Ch.250[Chapter 250] Glitchburg Aftermath

“So… you were trying to illegally mine data and sell that information to large clans?”

“Yes!”

“And you came to the police station this boldly to turn yourself in?”

“Yes!”

“Oh my goodness…”

Inspector Lupin, the junior colleague of Inspector Javert, stared with a puzzled expression at the woman who was cheerfully confessing her crimes as if she were high on drugs.

The woman was crunching on bead ice cream, giggling with delight as if she found the texture amusing.

Inspector Lupin was so suspicious that the woman might actually be on drugs that he took a blood sample for analysis, but her blood showed no traces of drugs—not even alcohol or tobacco.

Naturally, the woman who had fully cooperated with the blood test asked with her still-clear face if she could buy a bead ice cream from the police station vending machine.

Inspector Lupin refused, thinking she might be a flight risk, but he did agree to get one for her when she asked him to get it on her behalf.

“…Since it’s currently a period encouraging voluntary confessions, there might be some leniency. But the problem is this…”

Inspector Lupin sighed as he held up the statement.

“Let’s say I understand you entering Glitchburg. Everyone knows data miners have their own backdoors. And let’s say I understand you obtaining update information in advance. I see you have a prior record for similar offenses.”

Inspector Lupin set aside the parts he could reasonably understand.

After removing all the clear parts, only two pages of statements remained in his hands.

“But why did you include stories about soft, chewy, healing black walls, or chewy Turkish ice cream-like things?”

“Well… because it was soft and chewy?”

The miner replied with a grin to Inspector Lupin’s question.

Inspector Lupin pressed his temples as if he had a headache.

This was exactly it.

It was because of this statement that he suspected the woman before him might be on drugs.

So the fact that no drug components were detected meant one of two things:

Either this woman was simply innocently insane, or she really had seen such things.

Inspector Lupin believed it was the former.

“According to the coders who brought you in, there are no black walls in Glitchburg. Of course, they slightly hinted that something might exist given that Glitchburg is full of bugs and errors, but they categorically denied the existence of any soft, chewy black walls. I went back to the scene with those two coders just to be sure, and I want you to know that the black wall you mentioned absolutely does not exist.”

“But it was there. That fluffy, elastic black wall.”

Inspector Lupin glared at the miner who was still grinning.

“No matter how consistent your statement is, evidence from experts and people who visited the scene takes precedence. Insisting doesn’t make it true.”

“The black wall fixes what’s wrong.”

The miner began speaking as if she couldn’t hear Inspector Lupin’s words.

“Because my personality was crooked and my heart was twisted, the black wall came and fixed everything. It’s the same with Glitchburg. Even if you can’t see it from the outside, the festering inside has all been cleaned up. It’s soft and fluffy.”

After saying this, the miner briefly lowered her head.

Her hair fell forward, momentarily hiding her expression.

“By the way, can I get another one of these?”

The miner raised her head and held up the now-empty bead ice cream container.

Her expression was still as innocent as could be.

Inspector Lupin thought he vaguely understood why Inspector Javert had pushed this troublesome case onto him.

…

Inside Glitchburg.

Currently, hundreds of coders were moving around in Glitchburg.

Normally, they would have sent down only a few personnel, like the tall coder and the short coder, to check for abnormalities, but this matter carried more weight.

[Half of Glitchburg is functioning ‘normally’.]

This was part of the report that the short coder had handed to the section chief.

Upon receiving this report, the section chief, with a stern expression, passed it up to the deputy director, who also turned pale as he forwarded the report to the director.

Finally, when the report reached the executive level of System Industries that day, an emergency meeting was immediately convened.

In an ordinary company, they might have said to repair the remaining half, or perhaps to delay repairs since half was still functioning, but with Glitchburg, the feeling was somewhat different.

What would it feel like if you heard that the defunct Chernobyl on Earth had suddenly started functioning normally for more than half of its area?

The emotions the System Industries executives were feeling might be even more intense than that.

The bugs and errors in Glitchburg were of a kind that no one dared to touch.

If mishandled, half or more of Gachaland could disappear, optimized areas could become hells full of lag and buffering, and in the worst case, Gachaland itself—or even the entire worldview that Gachaland belonged to—could vanish in a major crisis.

