2 a.m.,
Theodore sat in front of his computer, his face expressionless.
On the desk lay an empty coffee cup and a half-used notebook.
“Next problem.”
He muttered in a low voice and tapped at the keyboard.
[Logia is checking your rating.]
Dududung—.
A gauge filled on the screen, and then a searching indicator appeared.
[Logia is about to bestow a new trial upon you.]
-Difficulty S+
-Success rate 0.3%
[Do you wish to challenge it?]
(Y/N)
Theodore let out a deep breath.
If he solved this problem, he would be able to maintain first place in the rankings for the time being.
“Do these guys not have any friends?”
He grumbled.
His competitors were climbing the ranks at a ferocious pace. Stanford, Princeton, Tokyo, Zurich, Cambridge… The prodigies of the world’s top-class universities were hot on Theo’s heels.
But he felt no sense of crisis.
Click.
“Bring it on, losers!”
Theodore smirked and clicked the mouse.
The problem appeared, and now it was time to focus again.
[00 : 10 : 00]
A ten-minute problem.
Then it would not be that difficult. After all, the time limit on the ultra-high-difficulty problems he had experienced had been a full two hours.
Scratch, scratch.
Before long, a message appeared saying he had gotten the answer right, accompanied by a sound effect.
Today, too, he had filled his quota. But his target was still offline.
“Yu Seoha, aren’t you coming soon? I’m waiting, you know.”
It was humiliating, but to drag him out, he had even written a post anonymously on Reddit.
“This is annoying.”
Theodore was a rising star in the world of mathematics, acknowledged by all. During his sophomore year at Stanford, he completed in a matter of days a lemma in differential geometry that his professor had been wrestling with for months.
His theorem expanded by one level Hamilton’s Ricci Flow theory, which was called a classic in the mathematical world, simplifying the process of combining complex differentiation and topological spaces into a single line of formula.
After that, Theodore published four papers in international journals in just two years, and two of them were selected as cover articles.
In academia, praise for him poured out day after day without end.
Among young mathematicians, he was a kind of “phenomenon.” Everyone admired him and struggled to follow the path he had walked.
Until Seoha made a dazzling appearance by proving the four color theorem.
“Damn it.”
He glanced at the journal he had tossed onto one side of the desk.
The bold letters on the cover caught his eye.
[Five Young Mathematicians Who Will Lead the Future]
Theodore could not turn the page for a long while.
「No.1 Yu Seoha (MIT)」
-Who would dare evaluate the potential of this young—no, childlike—mathematician? Even Elijah Cronen did not show such achievements at the age of thirteen.
(omitted)
Although he is still an undergraduate, multiple societies are already predicting him as the next Fields Medalist. Yu Seoha is, in name and reality, the ace who will lead the future of mathematics and its cleanup hitter.
「No.2 Theodore Lanford (Stanford)」
-The genius he has shown still has not lost its shine.
His early research, combining Ricci Flow and topology, was once so overwhelming that the Stanford Department of Mathematics was called “the undergraduate department Theodore belongs to.”
(omitted)
There can be no doubt that he will be one of the names representing the next generation of mathematics.
Grit.
An evaluation where anyone could see the superiority and inferiority were clear.
Theodore clenched his teeth.
“Even if I faltered for a moment, saying I’m on the same level as you is nonsense.
But what? Number one? Do those old fogeys have no eye for people? Where the hell are their eyeballs attached?”
As if he grew furious just thinking about it, Theo breathed harshly.
For the past two years, he had been preparing research that would shock academia.
He had planned to make a magnificent entrance by solving a difficult problem with his master’s thesis, but Yu Seoha had taken all the spotlight.
To make matters worse, even the research that had been going well had been driven into a dead end.
Logia, which he had started for a change of mood, filled his collapsed pride.
“What the hell? These scrubs?”
Victory after victory. Not long after he began, he reached Logia’s only S-plus grade and the number one ranking.
His shrunken confidence swelled again.
‘As expected, I’m the best. There’s no way there’s anyone better than me at the master’s or doctoral level. Now I’ll pull myself together and devote myself to my research again.’
He tried to put Logia down and immerse himself in research again, but his gaze kept drifting to one side.
The brilliant golden crown beside his name,
It felt as if he had reclaimed a throne that had been unjustly taken from him.
Clever as he was, he created a reason for himself to continue Logia.
‘Do I really have to quit this? I just have to call that guy here. I can make the hierarchy clear while I’m at it.’
Tap-tap-tap.
On Reddit, he deliberately provoked MIT. When there was no particular response, he gradually raised the intensity. In the end, he ended up writing a fairly high-level bait post.
‘Even if you don’t want to, you’ll come in the end.’
But the ones he actually drew in were not Seoha, but prodigies from other universities.
To defend first place, he had no choice but to fight hard every day.
* * *
“You’re not going to do it?”
Root and Cipher looked at Seoha with expressions of disbelief.
“No. I’m busy, you know? The Synapse Engine we’re going to use for our game is still incomplete, and I have research I’m working on personally. And I have assignments and exam prep to do too!”
Root grabbed Seoha by the shoulders and shook him.
“No way! Still, you can make a little time for it when you’re resting!”
“Yeah, let’s just try it once to clear your head. Hm?”
But no matter how much they tried to persuade him, Seoha remained immovable.
With an expression that showed no interest whatsoever, he sat at his workstation and edited code.
Tap-tap-tap.
The three were flustered by Seoha’s stubborn attitude.
Entropy thought back to the past.
