I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 38

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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 Much Profitable Talent Episode 38
“Please take your seats. We will now begin Match 3 of the Ciel Bank Cup Integrated Preliminaries.”
The solemn opening declaration of Heo Gyu, 9-dan, resonated through the Preliminary Tournament Venue.
Click.
The players seated at their designated positions covered the stones.
As stones were placed upon each Go board, a quiet tension settled over the room.
“…….”
Jang Yu-na observed her surroundings without a sound.
The number of preliminary participants had indeed dropped by nearly half compared to rounds one and two.
Which meant.
The battle for main tournament tickets was entering its final stretch.
‘Kim In-ha.’
She turned her gaze as she repeated the name in her mind.
A single man seated before a Go board set well apart from the others.
White shirt, neatly combed hair.
Impeccable posture.
An expressionless face that revealed nothing of his thoughts.
Though an amateur,
he was a player of considerable strength—one who had survived by winning both previous rounds.
‘I didn’t see his opening during the water-smoker tournament.’
During that event,
she had juggled an exhausting schedule.
Two autograph sessions.
A special event to host.
Even a simultaneous match.
As a result, she’d only watched In-ha’s game from the midgame onward.
The arrangement of stones whose sequence made no intuitive sense.
That alone had been startling enough.
But she hadn’t seen how he’d designed the entire position from the start.
Yet now,
she could observe everything unfold before her eyes, from his very first move onward.
‘I’ll watch carefully. Is he really Mu-myeong?’
Jang Yu-na quietly stepped closer to the board.
His opponent was Lu Yuan, 6-dan, a Chinese professional.
Though she’d beaten Mu-myeong on her stream, he was a player whose momentum had surged remarkably of late.
The idea of an amateur defeating such a Lu Yuan seemed,
frankly, impossible to imagine.
Clack.
Lu Yuan, holding Black, placed a stone.
The game had progressed to roughly the twentieth move so far.
They were still in the opening phase, sketching the broad outline.
Jang Yu-na held her breath as she followed the opening.
Tension crept through her.
‘It’s ordinary so far.’
Watching In-ha’s early moves, Jang Yu-na thought as much.
A docile formation.
An unobtrusive stone arrangement.
Though it was still the opening,
there were no conspicuous moves to speak of, no deviation from standard joseki.
A faint disappointment was beginning to settle over her.
Clack.
‘What—what?’
The stone was placed in an apparently ordinary location.
At first glance, nothing remarkable.
Yet that single move, strangely enough, stabilized the entire board.
Moreover, Lu Yuan was renowned for his prowess in the opening phase.
And yet,
now it was Kim In-ha, holding White, who was building the superior formation.
‘This… is this the extent of it?’
It took no time for bewilderment to transform into admiration.
One move.
Then another.
Each stone he placed carried a timing so uncanny it felt deliberate.
Especially.
It appeared unhurried, yet never truly slow.
Unrushed, and yet it seized the initiative.
Within the balance of the entire board, he had already claimed the vital points ahead of time, and now he waited.
‘Is this even possible? Every move feels like a Blue Spot.’
This was no mere mimicry of AI, no simple imitation.
It was as though he understood AI’s moves, had digested them, and now played them as his own.
Jang Yu-na caught herself holding her breath.
‘Could it be…… could it really be?’
This flow.
She recognized it.
Mu-myeong versus Lu Yuan, 6-dan.
Mu-myeong, who had completed the Opening with a Blue Spot in that game’s early moves.
‘It’s the same…… it’s far too identical.’
Then too, suspicion had rained down—was it AI cheating?
Now as well.
It was no different.
Not a single wasted move.
Looking back over a handful of stones, she couldn’t even conceive of a ‘better move’ than what had been played.
It felt near-perfect.
‘God, this is driving me mad.’
If she hadn’t been the referee.
She would have wanted to feed this game’s sequence into DeepStone right then and there to verify it.
Jang Yu-na forced herself to steady her breathing.
‘Don’t get excited. If this really is Mu-myeong…… blunders have to come soon.’
That was how it had gone before.
A flawless Opening.
