homeowner who felt the basement was too small, so he broke down a wall without permission to bring in the haunted house next door, which is full of mechanical monsters!
And she, the housekeeper, was almost cleared away as an obstacle just now for trying to "repair" the hole the homeowner had smashed open.
A profound sense of absurdity washed over Thea, and the data stream in her eyes stopped beating.
She understood, she understood completely.
Why did the three kings ascend to godhood so smoothly?
Why is Anya able to use golden magic?
Why do mechanical monsters appear underground?
Even... why do they exist?
Thea raised her head, her gaze seemingly piercing through the rune-woven ceiling, looking towards that non-existent void.
She has a pair of eyes that she can't see, but she can sense.
Those eyes were fixed on the sand table at that moment, watching her, the long-serving Goddess of Magic, frantically deal with these specially created "bugs".
Perhaps, that being is holding a teacup, evaluating each of her responses with great interest.
The authority, computing power, and divine status that they are so proud of.
In the eyes of that being, it was nothing more than a slightly more advanced automated program.
The so-called God.
It's that high-level NPC that exists in your possession, a "server maintainer" responsible for maintaining game balance and used as a scapegoat in crucial moments.
Now, the owner is going to add a new map to the game (the underground mechanical city).
The new map and the old version will definitely conflict and cause bugs.
The owner was too lazy to fix it themselves, or rather, these bugs were stress tests used by the owner to test the system's stability.
If Thea insists on fixing that hole.
So tomorrow, the God of Magic might be replaced.
Or, format her along with the whole thing.
calm.
You must remain absolutely calm.
Thea closed her eyes and forcibly shut down all the divine probes sent into the ground. She made a decision.
She extended her finger and tapped lightly on the control panel.
"Operation: Ignore error message."
"Add underground anomaly data to the 'whitelist'."
"Status: Normal"
In an instant, the red alerts that were plaguing the world disappeared.
It was as if the huge underground hole never existed, and the mechanical monsters crawling out were just harmless decorations.
"If you want it to exist, then it is justified." Thea made a standard gesture of submission to the void.
As a responsible worker, if you see your boss building illegal structures, the best thing to do is not to report it, but to hand him a brick.
But this doesn't mean she's willing to be blind; fear stems from the unknown.
What exactly is connected to that hole?
Now that the homeowner has taken in that so-called "mechanical civilization," it is bound to clash with the magical civilization on Earth in the future.
As a "server administrator," she cannot stop her boss from updating the version, but she must know the contents of the new version in advance so that she will not become the old file that is discarded when the system crashes again.
"The main unit cannot be moved; it's too large a target and will be discovered." Thea stood up, and her originally magnificent and solid divine body became ethereal and split.
A faint fragment of soul, so faint it contained almost no divine power fluctuations, was detached from her body.
This clone was extremely weak, so weak that it couldn't even defeat a slightly stronger orc.
It has no divine status, no authority, and bears no mark of the Arcane Codex.
It was merely a clone used purely for recording and observation. Even if discovered by the Creator, it would probably only be regarded as a slightly special mortal soul.
"Go." Thea cast the clone into the material world below.
"Give me sight and hearing."
"Go investigate that girl named Anya and see what her 'golden key' actually looks like."
"Go infiltrate that underground cave and find out the details of those metal monsters."
"I need to know... just how much of this boss is hiding in the mezzanine of this house."
The clone transformed into a shooting star and fell to earth.
Thea sat back down on her throne, waved her hand to clear away the error message panel, and brought up a boring chart called "Today's Weather Forecast," pretending to be working diligently.
In this sandbox filled with lies and manipulation.
This goddess of wisdom, once known for her reason and loyalty, has learned the first skill truly belonging to intelligent beings since she became a god.
—Slacking off.
Furthermore, I learned the advanced workplace survival rule: "Although I discovered your secret, I pretended not to know and even planned to secretly study your secret to save my life."