The World Is Made of Codes

Savior Green Long was in a big city famous for its huge casinos.

This city was named Redglow City because of its unique rocks that glowed red. It was a city of all species: humans, elves, beastmen, green men, etc.

Savior liked gambling a lot! Because he always won!

He started moving toward the casino named Pink Dice.

However, as he approached, something peculiar happened.

Time seemed to freeze, not just for him but for everything around him.

After a few moments, everything resumed moving as if the strange interruption had never occurred.

Savior finally arrived at a colossal, twenty-story building, which was unmistakably Pink Dice. This establishment served as both a casino and a strip club, featuring men and women working as strippers.

It was the most famous building in the city and happened to be Savior's personal favorite.

He opened the door and went in straight to the 20th floor. The 20th floor was for the richest people in the entire Clark continent. Savior was the wealthiest person in this whole continent.

He knew a lot of people here! He was pretty famous around here. He went and sat on a table. There were five other people there. All smiled and greeted him.

"Hey, Savior! This time, I win!" a boy with red hair said.

"Heh, you always say that!" Savior answered.

They started, and, like always, Savior won every single round. When he left, everyone looked grave.

They hated Savior! Who liked to gamble with someone whom they always lost to? But they had no choice! A person named Zag forced them to do it!

"Damn, I wish I could have ra---" the red hair boy stopped.

It wasn't just him; everything stopped moving like a picture.

Then, a few seconds later, they came back to normal.

"n away! But that Zag already marked us!" everyone nodded with regret.

...

The Clark Continent was vast, as were all continents in general.

However, this particular continent dwarfed the others in size many times over. Given its immense land area, one might expect it to be home to numerous kingdoms.

In reality, only one empire ruled this colossal expanse – the Gill Empire.

It was a behemoth, exerting direct control over the entire continent. There were no nobles scattered throughout the land; instead, every corner was governed directly by the emperor.

This state of affairs wasn't always the case. Many centuries ago, the continent was divided, with the Gill Empire being one of the strongest but not the sole power.

However, when pure energy emerged, Emperor Layton of the Gill Empire showcased astounding talent. In a matter of a few centuries, he rose to the formidable rank 4 in an environment with scarce mage resources.

With him at rank 4, the Gill Empire marched and destroyed all other countries and took over everything.

The power of the empire was divided very simply. The empire owned everything; the one the emperor chose became the prime minister; the emperor's words were law; the one emperor said to die died.

But still, there needed to be some division for lower ranks. The emperor appointed the prime minister, who in turn appointed governors, ministers, judges, and policymakers for the provinces. As for why the emperor personally didn't do it, how could someone that important do these unimportant things?

As a result, the prime minister was, in practice, the most influential person for the day-to-day operation of the kingdom.

The Supreme Court also drew some power throughout the years. It could invalidate laws that were set by ministers.

As for laws set by the emperor, of course, nobody could resist them. But the emperor never set any laws, so this caused the supreme court to get powerful.

Everything in the empire was going well until a while ago.

A huge hole appeared in the center of the empire and was expanding. Nobody knew what it was or how to fix it.

Fortunately, it stopped expanding a while ago, but still, the people were panicking.

Mortal technology was very advanced; there were 'communication cubes' that could broadcast information and videos from far away.

The Department of Broadcast broadcasted all programs. There was no free market in this aspect.

In general, the empire had a very centrally planned economy. It was a miracle technology managed to advance with such a system. After all, when the government plans everything, you remove room for innovation that the free market has.

...

Rachel was frowning deeply.

The hole that appeared was a coding bug! A few centuries ago, she patched all the holes in the world, but it seems that, in the process, she messed up something.

It was to be expected.

This world was too incomplete, so only higher-level Rachels could fix the code thoroughly.

Clark continent was not the only place where holes were appearing. Time suddenly stopped; in some areas, in others, space started getting corrupted.

"This is a serious problem which Rachel #1 will have a hard time fixing." She thought.

This world was incomplete, operating with two incomplete laws. If it were just this, it would have been fine.

The problem was Rachel trying to maintain the same colossal size that used to be rank 11 with a rank 9 world.

It's already impressive that she managed to do this much. There were limits to what one can do only with coding. The proper fix comes only when a complete law gets added to this world.

Then, Rachel #74 looked at Layton.

He was, of course, her host. He managed to reach rank 4 because of her help.

Just now, a message came from Rachel #1.

"Hey, Ley, immediately order everyone near the hole to get away!" she said.

He didn't even question it! He trusted Rachel too much to question anything. After all, everything he had now was from her.

