The Genius Programmer Turned Wizard - GPW Chapter 1: Bug Report (Part 2)

That day, I was more focused than usual…
Then suddenly—“crackle!”—a sharp sound, and a flash sparked in my brain.

At last, a loose thread.
A seam in this otherwise perfect game.

“This is…”

It wasn’t my imagination.
A spell cast by the character behaved differently than described.
I ran another test to confirm it.

‘Under the exact same conditions as before…’

Crackle.

The spell activated, and the result was—again—the same as last time.

‘What exactly are the conditions?’

I had tried changing various factors to test it, and eventually, I figured out the nature of the phenomenon.

It was a bug.

And not just any bug—this was the first one I’d discovered in the Chronicles of Terrasia after three years of playing.

Moreover, I had a pretty good idea of what was causing it.

‘I’ll only know for sure once I see the code, though.’

I had finished documenting the phenomenon.

Now, all that was left was to report the bug.

I began writing the bug report based on the details I’d compiled—describing the bug’s conditions, the behavior, and what I believed to be the probable cause.

[Send]

It was the moment I hit send on the report.

Buzz. A vibration, followed by a notification.

It was a reply from the game company.

‘Already?’

That was fast. Too fast.

Thinking it must be an automated response, I opened the message—but I was immediately caught off guard.

> “This is the development team of the Chronicles of Terrasia. We’ve reviewed the bug report you sent. We have a proposal for you regarding this issue.”

The beginning of the message definitely felt like a standard auto-reply.

But the word “proposal” at the end stuck out.

I replied immediately.

> “What kind of proposal?”

Again, the response came quickly.

> “Would you like to try fixing the spell yourself?”

What did that mean?

Was it… what I thought it was?

‘…’

With trembling fingers, I sent another message.

> “Are you saying you’ll give me the code?”

> “We will, if you agree to directly modify the spell.”

They were clearly hiding something.

It was a little suspicious, sure—but I didn’t have anything to lose.

If I could get even the tiniest snippet of the Chronicles of Terrasia’s code, it would be worth it.

> “I agree.”

The reply wasn’t a message—but a file.

> [Attached File]

‘What the…?’

My heart pounded as I cautiously opened it. The screen of my smartphone lit up with line after line of code.

‘Is this… code?’

I gasped in shock—but soon noticed something strange.

‘Wait a second, this is…’

The names of the functions and variables were odd.

‘Fire, Mana, Casting?’

This wasn’t the kind of code normally used in game development.

Still, reading through it, I could roughly understand what it did.

It was the code for the spell where I had discovered the bug.

And clearly, they had sent it so I could fix it.

However…

‘What language is this?’

Despite its oddities, it still followed typical programming structure, so I could tell it was code.

But the syntax didn’t match any programming language I knew.

‘Is this some obscure language?’

Whatever it was, I had to figure it out.

I could work with it just by identifying patterns—but knowing the language would make it much easier.

> “Can you tell me what language this is?”

But the reply was something I never expected.

> “It’s simply the language of magic. It doesn’t have a formal name. If you really need to call it something, then perhaps ML—Magic Language—would suffice.”

Are they out of their minds?

A custom language?

‘I’ve never heard of a dev crazy enough to make their own language just to implement in-game magic.’

It might be theoretically possible—but anyone who cares even a bit about compatibility or optimization would never attempt such a thing.

Still… I liked it.

For developers of the Chronicles of Terrasia, this kind of insanity felt just right.

> “Thank you for the answer.”

With that, I began coding immediately.

Since ML was a custom language, of course there was no proper editor.

But that also meant something like a smartphone notepad would do just fine.

‘First, the bug…’

As I thought, the fix was straightforward.

But—

‘Now that I look at it, the bug isn’t the only issue.’

The code was a bit sloppy.

Not terrible, but for someone who went so far as to create their own language for a game, it had more than a few rough spots.

‘Well, it does run as is, but…’

Let’s just say—it could be optimized.

‘Might as well polish it up a bit.’

Just in case, I saved a version with only the bug fix first.

Then I started tweaking other parts as well.

Unnecessary repeated operations.

Potential infinite loops.

Memory waste.

I was deep in focus, tapping madly on my smartphone screen, optimizing line after line.

So immersed, in fact, that I didn’t even notice someone tapping my shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir…”

I looked up—and saw someone standing before me.

The bus driver.

“Yes?”

“This is the last stop.”

Apparently, while I had been lost in my optimization frenzy, we had reached the terminal.

“Just a second.”

“Sir, you need to get off—”

“Just one minute! I mean it.”

I was serious.

I quickly checked through the optimized code one last time.

‘No typos… seems solid.’

I would’ve liked to actually run the program—no, the spell—and test it myself.

But of course, that wasn’t possible in real life.

In the end, all I could do was trust the code I had written.

[Sent.]

I confirmed the file was sent, then got to my feet.

“Sorry about that.”

I apologized and moved to exit the bus.

But then—buzz. My phone vibrated again.

‘Huh?’

It was a reply from the developers.

> “Impressive.”

Just a short line of admiration.

I hadn’t debugged it expecting praise or anything, so it caught me off guard.

But that wasn’t all.

> “Since we’ve confirmed your potential, we will now fulfill the contract.”

Potential? Contract?

Those bizarre words only deepened my confusion.

‘Huh?’

And suddenly, my vision began to blur.

‘What…’

Translatin_Otaku

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