Epilogue: The City of the Dead Mage (1)
I'd gathered some manpower for the game club, but the pure development team was just Wiki and me.
Wiki couldn't even handle specialized tasks like log analysis.
It could output the source code, but it didn't really understand what was going on in detail.
The result?
"Ah, damn it……."
"What? Did you find something?"
Liana Aishinkiore poked her head in, her face full of curiosity.
"I found something, but…… how do I even explain this? I have no idea what the hell Kasian did inside the Dimension."
The log I'd checked was perfectly normal.
Kasian Valerius had steadily progressed through the route for the true ending.
The City of the Dead Mage had three endings in total.
True, normal, and bad.
Of course, achieving the true ending came with conditions.
1. Realize Mary and Lucy's true identities in the hidden council facility.
2. Reach at least 60% affinity with each of them.
True to his status as a 7th circle mage, Kasian had figured out their identities faster than any player.
He'd even built up quite a bit of affection—by the final chapter, Mary's affinity had hit 99.8%.
All that was left was the finale.
Facing the last boss, Vedas, and Lucy bursting out to unleash her power.
If your affinity was too low from the start, you wouldn't even make it this far.
Mary and Lucy wouldn't come to save you.
You'd die alone, pathetically watching Vedas's back as it lumbered off to devour Mary and Lucy.
That was the bad ending.
But if you'd raised your affinity high enough?
The player faced a brutal choice between two options.
Kill Lucy to stop Vedas's ascension—that was the true ending.
Or kill Mary instead.
Since both Mary and Lucy were needed for the ascension, killing Mary instead of Lucy still doomed it.
In that case, Vedas failed its goal, and Lucy hit it with a suicide attack, vanishing together.
You survived, but with no one left to protect. That was the normal ending.
I figured he'd obviously pick the true ending.
After all, the log showed 99.8% affinity with Mary, but only 75% with Lucy.
Most players did the same.
Dante had vehemently opposed turning Mary into some "over-immersion death squad," so she reaped the benefits as the first character players met.
That's why Yuuka from the blue academy city with the teacher always ranked in the top 5 of popularity polls, right?
The design made players feel closer to Mary than Lucy by default.
But…… why the hell did Lucy's affinity hit 99.8% at the very end too?
And that wasn't all.
Final_Chapter_Underground_Sanctuary [Extreme Hard]
[Stay Time] 117:32:11
*Sound of magic barrier shattering.
Kasian: I can't let you sacrifice yourselves on your own again this time.
[■■■ ■■] Unauthorized ■■ ■■■ ■■ ■■ security■■ activated…… ■■ FAILED! ■■■■ ■■■■
Kasian: Mary, Lucy. You're already family to me.
[■■■in ■■ occurrence■■■■] adasdaf:Is the input invalid?
From the point after the Mary OR Lucy choice, every log entry was corrupted into unrecognizable gibberish.
"……What the hell!? That's creepy! It's all messed up! It wasn't like this before?"
Liana had experience checking Dementia: Lost Memories logs during the Lancaster vice-count murder investigation.
I shook my head.
There were no viruses in this world.
And the Dimension's magic formation wasn't faulty either.
"So what the hell is wrong?"
A dizzying, frustrating feeling hit me for the first time in ages, and a headache started brewing.
Then, whoosh—a translucent floating mass shimmered in front of my eyes.
"Wiki!!!"
"Whoa! Wiki's back?! Thank goodness……."
Liana had no spirit affinity, so she couldn't sense, see, or talk to Wiki.
And even after months of knowing each other, she knew Wiki kept a subtle distance.
"Finish up and tell me if you find anything! We'll be waiting downstairs with everyone!"
She tactfully backed off.
As soon as Liana was a safe distance away, Wiki's voice came through, sounding exhausted.
"Yujin…… Is this why you had me handle monitoring?"
"Extreme Hard at 100% sync rate…… A 2nd circle like me monitoring that would've blown my brains out. You wanna see me leaking brain fluid from my nose?"
"I took damage too!!!"
"But…… Wiki-chan's a spirit, so she doesn't die……."
That's why I kept the other Cubes at 10-20% sync.
That was the sweet spot for "game level."
Why 100% for Kasian?
Well, to convincingly bullshit a court mage, but also……
'The bastard deserved it.'
A 7th circle mage who wouldn't die to just anything.
But he barged in on my sweet holiday, threatened me, insulted my master, and even dragged my family into it?
He'd just feel the pain—no real death—so I figured fuck him.
But not only did he trash the system log, overload the Cube, and awaken to 8th circle in the process?
'How the fuck did he do that…….'
"Yujin! Keep this up and I'm out! I'll do that strike thing you mentioned! Guarantee spirit rights! Spirits first!!"
I settled with two top-grade magic stones and a forest stroll next week.
Only then did Wiki explain the full story of the broken log.
"Crazy…… He activated forbidden magic? No wonder the core processing overloaded……!!"
The comms blackout with Wiki wasn't anything else.
Crash. A runtime error, specifically.
The magic in The City of the Dead Mage was standard spells from the council's Magic Codex.
The target audience was mages, after all.
I figured even a 7th or 8th circle wouldn't recklessly spam unique or forbidden magic, whatever they picked.
Extreme Hard was designed for solid tension around 6th circle level.
But Kasian slammed forbidden magic straight into the final boss made unbeatable.
Forbidden magic, literally—proprietary to its creator mage, inheritable only by those with the same mana circuits.
No way the database had that.
The Cube tried reverse-engineering a nonexistent spell, causing massive overload.
It even temporarily disabled monitoring Wiki.
Meaning Arkythia's formation—which handles grand mage meteors easily—got overwhelmed, if briefly.
That's why the logs got wrecked.
"……Empire's hero is no joke. Deserves that archmage title."
I got Wiki's detailed error report and quickly inspected the Dimension system.
Thankfully, just a null error from loading nonexistent data.
The system itself was fine.
But during the check, I spotted another anomaly.
"What the hell is this now……."
[Item_ID: Weapon_MarySummerfield.model]
[Referenced model (.model) does not exist within Dimension.]
[Value: NONE]
[Tracking: Failed]
Summerfield MK.1, Mary's basic weapon and unique model with slight tweaks, was corrupted.
<Unknown_Item>
The integrity check right before game start had shown no issues…….
Argh, headache!
At least nothing major broke.
Normal difficulty still ran fine.
"Anyway, Wiki, you okay?"
"……Worried awfully quick. I'm fine. Like you said, I'm a spirit. Got force-ejected to the spirit corridor, though."
"Not an emergency evac, and it bounces you to the spirit realm in a crisis?"
"News to me too, Yujin. Never happened before."
Whatever. At least Kasian Valerius wouldn't press harder over this.
He'd even broken through his wall to 8th circle.
Rumors spreading would be trouble, but for now, I hoped it'd defuse the imperial aggro.
Master had rushed to the council to manage things properly.
"Wiki, what can we do when we can't even hit 3rd circle after a hundred Dimensions?"
"Grab a mop, Yujin. Floor's still soaked."
"Tch……."
I planned to keep running integrity tests on The City of the Dead Mage.
Fix errors as they pop, find solutions to problems.
No matter what happened.
Game development had to continue.