CHAPTER 65: THE DEV OBSERVES

"No. No. Nooo... Oh, for heaven’s sake... Who was the jerk who changed this code without commenting on the change?!"

Elliot Shard rose from his swivel chair with a bang, the wheels squeaking as if they were sharing in the drama. His navy blue suit was impeccable—at least up to the collar, where his lime green bow tie fluttered in pure indignation.

His hair—messy, rebellious, charmingly chaotic—was a mass in constant revolt. And his thick glasses slid down the bridge of his nose as he stared, for the tenth time that morning, at the main log panel of the European server.

The room was sterile, cold, aseptic like a laboratory — except for him.

Elliot was the color in that desert of technology.

"If anyone on the team has changed the Tamer class’s binding logic without telling ME, I SWEAR by the goddess of syntax that I will raise the entire damage return scope with an infinite while loop!

From the back of the room, a shy programmer coughed.

"Elliot, no one has touched that routine since patch 2.7.9-A."

"I know, Jisoo! I can see that! And that’s why I’m freaking out! The code hasn’t been changed... BUT THE TAMER IS WORKING!!!"

He pointed at the screen as if it had spat blasphemy.

"This here," he said, snapping his finger on the log tab. "Eren Vale. Cluster ZN-LAT. Last ping in free multicultural state. Received the patch, was affected, underwent the link reboot... and yet... and yet it’s adapting!"

The other devs pretended to be busy. None of them wanted to be the next victim of Elliot’s comic fury.

"He’s reconfiguring the link through shadows, accessing monsters alternately... using delay gaps to invoke with priority... and look at this!" Elliot enlarged the log line. "Attempt to initiate link with forced symbolic signature. FORCED. He’s trying to CIRCUMVENT the signature!

Silence.

Elliot turned his back, crossed his arms, and walked over to the coffee machine. He pressed the button. He waited. He looked at the cup. He looked back at the screen. And then he yelled at the cup:

"Players like this kill the game!"

He drank the coffee in one gulp, grimaced, and threw the empty cup in the trash with more force than necessary.

He came back, put both hands on his hips, and whispered:

"But you know what’s worse?

He paused dramatically.

"I know that name.

He made the system pull up the archived data.

[User: Lee Min-Jae]

[Character name: Eren Vale]

[Class: Tamer (...really?)]

"You..." muttered Elliot, his eyes narrowing behind his thick glasses. "It can’t be..."

He brought his face close to the screen as if the name were a mirage.

Lee Min-Jae.

It was a name that carried the scent of old forums, of endless posts with obscure theories, of buggy images with red arrows pointing out flaws in the system’s logic. A name that appeared in internal logs always accompanied by some statistical hack, some misuse of secondary mechanics, or an absurd way of turning inventory trash into a weapon of mass destruction.

Lee Min-Jae.

That annoying kid.

Who always said, "It’s not a bug, it’s insight."

"Oh, my God..." Elliot leaned back in his chair, almost laughing. "It’s him." That brat who broke the economy with mana potion looping in the Blood Cleric class... who reset cooldown by canceling animation with tab switching... who scaled warrior stats by combining taunt with ground buff... who used Night Archer animations as if it were an interpretive dance of exploit...

He counted them off on his fingers, one by one, with growing indignation.

"But Tamer?" His voice rose an octave. "Tamer, no! He never... he never found anything in the Tamer class. I remember! I followed it!"

Elliot began pacing in circles, his finger pointed.

"I read every one of his posts. Every provocation. He was scandalous, but methodical. He checked every line. He reproduced every bug. He gave risk ratings. He made infographics with color palettes. But he never touched the Tamers."

He stopped in front of the screen and pointed, offended.

"You said that Tamer was ’a conceptual mistake,’ that ’emotional bonds shouldn’t be mechanical, but roleplay.’ You wrote that, you bastard! I SAVED THAT POST!"

He opened another tab. He searched the old community file database. He found it.

Post by: LeeMinJae.EXR

Title: "Why Tamer Sucks (and Will Always Suck)"

Highlighted excerpt:

"If I ever find an exploit for this joke of a class, consider me hacked or possessed by a love wizard."

Elliot pinched his nose between his fingers.

"You said that. You yourself. How dare you... how dare you...?"

He looked back at the current log.

[Class: Tamer]

[Emotional exploitation detected]

[Evasion patterns: complex]

"You tricked me," Elliot whispered, his voice thick with drama. "You made me believe there was no way. That Tamers were safe. That you would never stoop to that. And now... now you’re one of them?"

His voice became a whisper of theatrical disappointment:

"You became... what you swore to destroy..."

And then, his eyes lit up.

"Or worse... you’re the only one who managed to make this shitty class functional."

And there, at that moment, Elliot Shard didn’t just feel hatred.

He felt... fear.

The kind of fear that only a developer feels when they realize that their structure has been corrupted by someone who swore never to touch it.

He opened the behavior analysis tab.

[Usage pattern: emotional opportunism / strategic dominance / contract deviation]

[System trend: undetected manual adaptations | Moderate exploitation | Abnormal stability]

Elliot let out a stifled scream, walked in circles, and began chewing on the tip of his bow tie.

"He’s not just breaking the rules... he’s dancing on them in high heels and sequins. And that, my darlings, is unacceptable."

He ran to his personal notebook, opened the administrative entity creation terminal, and began typing with the stylized fury of someone who knows what he wants:

// Emergency creation – Anti-Anomaly Unit

Name: Exploit Hunter – Alpha Unit

Attributes:

– Adaptive Intelligence (level 9)

– Status Copier (level 6)

– Emotional Bond Suppressor (level 10)

– Interface Interference (level 5)

Design: chivalrous specter with torn armor, symbol of corrupted justice

Base AI: hybrid of investigative logic + emotional prediction algorithms

Personality: relentless, silent, impartial

Objective: track, confront, and force the reset of anomalous users (PRIORITY 1)

Primary Target: [anonymized in public build]

Elliot smiled.

"Let’s see if Mr. ’My bonds are sincere’ can handle an enemy who doesn’t cry, doesn’t feel, and has no patience for tamer romance.

Press the execute button.

The screen flashed.

[Administrative Entity Successfully Created.]

[Unit: Exploit Hunter – Alpha]

[Status: Sleeping | Location hidden | Awaiting Activation by Risk Pattern 9+]

Elliot took a deep breath. He adjusted his tie.

"Done."

Then he turned to the room.

"No one... and I repeat... NO ONE here says a word about this to my dad. If he finds out that I’ve created another player hunter, he’ll make me review the Easter campaign!"

Someone coughed in the background.

Elliot spun on his heels, pointed, and said:

"And you, Minhee, know this: if this thing works... I want my name engraved on the main debug console, you hear me?! Because when this little tamer is deleted, I want the last thing he sees to be: ’Game Over – By Elliot Shard 3’"

And then, with a snap of his fingers, he returned to his swivel chair, crossed his legs, and whispered to the code:

"Let’s see how you deal with my rules, Eren Vale..."

And, for the first time in a long time, Elliot smiled with relish.