‘He’s surprisingly stubborn. He’ll never do it if we try to force him…’
The longer they spent together, the more they learned about one another. Seoha, at times like this, would not listen no matter what they did.
“Huh? Seoha, this is aimed at you.”
Root, who practically lived on Reddit twenty-four hours a day, discovered an anonymous post.
[Is Yu Seoha of MIT scared?]
-Why hasn’t he come to Logia yet? Surely he isn’t frightened, is he? Everyone’s been lifting him up as a future Fields Medal candidate, but when told to prove it here, he goes radio silent?
Admit it. MIT’s media play is definitely a cut above Stanford’s.
└I think this crosses the line a bit.
└I’ve been wondering for days, but did T really write this anonymous post?
└It is a bit blatant, but if Seoha Yu joins in, it’s good for us. It’ll be a festival.
└Frogs in a well lol Tsinghua will turn your festival into a funeral.
└KAIST is going innnnn!
└The National University of Singapore is joining too, though we’re low-level. Sent a group message to the math department.
└The University of Tokyo will send its second string. That should probably be enough wwww
With over a thousand replies, the board was on fire.
Entropy clicked his tongue.
“That’s vicious. Seoha, did you perhaps ever do something to make Stanford hold a grudge against you?”
“I’ve never even been there.”
Tap, tap.
Even as the post was read aloud to him, Seoha’s face remained calm.
“Aren’t you angry?”
At Cipher’s words, Seoha shook his head.
“If anything, I feel like I’d lose if I reacted to that.
Logia doesn’t seem like it would be any help to me. Just because people acknowledge me doesn’t mean I’ll come to know a problem I don’t know.”
To Seoha, mathematics was not a competition, but the exploration of truth itself. Therefore, he was not shaken by the evaluations of others.
The atmosphere turned solemn.
“That’s just like you. Sorry. I feel like we forced it on you for no reason.”
“Yeah, what does a useless ranking like that even matter? There’s no need to waste that precious brain of yours, which should be used on Millennium problems, on something like that.”
At Cipher and Root’s words, Entropy also nodded. Then, looking at Seoha, he added one more thing.
“But, you know, isn’t there a possibility that the AI might create a problem even you don’t know, Seoha? A type you’ve never encountered before.”
Flinch.
Seoha’s hands, which had been typing on the keyboard, stopped.
‘It worked!’
Entropy laughed inwardly.
The operating principles of AI flashed through Seoha’s mind.
After thinking for a long while, he nodded.
“The possibility isn’t zero.”
Seoha paused for a moment, then slowly scrolled the screen.
“When AI creates a problem, it is ultimately an extension of the statistical inference humans have built up. Based on existing data, it gathers and recombines the types of thought humans frequently use.
So, strictly speaking, AI cannot create a new concept.”
“But?”
Entropy, an AI expert, showed interest.
“In that process of combination, sometimes ideas emerge that humans have not yet discovered. You know, possibilities that we intuitively dismiss as unnecessary.”
“Ah! I know what that means!”
“I get it too.”
Root and Cipher cried out as if they understood what he meant.
“So that’s why you said it wasn’t zero?”
Nod.
“I’m interested now. I’ll try it once.”
“Really?”
“For real?”
Seoha nodded and accessed the website.
Tap-tap.
[We test your intellect - LOGIA]
When he registered a new account, a gauge filled, and the logo in the center of the screen flashed.
[Do you wish to begin the challenge? Ten questions will be given as a tutorial. Your initial rank will be determined according to your accuracy rate and the time taken to solve them.]
(Y/N)
Click.
When he pressed yes, a problem appeared on the screen.
Number 1, a calculus problem. The moment the problem appeared on the screen, Seoha clicked the answer.
Click.
Number 2, a problem concerning linear algebraic independence.
Likewise, he chose the answer without thinking for even five seconds. To begin with, multiple-choice was far too easy a test format for Seoha.
When he answered numbers 3, 4, and 5 with no time taken at all, it took a while before the next problem appeared.
“What’s going on? Is the AI lagging?”
“To calculate a rank, it needs to measure his level precisely, but Seoha is too fast.”
“Whoa! How does he do this without even calculating?”
Seoha had still not used the notebook and pen set beside him.
Number 6, a problem concerning the Bolzano property appeared.
“Whoa! It’s already getting hard. This is definitely harder than when I got an A.”
Click.
But this time, too, Seoha chose the answer without hesitation.
After he got numbers 7, 8, and 9 right, the loading took longer, as if the AI were thinking. And after quite some time, number 10 was presented.
“Hm?”
Seoha looked at the screen with a puzzled expression.
“What is it?”
“You can’t solve it?”
Root and Entropy asked anxiously.
“No. There’s no answer among the choices.”
Seoha simply pressed end test.
Click.
Dududum-chit-tadan—.
A cheerful sound effect rang out, and the loading spun.
[Tutorial grading in progress…]
[Accuracy rate : 100%]
[Average response time : 4.2 seconds]
[Initial rank cannot be calculated ► Switching to manual upward matching]
“Cannot be calculated?”
Cipher’s eyes widened.
Whew!
Entropy crossed his arms and whistled.
“Looks like he exceeded the evaluation sheet they set as the maximum score.”
[Moving to advanced session.]
[Warning: From this stage onward, incorrect answer penalties are significant, and questions will be presented in free-response format according to the user’s level. In addition, solving the problems may take a long time, so please attempt them when you have sufficient time.]
Unable to hide his excitement, Entropy shouted.
“He’s going straight to the upper bracket! He skipped the low ranks entirely?”
The rank calculated for Seoha that way was the first placement-test S-rank in Logia’s history.