For the next several hours, Xylos searched the areas for anything that could be useful to him. He found several shops but they were all empty. Each of the shops displayed an energy indicator and all of them were flashing red as if they were out of energy. All he can do is look at objects and interact with them through touch; every time he touched something a display panel would appear above or on it. The information displayed on the panel would be divided into 3 privilege levels; Guest, User, and Admin. As a guest, all he can see what general information such as the store name, energy level, and what it does. He could also perform simple actions such as turning a street lamp on and off or activate the central fountain to perform a water show.
As he interacted with various simple but almost useless devices, he couldn't help but wander back to the stage that he used the first time he was pulled into the book. At the stage, as a guest, he was able to do a lot more than what he can do with the things he found in the city. He had a feeling he might be able to indirectly obtain the means to increase his privilege level.
The stage felt like one of those simulation programs; the person can create things out of thin air but the things that they create need to be within their capacity. For example, a native who lived on an island for most of his life cannot imagine an airplane; he could see a bird and think that flying is possible, but he wouldn't know that to enable flight an "airplane" is required.
With his past experience as an end-to-end game developer, he could conjure an illusion that would help him "hack" the stage. The first idea that came to his mind is to create an illusion of a "debugger or developer console" for the stage, and using those interfaces he could slowly dive deeper into the design and architecture of the stage and "hotfix" it to give him the privileges of a user. Then, he can interact with the stage as a user and see if he can elevate his "account" to Admin. Once he has an Admin account, he might be able to connect it with the rest of the book and access things that are generally inaccessible due to energy and privilege limitations.
With a plan in mind, he rushed toward the stage area and activated the stage. The first thing he did was visualize a debugger console and keyboard. A moment later, a translucent debugger console appeared in the air and a generic white mechanical keyboard appeared on his lap. He pressed a few random keys to confirm that the keyboard works.
A few random letters appeared in the console. He pressed enter and consoled text glitched for a moment before the message, "Invalid command" appeared.
"Okay!" He took a deep breath and typed, "net user" and pressed enter. The console paused and glitched again and a list of names appeared, he noticed that his name was on it.
He then typed, "net localgroup admin Xylos /add" he paused for a moment and thought, "it can't be this easy right?"
He pressed enter, the console flashed and distorted for a moment before it regained coherence; as he expected the words "Access Denied" appeared in the console.
He then tried, "net localgroup user Xylos /add"
He pressed enter; there was a weaker flash and distortion on the console before the text "Guest Xylos has been upgrade to User." appeared.
"Alright!" He shouted. He then started browsing through the console the things he has access to as a user. He noticed that every new command he used would cause the console to flicker and distort before stabilizing as if the application is recompiling itself with the new commands.
Xylos had to focus every time it happened; he needs to affirm exactly what is supposed to happen when the command was entered otherwise the console would glitch and the words "Invalid command" would appear.
After a few hours, he was sweating and flushed, but he managed to accomplish his goal.
Letting out a sigh he typed "restart" in the console, closed his eyes, prayed, and then pressed enter.
The stage shutdown...Xylos waited for a minute, then 5 minutes. Every second that passed, he had a sinking feeling that everything would fail miserably. After a tense hour, Xylos hanged his head and walked off the stage.
The moment his back was toward the stage, The Cat jumped into the platform. A moment later, the stage glowed with bright light; feeling a rush of mana going toward the stage Xylos rushed back onto the stage.
"Welcome, Admin Xylos" a robotic voice filled the stage, "What can I do for you?"
Xylos stumbled a bit when he heard the voice but quickly regained his composure. He didn't expect the artifact to start speaking the moment he obtained admin access.
"What are you?" Xylos said.
"My name is PSA-000, the first prototype of Adolas the Great. I'm a virtual assistant to help the admin to access, manage and use the various features of PS" The voice said.
"What are you currently capable of?" Xylos asked
"Currently, the system is running in power-saving mode. Only the following features can be used:
- Record, and display the data of all actions performed on the stage
- Perform simple numeric calculations
- Create objects less than the size of the stage,
- Create semi-permanent objects less than 1 cubic meter in size that can be used beyond the stage and last about 1 minute
- Record, simulate and replay actions performed on the stage"
"Can you run programs?" Xylos asked.
"Yes, it is part of the record, simulate, and replay feature. What would you like to make?"
"Please create a desk, some magic paper, and magic ink."
"The objects are magical in nature so they will disappear when brought off of the stage." A tall desk with a stack of magic paper and a few bottles of magic ink appeared on the table.
Xylos took an ink pen and wrote a simple light rune. The moment he completed the circle, he rune light up and a ball of light float into the air.
"Please analyze this spell," Xylos said, and a moment later a panel floated above the ball of light and displayed several attributes.
Lethality: 0
Mana cost: 1
Life cost: 0.05s
Modifiers: none
Description: A light element spell that will create a ball of light
"What is "Life" cost?" Xylos asked
"Life cost is the amount of time it will cost your life if you cast the spell."
"How much Life do I have left?" Xylos inquired.
"Scanning...one moment. You have 1 month; 2678400 seconds left..."
"How do I increase the time I have left?"
"Not enough information..."