Chapter 8: Programming powers

My life is over if I don’t become a dungeon-delving Machia, might as well slave for a beautiful company president if I don’t reach my goal. At the very least, this offer is good motivation to become a professional Machia within 2 years.

“Sure, I could even become your personal slave if you ask me to!”

Looks like the old guy didn’t appreciate my flirting.

“Don’t be so cheeky brat! Do you even know who this is?”

“Its fine, I like it when my soon to be slaves are a bit feisty, makes it more fun to train them… here’s the contract. If you sign it, we’ll give you the yellow cartridge for 115 U-coins. But, if you haven’t delved a dungeon after 2 years or if you refuse our favor when the time comes, you’ll have to work for our company for at least 20 years without receiving any pay.”

I sit down at a table to sign the contract.

“This favor sounds dangerous, I mean, can’t you just give me an impossible task or tell me to kill myself after I have delved my first dungeon?”

She gets really close and rests her giant breasts on my shoulder while pointing at a paragraph in the contract.

“Don’t worry boy, as you can see in the extra clauses here, the favor cannot endanger the lives of your friends and family.”

She pushes her boobs even harder against my cheek and points to another paragraph.

“And as you can see here, the favor has to be within your scope of abilities at the time of my request and cannot be a suicide mission.”

W-Well under this amount of pressure, physically and mentally, I can’t really refuse now can I?

“A-Alright I’ll sign it, give me a pen.”

I sign the papers and the old guy hands me a box.

“This here contains your unknown yellow cartridge, *SIGH* you paid way too much for this you know?”

Then the lady looks at me.

“My name is Izumi, we’ll meet again after 2 years. You better not forget about our contract.”

I leave the black market and head back home, but something keeps gnawing at me… Izumi… Izumi… oooh right! Isn’t she the platinum [I] Machia from the article?!

…

Oh fuck, what have I gotten myself into…

I reach my dorm and see the light in Sara’s room is still on, even though it’s like 1.00 o clock already, must be practicing that naked yoga again… *GULP*

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I head to my own room and lock the door. Now I can finally insert the unknown cartridge and discover the magic inside. I really hope my affinity is combat focused, no offense to support Machias, but healing is kind of lame…

I insert the cartridge and a window suddenly appears in front of my eyes:

YELLOW UNKNOWN CARTRIDGE

Reveal

Eject

Program

Right, the three standard options: Reveal, Eject and program… WHAT? What the fuck is this program option ?! Mr. Ito taught us in class you would see a window with two options after insertion, reveal and eject…

I-Is this cartridge special? Or, even better, am… am I special?

I have a huge grin on my face from just the thought alone. I’m finally a step closer to my goal!... No, I can’t be too excited yet, I don’t even know what this program option entails…

I nervously press the program option on the screen in front of me. Another screen suddenly pops up with a Keyboard beneath it. But this screen is empty, there’s only a blinking cursor in the top left corner.

Okay… So the option read program, and they gave me a blank screen with a keyboard… Let’s try typing some code?

I don’t even know what coding-language to use though…

Well, worrying about it won’t do me any good, let’s just try the languages I know.

I type up a simple script in java that will just loop without doing anything. I hit the save button next to the floating screen and suddenly another window appears:

ERROR

* Syntax error

* Unknown function called

* Modifier error

What a useless error, it doesn’t even tell me where the syntax error is located or anything.

I tried a couple of other languages like Python, C and C++, but the same error would always appear when I hit the save button. I even tried XML, but it looks like markup-languages aren’t the answer either…

*SIGH* I can’t do anything with this, I just don’t know how to start coding a script using a language I’ve never even seen or heard of. It’s like telling an alien who’s never seen words before to write an entire fucking essay in Latin…

“Fuck…” I lay myself down on my bed and start staring at the ceiling…

Maybe I should just reveal the cartridge? Be content with the unknown magic inside… No, this might just be a special cartridge, I can’t waste it…

*SIGH* Okay just focus… calmly observe the situation…

People usually learn a language, coding or human, by observing it being used by someone else… A program option would only make sense if all magic cartridges are actually coded… If that were the case, maybe I could analyze a revealed cartridge to learn the coding-language used… And if the cartridge isn’t special, but it’s actually my own power, maybe I could insert a revealed cartridge and look at its code by pressing the program option…