I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 107

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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 — Chapter 107
After exchanging a few more pleasantries, I carefully rose from my seat.
“It’s getting late, so I should head out now.”
At the entrance, I was gathering my coat and putting on my shoes when
I heard footsteps coming down the stairs from the second floor.
“Wait a moment, please!”
Do-jun came bounding down.
“Could you… sign something for me? And take a picture too?”
“Of course I can.”
I smiled and nodded.
Do-jun handed over an autograph sheet with an eager face.
Then we stood side by side against the fireplace and took a picture together.
Watching Do-jun beam with innocent delight, Go-eun gently stroked his hair.
“You’re that happy?”
“Uh-huh! Super happy!”
Do-jun looked up at me with sparkling eyes.
“Thank you so much. I’m definitely going to earn my professional promotion this year!”
“This year?”
As I repeated his words, O Su, standing beside me, let out a soft laugh and added,
“He says he’s taking the test for regular professional promotion, not the research-student track. I wonder who he’s so eager to emulate.”
“Huh?”
At those words, Do-jun glanced sidelong at me.
And I found I couldn’t look away from that gaze.
For someone his age, the standard path would ordinarily be to enter as a research student.
To compete with peers your own age, to play baduk, to study and climb the ranks step by step.
But Do-jun had not chosen that path.
In fact, he was trying to skip it entirely.
‘…Is it because of me?’
I hadn’t taken the professional promotion exam.
Point-based induction on the strength of international tournament results.
It was an extraordinarily rare case of professional promotion.
And Do-jun had chosen a similar, yet different path.
Like me, he wanted to reach the professional stage by the fastest means possible.
To compete and survive in the world of professional baduk.
And to challenge me as soon as he could.
‘Park Ji-an was the same way, come to think of it.’
Park Ji-an, the research student I’d faced in the qualifying rounds of the Kuksoo Championship.
He admired my baduk, made me his goal,
and told me to wait at the top until he could reach it—that memory was vivid.
And now, another had joined their number.
A child wanting to follow in my footsteps.
And that child was the son of a legend, no less.
‘…I can’t afford to be complacent, can I?’
Quiet but resolute.
Children who would come to threaten my position.
For fear that I might fail to live up to their expectations.
For fear that I would disappoint them.
That fear was keeping me sharp, preventing me from growing lazy.
I raised my head and bid farewell to O Su’s family.
“Thank you so much for inviting me today. Thanks to you, I spent a truly meaningful day.”
The three of them smiled at me.
“We were the ones who enjoyed it.”
“Please come visit again.”
“Goodbye, sir!”
After exchanging quiet farewells, I stepped out of the Mansion.
A fragment of winter.
Snow falling in white sheets.
A day spent sitting across from someone, sharing warm food, sharing our hearts with each other.
Suddenly, a thought came to me.
Days like these too.
A genuinely satisfying day.

