Bab 3: Patch Notes in the Village
The morning after the boy's recovery, the village treated him like royalty.
He had slept—well, more like collapsed—on a straw mat inside the healer's hut. The dawn light filtered through cracks in the wooden slats, and for a moment, he almost believed he was back in his cramped apartment, groggy after pulling another all-nighter.
But when he rolled over and saw the rough wooden beams, smelled the tang of herbs drying overhead, and heard the distant bleat of goats, reality snapped back.
This wasn't home. This was a world of code and spells. And these people thought he was divine.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes, only to find a basket waiting at his feet. Fresh bread, goat's milk, and berries gleamed like offerings. He stared. "...I've been upgraded from debugging intern to holy consultant."
A laugh escaped his throat, but it was shaky. Gratitude was one thing, worship was another. He was just a guy who fixed loops. But how did you explain that to people who barely had a word for "logic"?
The door creaked open. The woman from yesterday—the one with sharp eyes who hadn't fallen completely into blind reverence—stepped in. She carried herself like a leader, and he still didn't know her name.
"You wake," she said simply.
"Yeah. Still alive, somehow." He scratched the back of his neck. "Listen, about yesterday—"
She cut him off with a nod. "The boy breathes. That is enough. The village thanks you, Oracle."
There it was again. Oracle. He grimaced. "I really don't—"
"Come." Her voice left no room for argument. "They wait."
Outside, nearly the entire village had gathered. Children peered from behind parents, men and women bowed their heads, whispers rippling through the crowd. He swallowed hard.
The woman gestured toward him. "The Oracle walks among us."
The cheer that followed nearly knocked him back. He forced a weak smile, raising a hand awkwardly like he was waving at coworkers on a Zoom call.
Then came the requests.
A farmer with a limp begged him to heal his leg. A mother carried a newborn, whispering about protection charms. An old man knelt, clutching a cracked talisman, asking him to bless it.
Panic swelled in his chest. He couldn't heal. He couldn't bless. He was no doctor, no priest. But… maybe he could debug.
He took a breath. "Okay. One at a time."
The farmer's leg was first. He knelt, eyes darting nervously, as our so-called Oracle reached out. And sure enough—glyphs shimmered faintly around the limb.
if (bone == broken) → limp = true;
He nearly laughed aloud. It was crude, simplistic, like a middle-school project. But unlike human physiology, this was system code. He carefully rewrote:if (bone == healed) → limp = false;
The glyphs blinked out. The man gasped, standing, then walking without stumbling. Cheers erupted.
"Patch complete," he muttered under his breath, trying not to grin at his own terrible joke.
Next was the newborn. The child seemed fine, but around the tiny body flickered defensive glyphs—weak, half-faded, like a firewall with holes.
defense = low;
He strengthened the command, tightening the script until the glow grew brighter. The mother sobbed, clutching the baby to her chest.
And then the talisman. The cracked amulet hummed faintly with unstable lines:protection = true; error: unstable array;
He stabilized the array with a quick fix. The glyphs steadied, pulsing with even light. The old man kissed his hands.
By the time the crowd thinned, his head throbbed like after a marathon coding session. He slumped on a stool, muttering, "I need… coffee. Or at least a bug tracker."
But their gratitude was undeniable. Where he saw syntax errors, they saw miracles. Where he whispered commands, they heard divine words.
And part of him—the part that had spent years being overlooked in offices, buried in endless tasks no one appreciated—felt something he hadn't in years.
Valued.
Later that afternoon, the woman found him again. This time, she carried a jug of water and a question in her eyes.
"You do not chant like mages," she said. "You do not pray like priests. Yet you mend what they cannot. How?"
He hesitated. She wasn't asking with worship, but with curiosity. She deserved some answer.
"I… see things differently," he said slowly. "To you, magic is like… words in a song. To me, it's more like… lines in a script. If something is wrong, I fix it. If something is broken, I patch it."
She frowned. "Script?"
"Like… instructions. Rules that make things happen." He rubbed his temples. "Think of it like weaving. If one thread is wrong, the whole cloth frays. I just… fix the threads."
Her eyes widened slightly, as if she'd glimpsed a new horizon. "Then you are no oracle. You are…" She searched for a word. "…a weaver of truth."
He blinked. Weaver of truth? Not bad. Better than Oracle, at least.
She extended a hand. "I am Maren. Healer of this village. And if you are to stay, you must eat."
He took her hand, managing a small smile. "Deal."
The following days blurred into a rhythm.
He learned quickly that not everything was fixable. Some scripts resisted his touch, like locked files. Some were so tangled he risked crashing the whole "program" by tampering. Once, he tried to rewrite the weather—and ended up drenching half the fields in a sudden, unnatural downpour.
The villagers still cheered, calling it a blessing for the crops. He muttered, "Yeah, accidental feature, not a bug," under his breath.
He experimented at night, in secret, testing small changes. He sped up a chicken's egg-laying function (lay_rate++), accidentally doubling output until the poor bird keeled over exhausted. He patched it back quickly, muttering apologies.
He optimized a torch flame to last twice as long without fuel. He even managed to debug the squeaky hinges on a door. Each success made him giddier, like solving puzzles in a world-sized coding challenge.
But with each miracle, whispers spread. Travelers carried tales to neighboring villages. A stranger who healed with no chants. A weaver of reality itself.
And though he tried to ignore it, a cold truth crept at the back of his mind.
Attention meant eyes on him. Eyes from people who might not call him Oracle. Eyes from those who might call him something else entirely.
Threat.
That night, as he sat by the fire, Maren joined him. The flames cast her face in shifting light, her eyes steady on his.
"You must be careful," she said softly. "The world is full of those who guard their power jealously. Priests, kings, guilds. They will not let one like you rise without challenge."
He stared into the fire. "So you're saying I should keep a low profile."
"I am saying," she replied, "that miracles invite both hope and fear."
He leaned back, letting the crackle of flames fill the silence. For the first time, the weight of what he was doing pressed on him. This wasn't just debugging systems. This was rewriting lives.
He whispered into the dark, almost to himself: "What happens when the patch notes reach the wrong user?"
And somewhere, far beyond the village, a ripple of altered code spread outward—like a signal pinging the system.
And someone, somewhere, noticed.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone