Debugging
While sweeping the floor, Dohyeon kept sneaking glances at the spell array.
The formula covering the entire floor of the laboratory looked like one enormous painting.
Hundreds of spell gates formed several concentric rings, and between each ring, thin lines intertwined like a spider's web. Apparently the floor alone hadn't been enough, because some of the spell gates climbed up the pillars and walls and continued all the way to the ceiling.
In this world, the methods of casting Taoist magic fell broadly into two categories.
Simple spells were written onto talismans in advance, while anything beyond a certain level required the caster to directly inscribe a massive formula into their mental image with spiritual energy to activate it.
'Astonishingly, this is nothing more than source code.'
Even what covered the laboratory right now wasn't a completed spell.
It was closer to a scaled-down version, stripped of everything but the core structure from the full formula in order to verify its viability.
If this succeeded and they actually deployed it, they would have to manifest a formula dozens of times larger in their mental image.
'Wow, someone wrote all of this by hand. No wonder debugging is a nightmare when readability is this bad.'
To Dohyeon's eye, at least, a spell written without properly using functions or loops was suffocating to behold.
"Ugh, I'm losing my mind. Why on earth won't this work?"
One of the researchers, slumped in front of the array, tore at his hair.
He hadn't slept properly in days; his face was deathly pale, and dark shadows sat beneath his eyes.
"Hmm, still not working?"
"I can't even find what the problem is, so there's no way it'll—"
The answering researcher froze mid-sentence.
Only belatedly registering the voice's owner, he jolted upright in alarm.
"Gah! Elder, you've arrived!"
At those words, every researcher in the laboratory snapped to attention, and the instructors overseeing the work also bowed their heads.
A woman stood in the entrance.
A woman draped in a snow-white robe with a green silk sash, she looked young enough to be in her twenties at a glance. She was beautiful, certainly, yet no one dared meet her eyes.
"Spare me the greetings."
The Elder waved a hand as she stepped into the laboratory.
"The Grand Elder is scheduled to arrive in an hour. I distinctly remember telling you that one or two more attempts would do it, no?"
"Th-that is... we managed to establish the circulation of spiritual energy."
"And?"
The researcher swallowed dryly before answering.
"But the moment the final spell gate redirects the energy back to the center, the entire array becomes unstable."
"You still haven't found the cause?"
The Elder slowly turned her head toward the cluster of instructors huddled in one corner.
In their own laboratories, each of them would have wielded near-absolute authority—but here, even the instructors couldn't risk speaking carelessly, and merely stammered.
"Haah..."
As if to voice the Elder's mood, a frigid chill poured out along with her sigh.
Everyone held their breath at the sight, but Dohyeon was not among them.
'Oh, so that's a manifested formula.'
A manifested formula.
Think of it as a kind of spell tattoo, engraved directly into the mental image itself by Taoists of the 5th Rank and above.
It could be used as naturally as breathing without needing to be drawn into the mental image, and it even reduced spiritual energy consumption. It was said that a Taoist who reached a certain realm could, when gripped by emotion, shake the very nature around them.
Curious, Dohyeon swept the thin layer of frost settled on the floor with his broom.
The Elder, still radiating cold, spoke.
"Then what exactly do you plan to show the Grand Elder?"
"..."
"Five whole years. That is how long you've spent developing this purification spell."
She walked slowly toward the instructors as she continued, and they began to back away step by step.
On the surface, it looked like a woman in her twenties bullying professors in their fifties.
"I trust you haven't forgotten how much spirit stone and spirit grass you've consumed over those five years. I personally laid out the basic structure for you, and instead of improving on it, you've managed to cause an explosion. You might at least have been honest and asked me for help."
The instructors' faces stiffened further. But what hardened their expressions wasn't humiliation—it was disgust with themselves.
Despite conducting research as instructors at Korea's finest academy, they had failed to improve the spell and instead ruined it. The realization flayed their self-respect raw.
The oldest of the instructors stepped forward.
"We will attempt it once more."
"Without even knowing the cause? An array expanded to this scale—even I couldn't identify the cause quickly."
"If we reduce the energy injection rate, we can buy time before it goes critical. In that window, we'll locate the unstable portion and repair it."
The Elder's eyes narrowed.
It was far from a satisfying answer, but there was no alternative.
"Hmph. Very well. I'll trust you one last time."
"Prepare the array!"
"Yes, sir!"
The moment the instructor's shout fell, the researchers under him leapt into motion all at once.
And Dohyeon, hearing it, nearly jumped out of his skin.
They're starting already?
