The Genius Programmer Turned Wizard - GPW Chapter 12: The Shallow Hallow (5)

‘Huh?’

Adeline was collapsed in front of me, dark red blood dripping from her lips.

‘She… failed?’

I was stunned.
Of course, I’d considered the possibility of failure—but for some reason… with her talent, it just felt like success was inevitable.

“Move, damn it!”

Liam rushed over, checking Adeline’s limp condition.

“What the hell happened!?”
“She attempted to advance to the 4th Circle… but it seems she failed.”
“Shit. Why the hell would this crazy girl do something that dangerous in a place like this!?”

He grabbed Adeline’s shoulders and started shaking her.

“Hey! Hey, wake up! Who the hell do you think we relied on to get this far…!”

But Adeline showed no signs of regaining consciousness.

“Damn it!”

Liam finally let her go, then turned his gaze toward what had once been a “door,” now destroyed by Adeline.

“What’s the point of punching a hole through if we can’t use it? At this rate…”

Then it happened.

“Huh?”

Liam reacted like he’d seen something strange.
Rumble—
The scattered stone fragments near the hole in the wall began to tremble faintly and gather together.

‘Already?’

It seemed a considerable amount of time had passed while I’d been focused on Adeline’s circle.

‘The restoration is starting!’

This was bad.
Once that hole was sealed, the Skeleton Soldiers would start spawning again.
And right now, Adeline couldn’t move…!

“We need to get out of here—now!”

There was no time. We had to escape through that hole, even if it was just barely open!

“Come on…!”

But then I realized something.

“L-Liam-nim…”

Even Ron, with a face full of fear, and Liam were both staring at the entrance we had originally come through.

“Shit, we’re retreating! Apprentice, you can carry one girl on your back, right?”
“No, you can’t!”
“What? You saying you can’t carry her?”
“No, that’s not it…”

We can’t go back now.

‘We’re almost there.’

Just a little further, and we’d reach the ancient magic hidden deeper inside!

“Leader! Let’s go forward!”

It was Ethan.

“Forward? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what might be ahead?”
“And going back? What then? Isn’t it just going to be another room swarming with skeletons like before?”
“Shit, I’d take skeletons! What if it’s a dragon up ahead!?”

In the midst of the rising tension, Ethan and Liam started clashing.

While they were distracted, I didn’t pick Adeline up. Instead, I sat down in front of her magic circle.

‘If the circle—her OS—is corrupted…!’

Then we just have to restore it!
Adeline’s circle still lay spread across the floor.
I quickly began analyzing its structure.

Then I bit my lower lip.

‘It’s… a live server?’

Her circle was still operating, even while she was unconscious.
It was functioning with incredible precision—almost like a living organism.

‘This is dangerous.’

Tampering with code that’s running in real time is a dangerous move.
It’s incredibly difficult, and the risk if I fail is far too great.

‘I could cripple Adeline.’

With my own hands.

‘Shit…’

Suddenly, the faces of my party members overlapped with the faces of those I missed—the old dev team.
Nine parts doubt, one part hope.
They surrounded me with subtle, unreadable expressions.

“Are you insane? Even the security companies gave up on this.”
“Mess it up, and the whole thing crashes, right? What the hell are you thinking…”
“I’ll make it work. I promise.”

But I wasn’t planning to fail.
Losing my blood-and-sweat-coded system? I’d rather die.
Abandoning a result I was just about to complete? Even worse!

“I can do this.”

Besides, I was confident.
Dangerous? Sure. Even a minor slip-up could blow the whole thing.
Then don’t slip.

‘I found it!’

I finally located the corrupted section deep within Adeline’s circle.
But something was off.
The code had been encrypted—and then, a few lines had been manually deleted.
The break was clean. No traces of accidental corruption. It was as if it had been deliberately cut off.

‘This…’

There’s no way this was some random error.
It was clearly an external attack—like a hack.

“Hey, apprentice. What the hell are you doing now?”

Liam grabbed the back of my neck.

“I said, what are you doing at a time like this!”
“I’m trying to wake Adeline.”
“What?”
“Whether we retreat or move forward… either way, we need her awake, don’t we?”

Right. For now, restoring her circle had to be my priority.

‘I found the damaged area.’

Now all that remained was replacing it with a valid, working code.

‘The problem is figuring out what that valid code is…’

The code was still encrypted, and even if I decrypted it, I didn’t know the structure of her entire circle. It was close to impossible.

‘But this section—it corresponds to the 1st Circle!’

I recalled what she had done earlier.
The posture. The feeling.
I focused on the OS concept with everything I had.

And then—

Ziiiing.

The code for my own 1st Circle unfurled from within me.

