Derek was still in a daze. Everything seemed to be happening so fast he couldn't quite wrap his head around it. Derek glanced at the screen one more time before looking back at the doors—he had automatically one more minute left.
But to Derek's greatest surprise, he knew instantly what the right answer was. He could tell the answer to the question at a glance. Derek stepped closer.
Door 1:
2^x+1 + 3^x-1 = 2^x + 3^x
Door 2:
√(2x + 5) = x^-
Door 3:
x^2 + 4x + 5 = 0
All he needed to do right now was walk through the door with the correct equation. Derek looked at each door and, by instinct, felt Door 1 was the right option. By default, he began walking toward it—but then he stopped midway.
The doors were unique. They had no knobs, handles, or anything of the sort—just glowing equations at their center.
Who did he think he was? Was he really that smart? He couldn't just stare at random complex equations and solve them in less than ten seconds. Derek's inner voice kept dragging him back. He casually looked at the holographic screen. He had just 40 seconds left.
Derek quickly decided to glance through them one more time. He had only 40 seconds, so he chose to breeze through each equation again. He looked at Door C—it was a quadratic equation, but he knew this trick too well. A negative discriminant can give you no real solution.
Derek moved to B, and at a glance, he saw its complexity. There was definitely no suitable answer for that question.
Without analyzing any further, he stepped closer to Door A, touching it lightly.
"I choose A," Derek said, his demeanor changing slightly as a sharp, determined smile formed on his face.
"A is the correct answer," a voice said as the door disintegrated before him.
---
He watched carefully. At least he had a little control of the Mind Grid. All he needed to do was make sure Derek didn't win—by making his test score harder. Lucian Graves adjusted his hat as he sat up from his table. He might have aced this test easily, but Thompson was way ahead now, and there was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it. He definitely didn't have a chance anymore.
But deep down, he didn't believe that. Derek was obviously an SSS-ranked genius. It was still going to be hard for Thompson to write him off—and that was exactly why Lucian was here.
Soon, he reached out for his laptop yet again, opened it, and quickly accessed where all the Mind Grid data was stored. He was definitely going to ruin things for him.
He looked up, and a bright smile broke across his cheeks.
"He won't see this coming," he said, his eyes glistening with pain from a past life.
2 points added.
Level 2
begins as soon as you press the green box. Derek hit the green button, discovering it to be almost the same as the level he had just finished. Without much thought, Derek moved straight in.
---
Lucy clicked the button. She was a little scared as she began fumbling with the hem of her skirt. She knew she wasn't as smart as Derek, and her IQ score didn't exactly show she was a genius.
All she really wanted was to rank high in this competition. She didn't care if she won, but all she needed was to rank high. They had believed she was stuck right at the B-rank in intelligence.
But she really doubted it. All her life, she wanted to be smart. And the only way to prove she wasn't just stuck in B-rank...
A room materialized around her, the walls shimmering white. A holographic screen appeared before her.
Test: Effective Memory
Detect which came first—but note: two of them are not from your memory but very similar to ones in your memory.
Lucy panicked. She couldn't tell which was fake, which was real, or even which one came first. The first image was of a baby crying… a hospital on fire… her mother smiling… a hospital hallway… a child holding a red teddy bear… and in another scene, the teddy bear was burnt and on the floor.
90, 89…
The clock began to tick down in seconds instead of minutes. Lucy tried calming herself down and decided to check for the picture that was likely not from her memory. After a few seconds, she realized something:
This test was a trick—to make her panic and look for the fake one instead of the correct answer. It was definitely her memory. The right answer had always been in her head. She stepped up to the holographic screen, scanning each scenario again as if they were all in her brain, all embedded in her memory core.
Her dad was a doctor before he passed away in the deadly hospital fire. That explained those two pictures. She hadn't really been to a hospital since she was a child. Lucy then decided the right answer was definitely the hospital hallway—but then she realized something.
That teddy bear in the image looked very familiar. She paused a moment, trying to make good use of the information she had. With 20 seconds left, she was still unable to crack the code.
10, 9…
Lucy's face lit up bright red. Her hands began trembling as she gazed at the two scenarios again. But this time she noticed it—the little tag on the teddy bear's neck. Reading closely, it said:
To my one and only baby.
Without thinking much more, Lucy quietly pointed at the child carrying the teddy in the picture.
"This is the one which came first," she said, mustering enough confidence in her cracking voice. That was a gift from her dad, Lucy thought. But honestly, she still wasn't sure which one came first—it still confused her.
After some time, the holographic screen lit up once more.But this time it was blinking with a sparkling red color.
Lucy's breath seized at an instant as the thought came in had she failed.