I restrained the screaming dragon, peeled off its scales, crushed its claws and teeth, gouged out its eyes, cut out its heart, and extracted its magic stone.
After continuing this for about a month, the dragon turned into a silent lump of flesh.
It seemed that its brain had shriveled up from the pain and despair.
So, I tried casting a regeneration spell to restore its sanity, but its smooth brain apparently couldnโt recover.
Even regenerating the brain doesnโt bring the mind back.
Well, thatโs true. Even if you restore the structural functions of the brain, the synaptic connections that were recorded there wonโt return.
Itโs like smashing a hard drive. Even if you somehow reconnect it, the data that was on it would still be lost. In that sense, it makes sense.
I also learned more about the ancient people, and I could update the immortality spell Iโm working on.
The full implementation is getting close.
As for the dragon I destroyed, Iโve replicated it and placed copies in various locations.
Iโll treat them the same as โtool humans.โ
Or maybe โreplicatedโ isnโt quite right? More like dragon homunculi.
Still, those ancient peopleโฆ or rather, elves? Whatever they are, they were foolish.
They created it, but then left it unchecked.
Leaving a great power outside of your control isnโt a sign of a superior beingโs generosity or composure; itโs carelessness.
The fact that theyโve left my โunauthorized access to the worldโs lawsโ unchecked shows a lack of skill or security awareness, but even so, this is just beyond the pale.
This dragon hereโsure, I could kill it in seconds if it were right in front of me, but killing it is one thing.
But if it were to engage in economic sabotage? If it put all its efforts into such schemes, Iโd be seriously inconvenienced too.
Isnโt it normal to be cautious of anything that can even slightly siphon off your resources?
And if itโs something you created and abandoned, and it holds a grudge against you, shouldnโt you control itโฆ or dispose of it?
I donโt like talking about vague moral philosophy without much basis, but I just canโt believe that people who work with this kind of mindset can produce meaningful results.
Itโs like how companies that donโt take compliance, political correctness, environmental protection, or SDGs seriously tend to suffer losses in business, right?
Because of their stuck-up, โweโre above it allโ attitude, they didnโt even notice my personal hacking, and their core system was tampered with.
Thatโs just not good at all.
Well, it doesnโt seem like those elves are complete idiots, and they havenโt shown themselves in public, it seems?
Besides, who knows what power they have now or what theyโre up to.
Actually, are they even still around? Isnโt there a chance theyโve gone extinct?
From what the dragon said, they were quite the villainsโฆ but if thatโs the case, shouldnโt they be ruling the world?
This talk of elves and ancient people seems to be about events from thousands of years ago, and with that much time, shouldnโt they have managed to dominate the planet by now?
But looking for them myself isโฆ wellโฆ
I have admin privileges and a program installed that can search for users connected to the โworldโs laws,โ butโฆ I donโt have the search terms. Itโs impossible to identify the elves through the system.
Besides, this system is insanely hard to use. No wonder Iโd want to mess with it.
It just wasnโt designed with this in mind.
If the system is meant to manage and run for users under the name of โlife,โ then it might work for populations in the thousands or tens of thousands, but if you include all life on Earth, down to microorganisms, itโs in the trillions.
The tag management is horrendousโฆ though, to be fair, the original designer seemed to have left some leeway in the system. But looking at the logs, a particularly awful update file was added about a thousand years after the worldโs laws came into effect, causing so many bugs itโs ridiculous.
Itโs like some third-rate programmer who, instead of fixing the core bug, just slapped a patch on and said, โIt works for now, so itโs fine!โ This worldโs at its end.
Also, the code is a mess! Just because they were the only ones writing it, they put these incomprehensible long comments right into the source code!
Stop reusing debugging code in the live environment! Stop hardcoding things here! Donโt just suppress errors and output something for the time being! Donโt return default values just because you donโt know what else to do!
โฆ I donโt know if they were ancient people or elves, but Iโm seriously starting to want to kill them out of personal spite.
Well, anyway, the system of this world is garbage.
So, umโฆ as expected of such a crappy system, I canโt find the elves.
I donโt even know if they exist.
Even if they do, if they canโt even control a planet of this level, thenโฆ well, I canโt say theyโre not worth worrying about.
As I mentioned earlier, those elves could potentially siphon off some of my resources.
But, unfortunately, their priority has dropped.
As Iโve been saying, the โworldโs lawsโ are, for all practical purposes, in my hands, so I canโt waste time chasing after โelves who might have authority over the worldโs laws.โ
I have too much work, you seeโฆ
What if the elves have some hidden ace up their sleeve that I couldnโt anticipate?
Iโve thought about that, of course, but rather than worrying about unseen threats, itโs better to steadily deal with the problems in front of me.
Even if I wanted to fret about their secret weapon, this world runs on such buggy code that itโs impossible to predict when it might collapseโฆ
Iโm dealing with the worldโs lawsโ errors myselfโฆ
โWell then, back to work! The fun vacation is over!โ
I finished my thoughts, clapped my hands, and started giving instructions to my employees in the office that used to be a slumโฆ