I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 32
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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 Profitable Talents 032
“……Every move you’ve made so far—it’s all Blue Spot?”
Blue Spot isn’t singular.
The AI presents three to five recommended moves depending on the situation.
Among those, moves with negligible differences in win rate are marked as ‘Blue Spot.’
In other words, Mu Myeong.
Throughout all thirty-one moves played so far.
Has been selecting only the precise Blue Spot at every position.
‘What on earth is happening?’
Jang Yu-na, 2 dan, swallowed hard.
A thought flickered unbidden.
‘……Could it be cheating?’
No. She forced the thought away.
What would Mu Myeong lack?
Given the skill he’d demonstrated so far, there was no reason for it.
“Everyone, it’s still early in the game, you know? The AI match rate peaks in the opening phase, then drops sharply as the middle game progresses.”
After all, there were games where nearly 100% match rate appeared in the early Opening phase.
But the problem was.
That this continued even now.
Click.
Mu Myeong’s next move.
‘Blue Spot.’
The move after that.
‘Again, Blue Spot……’
By move thirty-five.
Yet Mu Myeong’s match rate remained astounding.
The chat began to stir.
-Yu-na, what about this……
-Isn’t this cheating?
-It’s way too obvious to be
-But why would Mu Myeong cheat?
-Koreans are cowardly.
“Everyone, cheating?! No, it’s just…… a coincidence, pure coincidence! You all know Mu Myeong isn’t that kind of person, right?”
Jang Yu-na, 2 dan, forced a smile, but her insides were charring black.
‘What if sanctions come down?’
Jang Yu-na, 2 dan, fidgeted anxiously.
Mu Myeong was the channel’s signature content.
Regardless of truth, even a single gossip post would do damage.
‘Please, just let him play normally.’
An earnest prayer.
As if that prayer had reached somewhere.
Click.
The move Mu Myeong played appeared on the DeepStone screen not as Blue Spot, but in gray.
Jang Yu-na’s, 2 dan, eyes widened.
A move so dubious one might suspect it was played in error.
-That’s a blunderㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-What’s he doing playing there
-That spot has a 38.9% win-rate loss?
-Win rate just plummeted
An uncharacteristic move from Mu Myeong.
A blunder that shattered the precise, AI-style Move Reading he’d shown until now.
Lu Wei-an, 6 dan, did not miss that opening.
He pressed forward relentlessly and seized the initiative.
The position tilted, and the DeepStone win rate gradually shifted toward his side.
In the midst of this.
Gray.
Another gray.
Mu Myeong’s once-precise game crumbled like a lie.
‘Is he…… going to lose like this?’
Jang Yu-na, 2 dan, held her breath.
My throat had gone parched with tension, but there wasn’t even time to drink.
-What’s wrong with you today, Mu Myeong?
-Did you drink?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Trying to hide the cheating?
-China is great. We do not bow to fraud.
“You need to focus, Mu Myeong! It’s still early to mid-game — there are plenty of chances to turn this around!”
Jang Yu-na’s voice carried something between encouragement and prayer.
Then.
Tap!
Blue Spot again.
Another Blue Spot hit.
Hope flickered alive in Jang Yu-na’s eyes.
‘Another reversal?’
Tap.
A gray spot, dashing her hopes.
‘Ah.’
Hope and disappointment crossed paths.
-What’s he doing???
-Seriously, all over the place
-Wait, isn’t he catching up slowly?
-Is he possessed?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-His conduct is highly suspect.
Meanwhile.
The game had entered the middle phase.
‘Huh… huh.’
Suddenly Mu Myeong’s signature intuitive moves began to flow.
More than Blue Spot.
Moves that felt even more like Blue Spot itself.
A suffocating pressure — something only a human could feel.
And then came the final turning point.
Lu Wei-an, who had fallen behind in Move Reading, made successive mistakes, and the position reversed.
DeepStone’s win rate.
Mu Myeong 50.7%, Lu Wei-an 49.3%.
The endgame.
Lu Wei-an attempted a comeback, but Mu Myeong allowed no openings.
Scoring complete.
“By… by half a point. He won.”
Jang Yu-na’s face went blank.
