Chapter 95 - Mental Gymnastics (1/2)

Ten minutes. That was all the time it took for Elfie to single-handedly launch everyone into a pit of self-deprecation. Even Tom, the smartest student from the latest results, wasn't spared. It was a massacre.

For some reason, the hacker looked proud of himself for the deed. ”Told you it wasn't going to be easy,” he laughed at Jasper who groaned.

There wasn't anyone in the class who didn't tease Jasper about his results. In fact, this cheered the slower students in the class. Dragon scored higher than Jasper and wouldn't stop rubbing it into the leader's face. Elfie was slightly surprised that Dragon scored rather high on the benchmark even if it wasn't anything great.

Alex didn't do very well but wasn't too disheartened when she knew about everybody else's results. Scarlet was impressed that she actually failed something for the first time in her life. Failing it together with everyone else made her feel as if it was alright to make mistakes at times and not always be perfect. She thought that failing something would leave a stain in her pristine records but he was wrong. If anything, she had a relieved look on her face as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Not many people realised it but Elfie who was standing in front of the class noticed the strange expression on Scarlet's face. That made him more curious about her. Maybe she wasn't the same as the girls he knew. Scarlet might be an exception and by extension Alex too because she was Scarlet's sister. He found himself wanting to get to know the trio more now after seeing them act so unguarded in this class.

”If only our class could be like this too,” he thought sadly. Elfie knew that his time here would be brief. After the examinations, he would not have any excuses to stay or visit. Danny would most likely have him travel to another country to lose the traces of their pursuers. The Interpol would want him to start cracking down on a new case and the programmer would soon be back to his colourless life.

While the students were still busy exchanging answers and laughing at how badly they did, someone noticed the strange expression on Elfie's face.

”Hey, kid!” Rowan yelled. ”What did you score? Don't lie, I saw you taking the test with us.”

Elfie blinked and tried to hide his results but someone else was faster. The class hooted as Dragon snatched the result slip and passed it to Jeff to tally the score.

”Come on, what did he get?” Jinru urged and Jeff shook his head.

”Perfect score...”

At that, the class was once again thrown into chaos. Suddenly, Elfie became the star of the party and everyone wanted to talk to him from dishing praises to clapping him and the back and calling him a sly dog. The programmer was overwhelmed. He had never received this much attention or affection in his life and the feeling was unfamiliar with him. He didn't know how to cope and tried to escape but to no avail.

Elife blushed and stuttered in embarrassment.

”It's a matter about short-term memory retention and experience acc.u.mulation in the long term,” he said.

Jasper was impressed by how Elfie was able to demonstrate how to apply this multi-level thinking strategy in studies. He didn't know where Elfie learnt this but he was willing to bet that it didn't come from books or the internet.

”Knowing when and what to pick out during an information dump to make intelligent guesses is the key to coping with stress. For example, I can't accurately pinpoint what the girl is saying because it is a foreign term so I archive that information and focus on what she says after it. In this reading passage, I skim through the pages for verbs, nouns and adjectives. Things like connectors are seldom important. If a sentence has ten words, picking out two or three key points is good enough. Your brain learns to pick up priorities over time with the exercises.”

Jasper nodded. Now it started to make sense. Multitasking and parallel processing simply wasn't humanly possible. What Elfie did was simply increase the speed of switching tracks for the mental processing capabilities. If he had to compare it to something, it would be similar to stretching metal limits like how a gymnast tries to stretch past their physical limitations.

”Why are we learning how to count orders and calculate profits? This has nothing to do with the examinations, does it?” the DJ wannabe asked and Elfie grinned.