"Merlin!" Shouted by the professor that can be heard all over the room.
"What is happening?" Merlin questioned.
Merlin stood shakily as he waited for another scolding from the professor
But...
"Merlin, you are a top student, you should know this, and also stop slacking off"
Merlin was shocked about what he had heard, and takes the words of the professor seriously.
*BELL RINGS*
Merlin sits at the chair and suddenly ask his classmate, "Where am I?"
"You don't really know, do you?" Ben said.
"No I don't?" Merlin answered.
"Well, you are living, wait no- we are living in a dream world, and everything here is possible" Ben let out a sigh, "I want to tell you everything about the dream world and it's power-" he continued and suddenly interrupted.
"Powers? you mean powers, like literally?" Merlin questioned.
"Well if you know powers, then yes, that kind of powers we see in the media or shows," Ben explained.
"Ok, so going back to what our professor said, he said that I am a top student, my conclusion is am I popular?" He questioned as he points his fingers to himself.
"Well you are really the top student but you're not famous, cause in the dream world, the top students are the unpopular, and quiet kids are popular, in short they like nonchalant people," Ben explained.
"Oh shucks! Another question-" Merlin tried to ask again but got interrupted as Ben spoke up.
"Stop asking questions, were late to our next class, run fast!!"
"What's our next class?" Merlin said as he run, with Heavy breathing.
"Algebra." Ben said...
Merlin tried to spoke, but dare not to...
They entered the algebra class and they are right on time.
'i can't believe that I'm entering algebra class, I really suffered at this from my college.
"Our professor is starting," Ben quietly said to Merlin.
"Today, for this who don't know what algebra is let me tell you in analogy, Algebra is simply the 'generalization of arithmetic. If you calculate your grocery bill, that's math. If you want a formula that calculates every grocery bill you'll ever have for the rest of your life, that's algebra. It is a machine for economizing intelligence, it allows us to do the hard thinking once so we can solve a thousand problems mechanically thereafter."
"Does anyone have a question, if not I'll be starting at our first algebra example,"
Everyone said none.
The professor tapped a piece of chalk against the blackboard, leaving a dusty white dot. He wrote: x² - 5x + 6 = 0
"Most of you look at this and see a puzzle to be unraveled," he said, pacing the front of the room. "But algebra is about simplifying the chaos. We take this quadratic, this curve, and we break it into its DNA."
He quickly factored the equation on the board: (x - 2)(x- 3)= 0
"Now, look at this. It's no longer a complex curve. It's just two numbers being multiplied. Let's call them 'A' and 'B'. If I tell you that A x B = 0
what do you know for certain?"
A student in the back spoke up. "One of them has to be zero."
"Exactly!" The professor pointed at the board with a grin. "That is the Zero Product Property. It's the most powerful 'common sense' in mathematics. For this whole sentence to be true, either (x - 2)
is zero, or (x - 3)
is zero."
He scribbled the final results in large, bold strokes:
"If x - 2 = 0
, then x = 2."
"If x - 3 = 0
, then x = 3."
"We've found the two points where our path crosses the horizon," the professor said, dusting the chalk off his hands. "We didn't guess. We just followed the logic of nothingness."
Merlin is fazed about what he had learned, he thought to himself, if other protagonist is learning how to use their powers and fight, he is sitting, learning algebra and try to keep his mental health on defense.
*BELL RINGS*
"did you understand what our professor had just said?" Ben asked.
"Yeah- yeah, I completely understand it and made my mind much more smarter after absorbing that lesson," Merlin said, as he scratch his head. "So where are we going now?" He continued.
"We are going to our last class which is chemistry," Ben answered.
"Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm studying," Merlin murmured.
"But you are a top student, so you should feel this class is an easy task? Right?" Ben questioned.
"Yeah but I don't know, my mind is foggy and I don't really remember anything, besides," he said, 'i am not merlin' he thought to himself.
"Here we are, in chemistry class," Ben said as he smelled the room. "I miss you so much room," he continued as he hug the walls and parts of the room.
'the air conditioner here makes me puke I need to resist doing that.' Merlin thought.
Suddenly the door open, and behind the door showed a guy with golden brown hair, diamond like eyes, his chiseled jawline and and buffy body, the classmates started cheering and shouting, BUT NOT FOR HIM!
behind the popular that is not popular, a guy showed up with black hair, boring eyes, dry lips and a slightly thin body.
They shouted towards the unpopular guy that is popular.
'He looks tired.' Merlin thought.
And then the chemistry class started.
Professor Elena Vance leaned against her lab table, her lab coat sleeves pushed up to her elbows. On the whiteboard behind her, a chemical equation was scrawled in green marker, but it was incomplete.
H↓2 + O↓2 →H↓2O
"In this kitchen," she began, gesturing to the rows of beakers and Bunsen burners, "we never guess. If you're baking a cake and the recipe calls for two eggs, you don't just throw in five and hope for the best. Chemistry is the same, only the stakes are higher."
She circled the equation. "Right now, this equation is a lie. It violates the Law of Conservation of Mass. We have two oxygens on the left, but only one on the right. Matter doesn't just vanish because it's inconvenient for our math."
She picked up a marker and looked at the class. "This is where we use Algebraic Balancing. Think of the arrow as an equals sign (=). We need the left side to match the right. We treat the coefficients,the numbers in front—as our variables, our x and y."
She wrote a 2 in front of the H↓20
and a 2 in front of the H2.
2H↓2 + O↓2 →2H↓2O
"Now, it's balanced. But why do we care?" She stepped closer to the first row of desks. "Because if I have 10 moles of Hydrogen, algebra tells me exactly how much Oxygen I need to keep from blowing up this lab. We set up a ratio. A simple proportion."
She scribbled a quick fraction on the board:
2 moles H/ 1 mole O = 10 moles H/ x moles O
"Solve for x," she challenged, her eyes scanning the room with a sharp, encouraging glint. "It's a simple cross-multiplication. 2x = 10. So, x = 5. Algebra is the guardrail that keeps our experiments from becoming accidents. It tells us that in the universe, everything must be accounted for. Nothing is lost, and nothing is created out of thin air."
"That's it for our class, make sure you study well cause we are going to have a quiz tomorrow, Bye students."
Merlin whose mental capacity is at its peak,
Decided to just give up and absorbs all the lesson that will be given to him, maybe he could use it for the future.