The Genius Programmer Turned Wizard - GPW Chapter 11: The Shallow Hollow (4)

To her, the realm of magic—the Circle—had always taken the form of a door.
At least, ever since that day she awakened to magic while locked inside the wardrobe.

‘Mom… Dad…’

Her family had never stayed in one place for long.
Always moving from mountain to mountain, living in remote and isolated areas.
But she had been too young back then to even question why.
Her world had been her mother, her father, and nature. And that alone had been enough to make her happy.
At least… until they came.

In the middle of the night, the sky suddenly turned crimson.
A massive barrier had encircled their house.
And people in black robes began walking toward it.
Her parents, rather than trying to escape, had chosen to save at least their daughter.
They shoved her into the wardrobe and sealed it shut with magic.
Inside, she held her breath and peeked out through the gap in the door.

Her father was mercilessly cut down by a man wielding a sword.
And her mother… resisted them with magic.

If only she had been able to use magic properly back then.
If only she had been strong enough… maybe she could’ve opened the door and saved her mother.
It was a regret she had carried for as long as she could remember.
But the truth was, she had been weak.
She hadn’t been able to open the door.

“Hhk… sniff…”

All she could do was hold tight to the scroll her mother had pressed into her hands, and cry in silence.

“Hey, you hear something?”
“Now that you mention it… Where’s the little brat?”
“Check that wardrobe over there.”

Click.

The moment the door opened, she tore the parchment in her hands.
A blinding light washed over her vision, and a floating sensation enveloped her body.
Splash—!
In the next instant, she was tossed into water.
Flailing in the pitch-black depths, she was pulled up toward the surface by an unseen force.

“What the—? It’s just a kid?”

A voice, sounding genuinely dumbfounded.

“I thought some outlaw had cast a Teleport spell… into the heart of the Magic Tower, no less…”

She lifted her head and saw the massive Red Magic Tower reflected in the lake—and above it, a mage in a red robe floating leisurely in mid-air.

His gaze turned to the pendant around her neck.

“That pendant…”

A brief silence passed, then he asked:

“Are your parents… dead?”

She remained silent, but he let out a knowing sigh.

“Hmm… I see.”

He lingered in a gloomy mood for a moment, but soon continued:

“Do you know why they died?”
“…”
“Because they were weak.”

It was the truth.
Because she was weak, she hadn’t been able to save them.
So with a trembling voice, she asked him:

“Then… what do I need to do to become strong?”

From that day on, she entered the Red Magic Tower.
For five years, she poured everything she had into growing stronger.
Her growth was so extraordinary that she earned the nickname Red Saint—a name scarcely found in the history of the tower.

And yet… she still couldn’t open the door.
She could see the door.
She could recognize the handle.
She could reach for it and even turn it.
But it remained shut.

Until—

“Just blow the whole damn door off.”

A brutally straightforward solution.

Adeline blankly stared into space at the suggestion.

“Adel—”
“So that was it.”

Huh?
As I blinked in confusion, she added:

“Buy me some time. Just a moment is enough.”

With that, she raised her staff toward the door and began drawing a magic circle.

‘I have no idea what spell she’s casting…’

But if it was her, I was sure she could do it.
Believing that, I turned to the others and relayed the situation:

“Lady Adeline is going to break through the door! Until then, hold out and protect her!”

I, too, began tweaking the code for Magic Shotgun on the fly.

‘It doesn’t need to be as powerful as before.’

If I went too strong, I’d only get a few shots off.
Instead, I aimed to modify it for wide-range suppressive fire—enough to hold back the Skeleton Soldiers swarming us from all directions.

‘Something like this should work.’

I referenced the spell Adeline had been preparing to cast on the skeletons earlier.

“Duck!”

Boom—!
Bullets fired in every direction, momentarily halting the surge of skeletons.
There was no way Liam would miss that opening.

“Hraaah!”

He swung his spear wide, and the skeletons in its path crumbled like dominoes.

Clang!

Ron, too, bashed a skeleton aside with his shield.

‘That landed clean!’

The fallen skeletons tangled together, unable to rise properly.
At this rate—

‘Huh?’

From the corner of my vision, I spotted a lone skeleton.
It was darting straight for Adeline’s back while she was mid-cast.
Her eyes were still shut, fully focused on the spell.

‘I have to stop it—!’

Just as I was about to cast Magic Shotgun again to stop that thing—

‘No.’

I immediately changed my mind.
If I fired the Magic Shotgun here, she on the other side might get caught in the blast.
I canceled the casting and recalled another spell.