The executives recruited volunteers to go to Glitchburg to find out what was wrong with the suddenly normally functioning codes.

A total of 500 first-wave volunteers were selected, including high-ranking officials like directors and department heads.

Due to the nature of System Industries, many high-ranking officials had risen through the ranks as coders, and among them were those who had created and isolated the bugs in Glitchburg.

So it was only natural that they were eager to see and check on Glitchburg’s situation firsthand.

The 500 coders who set out were astonished as soon as they entered Glitchburg.

The darkness of Glitchburg had somewhat lifted.

In fact, the darkness of Glitchburg was a product of bugs and errors.

It wasn’t just because there was no lighting in Glitchburg, but because the gamma value was set excessively low.

The result was darkness where one could barely see a step or two ahead, but now Glitchburg was bright enough that the outlines of surrounding objects were visible even without lighting.

“…This is concerning.”

The coder who had arrived at Glitchburg first frowned.

For ordinary people, something working well might be a matter of course.

But for coders, something working well meant that if you touched it, something would go wrong.

It meant that even with bugs and errors, you could still make it work somehow.

On the other hand, something working perfectly was unsettling for coders.

The absence of bugs and errors was an incomprehensible realm.

That’s why the coders were feeling anxious in this space.

This space was filled with inhumanly perfect data.

“Gasp! Look over there! A perfect code filling 144 lines!”

“That’s not the issue! The optimization code here is truly optimized! I always wanted to cut it with a knife because it was so tangled!”

The coders trembled at this terrifying phenomenon.

Perfect code was nothing short of cosmic horror for coders.

“Quiet! Quiet!”

As the commotion among the coders intensified, the oldest-looking coder among them shouted.

He was a director at System Industries, and his rank was the highest here, matching his age.

“What’s there to fear? There’s perfect code? Then learn from it! Record all of this! We might be able to use it someday.”

Unlike the other coders, the director was overwhelmed with emotion.

Although he had been coding for hundreds or thousands of years, seeing code running this perfectly was extremely rare.

So he could understand the feelings of the other coders.

If even he, who had been coding for thousands of years, rarely saw perfect code, then the rookie coders with only decades of experience might fall into an incomprehensible fear just by looking at it.

But the director soon became displeased.

In his day, when people saw such perfect code, they would burn with ambition to create such perfect code themselves, unlike the weak coders of today.

However, the director did not express these thoughts outwardly as he encouraged the other coders.

He was well aware that he was an old-timer, so he was trying not to be one to others.

“Still, it’s not completely perfect. It’s about the level of ‘final final final ultimate last (3)’ completion.”

“What do you mean by that?”

A department head-level coder next to the director asked.

“Look. If you look here, it’s so perfect that it’s not compatible with other operating systems. It’s code that can only be used in Glitchburg. It can’t be used in Gachaland.”

“I… see.”

The department head-level coder looked carefully at where the director was pointing and soon realized that the director was right.

“Then Glitchburg…”

“Has become an entirely different operating system.”

The director sighed deeply.

“It has reduced its dependence on Gachaland and greatly enhanced its independence.”

“I-I see.”

The department head-level coder broke into a cold sweat at the director’s words.

Glitchburg was used to isolate useless parts of Gachaland.

That’s why the department head-level coder couldn’t dare to smile when he heard about increased independence.

Increased independence meant that Gachaland might no longer be able to interfere.

If Glitchburg became independent, where would they dump—no, isolate—all those bugs and errors?

“But whoever fixed this place seems very clever.”

“Pardon?”

“They only fixed half of it. They know that fixing it completely would make it an independent program. They improved it just enough so that it wouldn’t become independent from Gachaland. That means they know the state of Gachaland well.”

The director’s eyes gleamed as if he had made a sharp deduction.

However, in reality, it was because the black slime had only moved through exactly half the area, not because there was any special reason as the director suggested.

“I don’t know who it is, but they have remarkable skills. I’d like to meet them sometime. Perhaps—”

They might be even more skilled than the Unborn President. The director didn’t bother to say the rest out loud.

“Director! Look over here! This seems to be the remains of the ‘black wall’ that the data miner testified about!”

“What? I’m coming right away!”

The director hurried over to a coder shouting from a distance.

In the coder’s hand was a sticky yet elastic black substance.

It was the remains of the black slime that had not fully decomposed.