I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 103

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Too Many Lucrative Talents — Episode 103
‘…… Good Baduk.’
Kim In-ha.
An iconoclast in the Baduk world.
An invasive species in the ecosystem.
His emergence, the path he had walked—all of it was shocking.
And above all, his Baduk was lethally captivating.
Engaging.
Fascinating.
And most of all, joyful.
And it made those who watched clench their fists and lose themselves in concentration.
Baduk that did not fear risk, that knew how to harness it.
Even without being the favored choice, he imposed his own color and moves.
And in the end, he proved the rightness of his play with results.
In the AI Era.
In this age where everyone played the same Baduk.
He played differently.
As if to prove that Baduk was still a sport played by humans.
‘The most human Baduk of all.’
People still asked him about it.
Ranked first in world Baduk.
In his prime, at his zenith.
Why had he retired, they asked. Did he have no regrets?
Each time they asked, he would only smile silently.
But the real reason was different.
‘There is no place left for humans.’
Baduk was no longer the domain of humans.
Those years when humans pooled their minds and sought superior moves on the Go Board.
A philosophy and an art sustained for thousands of years had become mere calculation, no longer art.
That was when he felt it.
There was no longer any reason to play Baduk.
And so he decided to retire.
But then.
Kim In-ha’s Baduk made him move again.
Without him, O Su would never have accepted an exhibition match like this in the first place.
O Su drew a short breath.
The Go Board resembled a snowy field.
All white.
Yet to his eyes, the intense clash between black and white was distinct at a glance.
‘Was this what I missed?’
This tension.
This immersion.
This struggle.
He found himself savoring a match that made his palms sweat.
Still, he harbored no regrets about his retirement.
Only, in this moment.
He was resolved to play the finest moves without regret, here in this very place.
Tap.
‘…… He might survive. But he won’t win.’
He pressed down firmly.
He acknowledged In-ha’s escape attempt.
But by exploiting the weakness he had necessarily exposed, he rendered the center vacant territory.
In other words, Kim In-ha would secure a group and cut off all hope of reversal.
Kim In-ha slowly placed a stone on the Go Board.
Tap.
An attachment on the second line.
A move that probed the irregularity in shape, his only weakness.
A Key Point.
‘A fine move.’
Yet.
‘Baduk that relies on brilliant moves… isn’t good baduk.’
Put differently, it means the board state isn’t favorable if you have no choice but to depend on brilliant moves.
O Su responded with fluidity.
It appeared he’d conceded ground by retreating, but he never actually surrendered two points.
He left the Isolated Group as an Isolated Group.
With stubborn, relentless persistence, he harassed Kim In-ha’s stones.
In the moment that skirmish was settling—
Click.
Kim In-ha withdrew his hand.
Expanding toward the center to save the Isolated Group, he brought in a Reduction move that leaned on his sphere of influence.
‘A breakthrough to stabilize the situation?’
An improvised play.
Desperation showed through.
That said, it was indeed a large area.
O Su assessed the board state carefully.
‘The value of stones differs.’
It was certainly a large area to pass on.
But what mattered more—
Four Key Stones of Kim In-ha’s, extending from the center toward the left edge.
Click.
He cut those four stones.
With this single move, he secured two additional points.
Yet there was no way Kim In-ha could ignore it.
If those stones could be abandoned, they wouldn’t have been classified as Key Stones in the first place.
But then—
Click.
“…!”
There was no moment for deliberation.
Kim In-ha abandoned the Key Stones.
He chose the path that would collapse his gains and influence connected through the center and upper right.
He chose that path.
‘He’s… abandoning them?’
For the first time since the game began, a flicker of disturbance crossed O Su’s eyes.
Accepting was the natural move.
Why were they Key Stones?
Because they held absolutely critical value.
Yet he let them go.
An exchange worth twenty points.
The situation where every formation both had built until now shattered.
‘My loss.’
In-ha’s Isolated Group survived stable.
Not much, but he also secured points in the center.
He abandoned what could never be territory, and instead brought in Reduction toward the upper edge to restore balance.
O Su’s upper body leaned forward slightly.
‘I didn’t misjudge.’
He’d invested three moves to capture those four Key Stones. The value was worth it.
Naturally, it was a position he couldn’t pass on.
Yet Kim In-ha abandoned it boldly.
‘…The very fact that he conceives of such ideas is astounding.’
It wasn’t flashy.
It wasn’t flowing either.
But Kim In-ha’s moves possessed a shift, a creativity that human thought couldn’t fathom.
That’s what sent shivers through him.
That technique he’d never witnessed, not even among the world’s absolute elite.
In such an extreme situation, this manner of accepting such risk.
Clearly a Sacrifice Stone Strategy that overturned even a leading board state.
‘This match…’
Now it was a half-point game.

