Chapter 69
Chapter 69
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 69
Chapter Title: Rescuing Team The Beaver
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As they stepped out of the building, a fierce gust of wind swept in.
Yoo Seo-ha closed his eyes for a moment, surrendering his body to the strong breeze as it cooled his overheated head.
Walking along the long path, he spotted a stone wall. The marks of time were preserved there in full.
The school had been founded over 150 years ago, so this building was probably around that age too.
He pushed open the door, and a familiar air greeted him.
The scent of chalk, rubber erasers, aged wooden floors, and espresso that students must have chugged to shake off their sleep permeated the entire space.
Snnniff—
Seo-ha took a deep breath.
"Mmm—the smell of math!"
It was a cool air that somehow demanded utter focus.
This was Building 2, the Mathematics Department, where Seo-ha would be spending the bulk of his next few years.
Unlike other departments, the Math Department's hallways had no display cases or exhibits.
Instead, problems left behind by professors and students blanketed the entire space.
"Whoa! This place is on another level."
Blackboards stretched endlessly down the corridor—far grander in scale than the ones he'd seen in the Physics Department.
Applied math?
Amid the tangle of numbers and symbols, a familiar computational theory caught his eye.
Beyond that were questions on abstract algebra and quantum information theory.
Three people... no, four?
Numerous proofs were being refined through multiple hands.
Occasional chit-chat was scribbled in too.
Midway down, glass cases displayed various geometric models.
Klein bottles, Möbius strips, Riemann surfaces, torus structures. Surfaces that twisted endlessly, intersected, and closed in on themselves—all artworks crafted in the language of geometry.
At the corridor's end, engraved metal letters caught his eye.
Galileo's words.
From Pythagoras to the modern era, mathematics was humanity's oldest language for comprehending the world.
Begun in ancient times with shapes drawn in the sand, it now recorded the motion of stars, explained the structure of the cosmos, and even described the flow of time.
I need to hurry.
Seo-ha shook his head to clear his thoughts.
All the way to the far corner, around the bend, and to the very end. His destination was in the remotest spot of the Math Department building.
Touching the monitor by the door triggered an animation.
Ominous music played as three masked hackers appeared.
Seo-ha thought this hacker clearly had a talent for acting.
"What is it?"
Pababapapabam—
Seo-ha burst out laughing but paused before hitting Yes.
"If I clear this, what happens to the other students?"
Seo-ha lowered his hand at the hacker's words.
"Mind if I wait a bit? Lots of people are heading here, and it'd be a shame if I were the only one to see the ending of such a well-made game."
Silence stretched for a while.
"Figured as much. It was too elaborate for just a prank. There had to be a good reason."
The hacker nodded.
"Doesn't matter. If I'm qualified, I'll solve the final problem first anyway. You guys want more people enjoying this game you worked so hard on, right?"
"Sounds good!"
With agreement from both sides, the timer started.
Entropy pulled off her hood and flopped into a chair.
Her forehead was drenched in sweat from the heat.
"I like that guy!"
She pointed at the monitor screen.
Seo-ha sat resting for a bit, then stood and started solving the problems scribbled on the corridor blackboards.
"Teamwork shouldn't be an issue, that's for sure."
"His calculation speed is insane. Are all math majors like that?"
Entropy shook her head.
"No way. That's genuinely impressive."
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
Time passed.
"One's here now."
Cyber Fox zoomed in on the monitor.
A figure appeared at the end of the corridor in the footage. The silhouette suggested a woman.
As time nearly ran out, a male student with a black backpack came sprinting up, panting hard.
"Whew! Thought I was done for—late as hell."
The backpack guy caught his breath, relieved at the remaining three minutes.
Seo-ha smiled and extended a hand.
"Welcome. Felt wrong hogging this awesome game all to myself."
Backpack nodded vigorously, shaking Seo-ha's hand. The trek here had felt like stepping into a game as a character.
"You're 001, huh? So you're 002?"
He subtly glanced at Ellie as he spoke.
"Yeah."
