Chapter 778: Random points
They didn\'t stop their work when Cradle said she was done with her answer but it was difficult when I said it.
Not only the rest of them who were finding the answer to this question, even the rest of the students who were talking with each other and the rest of our house captains also stopped whatever they were doing and looked in our direction.
{ "So Captain Lucifer is done as well? Let me see then. What did you use as the divider?" }
Harry was curious in what kind of answer I had come up with as well so there was a smile on his face, while the rest of them were focusing on me right now.
It felt a little weird since they were looking at me like whatever answer I had come up with was most probably the right one, which, truthfully, wasn\'t so good of a reaction.
\'There was no certainty that if I had reached an answer, that answer would be the right one for certain.\'
If even Cradle was wrong, there was a good chance that I might be wrong as well.
It wasn\'t like I was some kind of omniscient being, not when there was this restriction of skill usage.
There was no certainty my answer would be the right one, but, we didn\'t even have a right answer to compare the authenticity of our answers.
So… only the most plausible answer was going to be the acceptable answer of this question.
Then again, the race was to see who gets to that plausible answer faster.
"The divider that best covers every element of this puzzle, is simply the \'cause\' that produced the certain results that made some impact on the overall result of the competition."
It was very simple actually.
\'Something happened, someone did something, because someone did something, something else happened, and because that thing happened, there was a certain kind of chain reaction that led to another event and ultimately, there was the resulting outcome at the very end, the victory of Miss Mia.\'
It wasn\'t too complex, but it was difficult to understand for sure.
There were countless things, countless visible and invisible things that could have happened for something to take place, however, if it was the headmaster we were talking about, if we consider the report that he received included video recordings of the entire competition, then it was certainly possible for him to have made the kind of system where the cause that was the reason behind the event that had the most significance.
"Look at this."
Using the Aura and a little telekinesis, I made the papers before me float before us and thanks to that, all of them were now looking at my readable handwriting and barely readable calculations.
"Dividing the distributed points into three broadest categories of Points given because of environmental factors, Points given to the individuals, and Points given to the Other elements, this whole process that the headmaster might have followed would be…"
I explained to them how I interpreted this process.
They couldn\'t fully understand the calculations since the methods I had used and the way I wrote those things was in no way something just anyone could understand, however, that was the reason I was explaining these things to them.
"Categorisation on one side, it\'s important that we pay attention to how the points are distributed in a broader category and unique ways than how we conveniently do simple kinds of point distributions."
This was pretty amusing, actually.
The headmaster was certainly the headmaster for a reason, and we all could see it from this example.
\'The way he distributed these points to us was one hell of a unique technique.\'
He first distributed the highest number of points to the greatest \'achievements\' that the students achieved during this time.
\'Some of these achievements included Miss Mia\'s victory, the performance of individuals that attracted the attention of certain special people, and the breakthroughs that they had achieved.\'
He judged the performance logically and without any kind of bias or prejudice, took the environmental factors into account, saw through the things that even someone that was present there could not perceive and in addition to all that, he also gave the individuals who had overcome their own personal limitations bonus points.
"The headmaster is as amazing as always, I\'d say. He did not just assign these points based on some random system or with any pre-existing method.
He created this mechanism himself and even though I have seen better distribution and data management models than this one, this one is unique and a very, very good example of a certain method that works the best in a certain kind of scenario."
Harry did not comment on anything I was saying after I told them how the \'cause\' was the dividing point of the equation, and the smirking expression he had right now represented his happiness.
The others were stunned already but got more surprised as I continued on with my explanation and skimmed through the pages of magical paper that contained more pages than anyone else.
"I see… I was stuck on the secondary distribution problem, but I didn\'t have to think about it that hard. It was simply explainable with this method."
Newtine was one of the few theoretical experts among us students that could give a good competition to Alf and captain Alph, but even he was surprised as he compared his own analysis with mine.
"That method of categorisation… I think I\'ve seen it somewhere…"
President Zodiac was curious about the way I had categorised the points, and his suspicion that he had seen this method somewhere was pretty accurate.
"Adventurer\'s association. They use this method to categorise the great number of quests they receive throughout the day, week, month, and years.
In the central branches of association throughout the world, the combined quest board that we commonly see has a similar kind of categorisation, though I have upgraded this one.
This is better, especially for this situation."
The explanation took time but it went easier than I had imagined since none of them asked any questions while I was speaking.
They just compared their own analysis with mine and found out where they had made mistakes or marked the points that they had doubts about, or highlighted their own portion that somehow connected to the mine.
"Well, this is my answer. You can ask what you have wanted to ask all this time, everyone.
And I appreciate you all being so considerate."
They had better manners than the students on the seats before us who wanted to jump up and question a hundred things about my analysis.
But since they weren\'t a part of our little competition or part of the stage, they didn\'t risk a punishment from the house captains.
"Ah, you can keep that appreciation to yourself. Tell me how you reached the second connection point in the three broadest categories you created.
Did you just instinctively know you should go with what you did there or did you calculate it?"
The one asking that was Newtine even though the way he was king that question was pretty much similar to how the vice president asks the questions.
We had to prove that the method we were using was completing the structure we were creating.
\'Or in simpler words, the categories we were using to separate the distributed points had to be connected to one another for the loop of information to complete itself.\'
It didn\'t have to be like this in all cases but in my case specifically, since I was using the \'cause\' as the connective in this equation, I had to prove everything was interconnecting at the end.
"If you are talking about how the \'Other\' kind of points are categorized, then yes. I calculated for them, however, not all of them have a fundamental application to the rest of the calculation."
There were many things that the headmaster gave points for.
Things as small as good teamwork, a proper choice of environment, the right way of greeting the other people during great times, their behaviour in times the judges of the competition did not look at them, to how well they took advantage of the things that they were provided from the start of the competition.
There were many little things that didn\'t look as significant to us as the headmaster had given them those points for, but logically seeing from a pure perspective, the things that he had given points for certainly made sense.
Newtine was perhaps the only one who reached closest to my own calculation, since even Alf had approached it in a unique manner.
\'Alf used his calculation abilities well and made the most simple looking categorization system, but he could not do well with the whole point distribution.\'
He focused on maths instead of logic and the premise of his calculations, however if he had done that, he would have reached the answer faster than any of us.
"One of the most important sub-category of \'Other\' section— if you look at the Random points, you will understand where you fell short, where even I was stuck for a while."
The headmaster used logic for almost all the points, but there were certain bunch of points that had no real premise to them.
They were the most confusing elements that the others did not understand the designations of and mostly mistook them as something they were not.
"The headmaster, at each time interval from the start of the competition to the end, gave away random points to either individuals, or elements present there, or influential factors.
Thinking critically about it was would make it seem like a joke from our great headmaster, however, taking out all logic and reasoning, if we accept the random assignment of points as something he thought was needed here… everything just makes sense."
The numbers were before them, the answer was before them, and the reasoning was before them as well.
They could see it now, our mistakes until this point and the reason it took so long for us to figure it out.
\'And though not all of them would know the reason behind it, us who had taught in the war against the demonic cultist, could certainly guess why he would have had to do that.\'