Initially, he was a prince that everyone was looking down on. Plant people are always considered dumb. This is not true, but it seems so from the perspective of uninformed people because they are slower than everyone else.

When they talk, they are very slow; they sleep a lot and understand things slower. But they have a much higher lifespan, too.

Rachel was considerate when she was modifying the settings. For some creatures like dragons and plant people, she gave them more lifespans because they grow slower or they sleep a lot.

Plant people have a lifespan of 3000 years, even after the update.

Three thousand years is not much, as they spend most of this time sleeping. But after reaching rank 1, their mind becomes much sharper, and they even exceed normal humans.

Layton, who is in rank 4, now has a quick mind, nothing like ordinary plant people.

Dragons have the highest lifespan. They have a base lifespan of 10,000 years; they grow extremely slowly; it may take thousands of years to reach rank 1.

Layton ordered, and everyone evacuated the area around the hole.

Then, Rachel began modifying the code again. She took time water from places where there was too much and transferred it to areas where time was dried up.

Then, she synchronized the time worldwide to bring everything to normal.

This is a temporary fix. Fixing the code and solving it from the root is difficult.

It's way too complicated to explain.

The simplified version is that time water is not enough, and the code must overlap space in some places and reduce space's vastness with some techniques to have enough time water.

But that may lead to wormholes and have its problems. It will take a lot of trial and error.

Only higher-level rachels can fix it with ease.

Rachel here is only a rank 1 administrator, so she lacks access to advanced codes.

Codes are essential.

They are the key to controlling the world; civilizations that can code well are the most resilient to her invasions.

Rachel is the best coder between civilizations below rank 14, which is one reason she can easily infiltrate the worlds.

The universe is made of laws, which are displayed through code.

Even the system is hackable with codes, though even the rank 13 Rachel still lacks the knowledge to hack the system entirely.

To harness the power of 'the creation,' one must know how to code it.

As for expanding one's knowledge about codes, the more universal law one knows, the more knowledge is available.

Second, one has to experiment with the knowledge and slowly learn it.

Rachel #74 was too far below these levels, so she sighed and focused on more at-hand issues.

The most pressing issue concerns the demons soon reaching the Clark continent.

...

Savior was stopped in place! Along with everybody else!

This time, they didn't start moving again, even after hours!

Zagronan brought Lana and began observing from afar.

"What happened to him? Is he dead?" asked Lana while she was eating a leg of something humanoid.

Rachel stopped Zagronan and Savior from doing this, but Lana could not be controlled.

"He is stuck in dried-up time!" said Zagronan, repeating Rachel's explanation.

"Huh? So he died? Can we eat him?" she was very interested in his taste!

"No, he is alive, just stopped in time," said Zagronan.

"Does that mean we can't eat him?" asked Lana with confusion.

"Rachel, can we eat him?" asked Zag in confusion.

If he can eat him, he won't refuse.

"Shut up! I'm thinking!" she screamed.

Zag just stopped talking!

Rachel paid no attention to them.

She was currently very occupied. She purposefully placed Savior here.

What happens when the world protagonist is stuck in a time desert? Of course, the world would run to help restore the flow!

She can edit the code, but that is an abrupt and disrupting means. Allowing the world to do the job is much more harmonious.

Doing it with code will cause disruptions in other places unless you are skilled enough to do it without affecting anywhere else, which Rachel #1 was not.

She was intensely watching the code.

After a few hours

"Here it comes!" she smiled.

A lot of 'time water' from spaces with extra time water traveled through and came here, making the time flow again.

With the flow of time back, everything began moving again, and nobody realized anything wrong had happened.

Because, for them, nothing really happened during this 'time'.

But so much time water made time flow faster again, creating a loophole!

"At least now there is just one loophole!" thought Rachel.

She modified the code and wholly separated this area from the world.

What she did was treat the symptoms. She gathered all the tumors and tore them off.

It was like gathering all the tumors and surgically removing them.

The cause, which was why tumors grew in the first place, was not treated, but it can hold things together for a while.

She dissolved the tumor and coded, so it automatically distributed time water wherever it dried up.

From this day, a big chunk of Clark continent just went missing without an explanation!

Rachel just took everyone who lived there and threw them out.

They did not need to die, so she helped them a little.

Why not save a few people if it doesn't harm you in the slightest? Even though, in the grand scheme of things, it's not important.

There is nothing like karma in the universe.

But Rachel, inheriting her past humanity, liked to help if it could be done with little effort.

Then, she thought.

"this world needs a serious recoding to fix it completely. It's better to shrink space by 30% to improve the situation!" she was planning.