For two whole days, Alex's bold post on The Node sat there, gathering digital dust. A few users had commented on it, mostly calling him a scammer or a fool.
One user, FistWizard69, had simply posted, "Pics or it didn't happen," which Alex found pretty funny. He started to think his grand business plan was a complete bust.
He went about his daily duties, unclogging a toilet in the teacher's lounge, replacing a flickering light panel in a hallway, and cleaning up a truly mysterious spill that looked and smelled like blueberry yogurt in a sparring room.
With every dull task, he checked his data pad, hoping for a sign.
Then, on the third night, as he was sitting in his room trying to figure out the instructions for a new floor-polishing robot, his data pad made a small ping sound. A private message. His heart jumped.
He opened it. The username was LeoTheLion, and the message was written with all the confidence of a nervous mouse.
< Is this Oracle thing for real? I don't have a lot of credits, but I've got a problem. A big one. My artifact is a piece of junk. Everyone says so. Can you actually fix stuff? >
Alex smiled. He had a fish on the line. He typed a short, cool reply.
< Oracle is real. All problems can be solved. What is the artifact? >
The reply came back almost instantly, a wave of desperate text.
< It's a D-Rank [Kinetic Booster]. It's supposed to make my punches stronger, but it's famously unstable. Half the time it does nothing, and the other half it nearly sprains my wrist. Last week, I tried to punch a training dummy and it made my arm go sideways. I punched the wall instead. People laughed. I'll do anything. >
Alex knew the type. The academy was full of low-rank artifacts that were more trouble than they were worth. They were cheap, mass-produced items with built-in flaws. The [Kinetic Booster] was a classic example. He sent his next message.
< Send a full data scan of the artifact. I will analyze it. >
A few moments of silence followed. Alex could almost feel Leo's hesitation through the screen. A data scan was like giving a stranger the blueprints to your most personal piece of equipment.
It required trust. Finally, another ping. A file had been sent.
Alex opened the file and immediately switched on [The Debugger]. The raw data of the scan blossomed in his vision.
He wasn't just looking at numbers on a screen; he was looking at the very soul of the artifact. He saw its structure, its power flow, its command logic.
It was like looking at the recipe for a cake. And this cake recipe was a complete mess.
He saw the problem in less than ten seconds. It was so simple it was almost stupid. The artifact had plenty of power. The energy source was fine.
But the part of the code that told the artifact when to release that power was written all wrong. It was a timing issue. The recipe told you to add the eggs after the cake was already baked.
The energy was being released a fraction of a second too late, after the punch had already lost its focus. This caused the energy to discharge randomly, sometimes sideways, sometimes not at all.
"Oh, you poor, poor piece of junk," Alex murmured to his empty room, shaking his head.
This was an easy fix. A ridiculously easy fix. He didn't need to rebuild it or add new parts. He just needed to change one line of code. He was like a master watchmaker seeing a watch that was only broken because one tiny gear was put in backward.
With a few quick taps, he wrote a new, tiny program. It wasn't a huge, complex piece of software. It was more like a note.
A small file that contained a single command: "When the user punches, release the energy at this exact moment." He named the file "Optimization Patch 1.0." It sounded professional.
He sent a new message to Leo.
< The analysis is complete. The flaw has been identified. Here is the optimization patch. The price is 500 credits. Payment is due after you confirm it works. >
Five hundred credits. To Alex, who had thirty, it was a fortune. To a D-Rank student like Leo, it was a huge gamble, probably all the money he had. Alex waited.
The silence stretched on. He imagined Leo on the other side, staring at the message, wondering if he was about to be robbed.
Then, a final, short message from Leo: < Okay. I'll try it now. >
Now it was Alex's turn to wait. He tried to go back to reading the floor-polisher manual, but he couldn't focus.
He kept picturing Leo in a training room somewhere, his friends probably snickering behind their hands, expecting the artifact to fail spectacularly as always.
Ten minutes passed. Alex started to worry. What if he'd messed it up? What if the patch somehow made the artifact explode? That would be a very bad start for his new business.
PING.
It was a credit transfer notification. < 500 Credits have been deposited into your account. >
Alex stared at the number. His account balance, which had been a sad little 30, now read 530. He felt a dizzying rush of success. He had done it. He had actually done it.
A second later, another notification came through. It was a new post on The Node, on his original thread. It was from LeoTheLion, and it was written in all capital letters, filled with typos and exclamation points.
"I DON'T KNOW WHO OR WHAT ORACLE IS BUT IT'S REAL!!!! I THOUGHT IT WAS A SCAM BUT I WAS DESPERATE!!! MY KINETIC BOOSTER WAS TRASH BUT NOW… NOW IT WORKS!!! IT DOESN'T JUST WORK IT WORKS LIKE A C-RANK ARTIFACT!!!! I PUNCHED THE HEAVY DUMMY AND IT FLEW ACROSS THE ROOM AND SMASHED INTO THE WALL!!! MY FRIENDS SAW IT!!! THIS IS THE BEST 500 CREDITS I EVER SPENT!!!!! ORACLE IS A LEGEND!!!!!"
Alex read the glowing review three times, a wide, uncontrollable grin spreading across his face. He leaned back in his chair, feeling like the king of the world. His secret cube sat on his desk, and now, he had the money to buy its first new part.
The birth of Oracle was complete. Business, he decided, was about to pick up.