I Got an Omnipotent Brain Chapter 69

Translator: Dreamscribe

As soon as he stepped out of the building, a strong wind blew.

Yu Seo-ha closed his eyes for a mont. Letting the river wind sweep over him, he cooled down his overheated head.

As he walked along the long road, a stone-built wall ca into view. The traces of ti were fully embedded there.

Since the school had been established for over 150 years, this building might be about that old too.

When he pushed the door open, a familiar atmosphere greeted him.

The scent of chalk, rubber erasers, old wooden floors, and espresso that students had likely drunk to stay awake was perated into the entire space.

Ssssp...

Seo-ha took a deep breath.

“Mmm- slls like math!”

The air was sowhat chilly and demanded focus.

This was Building No. 2, the mathematics departnt, where Seo-ha would be spending a long ti ahead.

In the hallways of the mathematics departnt, unlike other departnts, there were no display items.

Instead, the entire space was covered with problems left by professors and students.

“Wow! This place is on a whole different level.”

Chalkboards stretched endlessly along the corridor, far larger in scale than what he had seen in the physics departnt.

‘Is this applied mathematics?’

Among the tangled numbers and symbols, he spotted familiar computational theories.

Besides those, there were also questions about abstract algebra and quantum information theory.

‘Three people... no, four?’

Many proofs were being completed through the hands of several individuals.

Sotis there were also random notes.

[The guy who fixed my proof yesterday ssed up in the middle! Reflect on yourself.]

[Even Harvard kids would run away if they saw this.]

└Our math departnt is a bit insane ㅋㅋ

[Did you hear the rumor that a super rookie is joining our departnt soon?]

└You an S.H.Yoo? I read his paper on the Four Color Theorem too. It was really amazing.

└As a sunbae, I should show so dignity, but I’m not confident. Anyone want to take my place?

└No need. With the workload and difficulty level of the assignnts, no matter how great the rookie is, he’ll end up humble.

└I want to talk to him soon. I’m curious if there’s been any progress on the Riemann Hypothesis.

About halfway down, he saw various geotric models displayed inside a transparent glass case.

Klein bottle, Möbius strip, Riemann surfaces, torus structures. Surfaces that continued endlessly, intersected, and completed themselves. All of them were artworks created through the language of geotry.

At the end of the hallway, a phrase engraved in tal type caught his eye.

‘That’s what Galileo said.’

[Mathematics is the language with which God created the universe.]

From Pythagoras to the present day, mathematics had been the oldest language mankind had built to understand the world.

This language, which began with shapes drawn on sand in ancient tis, now recorded the motion of stars and explained the structure of the universe and the flow of ti.

‘I should get going.’

Seo-ha shook his head, shaking off his thoughts.

From the very end, he turned the corner again and went all the way to the farthest end. His destination was in the most secluded part of the mathematics departnt building.

When he touched the monitor in front of the door, an animation appeared.

With ominous music, three masked hackers appeared.

-You’ve finally arrived, 001! Actually, this soup needs a secret ingredient! Would you care to ask what it is?

Seo-ha thought this hacker definitely had talent in acting.

“What is it?”

-It’s you!

Badababababam-

[Final Stage]

-Would you like to rescue Tim the Beaver?

[Yes / No]

Seo-ha burst into laughter and was about to press Yes, but then stopped his hand.

“If I clear this, what happens to the other students?”

-Unfortunately, the ga ends. But no one will complain. It was at least more fun than a typical orientation.

At the masked figure’s words, Seo-ha lowered his hand.

“Then can I wait a bit? There must be a lot of people heading this way right now, and it would be a waste for to be the only one to see the ending of such a well-made ga.”

A silence lingered for a while.

-Kuhuk! You understand. To be honest, we prepared for over a month just for today.

“I thought so. It felt like too much effort for a prank. There must’ve been a good reason.”

The masked figure nodded.

-But are you sure about this? It ans giving up your right as first place.

“I don’t mind. If I’m qualified, I can still solve the final problem first. And you guys want more people to enjoy this ga you worked so hard on, right?”

-You’re a good one. Alright! Then let’s wait just one hour. Any longer, and we'll have to decline.

“Sounds good!”

Once both sides agreed, the tir began to count down.

[00:59:32]

***

Entropy took off her hood and slumped into the chair.

Her forehead was soaked with sweat, probably from the heat.

“I like that guy!”

She pointed at the screen on the monitor.

Seo-ha, who had been sitting and resting for a while, was now up and solving the problems written along the hallway.

“There definitely won’t be any issues with teamwork.”

“The speed at which he calculates is no joke. Are all the math departnt students like that?”

Entropy shook her head.

“No way. If he's like that, then he really is impressive.”

Tick, tock.

Ti passed.

[00:08:20]

“One person just arrived.”

Cypher Fox zood in the monitor.

At the end of the hallway on the screen, soone appeared. From the silhouette, it was a woman.

[00:03:12]

And just as ti was about to run out, a male student wearing a black backpack ca running, panting for breath.

***

“Thank god! I thought I was definitely going to be late.”

Backpack guy caught his breath with relief as he looked at the remaining three minutes or so.

Seo-ha smiled and reached out his hand.

“Welco. It would’ve been a sha to finish this aweso ga alone.”

Backpack guy nodded vigorously and grabbed Seo-ha’s hand. On his way here, he had felt like a character inside a ga.

“You’re 001, right? Then are you 002?”

He glanced at Ellie as he spoke.

