Eps 252 Another Sky (2)
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There’s none :)
Mark glanced back and forth between Shirone and Iruki, filled with excitement.
“Senior Shirone has the upper hand, right? Right?"
"It's a close situation. If time keeps passing like this, Pascal will overload. If Shirone can last until then, the match will be back to square one. That means Dante will lose his greatest weapon."
Mark was so happy he almost cried.
Until just a moment ago, he had thought that Shirone's defeat was a foregone conclusion. He had even thought that it was amazing that he was able to compete on equal terms with Dante, the most promising talent in the kingdom.
But Shirone turned the tables as if nothing had happened.
“As expected of Senior Shirone. Does that mean he’s surpassed Senior Dante in information processing, too?"
Iruki had no answer.
As Mark turned his head with a puzzled expression, all the seniors sitting in the row were watching the match with serious eyes.
Iruki continued to scratch his chin.
It was true that Shirone had figured out Dante's system, but he had no idea how it was possible.
If Dante’s Automaton had been so easy to analyze, Shirone wouldn’t have struggled as much as he did in the beginning.
Amy gave up thinking and asked.
“How did he analyze the pattern? Honestly, I don’t even know how Dante’s Automaton works. I don’t have the faintest clue. Nade, what about you?"
“I feel the same. It’s not just complicated; the system is too large. It’s like trying to guess the shape of an elephant from only seeing its leg.”
Amy thought Nade's analogy was perfect.
"Exactly. Dante didn’t design this system just for Shirone. It has an enormous range of adaptability, depending on the opponent. So how did Shirone manage to read the whole thing?"
Iruki proposed a hypothesis.
“It might not be mathematical.”
Mark tilted his head.
"Not mathematical? Then what is it?"
Iruki frowned and chose the right words.
“Should I say… instinct?”
“I- Instinct? Something like intuition?”
Mark was dumbfounded. Dante’s system was the pinnacle of cutting-edge information magic. If you could understand a system like that with just intuition, what would be the point of making things so complicated?
But Iruki was serious. No matter how he thought about it, intuition seemed closest to the answer, and it wasn’t something as simple as Mark was imagining.
"Instinct isn’t some kind of superstition. It's more like an evolved form of inductive reasoning."
To prove that humans have two eyes, we don't need to count the number of eyes in the world.
You don’t need to count everyone’s eyes in the world to prove that humans have two. Most people are confident that humans have two eyes because their family and friends don’t have three.
Amy said.
“Shirone’s insight is transcendent. He can grasp the whole picture with just a small amount of data. But even that has its limits. A certain amount of information has to be collected first."
Iruki commented.
“But there are exceptions. That is, the quality of the data. You can't imagine an elephant just by looking at its leg, but if you had its skeleton, you could roughly predict its shape."
Nade agreed with Iruki’s observation.
“It seems that Shirone collected special information that could only be gathered by risking one’s life and infiltrate Dante’s system. He then analyzed the entire system based on that information."
Mark recalled the words of Principal Alpheas, who used to say things like that. Insight is faster than effort and more accurate than knowledge. If Dante had the ability to read channels, then Shirone had the insight to see through everything.
Every time Shirone moved, the bracelet on his wrist heated up. Even though it had safety measures in place, keeping it on too long felt like it might cause first-degree burns.
Dante was shocked to see Shirone surviving for over five minutes inside Pascal System.
Automaton was designed to crush any opponent with overwhelming firepower in under five seconds.
This was the heart of the hellish system he had created.
In a situation where a normal human would be terrified, Shirone moved as if the battlefield were his personal playground.
'Why? Why don't you waver?'
Insight is the pinnacle of inductive reasoning, so it doesn’t always provide a 100 percent accurate answer. This uncertainty often leads to fear of an uncertain future.
But Shirone did not lose his composure. It was the mental strength of Unbreakable Diamond that did not change form in any situation.
As Pascal overloaded, Dante felt a tingle in his nose. If he continues like this, he will self-destruct along with the magic circle.
But he didn't stop.
At the bottom of the cliff, the first defeat of his life awaited him. With every victory came sharper blades of determination, and a single defeat would sever those blades, cutting through his very being.
'I can never lose!'
Dante, on the other hand, increased Pascal's computational speed.
As he stepped into an unknown world that he had never experienced before, the walls crumbled and a wonderful world unfolded before him.
The light of Pascal Magic Circle burned intensely and the speed of Mansion grew faster.
Streams of binary numbers flowed like a raging river through his mind, gradually wearing down his brain.
The changes in Pascal were instantly noticeable to the students. Functions that had been at least two steps behind Shirone’s pace were now catching up.
Dante was convinced.
'I can still do it! I can go further!'
Pascal doesn't need to process everything in parallel. By focusing on the most important calculations, specific functions could be exponentially enhanced.
'Starting with Slow Mansion. Then Fire, Bolt, and Press in that order.'
Dante selected specific addresses from the vast memory of Pascal and prioritized their calculations—jumping from the 352nd calculation to the 2,987th, and then to the farthest extremes. When he reached the point of going from one end to the other in an instant, Pascal Magic Circle roared.
'This is it! This is what I’ve been searching for!'
Dante felt the liberating sensation of his consciousness soaring.
He could no longer see Shirone, nor could he hear the sounds of the battlefield. His mind was filled only with the endless streams of 1s and 0s, moving at electric speed.
Olivia trembled with emotion.
'Dante….'
She knew that someday he would overcome the wall. She just didn’t expect the turning point to be Alpheas’s disciple, but it didn’t matter.
Dante had achieved astonishing growth, as remarkable as a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, reaching the realm of local computation (로컬 연산).