Then suddenly, as the Mid-game began, blunder after blunder tumbled out, throwing away the advantage.
But.
It should have happened.
It didn’t.
‘How—how is this still continuing like this?’
After the Opening ended, what Mid-game would unfold.
What battles would erupt within it.
All of it had been anticipated beforehand.
The framework was woven together so organically that it could only be described as deliberate design.
Jang Yu-na could barely breathe.
She had forgotten her role as referee, forgotten the eyes of the world around her.
She had sunk deep into the Go board itself.
Without realizing it, her hands had clenched tight.
A chill ran down her spine.
This Go.
This game alone—its sheer majesty overwhelmed her.
In this moment.
She had no words.
Not even suspicion of Mu-myeong.
Not even the name Kim In-ha.
All of it had vanished from her mind.
What remained was only one thing.
Go.
In this instant, drawn into that nearly flawless symphony of stones.
Deeper.
Ever deeper.
She was being pulled down.

* * *
‘My mind is clear.’
I gazed down at the Go board in silence.
Just nineteen lines across and down.
Some three hundred sixty intersections.
This Go board felt strangely narrow to me.
A sensation I had never experienced before in my life.
Click.
Each time I placed a stone.
The answer seemed to leap out from somewhere deep in my mind.
Too precise to call it intuition.
Too swift to call it calculation.
‘I can see it. The optimal move.’
It wasn’t that I was reading the board.
Rather, it was already being drawn within me
like a complete blueprint.
Drawn naturally, effortlessly.
‘Pretty shapes, strong position… it’s all meaningless attachment.’
Shapes could break.
Territory could be overturned.
In moments like these, the AI provided direction.
Optimal.
The most correct move based on calculation.
What they called the Blue Spot.
‘…I’m becoming like it. My thinking. My eye for reading and judging the board.’
My most frequent opponent of late was not a person.
The artificial intelligence DeepStone.
A cold calculator of winning percentages.
An absolute judgment capable of penetrating every phase of play.
I had striven ceaselessly to understand such an AI, to challenge it.
In that process.
There were times I played atrociously on Jang Yu-na’s stream.
Perhaps those trials and errors had become fertilizer after all.
A little.
Just a little, but.
I felt as though I had borrowed the AI’s vision.
Click.
I placed the stone with confidence.
A slightly better position.
A slightly faster timing.
A slightly more favorable exchange.
‘The Blue Spot.’
The AI’s perspective.
Even if territory were sparse, even if position lagged slightly.
Choosing the move with the highest winning percentage.
I seemed to understand that flow now, dimly.
Something like certainty seeped up from the depths of my mind.
A faint tremor.
Lu Yuan’s fingertips quivered slightly.
A player with a strong opening.
The displeasure of finding himself outpaced in the early game.
‘He’s being drawn along by me.’
Lu Yuan, too, must have felt that fact.
And yet.
He hesitated before playing his next move.
Though the position was still uncomplicated.
Though not many stones had been exchanged.
The initiative was already in my hands.
And every choice from this moment on could only be a path chosen from a position of disadvantage.
He said nothing.
Lu Yuan’s gaze swept across me for a moment.
Within it.
Displeasure.
Wariness.
And something like dread at the fact that I was falling behind.
‘It’s too early to be surprised.’
In the first match.
Around the early-to-mid game, I’d strung together a series of blunders that carried us all the way to score counting in a close contest.
But this time is different.
I’ve improved far beyond what I was before.
This is the proof.
Right now, as we cross from the opening into the mid-game.
‘A shift in perspective.’
From the AI’s viewpoint.
To Kim In-ha’s viewpoint.
I am not a machine.
I don’t believe myself to possess a calculator precise and error-free like DeepStone.
But because I am human.
I can reach a move that AI cannot see.
Intuition.
Psychology.
Warmth.
What my opponent fears.
What mistakes I can lure them into.
Where to apply pressure, how to give ground.
This.
Is a reading of moves only humans can master—something no machine can imitate.
And now.
Is the moment for that sense to shine.
Click!
What people call an Aggressive Connection Move.
Daring and bold.
There is risk to it.
But I did not hesitate.