This was truly a match played by a ghost.
Blue Spot.
Blunder.
Blue Spot.
Blunder.
And then at last.
An intuitive move that lay beyond DeepStone’s predictive reach.
With that, Mu Myeong broke the flow, twisted it, and secured victory.
-How is this even possible?
-He actually pulled that off?ㄷㄷ
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Mu Myeong is different
-Hold on, isn’t this that thing? Where you pretend to lose to aggravate them more?
-This is fraud. I cannot accept it.
The viewers erupted.
Jang Yu-na, who had forgotten to commentate and stared only at her monitor, murmured softly.
“Wow… he’s insane. Literally insane. This is…”
She swept her hair back with one hand.
Even seeing it with her own eyes, she couldn’t quite believe it.
As if swept up by the current.
Mu Myeong had pulled off a miraculous reversal.
-Can we get some commentary?
-A viewer? lol
-Yu-na, what on earth just happened?
-Explain it to me
Jang Yu-na fell silent for a long moment.
She stared blankly at the monitor.
Then she spoke, barely audible, almost under her breath.
“I…… I can’t explain this.”
The AI’s precise calculation.
Human intuition.
Baduk that seemed to blend the two together seamlessly.
Though it was utterly unstable.
But she was beginning to understand what he was pursuing.
“Mu Myeong is…”
Jang Yu-na drew a quiet breath.
One undeniable fact.
“I’m not someone who can presume to define him.”
And then.
She swallowed the rest.
Words she couldn’t say on air.
‘……He’s just insane.’
* * *
“Phew, that was close.”
Half a stone victory.
I checked the game result and wiped my dry hands.
The moment I sank back into my chair, the tension drained away.
This game had been an experiment.
An attempt to understand the AI’s moves.
Tracking down the Blue Spot.
Playing with a style grounded in precise Position Assessment.
“Let me review this.”
I launched DeepStone from the desktop.
I compared each move the AI had recommended with every move I’d played.
At first it was fine.
But once the early midgame began, things started to falter.
The position grew complex, and the Move Reading stretched longer.
There were many moments where my intuition fell short as I tried to play like the AI.
Eventually blunders piled up in succession, and my win rate plummeted.
“Now I understand why pros see their AI match rate drop from the midgame onward.”
From the middle stages on, I’d reverted to my own baduk.
As a result, I steadied the crumbling position.
And barely managed a reversal in the Endgame.
Even that victory was only possible because of Lu Wei-an’s successive mistakes.
It felt like I’d barely scraped a win together.
“But it was good study.”
Baduk grounded in precise position judgment.
It’s hard.
The grain of it is opposite to my own style.
But that’s exactly why it teaches me so much.
‘Opening and Endgame.’
Since I began studying the AI.
My strength in these two domains has grown noticeably.
My Opening, which had always lagged, now flowed evenly.
And my Endgame had become far more refined than before.
Results proven against a top-tier professional of the China Baduk Association, not an amateur.
“Let’s see. This move was good. This one’s a complete blunder. In a case like this, my own Style is the right play.”
The boundary between AI moves and Style.
I needed to make that clear.
I continued the review, retracing each move.
A moment spent examining the places where I’d stumbled.
Not quite a defeat, but a tremor in the middle game that bordered on failure.
And yet.
It was precisely this kind of game that pushed me forward.
In that moment.
A system window flickered at the edge of my vision.
[Congratulations. Talent Evolution is imminent.]
“……!”
My heart dropped with a thud.
The message I’d been waiting for.
‘This is it.’
My goal was never just to turn professional.
If that were all, I wouldn’t have started in the first place.
I could’ve stayed amateur and chased prize money.
I wanted to compete with the world’s elite players—and ultimately, to beat them.
‘The world’s top players are formidable.’
I’m strong now, too.
But not overwhelmingly so.
They’ve transcended my frame of reference.
Those recent world championship finals I watched on video.
Brilliant Move Reading.
Positional design honed by AI.
Ingenious reversals at critical junctures.
I’ll face them starting in the Ciel Bank Cup Unified Preliminaries.
To secure certain victory.
Evolution was necessary.
