Episode 50 — The Legacy Bug That Wouldn’t Delete

2:00 PM.

I was leaning deep into my Throne of Sloth, clutching a bag of potato chips while staring intently at the monitor.

"...Hmm. Yeah, the view from above really is the best."

The drone footage displayed New Felsen.

In the two main intersections of the primary thoroughfare sat the chalk-white roundabouts Garam had finished through sheer stubbornness, looking like precision clockwork gears. The Felsen Crossbridge—the pedestrian bridge gracefully straddling the area above them—was no longer just infrastructure; it looked like a beautiful piece of jewelry adorning the city.

Carriages flowed smoothly along the circular paths, and pedestrians crossed the road as safely as if they were walking through the sky.

It was the sight of the specifications I’d stayed up all night drawing, deployed into physical space without a single bug. As an engineer, there is no greater pleasure.

"Look at that, Tama. That is 'Order.' No useless freezing, no crashing. This is how the world should be."

"Meow. (...You’re getting awfully grand about this.)"

Tama, curled up on my lap, let out a massive yawn.

Humming to myself, I tilted the controller’s stick. On a whim, I directed the drone toward the west—toward the Old Town that was scheduled for demolition.

Left behind by the brilliance of the new city were soot-stained bricks and collapsing roofs.

The relocation of all residents was supposed to be complete. This should have been an empty directory, waiting for the golems to clear the land in one go.

But at the edge of the monitor, I saw a thin trail of smoke rising.

"...Hm?"

I cranked the digital zoom to its maximum. The 4K ultra-high resolution clearly captured "movement" hidden in the shadows of the abandoned houses.

A woman hanging laundry in a back alley. Men surrounding a campfire, engaged in some shady-looking deal. And a group of old men sitting around an ancient stone monument, clutching weapons and offering prayers.

"...Huh? What is this?"

I set the bag of chips down and knit my brows.

"The specs said 'Completely demolish Old Town after all residents have finished moving to the new city.' ...Why the hell are there still people there?"

I immediately grabbed the walkie-talkie sitting next to the throne.

"Bartos, do you copy? ...Yeah, sorry to bother you when you’re busy. Tell Gustav. ...Tell him, 'Get to my place immediately the moment you have a second.'"

'Yes, Master Zect! I shall inform the Lord at once! ...Could it be... a new divine revelation?!'

"It’s nothing that grand. Just a check-up."

I cut the transmission, ignoring Bartos’s over-the-top reaction.

Less than thirty minutes later, the front door chime rang violently.

"Mr. Zect! My deepest apologies! I’m late!"

Gustav burst into the living room, gasping for breath and bowing so low he looked ready to prostrate himself on the floor.

"...You’re fast. You don’t have to panic that much. Sit down."

I pointed toward the sofa while I remained seated on my throne, bringing up a still image of the "Old Town squatters" captured by the drone on the large monitor.

"Gustav. What is this? ...You told me the other day that 'the relocation of all residents was complete,' right?"

My voice was colder than even I expected.

It was that dry anger I used to feel back when I’d find a fatal bug in a program that had already been marked as "completed."

"A-Ah... about that..."

"I’m sure I wrote it in the specs. 'The Old Town is a target for deletion upon the completion of all move-ins.' We can't go through with the demolition while there’s still residual data left behind. ...Why are they still there?"

Gustav wiped the sweat from his forehead, his voice trembling.

"...I am truly sorry. To be precise, the relocation of 'residents on the official registry' is indeed complete. ...However, those people... are individuals who do not exist on Felsen’s resident list to begin with."

"Not on the resident list?"

"Yes. One group consists of those who despise the 'clean discipline' of the new city and have fled into the shadows. Brothel workers, black market dealers, gamblers—people who have lived in the underworld. They fear being monitored by the Management Plates and intentionally crawled into the abandoned houses on the verge of demolition."

(...I see. Unregistered users. They’ve escaped into an unallocated region where system monitoring can’t reach them.)

"And the other group... are descendants of a minority tribe that settled in Felsen long ago. To them, that old stone monument in the Old Town is a symbol of pride and history lasting hundreds of years. No matter how convenient the new city is, they refuse to 'abandon their ancestral land' and are sitting in protest, prepared to use force..."

(...And this one is an ideological legacy issue. A deep-rooted conflict that can't be solved with physical convenience.)

I let out a long, heavy sigh.

"...Fine. What’s done is done. Blaming you now won't clear the land."

"Mr. Zect..."

"Let’s pivot. We need to handle this immediately. ...Gustav, if we leave the Old Town as it is, it will inevitably turn into a slum. It’ll become a breeding ground for 'viruses' that erode the order of the new city. We can’t just leave it."

Gustav remained slumped over, looking defeated, but I needed information first.

"Gustav, tell me. These 'underworld groups' and the 'guardians of history'... specifically, what kind of people are they? ...I need detailed data if I’m going to write a 'patch' that’ll convince them."

And so, the greatest "debugging operation" in New Felsen began its first act.```

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