“……!”
Lu Yuan’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
The pressure of momentum.
The tremor of psychology.
All of this right now.
Is the board I designed.
Is the game I am steering.
[Your talent has reached the threshold of evolution.]

* * *
Lu Yuan, who was participating in the Ciel Bank Cup’s unified preliminaries,
Carried a determination unlike any other.
‘I won’t just aim for the main tournament—I’m going for the semifinals.’
He had the confidence.
He had the skill.
Even in China’s Yongin Cup tournament, he’d made a name for himself in the semifinals and was riding a wave of rising prestige.
Of course.
He’d tasted humiliation along the way.
A competitive spirit that craved challenge.
Determined to give that arrogant Korean player a proper lesson,
He’d sent a challenge to Mu-myeong—only to be soundly defeated.
The live footage had circulated on Chinese platforms too, turning him into a laughingstock.
‘I don’t let it bother me.’
Yet he paid it no mind.
What mattered was.
Learning from defeat.
‘It became a chance to reflect on my own game.’
Mu-myeong’s go was impossible to pin down.
In the opening, he employed moves close to what an AI would play.
Then, through incomprehensible Temptation Moves, he slowly dismantled his opponent.
That’s when it struck him.
Why he couldn’t maintain his composure.
Why he’d fallen for the Temptation Moves.
Why Psychological Warfare had tangled him up.
It was because he was insufficient.
‘I have to kill my humanity.’
Wavering emotions.
Pride that intruded upon the board.
Hesitation in the face of uncertainty.
He strove to excise all of it.
To overcome it, he endlessly reviewed Mu-myeong’s moves.
He analyzed matches with DeepStone, embedding the logic of AI’s moves deep into his bones.
Precise win-rate foundations.
Analysis of his opponent’s intentions.
Calculating the optimal response over and over again.
Opening.
Transition.
Combat.
Endgame.
In every phase, he completely eliminated human intuition.
A transformation that satisfied even himself.
The sensation of becoming a living algorithm.
‘I’m moving up.’
In the first and second rounds, he crushed Korean players decisively.
And the third round.
His opponent was Korea’s Amateur selection player.
He took no chances.
His only thought was to advance at his absolute best.
But now.
At this moment.
He found his ankle caught in an unexpected place.
‘He finds the Blue Spot better than I do?’
Lu Yuan’s eyes wavered.
Still in the Opening stage.
Yet his opponent.
Played with the precision of an AI.
And moves that lay beyond predictable calculation.
He couldn’t believe it.
No—he couldn’t accept it.
Just one move.
That single move ahead of him.
Had thrown off everything flowing through his mind.
‘I can recover.’
Lu Yuan clenched his teeth.
The Opening had only gone slightly against him.
The Opening wasn’t everything.
He immediately launched a counterattack.
The most precise move an AI would recommend.
Based on thickness, suppressing his opponent’s territory formation.
Distorting Position and breaking the flow—a pattern.
He sought to approach it from the AI perspective and seize initiative in the Mid-game.
But.
‘The ki—the style has changed?’
It was clearly the same person making the moves.
Yet the flawless AI sense from the Opening had vanished.
The texture of the moves was different.
Reading.
Penetrating.
A probing move.
The mechanical patterns had vanished, replaced by moves that suffocated the mind itself.
Sweat beaded at the fingertips of Lu Yuan.
‘This… this is.
Sensation had summoned memory.
That day.
The match lost by half a point.
The undefended flow he’d understood yet found no answer for.
His body remembered first.
His hands stiffened, his eyes wavered.
The exact same pressure as then.
“……!”
He raised his head slowly.
The man across the board.
White shirt, expressionless face.
Those eyes held no emotion whatsoever.
But the stones he had placed were testifying.
To that flow.
To that sensation.
To the way of victory.
Back then.
It had been incomplete Go, stuttering and crude.
But now was different.
Not a single move wasted.
Not a single rhythm lost.
Precise, meticulous.
Terrifyingly organic.
Complete.
The moment that word flashed through his mind.
Without thinking.
His lips moved and he spoke.
“……Mu-myeong?”

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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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