Outside the facility, Solara stood with a focused gaze, ensuring that none of the creatures were able to escape without her notice. This was not the first time that the Saints Guard had been forced to purge a site, and she knew that it would not be the last. She watched and counted as all four groups of centaurs left the complex, before they each ran out to occupy equidistant points around the research facility.

Once everyone was in position, Solara began the operation by spreading her arms wide. Orange-red flames shot out from her arms, forming lines that connected to flames released by those on either side of her in the distance. Once the line was fully formed, she brought her hands close to one another, connecting them just as everyone else in the formation did. This caused the lines to form an even ring, which began gradually rotating.

Next, she shifted her hands to rest horizontally, one above the other. As she spread her hands apart this time, the ring began to expand both above and below, the ground practically roaring as it was dug into. This extension went higher and higher, until it came together at the top to form a complete sphere.

As soon as everyone was able to sense the completion of the sphere, they took a half step back, their left fists coming forward until they were just outside of the flames. With this proximity, they continued feeding the fire with the left hand, their right forming an open palm that swirled with a silver wind. “Three, two, one.” Solara counted down, before slamming her palm forward, just as everyone else did the same action.

As soon as the thirteen points of wind struck the sphere of fire, it seemed to collapse in on itself, shrinking until there was nothing left of it. In its wake, it left a scorched crater, no indication of the previous facility anywhere to be found.

“Is it… over?” The project lead asked with a disheartened voice. With the research facility gone, it was clear that all of them would need to be relocated to other areas while a new complex was constructed. For those that were unable to find available positions, they were destined to suffer through a period of unemployment.

Solara gave a small nod, her eyes staring into the burnt crater. “We’ll remain posted nearby for three days to ensure that the creature did not escape the site before the purge.” It was clear that the creature that they were targeting this time was capable of digging through enchanted and reinforced concrete as if it were soft soil, so it was only natural for her to be cautious.

The project leader nodded his head dejectedly, turning to gesture for the rest of the staff to depart. Now that their site had been destroyed, they had to go report to the nearest government office. As they left, the Saints Guard converged on Solara, whose eyes remained focused on the crater below.

“Do you think we got it?” The normal centaur among the group asked, to which Solara shook her head.

“I don’t know. Hasting, head back to the stable, and send in a situation report. Make sure to set it as a priority message.” Hasting’s eyes went wide, and he immediately turned, kicking forward with silver wind wrapping around his hooves.

“What’s wrong, Solara? You think it survived the purge?” One of the pegasi asked in confusion. “You already confirmed that our fire can kill them, didn’t you?”

Solara simply nodded her head, before shaking it. She reached into her pocket, thumbing a coin with a catlike face. “I’m still in mortal danger.” She said in a soft tone, causing the eyes of the others to go wide in alarm. Each of the captains of the Saints Guard were given a single token of Terra, that way they would be able to sense an impending crisis. If they managed to resolve the crisis, the coin would fade away, having done its job.

Hearing that Solara was still feeling the sense of danger from the token, the others were able to all but confirm that the creature hadn’t been destroyed. Somehow, it had tunneled its way out of the facility before they initiated the purge. “Then why didn’t you go back yourself, or just file the report from here?” One of the unicorn centaurs asked in confusion.

“If I left, I would be leaving the crisis area, and the token would disappear. As long as I remain, I’ll be able to tell if anything changes about the situation. As for filing it myself remotely, I can’t be sure what actions might cause the creature to flee to another area. I need to remain present until the situation is resolved, and I can’t have any action taken in this area that was not already performed before the purge.”

The questioning centaur furrowed his brow, before giving a simple nod. It was obvious that Solara was willingly putting herself in danger, but this was also a part of her duty. “Everyone, retreat one kilometer and establish a temporary stable. Once reinforcements arrive, we need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.” Even though she said that, Solara did not move from her position.

Ashley nodded to herself as she looked at the uninhabited world around her. “This should be good.” She said with a small smile, thankful to have the area she needed to practice system programming. Although she had created some systems before, that was primarily through breaking down existing systems into different modules and then mixing them together.

This would be her first attempt to truly write her own system program. Of course… “First, let’s make a backup.” She said, taking a deep breath and mobilizing her divinity to create an egg-like item in her hand. This was a seed containing the current system’s settings, which she had learned the creation method of thanks to Vivi. If her experiments caused a system shutdown without destroying the world itself, she could use this seed to restore the system to a clean version.

Once that was done, she lifted her hand, causing a small facility to rise up out of the shadows on the ground. Although it was not much at first glance, this facility was like a portable home and workstation, one which she had created for occasions like this.

