[Logia’s Going Crazy lol]
-The top 100 rankers’ scores are higher every time I wake up. They must really be grinding, huh?
└I’d do it too, if I had the ability.
└I heard rumors that some two-digit rankers formed teams.... They say you absolutely can’t climb alone.
└Logia, aren’t you going to manage abuse?
└Damn it, I was in the top 100 too, but the cutoff keeps rising and I got pushed out. Guess I’ll just watch now.
└Does it feel like the difficulty of the problems suddenly went up, or is it just me?
└There are tons of new faces too. They’re pouring in from IIT and Tsinghua almost like a rush?
The small pebble Seoha had thrown came back as a tidal wave.
The hidden dragons who had been holding their breath all this time raised their heads all at once. The ripple effect APEX Lab possessed was beyond imagination. To master’s and doctoral students from prestigious universities, the chance to work on the same team as Seoha, who was changing the paradigm of modern mathematics, was a more attractive reward than anything else.
A laboratory at Oxford University in England. Beyond the window, the campus lay blanketed in thick fog.
The papers on the desk were filled with mysterious formulas, and a laptop computer was open to one side.
“Hmph! What a joke.”
Cecilia Ashley twirled a pen around her finger and gave a cold smile.
She was a direct descendant of the Ashleys, an old and storied family of geniuses in England, and a supernova already praised in her teens for having opened a new horizon in complex geometry.
To her, Logia was nothing more than a trivial game she had once enjoyed. Two years ago, she had been the legendary user who slaughtered every ranker at the time in just a few weeks, rose to first place, and then vanished.
“I was thinking of going there someday anyway. This works out nicely.”
No matter how arrogant she was, even she could not ignore what Seoha had accomplished so far.
She did not want to admit it, but the way he handled numbers came closest to the beauty she pursued. That was why it was all the more unpleasant.
“He said up to fourth place, right?”
Cecilia put on the glasses she had taken off and activated her locked account.
[Welcome Back, Cecilia]
The moment the message appeared on the screen, she began solving problems without hesitation.
└Guys! Did you just see the real-time rankings? Cecilia’s back!
└Who?
└Tsk, tsk. This is why newbies lol. She’s the legend who bombarded Logia two years ago like Seoha did.
└She just entered the 200s. Her rank goes up every time I refresh ㄷㄷㄷ
└Every ranker’s ass is on fire now.
As if the commotion in the community did not concern her in the slightest, Cecilia began smashing through scores with terrifying momentum. Her goal was not something like fourth place.
***
Sri stared blankly at the screen.
His rank, which had been 27th, kept dropping. The strength Sri believed he possessed was that he was an engineer who understood mathematics well. But here, one could only compete with mathematics.
On top of that, the situation was completely different from when he had reached fifth by taking advantage of an empty field. Even if he stayed still, his rank was being pushed down at a frightening pace each day.
[Rank 35: Srinivasa Krishnan]
‘Damn it.’
Sri gritted his teeth.
The ranking tab was filled with powerful people he had never seen before, as if they had appeared from nowhere. Besides Cecilia, geniuses from all sorts of affiliations—IIT, his alma mater, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Imperial College, and more—were solving problems all day long.
Needless to say, at MIT, Seoha’s home ground, the Logia craze was also raging fiercely.
‘Sri, don’t tell me you consider yourself an engineer?’
Why was Seoha’s question coming to mind now?
Sri realized that since growing up, he had never once seriously faced mathematics head-on. Perhaps the reason he had felt inferior while looking at Teo or Sujeong lay here as well.
Those who stake their lives on mathematics have a distinctive aura. It is an attitude toward the universe called numbers—in other words, a mathematical self.
“Phew.”
Sri exhaled, then closed his eyes.
In his childhood, there had been a boy who was poor but loved mathematics more than anyone.
An old house where the electricity often went out. At night, he would rely on a single candle and write down formulas. The memory of joy as he chased the beauty of concise equations and the symmetry that emerged in unexpected places—Sri sank into nostalgia and recalled those days.
‘But why?’
The weakness Seoha saw in Sri was that he pursued efficiency too excessively. It could not be helped. That was the alpha and omega of engineering.
That tendency had sometimes been an advantage, but now it had become a wall blocking Sri’s mathematical growth.
Efficiency is the technique of running toward a predetermined answer in the fastest way. But in the vast abyss called mathematics, the habit of considering only efficiency is also a blind spot that erases the possibilities hidden beyond formulas.
‘Ah! So that’s why......’
It was for the same reason that he felt at ease when analyzing papers or coding.
