The Genius Programmer Turned Wizard - GPW Chapter 14: The Shallow Hollow (7) (Part 1)

“Ethan-ssi. P-Please stop.”

Ron couldn’t understand.

He had gone on a few missions with Ethan before, and since they lived nearby, he even knew his family.
Ethan wasn’t the kind of man who would dare pull something this bold.
If anything, he was the cowardly, petty type of man.
The kind who always shamelessly clung to stronger people.
But the moment things got even a little dangerous, he would slither away like a snake.
He was the kind of man who would never make enemies with someone stronger than himself.

So then why…?

“Ron, stick with me.”
“…Huh?”
“I’ll give you 30%. If we hand this over to the Guild, we’ll barely get scraps. But that thing—mages would go nuts over it. We could sell it for a fortune on the black market.”

His tone was smug, like he was sure Ron wouldn’t refuse.

“I, I…”

But Ron couldn’t answer.
What could he say?

His grip tightened around his shield.

“….”

The shield gave no answer.
No, it had never once answered him to begin with.
Sometimes it felt light, other times heavy.
But he never really followed those signals.
Even today, he had felt the shield grow heavy… and yet, he had still come this far.
So once again, the decision had to be his.

“Ethan-ssi.”

Having made up his mind, he opened his mouth.

“This… this isn’t right.”

He wasn’t confident he could talk him down with logic.

So instead, he raised his shield and stepped in front of Ethan.

“…Is that so? That’s a shame…”

Ethan said as he readjusted his grip on his dagger.
And for some reason, Ron felt an odd sense of wrongness from the way he moved.

“Out of the way, you idiot!”

It was Liam.
He shoved Ron aside and stepped forward.

“Did you just try to stab me?”
“L-Liam-nim?!”

Liam pointed his spear at Ethan and charged.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

His spear sliced through the air like a raging storm.
But Ethan was still a C-rank Rogue.
He barely managed to dodge each strike.

Still… the difference was clear.
Liam was pressing the assault, while Ethan was barely managing to avoid the blows.

‘At this rate…!’

There wasn’t even time to intervene.

Shlunk—!

Liam’s spear pierced Ethan’s shoulder.

It was clearly a crippling, agonizing wound.
Yet Ethan didn’t so much as flinch.

‘Huh?’

Still skewered on the spear, Ethan closed the distance with Liam instead.
A dagger gleamed in his hand.

‘That’s… dangerous…!’

Just before the blade reached Liam’s chest—
Ethan suddenly stopped.
He wore a dazed expression, then dropped the dagger.

Clatter.

And then he began screaming in pain.

“Hrgh! Aaaargh! My shoulder! MY SHOULDER!!!”

What… what just happened?
Ron and Liam both froze, stunned by the incomprehensible turn of events.

That’s when a voice rang out from behind them.

“It won’t hold for long!”

It was Inux.

He held Adeline’s staff aloft, pointing it at the air.

“Bind him, now!”

—

‘Good, I wasn’t too late.’

I stared at the string of Mana.
It had been connected to Ethan just moments ago—controlling him.
But now, it had snapped in midair.

‘I did it.’

Normally, cutting off someone’s Mana is like trying to slice water with a blade.
I called it a “string,” but really, it’s just a flow—
like trying to sever a Wi-Fi signal floating through the air.

Of course, that’s in normal cases.
There are two special methods.

One of them involved the spell that Adeline had stored in her staff.

‘A spell with overwhelming firepower that vaporizes Mana in an instant.’

It’s the same principle as an EMP—wiping out all signals in an area with a burst of electromagnetic waves.

‘But it’s too dangerous to use in a confined space like this.’

If I wasn’t careful, I’d get caught in it too.

That’s why I went with the second option.

‘Interfering with the space itself.’

I looked at the code for the spell I was casting.

“`plaintext
[use mana type: space]
“`

Spatial magic.
The kind that includes ‘Teleport’ and other space-altering spells—
a popular branch in other games, commonly used by mages.

But not in this game.

Teleport, for example, was treated as a lost spell in the setting.
Research had been ongoing in the Red Magic Tower and elsewhere,
but no one had ever managed to restore it.

Back then, I thought it was just another quirky setting detail.

Now I understood why.

‘If magic is code… then Teleport is insanely hard to implement.’

Take this scenario:
What happens if a teleported object overlaps with another object at the destination?

Do they both vanish?
Does only one disappear?
And how do you implement that “disappearance,” anyway?

Also, how do you define “object” in the first place?
The air is filled with dust particles—
hell, even air itself is made of countless invisible bits.

When you consider all that…

Yeah.
I got it now.

It wasn’t implemented not because they didn’t want to…
But because it was just too damn hard—too buggy.

So they left it as a “lost spell” for lore.

But the funny thing is…

They still implemented it.
Just in the form of ancient magic.

‘They really are incredible.’

Translatin_Otaku

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