Suddenly, startled voices burst out from around me.

“What are you doing? You said you were going to wake the mage…!”

“Sh-shouldn’t we stop him?!”

“You idiot, just because you reached the 2nd Circle doesn’t mean you can—”

No, I wasn’t trying to level up my Circle.

I simply grasped the necessary part from within my own Circle, then immediately dismantled it.
And then, I overlaid that code onto Adeline’s code.

“Guh…!”

Adeline opened her eyes.

“What…?”

Unlike Ethan, who was flustered, Liam quickly issued an order.

“Apprentice! Right now—”

But I was already carrying Adeline on my back before he could finish speaking.

‘I can finally go!’

A hole through which a heavy concentration of Mana Power continued to pour in.

I started running toward it.

“Wait, fall back! I said fall back, you bastard!”

Sure. You guys go retreat by yourselves.

“Shit!”

Eventually, Liam and the others began chasing after me as well.
The hole had shrunk to the point where an adult man had to crouch just to squeeze through.
And once I passed through—

‘…!’

A completely different, vast space spread out before me.

A high ceiling, supported by towering columns.
Scattered rubble from collapsed pillars littering the floor.

‘This is it!’

I had finally arrived.
The deepest part of the dungeon—the place where ancient magic resided!

“Haa… haa…”

Just as I was catching my breath and preparing to step forward—

“My…”

A weak voice called out from behind.

“Put me… down…”

I’d nearly forgotten that I was still carrying Adeline.

As she requested, I gently set her down. She staggered away from me and collapsed against a wall.
Her complexion wasn’t good—she may have regained consciousness, but the internal damage remained.
Meanwhile, the others also crawled through the hole and entered this new space.

“Wh-where is this…?”

“Damn, it’s huge. There could be a dragon in here.”

Ron and Liam immediately assumed a defensive stance.

“Sir, how…? How did you do it? You looked at the penalty for failing the Circle upgrade and treated it like it was nothing!”

Ethan, on the other hand, was still running his mouth.

I let his voice go in one ear and out the other, taking in the scenery before me with wide eyes.

At a glance, it was a quiet, empty space.
But not to my eyes.

‘What the hell is this?’

To be honest… I was overwhelmed.
Until now, I had to focus my vision to see the code within magic circles or detect the Mana from ancient magic.
But not here.

Even without trying, I could see it.
Fragments of code—presumably ancient magic—floating freely in the air.
Countless incomplete words swimming like schools of fish, forming and dissolving into massive shapes.

“Come to think of it, isn’t this place kind of creepy?”

“That’s a dumb—actually, shit, you’re right. My body feels weirdly heavy.”

Even the others—non-mages—could feel the pressure of this place.

‘Something’s wrong.’

I stepped toward the area where the Mana was densest.

‘No… it’s beyond wrong. This is extraordinary.’

I ran my hand through the floating fragments of code and thought to myself:

‘This Mana is completely insane.’

At that moment, I heard Liam calling me from behind.

“Hey! Apprentice! Apprentice! Where are you going?!”

But he didn’t follow.

No—he couldn’t follow.

‘This ancient magic… interferes with space itself.’

The role of this Mana was likely to generate the endlessly repeating rooms we passed earlier.
But just as fire-element Mana feels warm, spatial Mana pressed against the body with raw resistance.

It felt like trying to move upstream against a powerful current.

At least I could see the flow of Mana, which let me navigate through the areas with weaker resistance.

‘Incredible.’

What kind of magic could generate Mana like this?

How much could be achieved if this were adapted?
I want to know.
I want to understand it—and use it.

Following the current upstream, I finally arrived at the source.

It was a stone slab, thick with dust.
I bent down and brushed it clean.

A magic circle engraved on the slab came into view.
And that circle began to manifest as code—code formatted exactly like what I’d seen in my status window.

‘Finally!’

How long had I waited for this moment?

Ever since arriving in this world… no, even before that—I had always been curious about this code.

Ancient magic.
Code that could link spaces together and rewind time itself—a system that literally manipulated the laws of the world!

How was it even implemented? I was dying to find out.
I’d analyzed and deconstructed it every day.
I tried replicating it and failed over and over again, sometimes laughing like a lunatic in frustration.

But now, that very code was unfolding before my eyes.

And then—
Shhk.
I felt someone’s presence behind me.

Someone had pushed through the current of Mana and reached this place.

‘Adeline?’

No, she didn’t seem well enough to even walk.

Even if she could see the Mana, following me through this would’ve been impossible.

But…

‘There was another mage.’

The one who hacked Adeline’s Circle.

I turned around.

Standing there was a man armed with a dagger and a bow.

‘Ethan.’

So it really was you.

Translatin_Otaku

•