Ch.237[Episode 237] Oh God, Another Bug?

Sir Dominic accepted death with his eyes tightly shut.

Having sunk beneath the ground, he believed he would die from suffocation.

However, no matter how long he waited, the death Sir Dominic had imagined did not come.

“…What is happening?”

Sir Dominic muttered to himself.

And suddenly he realized that he could speak.

If this were truly underground, Sir Dominic’s words should not be audible outside.

At least, that’s what Sir Dominic thought.

But the fact that he could speak and hear his own words—what could that mean?

As this thought occurred to him, Sir Dominic cautiously opened his eyes.

“…Good heavens. What on earth…?”

Upon opening his eyes, Sir Dominic was shocked.

His surroundings were not underground earth and stone, but rather some kind of space that was brightly open in all directions.

At first, Sir Dominic thought he had stopped in this space, but soon realized he was still falling.

Like rising smoke, the last scene he had witnessed remained fixed and was dispersing like smoke…

Upon understanding this much, Sir Dominic felt tremendous dizziness and nausea.

The current situation was truly filled with flashes beyond human comprehension.

Sir Dominic closed his eyes again.

Rather than curiosity, fear arose first at the sight that was utterly incomprehensible to Sir Dominic’s common sense.

Even for Sir Dominic, who was braver and more curious than most, this situation was impossible to understand or accept.

Fortunately, however, this dizzying scene did not last long.

At some point, Sir Dominic landed on the ground with a thud.

Unlike the earlier sensation of treading on air, this was truly the feeling of stepping on solid ground made of earth and stone.

Have I finally reached the bottom of the bottom?

Thinking this, Sir Dominic cautiously opened his eyes once more.

And the first thing that entered Sir Dominic’s vision was… a wall.

A wall made of moss-covered stones saturated with moisture.

Sir Dominic breathed a sigh of relief at this properly formed structure.

“At least it’s not that bizarre scene from before.”

Sir Dominic shuddered once as he recalled that terrible sight.

Even for Sir Dominic, who was accustomed to most things, the scene from earlier was enough to evoke fear.

Anyway, having discovered that this place had proper walls and floors, Sir Dominic began to look around, and suddenly remembered a place most similar to here.

It was the dungeon beneath the judiciary where Sir Dominic had been imprisoned not long ago.

“Is this… a dungeon?”

Sir Dominic began to examine his surroundings more carefully, holding his shield and sword.

The damp, moss-covered bricks were nothing particularly unusual.

What was unusual was the structure of this place; Sir Dominic noticed that except for the wall behind him, there was thick darkness spread out to the point where he couldn’t see an inch ahead.

“It seems I’ll have to move along this wall.”

Sir Dominic began to walk while keeping one hand on the moss-covered wall.

“I can’t see the end…”

A wall of seemingly endless length, no matter how far he walked.

How far had he come?

Sir Dominic suddenly realized that something soft was touching the hand that was on the wall.

Sir Dominic turned his head to check what the object was.

“Uh, um…”

Sir Dominic confirmed the identity of the soft object with a pale expression.

“I’m sorry, but if you can hear me, could you help me instead of just feeling around?”

It was Unryu Hime’s fox tail.

…

“Phew. I’m alive. I was in trouble, stuck in the wall.”

Unryu Hime sighed with relief and expressed her gratitude to Sir Dominic.

For some reason, Unryu Hime had been stuck in the wall with only her lower body protruding toward Sir Dominic.

When Sir Dominic urgently grabbed her legs and pulled, Unryu Hime’s body instantly came out of the wall.

Sir Dominic looked at the wall where Unryu Hime had been stuck until just now, but there was no hole in that wall.

“Why on earth were you stuck there?”

Sir Dominic asked Unryu Hime.

“There doesn’t seem to be a hole in the wall, so how…”

“I think this is… Glitchburg. My goodness, I thought it was just an urban legend…”

“Glitchburg?”

“Yes. Glitchburg.”

Unryu Hime answered Sir Dominic’s question.

“It’s a city in Gachaland where… bugs that can’t possibly be fixed are isolated. You could call it the garbage bin for bugs.”

Sir Dominic looked around at Unryu Hime’s words.

“I don’t see anything that looks like a bug.”

Sir Dominic recalled the bugs he had encountered so far.

