Hello and welcome to our exciting exploration of C++ strings! For today's lesson, we've prepared something extraordinarily interesting: you will learn how to access characters from a string following a distinctive pattern. Our presentation is both comprehensive and concise, allowing you to master the concept promptly. Let's get started!

Imagine this: You receive a string, from which you need to extract characters. However, the sequence in which you select them diverges from the norm. You start with the first character, then select the last character, move to the second character, then choose the second-to-last character, and continue this pattern until there are no characters left. Quite a mind-bender, isn't it?

Here's what we mean:

You are required to craft a C++ function, std::string solution(std::string inputString). This function takes inputString as a parameter, a string of lowercase English alphabet letters ('a' to 'z'), with a length ranging between 1 to 100characters. The function then returns a new string, fashioned from the input string but with characters selected in the pattern we described above.

For example, if the inputString is "abcdefg", the function should return "agbfced".