Code of the Archmage - Now with More Bugs!

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Code of the Archmage - Now with More Bugs!

장 1: Prologue: Kernel Panic: Isekai Edition

The glow of the monitor painted Park Jin-woo's face in stark relief, the only illumination in the cluttered, ramen-scented room. Lines of code blurred before his tired eyes, each character a tiny battleground in his war against a particularly insidious bug. He muttered curses in a mix of Korean and pseudo-C++, his fingers flying across the keyboard in a desperate attempt to exorcise the demon lurking in his program.

"Just… compile… already…" he groaned, slamming his fist on the desk, a maneuver that had become disturbingly routine. Empty ramen containers, stacked precariously high, swayed ominously. A half-eaten bag of chips lay open, its contents scattered across the keyboard like fallen soldiers. Jin-woo hadn't seen daylight in what he suspected was several days. Time had become a meaningless construct, measured only by the frequency of his caffeine refills and the ever-growing mountain of discarded instant noodle packaging. He was so close. He could feel it. The bug was right there, taunting him, hiding just beneath the surface of his code, a digital gremlin wreaking havoc on his sanity.

He leaned closer to the screen, his eyes blurring. He'd tried everything: brute force debugging, logical deduction, even resorting to the dreaded stack overflow forums. Nothing. The bug remained, an elusive phantom mocking his every attempt. He felt a twitch in his left eye, a sure sign of impending coding madness.

Suddenly, the screen flickered, a surge of energy crackling from the monitor. Jin-woo blinked, assuming it was just another symptom of sleep deprivation. He'd seen stranger things after coding for 72 hours straight. Hallucinations of dancing emoticons, sentient error messages, even once, he was sure he'd seen his monitor morph into a giant, mocking rubber duck. But this… this was different. The air crackled with an unfamiliar energy, and the room began to glow with an eerie, otherworldly light.

"Huh," Jin-woo mumbled, his eyes still glued to the screen. "Kernel panic, maybe? That's a new one." He reached for the power button, intending to reboot the system, a ritual performed countless times in his coding career, but his hand froze mid-air. The light intensified, engulfing the room in a blinding flash, a supernova of pure digital energy. The monitor screamed, a high-pitched whine that pierced the air.

Then, everything went black. Not the comforting black of a powered-down monitor, but a deep, absolute darkness that swallowed him whole. There was no sound, no sensation, just an endless void. Jin-woo felt himself falling, tumbling through nothingness, his mind reeling. He tried to scream, but no sound escaped his lips. He tried to move, but his limbs were unresponsive. He was adrift in the digital abyss, a lone packet of data lost in the vast expanse of the internet… or something like it.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the falling stopped. Jin-woo gasped, his lungs burning. He blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust to the unfamiliar brightness. He was lying on something soft and… damp? He sat up, groaning, his head pounding. His apartment was gone. The familiar clutter of his coding sanctuary had vanished, replaced by… trees. Giant, impossibly tall trees, their leaves a vibrant, almost unnatural green. Sunlight, real, unfiltered sunlight, streamed through the canopy, dappling the forest floor.

"Okay," he muttered, rubbing his temples. "Definitely a hallucination. Must have finally cracked. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep. Just gotta… find my way back to the keyboard…"

He stumbled to his feet, disoriented. The air smelled… different. Cleaner, somehow. And there was a strange, almost palpable energy in the air, a hum that resonated deep within him. He looked around, taking in the alien landscape. Giant ferns, glowing mushrooms, and… was that a squirrel with wings?

"Nope," Jin-woo said firmly. "Definitely a hallucination." He pinched himself. Hard. "Ouch. Okay, maybe not a hallucination. But… where am I?"

He started walking, his programmer's brain trying to make sense of his surroundings. He needed data. He needed information. He needed… a debugging tool. Unfortunately, his trusty laptop and his collection of multi-tools were conspicuously absent. He was alone, in a world that defied logic, a world that felt both real and utterly surreal.

As he ventured deeper into the strange forest, a low growl echoed through the trees. Jin-woo froze, his eyes scanning the surroundings. Something was watching him. Something big. Something… furry?

A creature emerged from the shadows. It was… large. Very large. And it had… was that a tail? A long, scaly tail?

Jin-woo stared at the creature, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. "Okay," he whispered to himself. "This… this is definitely not Kansas." Or, more accurately, not Seoul. He took a step back, his programmer's brain desperately trying to categorize the creature, to assign it a variable name, to understand its function.

"Um… Hello World?" he called out tentatively.

The creature tilted its head, its eyes glowing with an eerie light. It let out another growl, a sound that sent shivers down Jin-woo's spine.

"Okay," Jin-woo thought, his heart pounding in his chest. "Time to debug this situation."