And now, I stood on the threshold of crossing that boundary.
Ding.
“Hm?”
My phone chimed on the desk. A message from Yu Zuha.
[Did you get home okay? Thank you so much for today. Think about the Study Group and let me know!]
I stared quietly at the phone.
I hesitated for a moment.
But there was no reason to doubt.
To pass the Ciel Bank Cup Unified Preliminaries and break through to the Main Tournament.
I sent my reply at once.
[I’m in. The Study Group.]
* * *
Inside the bank branch.
Ten minutes before business hours began.
The Deputy Branch Manager opened the morning briefing in place of the Branch Manager, who was away on assignment.
“In-ha, you’ll be taking annual leave all next week, so everyone note that. When the replacement arrives, Ha will handle the handover.”
The Deputy Branch Manager was a man of few words.
Even the briefing ended without a word wasted.
“That concludes the briefing. Everyone, back to your posts.”
The Deputy Branch Manager returned to his desk.
I was turning to head back to mine when—
“In-ha.”
Director Park, who oversaw withdrawals and ATM management, called me over.
Ha stood beside him, his face dark.
“You could’ve at least given us a heads-up before taking leave. How are we supposed to manage with an entire week gone?”
Director Park continued, his voice tinged with exasperation.
“ATM operations aren’t easy to hand over even with the replacement, as you know.”
Ha, who’d been standing nearby, jumped in as if he’d been waiting for this moment.
“And you’re going to some baduk tournament or whatever? Even so, springing this suddenly is too much. Where’s the consideration?”
‘Really.’
I was taken aback.
It was as though they’d both been sharpening their blades for this.
Come to think of it.
Yeon-hui had tipped me off about this earlier.
After the Branch Manager said not to assign me any duties beyond bank security,
the ATM withdrawal team’s workload supposedly increased.
But.
That wasn’t even part of my job description to begin with.
‘Should I really just let this slide?’
In the old days, I would’ve simply bowed and said, “I’m sorry,” and moved on.
Even though I’d done nothing wrong.
Back then, I thought all I had to do was endure.
Like a fool.
“Director Ha.”
My voice came out low and steady.
Strangely, my mind felt sharp—almost cold.
“I’m using annual leave that’s legally guaranteed to me.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“It’s my right.”
I cut through the moment with a sharp edge.
“Calling that selfish feels like you’re going a bit far.”
I looked steadily at Director Park and Ha.
They hadn’t expected me to push back like this, clearly.
Both of them looked taken aback.
“No, I mean, Kim—what I’m saying is…….”
“And since I’m a contract employee, using annual leave gets deducted from my salary.”
…….
“I’m the one bearing that cost, so I don’t see how anyone else gets a say in it.”
Silence.
The air grew heavy and strange.
Everyone just watched for cues; nobody opened their mouth.
‘Ah.’
It was a feeling I’d never known before.
Like a years-old blockage suddenly breaking free.
A sharp, electric relief.
‘I wasted all that time holding back.’
I could’ve said this much.
No—I should have said this much.
It was a legitimate claim.
Then.
Yeon-hui, who’d been quietly watching the whole thing, looked down at her phone and spoke.
“Oh? There’s an article about you here too, Director Kim?”
Ha’s head snapped toward her.
All the employees’ eyes fixed on Yeon-hui.
“Wow. How many championships is this? President’s Cup, Supreme Master Cup, Namwon Chunhyang Cup…… just in prize money alone, you’d be over ten million won, wouldn’t you?”
Yeon-hui widened her eyes theatrically, feigning shock.
“And this one here looks like a tournament you’re entering right now…… with a championship prize of 300 million? 300 million won?”
The employees visibly reacted to Yeon-hui’s theatrical performance.
A few of them stared at me as if to ask if it was really true.
And.
Director Park’s and Ha’s faces
twisted as though they’d bitten into something sour.
“According to the article, just passing the preliminaries makes professional induction highly likely?”
I barely managed to hold back a laugh.
That Yeon-hui—she’s a fox.
How is she so good at acting.
“Director Kim, be honest with us. Baduk is your main profession, and being a bank security guard is the side job, right?”
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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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