Once again, Lith walked through the beautiful hallways of the castle and made his way towards the courtyard where Alea was.
As he reached the courtyard, he saw an amazing landscape of tall trees and greenery everywhere.
It was as if a patch of an evergreen rainforest was taken away and put in this place. There were many butterflies, colorful insects, and small animals like rabbits and so on in this courtyard, roaming here and there.
The tall trees were present at proper intervals and the area at the ground was laid with a carpet of grass.
Alea was sitting in such an area with her back rested on a tree. She had a quill and parchment with her and was writing something on it.
Lith walked close to her. Alea noticed his presence and putting her quill down, turned her face up to look at him.
Her face brightened up as she saw him and she put the quill down and waving her hand, called out cheerfully,
"Little cousin!~"
Lith's appearance didn't help Alea understand that he wasn't a child. He was just 22 and keeping that fact in mind, Alea still had an image of him being a child.
Lith wasn't aware of what Alea was thinking. But looking at her so cheerfully call his name out made him smile.
Alea's jolly mood was contagious and coupled with this bright atmosphere around him made Lith feel calm and happy.
He waved back at her and after getting close, sat down beside her and the two began conversing.
"How was your first day?" Alea asked with a smile.
"It was good. I saw the nobles for the first time and…" Lith began explaining things to her.
Alea asked him a few more things and finally when she was doing questioning, Lith asked her,
"What are you doing here all alone?"
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtThere were so many things Alea could do in her castle because unlike back home, the Elven castle had lots and lots of people roaming everywhere.
There were maidservants, elven nobles, and so many more people. Alea could command them or simply interact with them and get busy.
Alea seemed like a very happy person and Lith felt that being alone didn't suit her. Thus, he asked her that question.
Alea smiled in response to Lith's question and said, "Probability."
"Hmm?" Lith was confused with the one word answer.
Alea nodded her head. "I got bored waiting for cousin to come so I started doing probability to pass time."
"Oh." Lith understood now. "Interesting…"
He took the parchments present beside Alea to have a look at what she was doing.
He didn't expect she would say something like that but now that she did say it, his interest piqued in this matter.
Lith had a look at what she had written and on the paper, he found many graphs, charts, and also strange symbols that he hadn't even seen before!
Lith knitted his brows and browsed through everything one by one.
It took him a good ten minutes to reach the end and as he read the last graph present, Lith raised both of his eyebrows in surprise.
Alea had written a solution to one of the most challenging problems in probability in the last part and it was fully explained by a mere graph. There weren't any explanations, no unnecessary words, just pure concepts presented via a graphical representation.
Out of everything on the parchment, Lith could only understand this properly as he had studied it well.
The answer Alea had handed out was to a question that asked about the probability of rolling the same number exactly three times with five six-sided dice.
This may come off as easy, but it surely wasn't. It needed one to rack their brains to the limit to get an answer and at first try, Lith had struggled as well previously but somehow got it right after spending a good amount of time on it.
Lith turned to look up at Alea's face and saw her smile at him.
He looked down on the parchment and back again at her, having trouble understanding if what he was looking at was true or not.
Alea's impression that Lith had in his mind was that she was an airhead. But someone very kind and innocent. However, now that he had a much closer interaction with her, it felt as if he didn't know anything at all.
Alea, looking at Lith gaze her up and down, giggled and asked, "What are you looking at, little cousin?"
Lith's thoughts stopped as Alea questioned him.
He couldn't help but point at the graph and ask, "Can you tell me how you did this?"
He wanted to know more about it and learn things from the perspective of Alea. If she was indeed a genius, it wouldn't hurt to learn from her.
Lith wasn't of the mindset that he was smarter and better than everyone else. He knew everyone had their own unique traits and that he had a lot more to learn and experience.
Even if Alea seemed like an airhead, he didn't question it for even a single second that she wasn't smart enough to write these things or doubted her intellect.
Alea, being questioned, looked at what Lith was asking and then smiled.
"Oh it's easy. Take dice, throw, plot, repeat. And boom! You have the answer ready." Alea replied.
"How can you do that? The possible outcomes are in the number of (x/6)⁶. You can't possibly sit and roll the dice that many times, right?" Lith asked.
Alea nodded. "Indeed. Indeed. Little cousin is right. It will take lots of time to do it manually. So instead of doing with own hands, just use magic and done."
"Oh." Lith felt stupid hearing that.
She answered everything in such a simple manner and hearing the solution made him feel stupid because he was thinking of things via a complex perspective.
The conversation the two were having were too profound and not something easy to understand by people who didn't have a deep knowledge of these things.
Had Lith not been good at everything already, he wouldn't have understood Alea properly and would think that she was saying something dumb or something along the lines like:
"Oh, you can't do this? Simply use magic and voila!"
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmAlea's words of her asking Lith to use magic meant using spells that would roll the dice in a fast manner and also note down the outcomes that have appeared.
Spells could be made to plot a graph as well but with the level of understanding Lith had, he didn't know how to make such spells and as far as he knew, they weren't available to purchase as well.
He had to ask someone good with mathematics to make such spells but such a person was also not easy to find and it was extremely difficult to get hands on such knowledge and tools.
Lith looked at Alea and asked with great curiosity, "What spells did you use to plot the graph?"
Alea put her hands out and began making a spell to show it to Lith.
She was happy to find someone show interest in things she liked and with great enthusiasm, explained everything she could to Lith with the best of her abilities.
Lith was having trouble communicating with Alea on these things as she continued on with her explanation.
She spoke like a middle-schooler and sometimes even like a eight-year-old child. Her mind, body, and intelligence weren't in sync and it was slightly troublesome for Lith.
But somehow, Alea ended up explaining everything she could and from what Lith understood, she indeed was a genius among geniuses.
Alea had made her own spells to solve complex problems and she knew a lot more about things than Lith himself.
If Lith were to compare her with himself, who was unofficially the smartest among everyone in his generation, he paled greatly in comparison.
There were so many things he didn't know despite his ass off day and night.
Lith had spent a good ten years of his life just studying in this world. Since he had the intelligence of a university kid ever since his birth, he had studied as much as he could until the time he reached the academy.
It was only after he left the academy did Lith stop focusing on academics and tried building a strong Magic Rank.
It had been almost ten years since he had stopped studying and it was only now did he realize that there was so much more to learn.
Lith had a healthy discussion with Alea regarding probability for a good few hours. It was when he saw the sun setting did he parted ways with her and left to get some rest.
While he rested, he pondered over the things that happened throughout the day and planned his next few days.
He was going to leave the castle to have a better look at things from ground level. This meant he would be blending with the commoners and see the issues.
It thus needed a bit of planning and Lith devised a simple one that he would follow for the coming few days.
After he was finished with things, he decided to take a small nap and slept.