* * *
Inha-ive Office.
I’d come in on the weekend too, and now I was staring down at the schedule chart on my desk.
It was packed.
Next week had the official sponsorship contract signing with Red Eagle scheduled.
Studio shoots, promotional photos, interviews—they were lined up one after another.
Just earlier, a review request had arrived for the movie scenario “A Divine Move,” which director Kang Yoon-hyeok had apparently written with me as inspiration.
Since my real name appeared in it, they said a thorough review was necessary.
And I had to leave for Japan to compete in the Nichirenhai, an international professional Baduk tournament.
After returning home, I’d be checking into the Winter Athletes’ Village for two weeks of training to prepare for the compound Olympic games.
‘Hectic, sure… but it’s exhilarating.’
There was no sign of exhaustion in me.
This wasn’t work someone had forced on me.
I’d chosen it myself, carved out this path with my own will.
The sensation of living each day with my own hands.
That was who I was now.
“Today was the broadcast day for The Masked Singer, right?”
I picked up the remote and turned on the office TV.
The first performance.
The lights came up, and there I was onstage in my mask—Checkmate, the masked identity.
The first-round duet.
The tension and immersion from back then came rushing back.
‘So this is how I sang.’
I relived that emotion while simultaneously starting to check the real-time responses.
Portal articles.
Clip videos.
SNS.
Online communities.
Thanks to the production team distributing some articles and teasers in advance, reactions were pouring in rapidly.
-Why is Checkmate so good at singing?
-Who is this?
-Love Catcher’s ranking dropped?
-The producers must have something against her ㅋㅋㅋ
The second round followed.
I performed Lee Jik’s “Fortunately.”
And then, from within the comments, a familiar name began appearing sporadically.
-Wait, where have I heard that voice before?
-Me too. Ah, who was it?
-Could it be the professional Go player Kim In-ha’s voice?
-Really? It does sound kind of similar to Kim In-ha?
-Who’s that?
“They figured it out… from the voice?”
What started as just a few comments
gradually began to multiply.
And opposite feedback and replies poured in right after.
-What, Kim In-ha? I just watched “Last Song” and he can’t sing.
-I heard it too. He was just mediocre.
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ The voice is just similar. Only the voice.
-Baduk and archery weren’t enough—now singing too? That’s two lifetimes right there.
-Come to think of it, there were rumors Kim In-ha plays chess.
-Chess? He’d probably be amazing at it.
-So the masked name is Checkmate? Come on. Just slap together whatever fits ㅉㅉ
But their detective-worthy deductions began to falter.
A contradiction.
Me on “Last Song,” singing back then.
Me on The Masked Singer, standing onstage as Checkmate.
The voice was definitely similar.
But the singing ability? Night and day apart.
It was a gap that no technology like autotune could bridge.
“…… Is it actually working in my favor?”
Disoriented as I was, the feeling wasn’t unpleasant.
The name Kim In-ha kept surfacing endlessly.
The same voice to anyone’s ear.
Yet a puzzle where the skill levels refused to align.
The confusion that came from that.
That was the strategy this stage possessed—a calculated bewilderment.
And unless I’m mistaken,
next week, when the mask comes off and the title of King of Songs is added to it,
the ripple effect will be incomparable to what it is now.
Click.
The moment the broadcast ended, I executed a file from my desktop.
With my back to the full glass window, I leaned halfway into my chair and closed my eyes.
The MR file sent by the production staff of The Masked Singer was playing through the speakers.
The instrumental performance was tight, and the mixing was clean.
The harmony and spatial depth had been naturally corrected.
So this is what a professional’s touch looks like, I thought.
Come to think of it, becoming King of Songs with “For Me” at the last recording was nearly miraculous.
‘Honestly, I had a lot of luck on my side.’
If the previous King of Songs, Antique Boss, had selected songs with a bit more mass appeal,
if he had focused more on competitive strategy than emotional depth,
I might never have made it to King of Songs at all.
“…… Even if I manage to hold the King of Songs position this time, I won’t be able to keep it long.”
I regarded myself with cold objectivity.
B+ rank Talent: Singing.
Exceptional, certainly.
My foundation, Baduk, was A rank—what more explanation was needed?
But in this country, there are far too many people who sing well.
Even if I lean on my talent and sing with sincerity,
the gap that comes from career, depth of experience, and emotional resonance can’t be easily closed.
I closed all the windows on my monitor and checked the time.
Korean time: 9 p.m.
Eastern United States time: 7 a.m.
“An hour left, then.”
Tension seeped in without my noticing.
Something that could never happen with Baduk.
But chess was different.
Part of it was that my skill hadn’t reached its full form, but more than anything, the opponent I’d be facing today was none other than….
‘Sara Linova.’
A female Grandmaster.
In Baduk terms, a force equivalent to Professional 7-dan or higher.
In comparison, my Chess Talent was still stuck at B rank.
True, my Chess.com rating had crossed 1990.
But that was only online.
Just as with Baduk, you can’t equate online and offline tournament strength.
Sara Linova’s official rating: 2450.
Built entirely from actual offline tournament results.
‘…… Every move, each one will be different.’
It was the same with Baduk.
A professional’s single move—an amateur can’t read it.
The difference in depth, the difference in texture.
That much was certain.
Unconsciously, my eyes shifted to the system window beside the monitor.
Through it, the list of roulette tickets in my possession came into view.
[Talent Enhancement Voucher: 1.]
[Enhanced Platinum Roulette Ticket: 1.]
“I can’t use this.”
I’d only figured it out recently.
This “Talent Enhancement Voucher” I’d received as a reward for winning the Ciel Bank Championship,
Only talents that had been ‘acquired’ through roulette applied to the enhancement.
In other words.
Talents like Chess or Shogi—obtained by expanding the Realm of Enlightenment through Baduk—could not be enhanced.
An unexpected turn of events.
Yet I was not discouraged.
Rather, that restriction—that I couldn’t use enhancement on talents acquired outside the roulette—took on a different meaning for me.
‘…Talent is just a tool, nothing more.’
I’d learned something through playing Baduk.
Talent wasn’t an answer, only a possibility.
What truly mattered was how you wielded it.
And that process connected directly with the story I would now write under the name Checkmate.
‘I’ll find my own chess.’
I was confident.
And my heart raced.
A sensation entirely different from when I’d acquired Singing or Archery through the roulette.
This time, I truly felt like a challenger.
I moved the mouse and logged into Chess.com.
Sara Linova’s ID, which I’d already added as a friend, showed as online.
By Chess.com standards, her rating was a staggering 2927 points.
Though her online average was supposedly higher than her offline performance, that number was, in every sense, a wall.
[A custom game request has arrived from Sara Linova. Yes or No]
“Phew.”
I took a short breath, then accepted the match.
—Ding!
The chessboard appeared on screen.
A custom game.
Literally a private match.
It wouldn’t be reflected in ratings, and the result wouldn’t be made public either.
The format was Rapid.
Twenty minutes base time, plus ten seconds per move—mid-tempo chess.
A format that demanded both strategic thinking and intuitive sense.
‘I’m playing White.’
The match began without so much as a greeting between us.
—Swish.
The Reti Opening.
An unconventional structure that mirrored my style.
A formation that allowed flexible adaptation depending on the opponent.
Not theoretical dogma, but rather a structure that shifted the flow through immediate, intuitive move reading.
—Swish.
Sara Linova responded quickly.
A response worthy of a Grandmaster.
As my moves progressed into a Catalan Structure, she countered with textbook precision.
‘…There’s no way I can win by playing it straight.’
A shift in the opening.
Piece placement in the middlegame.
Overall experience.
She surpassed me in every aspect.
I knew this, and I acknowledged it.
‘I have to make it deformed.’
—Swish.
I initiated an early piece exchange.
Bold exchanges from the very opening.
A path that deviated—not even a full step, but a half-step—from the flow of theory.
—Swish, swish.
Sara Linova accepted without hesitation.
The piece development was rapid and clean.
But I deliberately left the center unresolved.
Sheer chaos, in other words.
I chose disorder instead of a stable position.
A way to distort the flow itself.
‘Destabilization.’
I know it.
Baduk and chess are not the same.
But I wanted to pour into chess the method I do best.
Whoosh.
Imbalance born before all pieces achieve their formation.
Development that breaks free from theory’s safe ground.
A position where calculation clashes with intuition.
Across the chessboard, both armies’ formations began to warp.
Watching that flow unfold, I smiled quietly to myself.
‘From here on…… there is no fixed answer.’
The standard sequence shattered.
Theory crumbled.
What remained was sense and instinct.
To defeat the Grandmaster, this was the board I had designed.

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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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