Ch.6[Chapter 6] Bug Report: Area 1 Final

“What about the other developers?”

The security guard was eating a glazed donut at some point.

“Have you ever seen those tips in loading screens that claim to be Easter eggs?”

The coder handed a can of coffee to the security guard in exchange for receiving a donut.

The security guard unconsciously checked the caffeine content and frowned.

But it’s better than nothing. The security guard opened the can and took a leisurely sip. It was a mess of a coffee, the sticky coolness either trying to clear or amplify the dryness in his throat.

“As you know, most projects have backdoors built in for sneaking out. We were trying to escape through that backdoor but got caught by security protocols and ended up trapped in between. Oh, by the way, this is delicious. Where’s it from?”

“Home baking. I’m a domestic man.”

“Your wife must love that.”

“If I had one.”

“If I may not be too forward—”

From behind the security guard and coder, who seemed oddly out of place in the jungle, Sir Dominic shouted.

“Could I get some help here!”

The security guard and coder looked at Sir Dominic.

Sir Dominic was holding up a shield, blocking a chaotic mix of mobs.

The mob, which had now transformed into a hip triceratops featuring an orc rapper riding a raptor with a goblin head that shot poison darts, was firing poison darts with machine-gun rap.

“Just hold on. The coder is analyzing the problematic code.”

“That’s right. If you knew how difficult it is to read coding methods from different dimensions, you wouldn’t rush me.”

The coder agreed with the security guard’s rebuke.

Though they appeared to be playing around on the surface, this was an unavoidable situation.

For the coder to find the problematic section, he needed to check all the code.

In between were parts where line breaks were missing, comments were incorrectly added, or even places where delivered malatang was left to rot after being spilled.

A normal coder would reluctantly overlook such parts if they functioned properly, but the coder before them had OCD about coding, so he fixed, oiled, and cleaned up all those minute details.

Because the coder was so focused, he couldn’t perceive the surrounding dangers.

The security guard was standing guard next to the coder to protect him.

All of this was part of a complex and difficult-to-understand operation to solve this bug—

“But I’m the one doing all the fighting!”

Sir Dominic let out an angry cry.

Is this what group projects from injected knowledge felt like?

Sir Dominic struck the orc rapper, who had been bragging about how he rose from humble beginnings to become a billionaire, with his shield.

“Ah.”

After hitting the orc rapper’s snout at least three more times, just as he was about to say something to the two—

“This is it. Zombie code.”

The coder found the problematic section.

“Look. This is the problematic code, and if you look at the line break here, it’s the child, not the parent? The child code doesn’t actually have any problems but has become zombie code. That means the parent code is the issue, and if you look here, see the tag marked @na_Ch1st_01? That’s the problematic part in the parent code. Do you understand what the problem is?”

“Hmm. I can’t tell even looking at it.”

“The parent code is an anarchist. It expected natural healing for the virus in the child code, but it became a zombie instead. My goodness. Whoever wrote this code must be a demon.”

The coder grumbled with dissatisfaction.

In truth, no one here understood what the coder was saying, but each had their own understanding.

The security guard realized once again that coding was truly an impossible task, and Sir Dominic understood that they could now solve this problem.

Now, in place of Sir Dominic who had begun the final battle with the breakdancing triceratops, the security guard asked.

“So, if we solve that problem, will everything be over?”

“Not exactly. Well, yes, but…”

The coder trailed off. It seemed there was some issue.

“As you know, System Industries’ coding has the characteristic of being forcibly connected. Elven code and dwarven code can’t connect to each other, but they insert the most similar human code in between and then glue it together with half-elf and half-ogre code. Oh, and why half-ogre instead of dwarf, well that’s complicated—”

“Just the point.”

The security guard stopped the coder, who had started to ramble upon finding something he knew about.

The increasingly excited coder became sullen again and said.

“So, it’s written in a coding style I don’t know. Tags are a language all races agreed to use in common, but coding languages aren’t unified.”

“You mean you can’t fix it?”

“Yes.”

The coder’s answer was cheerful. Where that happiness came from was a mystery.

The security guard clutched his head. Good grief. Does this mean they’d be trapped here forever?

“Well, if there was someone who hadn’t cleared Area 2, there might be a solution, but who wouldn’t have cleared Area 2 by now?”

“Say that again.”

Sir Dominic, who had been staggering from the triceratops’s dazzling moonwalk and 12-consecutive windmills, rushed over.

