Connecting the Dots

"The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity."

7 

If he were to connect the clues, the likelihood that another person took over his body and lived as him for five years was the real reason for his current situation.

A possession, not a memory loss.

Dice was skeptical, but he could not deny the likelihood of his guess. After all, it was possible because the world he's living in now had magic.

'I suddenly miss my brother's noise. I miss Dad's nagging and Mom's cooking.' 

Did anyone notice that a different person was posing as him?

'That's why, I must survive this and find out what happened to them. No news is good news. I could only hope that they are alive and living well.'

Dice forced smiled, cheering himself on, but he quickly erased it from his face.

'I should practice my expression.'

He was used to putting on a friendly smile on his face. How could he not when in his job, he had to face people from all walks of life everyday?

Regardless if the customer bought an item or not, or whether he was exhausted or full of spirit, Dice had trained himself to keep a pleasant smiling face in order to service customer needs.

So what if the customer asks a silly question?

So what if the customer's companion shouts for a refund?

So what if the manager orders him to work overtime and recheck the newly arrived stock of mountain gear or sports shoes?

Smile, be servile, make sure others feel comfortable in your presence.

Unfortunately, the person Dice was impersonating was the complete opposite.

Professor Lee Suho was expressionless.

His face was neither cold nor arrogant, but neither was he warm or humble. His actions in public never stepped out of the line, but his achievements and reputation were so overwhelming, it was always other people who attempted to please him and curry favors with him, not the other way around.

'My complete opposite.'

In fact, from what Dice had seen in the videos online, from interviews to conferences, the Professor was the kind of boring competent academic, somewhat introverted but not shying away from interacting with people when it was necessary.

He was not an unreasonable bigshot, nor did he have a penchant for bullying others who were of inferior status than him.

Just that he only speaks when spoken to and never does anything beyond his set purpose.

Truly like a robot.

'After years of training to smile, now I have to train myself not to smile. Who would have thought that my largest hurdle today is this learned habit?'

However, it made him wonder why Kim Young-joon, that man in green armor, was so afraid of him.

'Was the Professor's personality different from the one he shows in public? Or is Assistant Kim just a scaredy cat by nature?'

Dice casually checked the tablet that the guy from Craft Guild gave him. There was a document listing out what looked like complicated formulas.

For some reason, he understood what was written.

Runic language. A language that mysteriously appeared After the Sky Shattered.

"After the what?"

After the Sky Shattered. A phenomenon that marked the introduction of unscientific foreign elements into the Earth's atmosphere that caused a genetic mutation to all organic forms in the planet.

Dice felt his heart thump once more and he nearly dropped the tablet. 

A knowledge that did not belong to him suddenly appeared in his mind.

If the fact someone had seized his body and took over his life for five years wasn't so shocking, the sudden influx of strange information would have made him question whether he should head to a mental hospital and see a psychologist.

It was a strange feeling, but it felt like…like his mind was connected to the tablet he was holding. Like the information inside would be transmitted to his brain as long as he willed it.

Shock could not even cover what he was feeling.

'Hmm?'

Dice noticed the time at the corner of the tablet screen.

8:39 AM

He blinked, doubting his eyes, and then proceeded to check his phone.

8:39 AM

8:40 AM

Dice realized why the time felt off.

According to Tubby the AI, didn't Assistant Kim Young-joon arrive at the penthouse at exactly 8 AM? Dice drank coffee while listening to him chatter, then had a shower and took time getting dressed…

It was reasonable to think those activities combined took half an hour.

'But I've also managed to read many articles and watched many videos. I did not bother to count but they had to be in the dozens, maybe more.'

Given the number of videos he had watched and articles he had read, Dice expected the time to be at the very least ten o'clock in the morning. He would not even be surprised if he finds out it was already noon.

Did he really read them all?

Or was it more similar to his current situation, where the information he sought was being transmitted to his brain straight from the phone…?

Also, didn't this cell phone appear out of thin air when he thought he needed it?

Dice had another shocking discovery.

'The Professor's ability is not magic engineering as publicly known, but broader in scope, related to information-gathering and technology in general?'

'Isn't this too broken?!'

Didn't that mean Professor Lee Suho was a walking, breathing search engine, Google in the flesh? 

'As long as I am connected to the internet, I can access its contents.' 

'I thought I was Tony Stark, but in fact, I was Jarvis.'

'If I go to a military base and touch their computers, will I also be able to sneak a peek at the highly classified information they circulate in their intranet? Confidential national secrets and dark histories, things like that?'

Possible.

Dice's intuition was telling him it was possible.

'But it seems no one knows the Professor's real abilities. Did he intentionally not disclose the truth? The Professor has been hiding it behind the guise of magic engineering.'