System Programmer - 11 Playing with Fire

‘First, I think it’s time to boost my capacity.’ he thought as he exited his soul world and entered Catherine’s. He went in front one the waterfalls and studied it for a while before calling Catherine over.

“Can I help you with something?”

“Actually you can. I would like to build a hydro dam. It’s a giant dam that uses the flow of water to produce electricity, a bit like those hydropower plants I made a few weeks ago, but on a much larger scale.” he explained while projecting a 3D illustration via Luna.

“I see. It won’t perturb the water flow so it shouldn’t harm me, go ahead.”

“Can you just turn off the waterfall for a moment? It will make things simpler.”

“Very well.”

Catherine focused and the waterfall soon stopped pouring water. Joshua didn’t waste time and started to deploy the dam. The construction was large and he barely had enough energy to finish it. He used the last bits of his reserve to connect the dam to the rest of his power supply. Once it was done, Catherine resumed the flow of the water. Joshua waited until the dam was full of water to activate the power plant build in it. Instantly the amount of electricity Joshua produced increased several times.

“Yes! It’s working!”

“Do you want to repeat it with the other waterfalls?”

“I’m afraid one is all I can maintain for now. However, with the increased production, I should be able to soon have a dam for each of those waterfalls. With this one in place though, I should have enough energy in stock to bring my idea to fruition.”

“If you need such a large construction, it better be good. I’m looking forward to it.”

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“Leave it to me. You should get some rest, I can keep watch while continuing.”

Catherine agreed and went to sleep while Joshua returned to his own world. With the dam running, he could now deploy a lot of little bots to fix his soul world. He observed them for a few minutes before resuming his work.

Joshua smiled, this was just the first step of his plan, but it was promising. The drone was set on autopilot mode, with Luna taking care of its movement. It was equipped with a camera, which was directly connected to him and Catherine through the system. He checked out the range, for now, he managed to move it about a hundred meters away from him before losing control over it and it got dismissed. It wasn’t spectacular but it will have to do for now. It was time to move on to the next step.

He reentered the soul world and went to his runes laboratory. The base of his plan was actually fairly simple: Catherine was able to create a rune for a few seconds and unleash its power by using her water, he should be able to do something similar by equipping the drone with a rune. Inscribing runes within an object normally took a long time, but what if he created an object where the rune was already inscribed on it? It was worth a try at least.

Before trying it out in the real world, it was best to try it out in here. He picked out the rune he had used for testing before, the basic fire rune. Next, he opened the file containing the blueprint of the drone Luna had in memory and made a backup of it, just in case. With Luna’s help, he altered the design so the drone’s exterior would have the rune’s design engraved into it. Once that was done, he materialized the drone, safely behind the glass. The good news, the rune seemed to work, but it automatically activated and set the drone on fire. This was within his expectations so it didn’t annoy him. He was on the right track and felt confident. Clearly, if he wanted to attach the rune to a conjured item, it wouldn’t work without any modifications.

The first issue to tangle was the fact that the rune immediately activated. The problem was obvious: the rune was full of energy when it was created while attached to an object. Solving this issue was simple enough: he had to alter the design of the drone to separate the energy reserve from the rune and link both with a circuit that could be activated remotely. It was a very basic design so adding it was not an issue. He created a new drone and was glad to see it didn’t catch fire as soon as summoned. Of course, as soon as he activated the circuit, it burst into flames again.

The final step of the plan was to determine where the rune should apply its effect. Joshua had kept this part for last since this part would vary depending on what the rune does. For this, he could reuse the library he had made to create the training rune. He opened the rune editor application he had made, took the fire rune as base and programmed it so it would create a circle of flame around the drone instead of on it. All the functions needed for that were already in the system, so the modified rune was soon ready. When he saw the drone surrounded by flame without burning, Joshua felt a hint of pride.

Of course, now was the moment of truth: would this work in the real world? Full of anticipation, Joshua made this new drone appear. Everything seemed normal and it flew around normally. Biting his lip, he activated the circuit. His eyes were sparkling when he saw the flames surround the little drone without burning it. Joshua jumped in the air and started to dance.

‘I’m a god damn genius.’ he thought, ‘ Using this method, I can literally make programs that activate remotely. Considering what runes can do, I have limitless possibilities in theory. And we haven’t even reached the ruins yet! Once I add the knowledge of that place to my repository, I will be unstoppable!!!!!!’

This brief moment of megalomania made Joshua forget a very important detail. As he was dancing around like an idiot, he suddenly noticed smoke started to surround him. Then it hit him. He had unleashed a drone that flew around surrounded by a layer of fire… in the middle of a forest. It might be made of mushrooms instead of regular wood, but he still saw several flames around him, and they were starting to spread. Of course, he was in spirit form and in no danger but after shouting a bit ‘WHOOPS!’ he rushed over to Catherine while having Luna sound a infernal alarm clock in her head.

Catherine heard the noise, woke up at once and drew her weapon.

“What’s going on?” she asked mentally.

“I accidentally set the forest on fire… I need your water!”

“You… WHAT?” she said as she rushed over to his direction.

Luckily the fire was just starting, Catherine’s magic was strong enough to handle it. A few minutes later, the whole area smoked of grilled mushrooms but the situation was under control.

Catherine let out a deep breath when the last flame was extinguished and turned her attention to Joshua. He was, of course, kowtowing while spouting nonsense.

“I’m sorry, Madam, I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. Please don’t banish me to an alternate dimension where I’ll be buried alive by pink elephants wearing top hats.”

Catherine sighed. “Your weird punishments idea make less and less sense…. So, tell me you at least got something out of this?”

Joshua dropped his nonsense act and yelled: “OF COURSE, I DID!”

He demonstrated what he had accomplished to Catherine. Obviously this time, he went to one of the clearings in the forest first.

Seeing the drone in action, Catherine was intrigued but not yet convinced.

“The concept is interesting, but do you have any concrete plans for this? This little flame won’t be of much use.”

“I can alter the rune on the drone, that’s the whole principle.”

“I get that, but do you have anything that can help us with the snake situation?”

“I got a few in mind. I’ll get back to work. Again, I’m sorry for the incident.”

“This is pretty low key for you. Next time, you wake me up, at least destroy half the cavern.” she said smiling.

Joshua’s eyes lit in inspiration…

“Blowing up half the cavern…” he said smiling.

“Hold on, that was a joke!” Catherine replied in a hurry.

“Oh. Nevermind then.”

After Catherine went back to sleep, he spent the rest of the night going back and forth testing out stuff in the real world and making some adjustments in his soul world. By the time he had finished everything he wanted, it was morning and the group was waking up.

“So, did you make anything useful?” Catherine asked as soon as she saw him.