"Ouch."
Dante removed his finger that had been pressing down on the ant. The ant, which had been struggling and biting his index finger, fell to the ground.
Olivia glanced at the ant on the ground and asked.
“Oh dear. It looks like you were bitten. Does it hurt?”
“Haha! It’s okay. It happens all the time.”
Dante put his finger in his mouth and sucked on it while observing the ant. The ant, number 1111, which had lost its purpose, was aimlessly circling around, seemingly aware of the collapse of its kingdom.
“All channels are connected. If one specific channel is cut off, everything collapses. But...”
Dante gently picked up the confused ant and observed the chaotic state of the ant kingdom. After carefully examining it, he placed 1111 back in a certain spot, and gradually, the kingdom began to stabilize from that point.
Dante didn't stop there, and placed a few ants in each key locations. Olivia watched in awe as the once-collapsing kingdom quickly reorganized into a solid system.
“Hehehe! I’m sorry, ants.”
Dante looked up at Olivia and smiled brightly.
“It’s okay now.”
Olivia, with a soft smile, gazed at Dante. As she studied his clear, transparent eyes, as if trying to figure something out, she finally made a decision.
“Dante, would you like to learn magic?”
It was the day that Olivia and Dante's relationship began.
From that day onward, Olivia never doubted for a moment that Dante would become the kingdom's greatest mage.
He wasn’t just a machine processing information—he was a human capable of surpassing any limits.
While Shirone was undoubtedly a remarkable child, there was no one left on his level who could defeat Dante, who had broken through that wall.
“Ughhhh…!”
Dante struggled to keep his wits. His information processing speed was accelerating at a rate he had never experienced before.
The magic unleashed from the 86 mansions now stretched in all directions, to the point where direction itself became irrelevant.
If Shirone made even the slightest wrong decision, the match would be over, and now even the students couldn’t confidently say who would win.
Dante's mental strength was rapidly depleting, but Shirone was also linking Teleportations across Heaven’s Trial.
'Damn it! Why? Why isn’t it hitting?'
Dante was beyond frustrated.
Even though Pascal's functions were pushed to their limit, Shirone was still moving through the system. It was clear that his thoughts were accelerating to match the gears Dante had raised.
Dante’s five senses were fully open, making it impossible to distinguish between visual and auditory information.
It was an amazing experience.
As Shirone’s information mixed together, Dante felt a sense of unity, as if his body and mind were merging into one.
'Damn it! I’m not into this kind of thing with another guy!”
Regardless of his feelings, Dante tasted a supreme sense of exhilaration. His thought response speed had reached a level he had never attained before, and all of Shirone's information was breaking down into signals, flooding into him.
The two of them were engaging in a conversation of existence—raw communication without lies or truth. At that moment, both Shirone and Dante shuddered, as if their entire vision had exploded with flashes of light like electricity.
The ultimate talents of induction and deduction reasoning were exchanging a dialogue, using magic as their medium, transmitting this to all who were watching. The students observed their battle, not even blinking.
Battle is a clash. Yet, now, the two seemed as though they were dancing—a dance mixed with all kinds of magic and knowledge.
Alpheas smiled.
“To understand what is right, one must take a long journey. Only when you are sure, deny, and then are sure again, does the mind truly settle in the body. You can be troubled to your heart’s content. After all, isn't it still the same sky?”
Olivia's gaze calmed and softened.
The battle simulation system, Heaven’s Trial, was a place where students could experience real combat in advance and a place to show off their superiority.
But was that the intention of Jacquebain, the creator of Heaven’s Trial?
Perhaps he was giving the students the freedom to fail as much as they wanted.
Olivia clenched her fists on her knees.
Alpheas’s philosophy was certainly correct. But now that it had come this far, she didn’t want to compromise. Once the battle had begun, only the victor would be remembered in history. The one who should win must be Dante—her best student, whom she proudly called the greatest of her teaching career.
The information exchange between Shirone and Dante had reached an extreme, and the students twisted their bracelets that were heating up unbearably.
Eighty-six mansions and a single streak of light.
Watching the hundreds of information exchanges per second created by that combination made the world feel like it was spinning.
Maria's eyes were moist with emotion. The talent that transcended the human realm. When two people with such talents collided, an absurd scene like this unfolded.
“Senior Dante… really is amazing.”
Mark turned his head in surprise. He had assumed that Maria would naturally cheer for Shirone. After all, personal feelings aside, she would never forget the insult from Dante’s group.
“Maria, what are you talking about?”
“Perhaps today’s match will be recorded in history.”
Mark realized something and shut his mouth. Maria was right; the match between Shirone and Dante had surpassed the level of mere practice.
“I used to hate the idea of competition so much.”
Mark knew this, too. She couldn't stand the pressure of competition and had even activated the machinery of Uncrossable Bridge.
“But now... I feel like it's truly a magnificent world. Senior Shirone was just a genius. I used to just look up to him without thinking. But Senior Dante is making even a genius like Shirone fight with all his might.”
Mark looked at Maria with a sense of sorrow. He deeply sympathized with her emotions, which tugged at his heart.
He felt the same way. But that couldn’t be allowed. If he continued down that line of thinking, he would never rise again.
Maria lowered her head with a sorrowful expression.
"Maybe... I'll never experience something like that in my lifetime."
Mark clenched his teeth. Shirone's figure perfectly matched the ideal image of a mage he had always dreamed of.
What must it feel like? To showcase one's heavenly talent. To seize the strongest opponent and fall together to the depths of hell.
He couldn't even imagine it, but it must be the greatest joy a mage could ever feel.
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