All of those were problems where optimization mattered.
Sri opened his eyes.
“Let’s start from here.”
[Are you sure you want to delete your account?]
Click.
He decided to erase everything he had been until now.
From zero again.
He did not feel any regret over his ranking. Rather, he even began to look forward to how Logia would evaluate the changed him.
Over the past year, the number of papers he had analyzed on the team was beyond imagination.
At Seoha’s side, he had watched the way Seoha handled numbers, and through frequent conversations with Teo and Sujeong, he had experienced their ways of thinking.
[Would you like to create a new account?]
Click.
He did not necessarily have to go this far, but to Sri, it was something as important as a ritual.
***
“Um, noona. I don’t think you necessarily have to do that....”
Seoha awkwardly scratched his head and watched Sujeong’s mood.
Sujeong let out a small sigh and glared at him.
“Say something that makes sense. Everyone is obviously going to be watching our team members’ rankings. How can I not!”
Seoha flattened himself like a sinner.
He had only wanted to stimulate Sri, but he had unintentionally burdened Sujeong as well.
Teo leisurely sipped his coffee and nodded.
“She’s right. Imagine Sujeong gets pushed out of the top four. What do you think people will say?
Whew, but this won’t be easy. Look at the universities the kids in the top 100 are from. There are quite a few I know too. I thought they weren’t all that interested in this kind of thing, but I guess not?”
Slurp—
Sujeong looked at Teo and furrowed her brow.
She was sure he was doing it on purpose. For the first time in a while, she took out her battle attire again. A gray hoodie and sneakers, her hair tied tightly into one ponytail, and with her laptop in hand, she sat in a corner seat.
“I wanted to hit first place at least once anyway. It’s not like I don’t think I can.”
As a mathematician, Sujeong’s momentum these days was frightening.
Teo glanced sideways at her, then clicked the ranking tab.
“Hmm....”
Tanaka from Caltech, Raphael from Harvard, Daniel from Princeton, and Cecilia, who was climbing with terrifying momentum, stood out.
Several bright minds from China and India had also placed their names in the top 20.
Teo looked at the screen and chuckled.
“This’ll be fun. It’s like Seoha put out a call to assemble the Avengers.”
He was more than happy about the moths flocking toward this Eldorado. Maintaining his ranking had been getting a little boring lately.
Crack—
After loosening his hands and neck, he clicked problem matching.
***
[Analysis of the Current Logia Ranking Situation]
-Things have been so interesting lately that I organized the current status of the major rankers. The rankings up to fourth place that Seoha announced are fluctuating like crazy.
1. Teo (Team APEX Lab) [-]
The immovable number one. Since Seoha became a statue, he has never come down from that spot. Won’t he comfortably defend first place until the end of the month?
2. Cecilia Ashley (Oxford) [▲4]
The return of the empress. As expected of the legend who bombarded Logia two years ago and disappeared, her momentum is fierce. But since there’s almost no gap between her and the upper group, she can’t relax.
3. Sujeong Lim (Team APEX Lab) [▲7]
Another undergraduate at APEX. Since the no-entry announcement, she has been raising her rank terrifyingly fast. Rumor has it that unlike her looks, her personality isn’t good, so don’t pick a fight with her in chat.
She announced on social media that she would challenge for first place. We may have been underestimating this person all along.
4. Daniel Brown (Princeton) [▼1]
Belongs to Elijah Cronen’s lab. There were rumors that he was trying to move labs, but they turned out to be false. Seems like he’s just doing it for fun. His rank has dropped a bit lately, but he’s been mentioned several times as a Fields Medal candidate, so he might climb back up quickly.
5. Julian Lambert (Caltech) [▼3]
Was doing well, but lately he’s in danger of being kicked out. He once climbed as high as second and made the rankers nervous, but lately he seems to be struggling among the monsters. He’s logged into Logia for over 15 hours a day. Looks like he wants to transfer to APEX Lab.
9. Srinivasa Krishnan (Team APEX Lab) [▲27]
The only ranker who isn’t a math major. He’s the team’s coder, and many guessed that his pure mathematical ability would be relatively lacking. He suddenly deleted his ID, so I thought he had dropped out of the race, but he immediately made a new account and is tearing up the rankings.
He’s jumping dozens of places at a time and is now aiming to enter the top four.
└APEX Lab has no holes. I’m seeing Srinivasa in a new light.
└Still, won’t fourth place be hard? There are only a few days left now.
ᄂWhere did all the guys who looked down on him because he’s a coder go?
