An Unexpected Beauty and Two Lines of Code
Wait. Did the academy actually have a beauty like this?
Stunned by the unexpected customer's arrival, my eyes kept instinctively drifting toward her face. Her lustrous, deep blue-black hair gleamed beneath the incoming sunlight, tied back into a high ponytail. Every feature seemed tailor-made for her small, refined face, dominated by striking, feline eyes that carried an aloof, coy edge, down to her vivid, petal-soft lips. Staring at her face alone was enough to leave a man spellbound.
Having been dragged around the cafeterias and lecture halls on endless errands, I thought I had seen most of the student body by now, but someone of this caliber was unprecedented. And her face was only the beginning. The real spectacle lay beneath.
Standing just a hair shorter than me, she had to be in the low one-seventies in centimeters, carrying herself with an upright, athletic grace that radiated pure vitality. And then, impossible to ignore, was her bust. Is that... the largest pair I've ever seen in my life? While I was hardly an expert on bra sizing, they easily started somewhere around a G-cup.
The buttons on her crisp white dress shirt and charcoal academy jacket strained under immense pressure, practically screaming in agony as they fought to contain her massive chest. Beneath them tapered a trim, firm waistline. Her uniform skirt and the black over-knee socks riding high on her legs barely covered a pair of wide, voluptuous hips and powerful thighs that easily rivaled her bust. It was the exact same uniform worn by every other student, so why did it look several sizes too small on her? To think a girl this unimaginably curvaceous existed on campus. It was a feast for the eyes, certainly, but I had no idea where to safely anchor my gaze.
Take your time with your business, Boss Walter. Take all the time you need.
“Excuse me?”
“Ah, yes?! My apologies. How can I help you?”
Her call snapped me out of my trance.
“This is the magic tool workshop, right? Where should I place the item I'd like to leave with you?”
“Ah, yes, absolutely. You can set it down right here.”
Get a grip, Noel. What kind of apprentice stands there drooling while a customer is left waiting at the door? Taking the box, I placed it on the counter, and she lifted the lid. Resting inside was a pristine white metal bracelet meant for the wrist. It was unexpectedly wide, fitted with a thin plate covering its inner surface.
“It's a magic tool that amplifies physical strength. Its mana has nearly run dry. Would it be possible to recharge it right away?”
“The workshop master is away at the moment, so we can't inspect it immediately. If you leave it with us, I'll inform him as soon as he returns.”
As I opened the ledger, she kept one hand resting on the box lid and pressed further.
“I absolutely need it back by tomorrow. Will that be alright? I have a duel scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Hmm... There's no physical damage, just a standard recharge, correct?”
“Yes. I considered sending it back to my family estate, but having it shipped off just for a simple recharge felt unnecessary, so I brought it here.”
Judging by her resolute tone, she looked ready to snatch the box back and march out the door if I hesitated. It wasn't a repair, just a routine recharge—surely we could manage that before tomorrow. I had never seen Walter break a sweat over something so basic. Besides, turning away an unprecedented beauty like her would practically be grounds for revoking my man card.
“Understood. If you come by tomorrow morning, we'll have it charged and ready for use. May I have your name and year?”
“Aurélie de Clermont. Second year in the Knight Course.”
Only after I jotted down her name did Aurélie finally lift her hand from the box. Now that I knew who she was, would it be okay to greet her if we ever crossed paths around campus? Granted, there was no guarantee a noble lady like her would even remember me.
“Then I'll return tomorrow morning. I'm counting on you.”
“Of course. Have a safe walk back, Lady Clermont.”
After seeing Aurélie out the door, I trudged back to the reception counter and let out a long, unnecessary sigh. Left alone, the workshop suddenly felt far emptier than before. If customers like her showed up every day, this apprenticeship wouldn't be half bad.
“Aurélie de Clermont...”
Murmuring the name penned into the ledger, I carried the box containing her bracelet over to the workbench.
Even after waiting quite a while, Walter showed no sign of returning. Technically, I should have just sat tight and let him handle it later, but my hands kept itching toward the box sitting in front of me.
Couldn't I just take the initiative and recharge it myself?