The triceratops, absorbed in its own actions, was just doing its own thing.

“I’ve only cleared 2-1. It was maintenance day.”

“What?”

“Ah. Right. Today was maintenance day.”

The coder grinned broadly.

The security guard looked at Sir Dominic with disbelief.

Everyone who arrived at Gachaland received a beginner’s package.

That package contained 100 energy, a choice of equipment, and 30 hero fragments—a generous package.

With the 100 energy plus occasional bonuses, it was enough to clear Area 1 and half of Area 2 in just one day.

But only cleared 2-1?

“…Have you checked your gift box?”

The security guard asked Sir Dominic, just in case.

Sir Dominic tilted his head before exclaiming “Gift box!”

Inside was the package, still unopened.

“Aha.”

“What do you mean ‘aha’! How could you not even read the guide—”

“That’s not what’s important! We now have more options to try!”

The security guard, who had considered himself quite knowledgeable, couldn’t hide his dismay at seeing this mess of a beginner.

However, the coder was right.

Who could have guessed that the junior who had just joined would turn out to be a hidden card by sheer coincidence?

“First, I’ll open a backdoor into the code. This passage has a circular structure internally, so it hasn’t been blocked. In simple terms, it’s a shortcut to the boss room right from the start. What we need to fix is internal, not external, so we’ll be fighting whatever constitutes the zombie code there.”

“Wait, why do we need a newbie for this plan? And one who hasn’t even cleared Area 2?”

“Well, if you look at ‘System Coding Made Easy for Elementary Students’ Volume 21, page 1…177 was it? It explains about permissions and restrictions. You know how higher permissions also mean higher restrictions, right? In Gachaland—”

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

The coder’s words were filled with incomprehensible jargon.

So they decided to summarize, excluding the complex rhetoric and technical terms.

“…So, the closer you are to the system, the stronger the system’s resistance. So we need to use a newbie who has almost no connection to the system to deceive the system’s eyes?”

“Yes! That’s the summary!”

The security guard sighed.

Sir Dominic was on the verge of a headache from the parade of incomprehensible words, and the triceratops, who had been listening to the same conversation, had already had its head explode and was being reconstructed with a new body by the zombie code.

But Sir Dominic could understand one thing despite all the incomprehensible talk.

The fact that he was needed.

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s do it right away.”

Sir Dominic confidently tapped the front of his shield with the flat of his sword.

It was one of his habits that emerged when he was happy.

“Right. If there’s something we can do, let’s do it now. We don’t have time.”

“Ugh, fine. Wait two minutes. I need to enter the backdoor activation password. By the way, what do you mean we don’t have time? Time is all we have.”

“It’s almost quitting time.”

“Ah.”

The coder glared at the security guard.

It was the look one gives to the heretic with the most flexible work hours at System Industries.

“Two minutes to enter a password. How deeply did they hide it—”

“It’s this, this.”

Sir Dominic followed the coder’s finger.

It was a rock. The rock the security guard had been hiding behind just moments ago.

“Three knocks, say ‘Anyone there?’ once, three more knocks. And one angry kick.”

The coder performed the actions while reciting the incantation.

Whether the spell worked or not, a long input window appeared before them.

…It was a 128-character password.

“Once I enter the password, we’ll go straight to the boss room. The controls are terrible so I have to move bit by bit while entering it, which is why it takes two minutes. If I could just type it normally, it would take 10 seconds.”

The coder grumbled but looked at the password input window with loving eyes.

The security guard was certain that the coder had created this program.

“Now, capital E…A. Lowercase C… underscore one three four two then two again…”

After entering the 128-character password using English uppercase and lowercase letters, special characters, and numbers for secure authentication, a message appeared saying “Verifying compatibility.”

Then, with a “Authentication complete” message, the backdoor gate opened.

“Great! Now if we go through this door, we’ll reach the boss room. The parameter from earlier was the boss—”

The coder started rambling again.

But Sir Dominic interrupted him.

“Is that boss perhaps a goblin riding a large dinosaur?”

“Yes! To be precise, the bug happened to the goblin. The dinosaur isn’t affected by bugs because it’s cool!”

Sir Dominic looked past the coder’s shoulder, who was presenting strange logic.

“Is that… the boss?”

The security guard and coder followed Sir Dominic’s gaze.

There was a goblin riding a Tyrannosaurus with a djembe strapped to it.

[BOSS Konga the Goblin King]

With that peculiar name.