Ellie's curt reply didn't deter him; he kept trying to break the ice.
"Which colleges did you crush to end up here? I got into Stanford and Duke..."
Among freshmen, admissions talk was still the hottest topic.
"Harvard and MIT for me. Both accepted, of course... What about you?"
Ellie glanced at Seo-ha, curious too.
Five admission letters flashed in Seo-ha's mind.
"Uh... besides here, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton all offered me spots."
Both stared at Seo-ha in shock.
"Whoa! You got into every top US school."
"Yeah, that's news-level stuff, right?"
His word choice—"offer"—felt a tad off, but they chalked it up to him being foreign.
Right on the hour, the monitor lit up.
"Obviously. Been waiting forever."
"Today's GPU upgrade day or what?"
Seo-ha grinned proudly at their excitement.
"I'll hit it then."
Seo-ha approached and touched the screen.
Hitting Yes unleashed grand opera music.
They switched up the演出 again.
Ziiing—
The automatic door slid open.
The three hesitated briefly before stepping inside.
"Solution boiling yet?"
Root pushed his lab goggles up onto his forehead and asked.
"93 degrees—good to go. Heater's performance sucks."
The hackers had reinterpreted a witch's cauldron using lab equipment for their stage.
"Incoming!"
Ziiing—
The three entered together and gawked at the setup.
A massive beaver plush dangled from the ceiling; below it, a giant beaker bubbled with suspicious liquid.
"What the hell is this?!"
"Whoa!"
"B... Beaver!"
The hackers were pleased with their reactions.
Text appeared on the monitor.
Three channel windows popped up side by side.
Raw output values, derivative approximations, cumulative totals—in sequence.
As expected, all three looked flustered.
The timer began ticking. They'd need smart timing on hints to solve it in time.
Click—
Entropy muted the mic.
"You got your way, but this problem's kinda harsh, no?"
Cyber Fox crossed his arms, eyeing the monitor.
"Nah, anyone at this school is solid at math. But that's not what our project needs.
We need someone who can extract data and structure it. Someone who can impose mathematical order on chaos."
Root bristled at Entropy's words.
"You think talent like that grows on trees?"
"If not, it's a bust anyway. I'll just do it myself."
"Ah! That grind?"
She was manually tweaking formulas to match data conditions, one by one.
"Shut it!"
"Quiet, both of you. Entropy, where's the passing line in your book?"
Cyber Fox asked, staring at the screen.
"At least able to automate what I was doing by hand. Three hints? Usable."
"One or two?"
Entropy shrugged at Root's question.
"One's a natural prodigy. Needs killer intuition.
Those types can intuitively classify if it's exponential, logarithmic, or a damped wave—just from feel. Our prof calls it 'functional intuition.'"
"Possible mathematically?"
"Duh. A skilled musician can sight-read any score, right?"
"Yeah."
"Now make them transcribe a song from hearing it alone—melody plus every element."
"No way."
"In math, people exist who can. Music probably has 'em too if you look."
Entropy eyed the monitor.
Ten minutes gone. Prime time to quit and beg for hints.
Then 001 suddenly stood.
And started typing on the keyboard.
"Huh?"
"What's he doing? No hints yet!"
"Uh... impossible to know without any, right?"
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
"Just guessing randomly."
"Shotgun approach?"
But when he finished inputting, an impossible message blared from the speakers.
The ceiling lights shifted instantly.
The dim lab flooded with golden light.
The hanging beaver plush suddenly wagged its tail.
A triumphant fanfare erupted from the speakers.
Bam-bam-bam-para-bam!
Clear message displayed.
"Wha...?"
"What just happened?"
Root and Cyber Fox stared blankly at the monitor.
With just that info? No way... unless...
Snapping to, Entropy peered intensely at Seo-ha's face.
The other two solving with him looked stunned too.
As far as she knew, only one freshman could pull off this performance this year.
A big shot they hadn't expected at orientation.
"No way... Yoo Seo-ha?"
They'd only known him from his paper—never seen his face.