Chương 124: Chapter 123: Source Code Refactoring and a Miniature Black Hole

Floor 50's central reactor sat deep inside a heat-resistant quartz enclosure three meters thick. At the heart of the containment chamber, a dark purple plasma sphere ten meters across spun wildly, shrieking like a jet engine about to tear itself apart. Heat inside the sealed enclosure climbed into the thousands, and the outer control room's shielding groaned as its safety margin fell. BEEP BEEP BEEP! Warning lights on the console flashed red: [MAGITECH FUSION OVERLOAD WARNING!] Containment pressure: 98.

4% (Detonation risk in 12 minutes) Energy blockage rate: 92. 0% Lucian stood at the console, sleeves shoved up past his elbows. Evelyn sat in the swivel chair, ten fingers flying across the magitech keyboard, eyes tracking tens of thousands of lines of ancient code scrolling down the crystal display. She stopped cold and spun toward him.

"Found it! Massive memory leak! There's an infinite loop called calculate_cloud_shapes() that's been running in the background for ten thousand years — its entire job is deciding whether today's sky should generate bunny-shaped clouds or mushroom-shaped ones!" Lucian pressed a hand to his forehead, voice tight. Delete that bunny-cloud function permanently. Redirect ninety percent of the excess heat to the Floor 1 substation. My thirty looms can buy the surplus at the published industrial tariff.

"Recompiling now!" Evelyn yanked the main lever.

"Opening manual override!" Ting! The Station 50 maintenance console opened an authorized patch window: [STATION 50 REACTOR PATCH WINDOW:] → SOURCE CODE REFACTORING TOOL: AVAILABLE Target: Reroute plasma flow and optimize the cooling system. Lucian stepped up to the edge of the quartz enclosure and pressed both palms flat against the energy-conducting surface. Layered Focus mapped all ten thousand circuit ports. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Lucian split his established Spell Control into thousands of fine threads. Millions of threads of silver mana, finer than spider silk, poured out from Lucian's fingertips, pierced straight through the quartz wall, and drove into the center of the roiling purple sphere. He didn't try to smother the fire with brute force.

Through Source Code Refactoring, he cut out dead energy branches one by one, wiped clean ten-thousand-year-old blockage loops, and forced open sixty buried heat-vent lines running straight down into the lower floors of the tower. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The feedback from the compressed heat surged back through the conduit and set his arms trembling in small waves. Swish. A white silk handkerchief scented with rose water touched his forehead. Eleanor had stepped up beside him.

With one hand she gently blotted the sweat running down his cheek; with the other, she rested her palm on his shoulder, channeling a stream of cool, soothing holy light into his body to bring down the heat racing through his meridians. She watched the movement of his fingers without a word, standing quietly as his anchor in the middle of the burning room. WHRRM...! The screaming purple sphere suddenly went still. The violent red-purple deepened into a clear jade blue, calm as a lake in autumn.

The piercing pressure-whine cut out completely, replaced by the low, contented hum of a machine running perfectly, without a single wasted sound. Ting! Ting! Ting! [MAINTENANCE PATCH EXECUTED: SOURCE CODE REFACTORING — SUCCESS] Deleted: 45, 000 lines of the ancestor's junk code Reactor output restored to rated safe capacity; surplus routed to stabilized reserves.

Excess energy successfully compressed into: 3 STABILIZED REACTOR RESERVE CELLS (industrial use only) [CONTROL ROOM HEAT ASSESSMENT:] Ambient heat output: Reduced to just enough to warm the floor and simmer beef hot pot for five. Click. From a dispensing tray beneath the reactor, three fist-sized blue crystals slid out, translucent and glowing with a clean, pure light. Lucian registered the cells to Station 50's inventory, secured them in a locked carrier, and let out a long, satisfied breath.

Outside the World Tower, over the skies of both the Solaris Empire and the Demon Realm of Tartarus — Recovered power propagated through the tower grid. Elevator substations and railway depots reported higher safe capacity, and dispatchers on both sides began recalculating their schedules. The authenticated maintenance console also logged a twelve-hour deferment on legacy authorization sweeps while the reactor stabilized.

In station plazas where the restored tower beacon was visible, workers and travelers began cheering; a few familiar reading clubs immediately credited Lucian:"Sage Lucian has tamed the Thunder God's Wrath!"

"The eternal energy of a new age has arrived!" Lucian turned, took a cup of tea from Sylvia's hands, and took a sip.

"That's enough spare heat to run thirty looms for ten years without spending a single coin on coal." FSSHHH — KTCHHH! The heavy doors of a bypass maintenance lift at the north corridor slid open. Its brass indicator read FLOOR 52. A cloud of high-pressure steam hissed out. Six short, stocky dwarves stepped through, each wearing hundreds of pounds of brass steam-powered exoskeleton armor, gripping six-barreled magitech grenade launchers. They fanned out in a line, surrounding Lucian's group.

The dwarf captain raised his launcher, his thick red beard twitching, and roared in a gravelly voice:"Who — WHO just dared to go and tamper with the Eisenwald Alchemist Guild's power meter?!"