“That’s right.”

Ellie replied coldly.

But he didn’t give up and tried to break the ice.

“So, which universities did you turn down to co here? I got into Stanford and Duke myself...”

Among the freshn, the hottest topic was still college admissions.

“I only applied to Harvard and MIT. Got into both, of course... How about you?”

Ellie seed curious too as she looked at Seo-ha and asked.

Five admission letters flashed through Seo-ha’s mind.

“Uh... Besides here, I got offers from Caltech, Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton.”

Both of them looked at Seo-ha in surprise.

“Wow! You got accepted into all the top schools in the US.”

“Seriously. That’s the kind of thing that should be in the news.”

The word choice (offer) felt subtly off, but the two figured it could be because Seo-ha was a foreigner.

[00:00:00]

When the ti hit zero, the monitor turned on.

-Ti’s up! Warriors, are you ready to challenge us?

“Of course. We’ve been waiting too long already.”

“Is today the day we get new graphics cards?”

Watching the two of them rejoice, Seo-ha smiled warmly.

“Then I’ll press it.”

Seo-ha stepped up and touched the screen.

[Final Stage]

-Would you like to rescue Tim the Beaver?

As he pressed the ‘Yes’ button, grand opera music played.

‘They changed the direction again.’

Whirrr-

The automatic door opened.

The three of them hesitated for a mont, then stepped inside.

***

“Is the solution boiling?”

Root pushed his lab goggles up onto his forehead and asked.

“93 degrees. Almost done. This heater’s performance sucks.”

The hackers had reinterpreted a witch’s cauldron in their own way using laboratory equipnt as stage props.

“They’re coming!”

Whirrr-

The three walked in at once and were shocked by the stage setup.

A big-sized beaver doll hanging from the ceiling, and beneath it, a large beaker filled with a mysterious boiling solution.

“What the heck is this!”

“Wow!”

“Th-the beaver!”

The hackers were satisfied with their reactions.

-The final problem is on the screen. Every ti we give you a hint, the rope will be lowered. You’ll get up to five hints. Any more than that, and it’s ga over!

-We have high expectations. The graphics card is real, so take them if you’ve got what it takes!

Letters appeared on the monitor.

[We created a certain ‘source function’. But now, all that remains is the output data generated by that function.

Your mission is to reconstruct the function using only the results.]

Imdiately, three channel windows appeared side by side.

Raw output values, approximated rate of change, and accumulated values appeared one after another.

-Start!

As expected, all three of them looked flustered.

[00:59:59]

The tir started counting down. To solve it within ti, they would have to carefully decide when to use the hints.

Tick-

Entropy turned off the mic.

“I did what you wanted, but... don’t you think this problem is a bit much?”

Cypher Fox crossed his arms and stared at the monitor.

“No, if they got into here, they’re generally all good at math. But that’s not the skill we need for our project.

We need soone who can extract data and structure it. Soone who can make sense of anything we throw at them, mathematically organize it.”

At Entropy’s words, Root flared up.

"Would such a convenient talent exist?"

“If not, it’s useless anyway. I’ll just do it myself.”

"Ah! That tedious work?"

She had been manually modifying equations to find a function that fit the data conditions.

“Shut up!”

“Both of you, quiet. Entropy, what’s your benchmark for a pass?”

Cypher Fox asked, watching the screen.

“At the very least, they need to be able to automate what I’ve been doing by hand. If they use about three hints, that would be decent enough.”

“What about one or two?”

At Root’s question, Entropy shrugged.

“One hint? That’s pure talent. You need really sharp intuition for that.

Those types can just ‘feel’ whether a function is exponential, logarithmic, or if it’s a wave with damping amplitude. My professor used to call it functional intuition.”

“Is that even mathematically possible?”

“Of course. Kids who are good at instrunts can play a new song just by reading the sheet music, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what if you told them to listen to a song and write out the sheet music? Not just the lody, but every component in the piece.”

“Obviously impossible.”

“In math, there are people who can do that. Maybe in music too, if you look hard enough.”

Entropy stared at the monitor.

Ten minutes had passed. It was about the ti when she thought soone would give up and ask for a hint.

001 suddenly stood up from his seat.

Then he began typing on the keyboard.

“Huh?”

“What’s he doing? We haven’t given a single hint yet!”

“Uh... huh? There’s no way he could know the answer with the data he has, right?”

Tap, tap.

“He’s probably just giving it a shot.”

“Just randomly guessing?”

But as he finished typing, a ssage ca from the speaker, one they never thought they’d hear.

-Congratulations!

The lights installed on the ceiling instantly changed.

The dimly lit laboratory was bathed in gold in an instant.

The beaver plush hanging from the ceiling suddenly wagged its tail.

A grand fanfare burst from the speakers.

Bam-ba-bam-barabam!

[Thank you for saving . Beaver will never forget this kindness.]

A clear ssage appeared.

“Uh...?”

“What the hell just happened?”

Root and Cypher Fox stared blankly at the monitor.

‘With just that little information? That’s impossible… wait, don’t tell …’

Coming to her senses, Entropy stared hard at Seo-ha’s face.

The other two who had been solving the problem with him also had astonished expressions.

As far as she knew, there was only one freshman this year who could pull off a performance like this.

Soone so exceptional, she hadn’t expected him to even attend orientation.

"Could it be.... Yu Seo-ha?"

They only knew his na from his paper, but none of them knew what Seo-ha looked like.