Most bugs tended to appear in a visual form that proclaimed ‘I am a bug.’

“That’s exactly what makes this place scary. The fact that it doesn’t look like a bug on the surface.”

Unryu Hime answered as if she had read Sir Dominic’s mind.

“As you just saw, suddenly the wall opens up or—”

Unryu Hime suddenly started kicking the wall.

In the middle of talking about bugs, she suddenly started kicking the wall.

Sir Dominic looked at her strangely, but soon watched with surprised eyes as Unryu Hime began to surge upward.

Without her hands or feet even touching the wall, Unryu Hime climbed up the wall just by kicking.

“Things like climbing walls at will like this.”

“Impressive.”

Sir Dominic tried kicking the wall as Unryu Hime had done.

Instantly, Sir Dominic also shot up into the air about 2 meters.

With both feet back on the ground, Sir Dominic understood why this was called the garbage bin for bugs.

This was a place where common sense didn’t apply, incomprehensible even by Gachaland’s standards.

“I think our falling underground might also be due to Glitchburg’s influence.”

Unryu Hime carefully said to Sir Dominic.

Of course, the reason Sir Dominic and Unryu Hime had fallen underground was because of the stair-step effect created when Doremi didn’t apply anti-aliasing, but for now, it was a reasonable enough explanation for Sir Dominic and Unryu Hime to accept.

“Then what should we do? Should we try dying once and respawning in Gachaland—”

“That would be a good suggestion under normal circumstances, but here we need to be careful about dying too. Since it’s full of bugs, I’m not sure if we’d respawn properly.”

Unryu Hime spoke to Sir Dominic with concern.

Sir Dominic abandoned his attempt to try dying based on Unryu Hime’s words.

Instead, he asked Unryu Hime a question that suddenly occurred to him.

“Come to think of it, if this place is full of bugs, why don’t they fix these bugs?”

Sir Dominic made a logical point.

“As you just mentioned, if there are bugs that can prevent respawning or mess it up, shouldn’t they be fixed? Rather than isolated.”

“There are complicated circumstances around that.”

Unryu Hime sighed and responded to Sir Dominic’s words.

“According to a coder I know, the bugs here can’t be touched. Because these bugs are the untouchable kind.”

“…What does that mean?”

Sir Dominic didn’t understand Unryu Hime’s words.

But Unryu Hime nodded to Sir Dominic as if it were obvious.

And she added an explanation so Sir Dominic could understand.

“The codes applied to Gachaland aren’t applied independently, but in a complex, intertwined structure.”

“So if you manipulate one, it affects all connected codes.”

“Remember the abnormal weather incident not long ago? Jelly rain and candy hailstorms…”

“All of that happened because the weather system malfunctioned. When the code constituting the weather system went haywire, all of Gachaland went haywire.”

“I understand that much.”

Sir Dominic interrupted Unryu Hime.

“My question is, why can’t those bugs be fixed?”

“Because they’re functioning properly.”

Unryu Hime immediately answered Sir Dominic’s question.

“When you think of Gachaland’s codes as gears, there are defective gears in between. If all the gears turn properly because of those defective gears, should we fix them? Even if fixing them might mess up all the gears?”

Sir Dominic still didn’t fully understand Unryu Hime’s words, but he vaguely felt like he grasped the meaning.

“So… if we touch those things, something might go wrong with Gachaland?”

“That’s an easier way to think about it.”

Unryu Hime’s fox ears drooped, as if her head hurt too much to explain further.

“Anyway, bugs that might cause problems if touched, but might also cause problems if left alone, are isolated elsewhere like this. When I first heard about it, I thought it was just meant to scare me…”

Unryu Hime trailed off.

“…I think it’s best not to touch anything here if possible. We don’t know what problems might arise—”

That’s when it happened.

Sir Dominic suddenly felt the ground shake.

The source of the vibration was the very wall where Unryu Hime and Sir Dominic had just tried the bug, and that wall was gradually splitting open, creating another room.

“…The problem has already occurred.”

Unryu Hime sighed and said.

“I’m sorry. Because I demonstrated the bug—”

“Let’s save the apologies for later.”

Sir Dominic raised his sword and shield, glaring at the room that had formed across from them.

“It seems now is the time to take up weapons.”

In the gap Sir Dominic was looking at, there were bizarre gazes staring back at him.