Silverpeak Outpost was a beehive that had just been kicked.
Militia members sprinted past me, their faces pale and slick with nervous sweat. Archers were scrambling up the wooden ladders to the watchtowers, their quivers rattling. Nobody paid attention to the guy in tattered rags standing in the middle of the street, staring intently at the massive wooden gates.
Through my Source Code Vision, the glowing red error message hovering over the right side of the gate was blinding.
[Error: Fatal Structural Flaw Detected] [Variables Corrupted. Load-bearing capacity at 15%.]
I pushed through the rushing crowd, my eyes tracing the red wireframe lines down to the source of the problem. It wasn't the massive oak doors themselves, nor the thick iron bands wrapping them.
It was the locking mechanism. The main iron crossbar, thick as a man's torso, rested inside two heavy iron brackets bolted into the stone walls. The right bracket was fracturing. Deep, microscopic fissures laced through the metal, glowing a furious, critical red.
Weight: 4.2 kg. The system supplied the data as I focused on it.
It was under my 5-kilogram Hotfix limit. I could alter it. But my heart sank as I remembered the secondary limitation.
Sixty seconds.
A siege didn't last sixty seconds. It lasted hours. If I used my skill now, the bracket would become pristine for exactly one minute, and then revert to its fractured state. I didn't have the Mana to keep casting it. I had 70/100 Mana. At 25 Mana per cast, I could do it twice more, max. That was two minutes of safety. Then, the gate would explode inward, and Silverpeak would be slaughtered.
"You! Vagrant!"
A heavy hand grabbed my shoulder and shoved me backward. I stumbled, nearly losing my footing. It was Kaelen, the guard from the entrance, his face flushed with anger and fear.
"I told you to get to the cellars! You're in the way of the barricade teams. Move!" he roared over the din of the panicked outpost.
Before I could argue, a sound echoed from the dark forest beyond the walls that froze the blood in my veins. It wasn't a howl. It was a deep, guttural roar that vibrated the cobblestones beneath our boots. It sounded like an earthquake given a voice.
"They're here," Kaelen whispered, the color draining completely from his face. "Archers! Nock arrows! Brace the gates!"
Dozens of men rushed forward, slamming heavy wooden support beams against the twin doors. Kaelen drew his sword and joined them, pressing his armored shoulder against the wood.
BOOM.
The first impact hit the gates like a cannonball. The entire palisade shuddered. Dust and splintered wood rained down from the ceiling of the gatehouse.
Crack.
The sound was faint over the screaming men, but I heard it. I looked at the right bracket. The red fissures widened. The load-bearing capacity dropped from 15% to 8%.
BOOM.
Another massive impact. Outside, the screeching and howling of the horde reached a deafening pitch. They were battering the doors with something heavy. A siege beast.
"Hold the line!" Kaelen screamed, his boots sliding backward in the dirt as the wood groaned under the pressure.
The capacity on the bracket dropped to 3%. One more hit, and the iron would shatter like glass.
I didn't have a permanent fix. But as I stared at the UI floating in my vision, a crazy, desperate logic clicked in my brain. I didn't need the gate to hold for hours. I just needed to survive the breach attempt. In physics, and in game engines, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If an unstoppable force hits an immovable object, the kinetic energy has to go somewhere.
I didn't run to the cellar. I sprinted straight for the right side of the gate, sliding to my knees right beside Kaelen.
"What are you doing? Get away!" Kaelen barked, trying to kick me away without losing his footing against the bracing beam.
I ignored him. I slammed my bare hand flat against the freezing, fractured iron bracket.
"System," I shouted over the roar of the monsters outside. "Execute Hotfix!"
The golden keyboard materialized in my mind's eye. The world around me seemed to move in slow motion as my remaining Mana plummeted from 70 to 45.
[Target Selected: Iron Bracket (4.2 kg)] [Select Variable to Override:]
I didn't try to change the durability. I went straight for the physics engine of the object. I selected the [Kinetic Absorption] variable, which was currently set at a default 20%.
I deleted the 20. I typed [Kinetic Reflection: 10,000%].
[Warning: Variable exceeds standard material parameters. High risk of localized anomaly.] [Executing Hotfix... Compiling...]
The iron bracket under my palm flared with a blinding, terrifying violet light. The color was so intense that Kaelen and the surrounding men cried out, shielding their eyes. The metal thrummed with a terrifying, vibrating energy, no longer acting like iron, but like a coiled spring built by a god.
Outside, the monster roared—a final, massive bellow before it charged for the killing blow.
"Brace!" I screamed, pulling my hand back and covering my head.
KA-THOOOOOM.
The siege beast slammed into the gate with the force of a freight train. But the gate didn't break.
The violet-glowing bracket caught the immense kinetic energy of the impact, multiplied it by ten thousand, and violently rejected it. A shockwave of blue force exploded outward from the wood, passing straight through the gates like a ghost.
The sound that followed wasn't the splintering of wood, but the sickening, wet crunch of thousands of pounds of bone and muscle instantly pulverizing.
A shockwave ripped through the air outside the walls, followed by the terrified, high-pitched yelps of the surviving wolves being thrown backward by the blast.
Then... absolute, ringing silence.
The violet light faded from the bracket. The timer hit zero. The metal returned to its rusted, cracked state, but the load-bearing capacity slowly stabilized at a safe 80%. The pressure from the outside was completely gone.
Kaelen slowly lowered his arms, staring at the gate, then down at me, his eyes wide with absolute terror and awe.
A familiar chime echoed in my mind.
[Massive Threat Eliminated: Alpha Siege-Hound (Lv. 25)] [Calculating Experience...] [Level Up! You are now Level 4.] [Level Up! You are now Level 5.] [New Skill Unlocked: Compile...]
I slumped back against the stone wall, a tired, victorious smirk touching my lips.
"Bug fixed," I whispered, before the exhaustion finally pulled me into darkness.