It wasn't as if recharging required any profound arcane secrets; I simply hadn't had the chance to do it yet. Much like Earth's batteries, mana stones in magic tools were divided into two main categories: integrated and replaceable. According to Walter, if prying the stone out felt like it would break the tool, it was integrated; if it popped out cleanly, it was replaceable. One might complain that this was an absurdly crude rule of thumb, but considering how long he had held down this job at the Imperial Academy, the man clearly knew what worked.
At any rate, if I finished the job and presented it to Walter upon his return, he might finally trust me with simple tasks down the line. Right, let's treat this as hands-on training.
Sitting at the workbench, I laid out an assortment of tools. Spreading a clean cloth over the wood, I retrieved the bracelet and carefully unfastened the tiny screws securing the inner cover. Terrified of leaving so much as a scratch, I handled it with utmost care, but once the cover came off, a surprisingly familiar internal structure greeted my eyes. Affixed inside the cover was a small mana stone, paired with a thin, elongated metallic band that ran along the inner circumference of the bracelet.
However, there was one glaring detail that rubbed me entirely the wrong way.
“What in the world... All of this is a spell formula?”
A dumbfounded mutter slipped past my lips. The sheer volume of the spell formula engraved upon the plate was beyond absurd. Characters were crammed into every millimeter of space with hardly a speck of margin left—at first glance, I honestly thought I was looking at a user manual for a home appliance.
Reading the script itself wasn't difficult. The problem was that even when I read it, it made zero sense.
“...O stars that traverse the heavens, O mother of the pulsing earth, awaken the mana to grant this vessel strength enough to move mountains and overturn rivers...”
What was with this cringe-inducing drivel? Did one really need to summon the heavens and the earth just to ask for a slight boost in physical strength? Morbid curiosity got the better of me, so I grabbed a sheet of paper and transcribed the entire formula from start to finish. If I thought the opening lines were theatrical, the rest only escalated. After skimming verses about the glorious vessel and unyielding will, I felt less like an enchanter and more like a clerk copying down a legal waiver signing away someone's bodily rights.
But tucked away within the florid prose, a few words with actual, tangible meaning popped up here and there. I underlined the segment designating the user, circled the phrase commanding the augmentation of strength, and highlighted the directive to draw power from the mana stone. Once those key elements were isolated, the impenetrable wall of text finally began to make sense.
Where to draw mana from, whom to apply it to, and how to alter that person's strength.
Broken down like this, the architecture was surprisingly simple. Reading only the underlined parts provided more than enough logic to define the bracelet's function. Conversely, no matter how many times I re-read the invocations to heavenly stars and earthly mothers, I couldn't discern their practical purpose whatsoever. Was this some bizarre law of attraction where the universe answers if you pray hard enough?
Sifting through my residual memories, it seemed the original Noel hadn't been taught the theory behind it either. Transcribe the spell formulas without error. Never smudge a stroke or omit a letter. That was the extent of his training; the memory contained not a shred of conceptual understanding as to why it had to be done that way.
Add the desired amount of strength to the wearer.
In my previous life, if someone had asked me to write code that accomplished that function, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second. Wait. My previous life? Memories of my days as a software engineer flashed through my mind like a revolving lantern, and before I knew it, my hand instinctively scribbled a familiar snippet onto the paper.
user.power += k;
A dead-simple line of pseudocode that even an elementary schooler could grasp in ten seconds.
“Ha.”
A dry chuckle escaped me at the absurdly concise one-liner. The era of writing code with pen and paper had ended decades ago, yet here I was, handwritten-coding in a fantasy world.
Right then, a spark fired across my brain. Come to think of it, isn't an enchantment's spell formula just a set of instructions written to execute a specific operation using mana? Software executed tasks when written in predetermined syntax. Wouldn't enchanting function on an identical principle?
I needed to know whether enchanting demanded strict adherence to dogmatic stroke orders and ancient phrases, or if it simply required the underlying intent to be logically sound. If it was the former, the code I had just scribbled was nothing more than useless graffiti. But if it was the latter, the rules of the game changed completely. There would be zero reason to write a lengthy novel just to execute a single task. Of course, at this stage, it was pure hypothesis.
First things first: the mana stone needed recharging. Imitating Walter's technique, I lightly tapped the retaining bracket with a tool, and the mana stone wobbled like a loose baby tooth. Only then did Walter's words click. Old man Walter, were you an elite tutor in disguise all along?