Stepping inside, she quickly found the console she needed and plugged the golden Admin Stone in. As soon as she did so, the familiar screens appeared, displaying scrolling lines of code. Ashley licked her lips at the prospect of deciphering this code, though she knew that it was not going to be an easy feat. Even using the various domains that she had access to would only give her a starting point.

Lifting a hand, she pointed her finger at the screens, mobilizing the power of the Games domain. “Show me the code governing the Mage class.” She said, and most of the screens flickered away. Only one remained, rapidly scrolling and enlarging to display a massive wall of code.

The Mage class was one of the classes which directly governed a primary energy, so it would be a good starting point for referencing how the class system worked. Currently, the issue Ashley was facing was that the characters displayed on the screen were not part of any language that she knew, similar to when she assisted an artificial intelligence in reaching divinity. “I need a translation program…” She muttered, thinking how she could accomplish this, before snapping her fingers.

“Map the characters within the Game code, and use Technology to produce the translation software.” She said with a grin, conjuring one of her own domains and two from her subordinate deities to use in the creation of a trinity. This trinity quickly took effect on the console where the Admin Stone was installed, mapping the language that was displayed and converting it into characters that she could recognize. However, the process of doing so caused the window to expand even further, as there appeared to be specific characters representing entire words or concepts.

Still, this was enough for Ashley, as it meant that she was able to read the code. However, there was something bothering her the more she looked at the translated text. There were no areas within the code where variables were created, meaning that either that code existed elsewhere within the system, or the variables simply existed somewhere in a base system registry. If it were the latter, it would be difficult for her to decipher them all, and she would ultimately be limited to the existing variables in the system.

Regardless, she began pouring over the code, left in awe as she came to realize that the system did not deal with hard set rules, but instead had more abstract concepts. She had always been aware of this on some level, as it was impossible for the system to function otherwise, but this was the first time seeing just how abstract the system went. “Let’s just try writing a simple function for now.” She muttered to herself, generating a holographic keyboard. “Let’s see… how about registering the act of blinking as a way to level the Mage class?”

Obviously, she would never implement something like this in any of Dale’s worlds, as it would cause everyone to self-destruct from their mana building too rapidly. However, it was a suitable test for her first function.

She wrote the code in a separate window, before running it through the translation program that she had created to import into the main system code. When she realized that nothing had immediately broken, she tested it by blinking.

Mage has leveled up!

Surprised, she grinned and blinked again twice. However, the same message did not appear again. Raising her brow, she looked at the code windows before her, her face going pale when she saw that the text was now garbled and scattered about. “Delete! Delete all the code! Factory reset!” She shouted quickly, using the Admin Stone to delete the entire system code before using her backup.

Once she confirmed that the code had been restored, she sighed and created a second backup. “If I still had a physical heart, this would not be good for it.” She muttered, before trying to think of what she could have done wrong. Maybe I just have to take the system down between patches?

Trying the same test once again, she first programmed a way for the system to be shut down without deleting everything. To do this, she used one of the same backups that she had created as a storage device, adjusting the console to be able to upload the system code into the seed where it could be patched. Once the patch was complete, she could use the seed to restart the system. In theory, this should work just fine.

In practice, it was less fine. Once again, the code came out corrupted after the patch, leaving Ashley to suspect that there was a problem with the code itself. “Is there an untranslatable character that I’m missing?” She asked, looking at the esoteric characters of the system code, and comparing it to the results of her own code.

In the end, she found that there was an alteration to the last character in every line of code, one that wasn’t in the software she created. With a groan, she rubbed her face with a palm. “Why do I feel like this is the equivalent of missing a semicolon…”

Ashley shook her head, making the necessary adjustment to the translation software and running the patch again. As she felt it was a good idea to keep the downtime functionality for patching, she reused that code. Thankfully, it seemed to work this time, Ashley having the power to take down the system by literally snapping her fingers. Though, she had to use the console to activate it again after the patch was complete.

She felt as if she were exploring bold new terrain, once again writing what was essentially a cheat code to level up. The difference was, this time it worked. She bit her lips, curious. “What other cheats could I write in? Health? No, that wouldn’t work. The system doesn’t have a direct effect on the body’s health unless it is during the leveling process, and that’s just a side-effect of the body’s evolution.”

Although she wanted to create a cheat code for unlimited health that Dale could use, she knew right away that it was impossible. The system only reported a person’s health, but did not directly control it. Thus, such a system would only display Dale as being at full health even when he was at death’s door.

In the end, Ashley couldn’t think of any truly game breaking cheats that could be written, as all of those systems were governed by natural laws instead of the game system itself. Without access to the system’s core variables, she wouldn’t be able to find anything that she could take advantage of for things like that, either. Thus, she set her sights to simply understanding the code at a deeper level again, wanting to figure out how everything functioned. Of course, that was after disabling the cheat to level the Mage class.