‘The spell Adeline used to take the letter of recommendation from me.’

Magic Web

In that moment, Mana spread out like a spider’s web.
It wrapped around the right ankle of the Skeleton Soldier.
Clack!
The skeleton fell over, unable to reach Adeline.
Fwoosh—
Then, in front of Adeline’s staff, a massive spear of flame emerged.
Fire Lance.
It was a 3rd-Circle spell, so of course Adeline could use it—but the size was something else entirely.

‘A 3rd-Circle Fire Lance is that big?’

And surely she didn’t have much Mana left by now.
The moment my eyes naturally drifted toward her magic circle—

Flash— My vision turned completely white.
At the same time, heat spread through my skin.

‘This is—!’

Before I could even recover from my surprise, my surroundings came back into view.
And then a horrifying sight stretched out before my eyes.
A charred path extended in a straight line from where Adeline had been standing, and every Skeleton Soldier that had stood in its path had vanished.
No, not just the Skeletons.
Even the area where the door had once been was now just a gaping hole.

‘I didn’t expect this much power…’

Somewhat bewildered, I watched as all the remaining Skeleton Soldiers—including the one I had trapped—crumbled into bone dust.
And Adeline… collapsed on the spot.

‘Adeline?’

At first, I thought she’d collapsed due to Mana depletion.
After all, the sheer force of that last spell would make that easy to believe.
But as I stepped a little closer, I realized—

‘This girl…’

Her eyes were still open.
And in them—I saw something like excitement, even euphoria.
It was a look all too familiar to any programmer who spent every day staring at a black screen full of white code, confronting their own reflection.
The look of someone who had just broken through a wall.

Ziiing.
At that moment, a new magic circle began to etch itself into the ground around her as she knelt on one knee.

“What, what’s happening?”
“Wasn’t it all over?!”

It was true—the danger in this room had passed.
But for her, it seemed things were only just beginning.

‘This is…!’

This magic circle was clearly different in shape from any I’d seen before.
It drew a complex circular pattern, which then extended outward and began to form another circle.

‘A Circle…?’

I remembered a forum post titled “Let’s Talk About Small Game Details.”
That post had talked about this very type of magic circle—where the number of circles represented the number of tiers (or Circles) the caster possessed.
In short, each individual ring symbolized one Circle of a mage.

‘But you’re only supposed to see this when someone’s ascending to the next Circle…’

From a gamer’s perspective, her current action was completely irrational.

‘She’s trying to ascend a Circle… right here in the middle of a dungeon.’

She’s insane.
I already knew she wasn’t a normal person, but this?
Of course, if she succeeded, it wouldn’t matter.
But raising your Circle always came with the risk of failure—
And that risk wasn’t some simple miscast.
It could leave a mage permanently crippled.

And yet here she was, performing it without a shred of hesitation.
As a gamer, I was horrified.
…But as a programmer, my legs started to move on their own.

‘If this really is a magic circle… then surely…!’

I stepped closer, narrowing my eyes and focusing hard.

‘I can see it!’

Her magic circle began to distort with static, its form gradually shifting.
What was once an indecipherable squiggle of lines started to transform—into letters I recognized.

‘…Wait a second.’

`[aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20=]`

I couldn’t help but sigh in disappointment at the string of meaningless letters and numbers before me.

‘So that’s how it is, huh.’

[System Message]
The magic circle is encrypted and cannot be interpreted.
Please enter the correct decryption key.

‘Well, yeah. No way they’d just show such an important circle in plain view.’

And judging by the structure, it probably couldn’t be decrypted without a personal key only she knew.
Even so, I wasn’t ready to walk away empty-handed.

‘I’ll extract something!’

Encryption couldn’t perfectly conceal everything.
At the very least, the outline…
If I could identify even the bare structure—its architecture!

‘……!’

Like a blind man feeling out the shape of an elephant, I focused not on the text, but on the structure.
I pieced fragments together, trying to see the whole.
And searched my memory for code with a similar layout.

‘The fact that Mana is like machine code… this world’s magic definitely follows computer science principles!’

I knew there was a similar piece of code in my mind somewhere!
I rummaged through my memory again and again.
Meanwhile, Adeline’s fourth circle was forming.
And the moment I saw its full shape, a wave of déjà vu crashed into me.

‘Wait… this shape is—!’

Ah.

‘Operating System (OS).’

The moment that word came to mind—
Splat. Adeline collapsed, coughing up blood.

Translatin_Otaku

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