└I think Julian is kind of a laughingstock. He bought an MIT hoodie and cap and posted them on social media, remember?
└I saw that too lolololol
└Cecilia really is amazing. Thanks to her, this got fun.
ᄂAt this point, it’s basically like all the elite master’s and PhD students on Earth have gathered. There are lots of kids from University of Tokyo and Tsinghua in the upper ranks too.
***
Sri was immersed in a trance.
When he stopped thinking about taking shortcuts, only then did things become visible. Pursuing rigor, the mathematical fundamentals he had disregarded until now. Sri worked tirelessly to fill that gap.
‘I understand now. Engineering looks at efficiency, but in mathematics, you have to find necessity.’
Once he had less to worry about financially, Sri was able to return to his childhood self and devote himself to mathematics again.
One in 1.4 billion. Sri’s true talent, which even Seoha had acknowledged, awakened.
He solved one problem, then another.
Sri was no longer conscious of time or ranking. Once he changed his mindset, the joy he had felt when he first learned mathematics came back to life.
‘This is fun.’
The thrill of the logic he had built leading to inevitability and becoming the sole answer to the problem. The realm that had once felt difficult now appeared so clearly it seemed within reach.
And the next day,
Ding—
[Rank 6:Srinivasa Krishnan]
Sri looked at the window.
The sun had set long ago, and outside was pitch-black.
[23:30]
Today was the last day of the month.
Seoha’s announcement would apply starting tomorrow.
‘This will be the last problem.’
The battle at the top was fierce.
Even when he raised his score, the gap did not easily shrink. The rankers held their positions until the very end without collapsing.
Click.
“Huh?”
An S+ grade problem came out as the last problem.
It was likely a problem for which the AI had intentionally raised the discriminatory power due to score inflation.
Sri drew in a deep breath and glared at the problem.
A moment later,
Ding—
[Rank 4:Srinivasa Krishnan]
Sri closed his eyes and quietly cheered.
He felt that only now could he answer Seoha’s question proudly.
“No, I am a mathematician.”
***
“Mom! I’m heading out first!”
Seoha shouted as he put on his shoes at the entrance.
“What about breakfast?”
“I’ll eat at the lab!”
The door closed the moment he answered.
As he pedaled his bicycle, the fresh morning air brushed across his face.
‘That scared ten years off my life.’
At midnight yesterday, Seoha had refreshed the app with trembling hands.
He trusted his teammates, but if, by any chance, someone failed to enter the top four, an uncomfortable situation might unfold.
‘I knew this would happen!’
Seoha cried out in triumph.
Sri would gain more confidence than before, and he would also be able to solidify his identity as a mathematician. More than anything, Seoha was happy that he no longer had to fret over whether Sri might go back.
Beep-beep—
“Good morning!”
Seoha greeted cheerfully as he opened the door and entered.
‘Huh? Is something wrong?’
A chilly air flowed through the laboratory.
Teo and Sujeong were needlessly looking elsewhere, and Sri was also glancing to the side while pretending to do something else.
“So you’re Yu Seoha?”
A voice came from behind the partition.
As if making an excuse, Teo looked at Seoha and said,
“I clearly told her outsiders couldn’t come in...”
“You said up to fourth place was welcome, didn’t you? You should keep your promise, no?”
A woman with deep chestnut hair entered Seoha’s sight.
She was sitting in a chair with her legs crossed as if it were her own home. She was a beauty with a sharp yet restrained impression.
Beneath her black long coat was a dark navy suit that looked tailored, and on her wrist was a watch worth as much as a decent house in a small or mid-sized city.
Seoha’s eyes widened.
“Huh?”
She chuckled.
“You react like that too? That’s why I don’t take photos.”
Posh English, symbolizing the British aristocracy. It was an accent that suited her perfectly.
“Cecilia Ashley. At the moment, I’m the head of the family.”
“Don’t tell me, that Ashley?”
She nodded.
Teo jumped up from his seat in surprise.
A life peerage in the British House of Lords, Lady Ashley of Oxford.
She was an aristocrat among aristocrats.
But what surprised Seoha was none other than her face.
“What is your relation to Countess Ada Lovelace?”
The genius of the century whom Britain was proud of.
The person who, in the 1800s, first transformed mathematics into a programming language. A figure still praised today for her beautiful appearance and intellect.
Cecilia’s face bore an astonishing resemblance to the one he had seen in a history of mathematics book.
“She’s my great-great-grandmother.”
A golden spoon among golden spoons.
An heiress who had inherited not only title and wealth, but also the intellect of the century. That was Cecilia.
The three of them gaped.