The truth was that Dohyeon had been pretending to mop the floor while erasing parts of the array with his broom, and pretending to tidy up ink stones while secretly inscribing corrections. Everyone had been too busy getting chewed out by the Elder to notice.
But the array was enormous, and he hadn't managed to fix all of it yet.
"Laborer! We're about to run the test, so get out and come back when it's done."
"Excuse me?"
The problem with the current array was that every purification gate shared a single central hub.
The structure split contaminated spiritual energy into multiple fragments to process them, yet the results were all stored in one place.
When the first gate to finish purifying modified the energy at the center, the next gate received the modified energy instead of the original, processed it, and the whole thing kept colliding with itself.
Simply put, this whole disaster was a global variable problem...
'I still haven't fixed the central gate, though.'
Because Dohyeon had already cut away unnecessary connections, the transmission speed of spiritual energy was now dramatically faster than before.
Since he'd repaired the parallel processing flow, the time until detonation might actually have gotten shorter.
'I haven't solved the race condition yet, people!'
"What are you doing? I said get out, now!"
The researcher had already been scolded by the Elder, and was now irritated at the thought of being dragged off to the laboratory and berated by the instructor on top of it.
Just as the researcher's scowl was deepening at the sight of Dohyeon still dawdling—
Dohyeon abruptly began moving in an awkward, exaggerated way.
"Wh-whoa? I stepped wrong on the frost!"
Suddenly dancing in place as if skating on ice, he slipped and toppled straight toward the central spell gate.
In the split second of his fall, Dohyeon mobilized the pathetic thimbleful of spiritual energy inside his body and activated the spell he'd developed back at his dorm.
1st-Tier Shaping Spell.
Printing.
A spell squeezed out of his past life's knowledge of physics and code golf.
In terms of function, it was simple.
Rather than moving ink with spiritual energy, it raised the ink affinity of specific areas while lowering it everywhere else.
The ink then simply moved of its own accord, following nature's flow, so even a minuscule expenditure of energy could redirect its motion.
Like water finding its way downhill, the ink would travel exactly along the path Dohyeon designated.
I only made this because I got sick of drawing formulas by hand while messing around with talismans. Who knew it'd get used like this.
Thud-tang.
As he went down, Dohyeon pressed his palm against the central hub and triggered the spell.
Sliiide.
The formula painted across the floor began redrawing itself, following the shape he'd sketched in his mental image.
The structure where every gate had simultaneously hammered on the same central hub was transformed into one where each result was processed and stored independently, then merged at the very end.
Dohyeon's body rolled perilously past the central spell gate and tumbled to the far side.
"Y-you lunatic!"
The researcher who had been shooing Dohyeon out went white as a sheet.
"Do you even know where you just fell?!"
"I'm so sorry! My foot slipped on the frost, that's all!"
Dohyeon scrambled up and bowed repeatedly at the waist.
"Is this what you call—!"
The researcher was on the verge of seizing Dohyeon by the collar when—
"Enough."
The Elder's frost-edged voice rang through the laboratory.
"The array first."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
One of the instructors took two researchers and approached the central hub to inspect it.
Dohyeon seized the opening and began edging slyly toward the door.
"...Hm?"
The instructor stared at the spell gate for a long moment, then fell deep into thought.
Before long he called the other instructors over, and they gathered around the gate to discuss it.
Watching them, the Elder frowned.
"Is something the matter?"
"Ah—Elder, could you take a look at this section for a moment?"
The Elder approached and slowly began reading the central spell gate.
Her brow was still furrowed, but unlike before, it was from deep deliberation rather than irritation.
Several minutes passed in silence.
Then the Elder lifted her head and spoke slowly.
"I'd have to read the surrounding gates as well to be certain, but this portion that was changed by accident—it may well hold the answer."
"What do you mean?"
"For now, let's simply begin as it stands. Splitting the energy flow like this does seem like it should improve stability."
Dohyeon, who had been sweating bullets in case he got dragged off for a beating, quietly swallowed a sigh of relief at the sight.
Phew. So I got away with it, for now.
Though I can hardly say I debugged it perfectly, fixing it in such a rush.
By then he had slipped outside and was leaning against the wall, peering at the commotion within while busily running code through his head.
Hmm. I didn't miss anything, right?
"Spirit stone deployment complete!"
A researcher's shout carried out from the laboratory.
Whether the test had begun or not, blue light was spilling from inside.
Vuuuum—
A faint vibration reached even Dohyeon, leaning against the wall.
'Come on, work on the first try!'
Dohyeon swallowed dryly without meaning to.
Because that's the thing about code.
You never know if it has bugs until you run it.