Realizing it was indeed a replaceable model, I decoupled the depleted mana stone from its bracket and swapped in a pre-charged spare from the workshop's inventory. Reassembling the components in reverse order proved surprisingly effortless despite my initial anxieties. Discovering that it was roughly on par with changing a watch battery left me feeling faintly sheepish.
To verify that it worked, I slipped the reassembled bracelet onto my wrist.
Huuuum—
With a low resonant hum, a faint glow spread across the metal, accompanied by a subtle surge of energy coursing through my limbs. Time for a test. Glancing around for something suitable, my eyes settled on a crate of spare parts I had hauled while cleaning earlier. Weighing nearly fifteen kilograms, it had been a chore to move, making it the ideal benchmark.
“Hup.”
Lifting the crate, it felt noticeably easier than before, though far from weightless. Alright, so this is its baseline.
Removing the bracelet and setting it on the workbench, I hesitated. If I boxed it back up and placed it on the shelf, my job was done. What if I meddled further and broke it? Still, I had accurately transcribed the original formula, and I thoroughly understood how it went together. Even if an experiment failed, I could always revert it to its original state.
“Screw it, whatever.”
Muttering the words, my resolve hardened. I popped out the mana stone, removed the strip-like enchanting plate, and cross-checked my written transcription to ensure nothing was missing. Then, rummaging through the shelves, I unearthed a scrap sheet of thin iron. Trimming it with shears into a band identical to the original spell formula plate, I took up a fine-tipped pen and inscribed a short block of code onto the metal.
device.ptrSource = DEVICE_SOCKET_0001;
user.power += 1;
In the first line, I designated an identifier pointing directly to the bracelet's mana stone socket, directing the tool to draw energy from that source. For the amplification value, I set it to a modest 1. While the integer '1' might seem small, I had no reference for what scale of physical enhancement it represented, so caution was paramount. For all I knew, it could boost my strength not by the factor of one person, but by one whole elephant.
Reassembling the bracelet while leaving the inner access cover open, I strapped it onto my wrist.
Huuuum...
Wait, what? It actually works?!
The metal gave off a soft sheen as a gentle pulse of physical power diffused through my muscles, slightly weaker than the original's baseline. I had half-expected the magic to reject it as nonsense gibberish, but this meant I could regulate the output simply by adjusting the numeric value.
Even so, I couldn't just throw in an arbitrary giant number. From what my fragmented memories told me, higher output required greater mana consumption, and if a magic tool couldn't endure the surge, the hardware itself would break. And even if the artifact held, my own body might tear itself apart under the strain. I also recalled that an evenly glowing mana stone indicated stable current, whereas erratic flickering signaled catastrophic instability. With clear benchmarks in place, all that remained was finding the optimal value the bracelet could tolerate through a bold, time-honored methodology: trial and error.
user.power += 2;
The moment I strapped the bracelet back on after bumping the value to 2—
Bzzzt, bzz-crack...
The mana stone began to sputter and spark with an ominous shudder.
“Gah! Stop, stop!”
Panicking, I ripped the bracelet off and dialed the value down to 1.5. To think I'd be running a binary search algorithm in another world.
After nearly thirty minutes of repeatedly fine-tuning the parameters—
user.power += 1.875;
I settled on 1.875 as the threshold for rock-solid stability. Confirming the final inscribed value, I set the pen aside. Wearing the bracelet, I flexed my fingers and rotated my arm in slow arcs, checking for any prickle of joint pain or strain.
“Alright. Let's see what you've got.”
Grabbing the metal handles of the parts crate I had tested earlier, I braced myself and applied steady upward force.
Whoosh.
The heavy crate shot off the floor as though filled with feathers.
“Wh-what the...?”
Having pulled it off myself, the sheer weightlessness almost threw me off balance. Removing the bracelet, I inspected the mana stone and the iron plate once more. No abnormal heat, no cracks, and my arms felt completely fresh. Compared to the performance under the original formula, the difference was night and day. A flawless upgrade.
Damn. If only I had this when I was hauling those flour sacks yesterday.
I would need to monitor it a bit more before handing it back to Aurélie tomorrow, but my initial experiment was a ringing success. Looking back down at the paper spread across the workbench, I saw the densely crammed transcription sitting side-by-side with my two lines of code. Replacing that wall of archaic prose with two succinct lines had not only worked—it had outperformed the original.
Maybe I won't be stuck doing menial chores forever after all.