* * *
Jang Yu-na, 2-dan, on live stream.
A streamer who was once a professional female player.
Not conventionally beautiful, but striking enough—intelligent, composed features.
Young enough to appeal to younger audiences.
Riding the recent wave of Kim In-ha’s popularity, her channel had become one of the top Baduk broadcasts for newcomers and novices.
Because of that surge, she’d just crossed ten thousand concurrent viewers for the first time since she’d started streaming.
“I—I can’t find words. This is insane. Do you see my arm? Look—I have goosebumps.”
Jang Yu-na rubbed her forearm, her voice trembling.
She seemed to have forgotten she was on camera, forgotten that thousands were watching.
Just a Baduk player, seized by the shiver of a single stone.
“If this move had been missed… there would’ve been no comeback. But In-ha—he was setting this up from the start!”
Her voice brimmed with excitement, each phrase trailing into breathless half-sentences.
Her gestures grew larger; her torso leaned closer to the camera.
It wasn’t commentary so much as admiration, pure and simple.
The chat exploded.
-don’t know baduk at all but she’s cute lol
-is this the brilliant move everyone talks about?
-i’m 18-kyu and this looks like a godly move ㅋㅋㅋ
-kick the trash talkers out
-idk about the rest but are they geniuses? all the stones are white, how do they even tell them apart?
Any other time, she would have laughed it off.
But this was different. She was sincere.
‘How do I explain this.’
To the new viewers.
The real beauty of Baduk.
Kim In-ha’s greatness.
She wanted them to feel it, even a fraction of it.
Jang Yu-na steadied her breathing and fixed her gaze on the camera.
“…The reason this move is so remarkable is this. In chess or xiangqi, there are pieces, right? You win by capturing the king. But Baduk has nothing like that.”
Chess and xiangqi are typically strategic games.
They have pieces, they have a clear objective.
Baduk, by contrast, begins from nothing—two minds battling over territory in an abstract strategic game closer to pure intellect.
“So what just happened here—”
Jang Yu-na continued.
“In military terms, they’ve just exchanged capitals. But the way it happened was insane. An army that was outgunned, outpositioned, used an absolutely absurd strategy to strike straight at the enemy’s heart!”
Her voice grew thin, trembling.
No metaphor felt adequate.
And yet she had to try, had to convey this moment somehow.
The real depth and beauty of Baduk.
The true grandeur of the exchange that began with Kim In-ha’s Sacrifice Stone Strategy.
“…People say Baduk was conquered by AI?”
She drew in a breath, then spoke with absolute certainty.
“Don’t make me laugh. This kind of Baduk—only humans can play it. Or more precisely, only In-ha can.”
She fought to contain the emotion, but something welled up unstoppable.
In chaos without predetermined moves, without answers, he always found a way.
Perhaps, unbeknownst even to herself, she’d been waiting for this moment all along.
After the AI era—a time when human intuition and imagination would shine in Baduk again.
Jang Yu-na swallowed her passion and murmured softly into the microphone.
“…Is Baduk really such a beautiful game?”
Before she could finish, the chat detonated.
Her eyes glistened with the faintest tears.
She didn’t care if this would haunt her later.
For her—a professional who had staked her life on Baduk—
this moment was one she’d waited for so long, and it was happiness itself.

* * *
‘A half-point game.’
The entire Go board was filling with stones.
The endgame.
The board state was perfectly balanced.
Neither side held a clear advantage.
From this point forward, a single move, a single placement, would decide the game.
I lifted my head quietly and met the gaze of O Su.
He was called the poet of the endgame.
Precise, clean, restrained.
The endgame most resembled artificial intelligence.
Not a single gap remained.
To battle him in the endgame meant surrendering breath itself, matching my precision to his without tremor or doubt.
I gripped a stone quietly.
After more than two hundred moves, the board lay tangled in breathless complexity.
The Go board gleamed white as a snow field.
Nearly pure white.
‘I have to focus. One lapse and I lose.’
A single sacrifice stone, a single neutral point—either could overturn the match.
A breathless tension.
Yet strangely, I was at peace.
My whole body seemed alive, every sense awake.
A collision toward the final half-point.
Urgent placements.
Silent calculations.
Neither of us made a mistake.
The moves were flawless, the flow unhesitating.
‘This is the Baduk I wanted to play.’
Beyond winning or losing.
This moment was pure joy.
Playing Baduk that pursued the best possible move until the very end.
The feeling of drawing one step closer to a masterpiece game I had once longed to reach.
And so the final empty spaces were filled with white stones.
One stone.
Two stones.
That moment when no more could be placed.
No ko rule violations.
No neutral points.
No more fighting sequences.
In the moment when even the silence seemed to hold its breath.
Soft click.
O Su quietly lowered the sacrifice stones beneath the lid.
“I have lost.”
Those words.
A heavy stone fell into the depths of my chest, striking with a sound that was deep, that was final.
‘Ah.’
Only then did it become real.
That I had defeated the legendary O Su.
That I had overcome the poet of endgames by half a point at the finish.
My held breath returned, my heart resuming its beat beneath an indescribable swelling of triumph and joy.
Strong, quiet, deep.
And before that warmth had even faded.
-Ding!
The familiar system notification chimed.
[You have defeated the “Unparalleled Emergence.”]
[You have won the Shin Jung Special Match Ileaksaek Go Match.]
[Though not an official tournament, your achievement of defeating the “Unparalleled Emergence” will be recorded eternally.]
[Congratulations. You have approached the Rank of Masterpiece Games. Bonus points have been awarded for this achievement.]
[The system confirms the evolution potential of your talent “Baduk.”]
[Congratulations. Your Realm of Enlightenment has deepened.]
[Congratulations. Your Realm of Enlightenment now influences certain of your other talents.]
[Congratulations. Your talent “Chess” has risen in rank. You have reached B-grade.]
[Congratulations. Your talent “Shogi” has risen in rank. You have reached B-grade.]
[These talents are not connected to your “Primary Job” or “Talent Maintenance Conditions.”]
‘Ah.’
I could feel it clearly.
The newly added phrase.
—Rank of Masterpiece Games.
That single sentence was telling me the path I had to walk from here on.
The Baduk I had to play.
Baduk that only humans could play.
Baduk that would be remembered forever, even after the AI Era passed.
Deep in my chest, something hot and heavy swelled up.
A longing I hadn’t known I possessed.
In this moment, I understood it clearly.
‘……I want to leave something behind.’
A true Masterpiece Game that would be passed down to future generations.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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