I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 41

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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 — Chapter 41
Preliminary Tournament Playing Hall.
Sparse.
The number of professional Go players who had once filled every empty board had dwindled sharply.
And that made it feel real.
‘Everything comes down to this single game.’
Today’s results would determine which thirteen players from the General Division advanced to the main tournament.
My current Promotion Points stood at ten.
Advancing to the Round of 32 in the main tournament would earn me eighty points.
That would bring me to ninety total—just ten points short of professional certification.
The moment I secured Main Tournament Advancement, I would cross the threshold into the professional ranks.
‘But why are there so many spectators?’
The match hadn’t started yet.
People lingered around my board.
Throughout the Integrated Preliminaries.
Several domestic professional players I’d encountered once or twice.
Among them, Lu Wei-an, a 6-dan I’d played yesterday.
And Sun Yao, also 6-dan, whom I’d faced under a pseudonym.
‘Strange feeling.’
Being watched.
I still wasn’t used to it.
Of course, not all those eyes were on me.
I lifted my chin, my gaze settling on my opponent.
Byeon Woo-bin, 5-dan.
Ranked nineteenth domestically.
Champion of the Open Rookie King Tournament.
Runner-up in the Go King Tournament.
A rising star prophesied to carry Korean Go on his shoulders.
Last night, I’d sought out and replayed the final match he’d competed in.
To sum it up in one phrase:
He plays well.
His style is Intuitive Combative Go.
More aggressive than mine, more daring.
He shakes the board.
He breaks formations.
He forces openings.
On the surface, you could say he plays similarly to me.
But.
‘Byeon Woo-bin’s stones carry emotion.’
Creativity and intuition.
A player whose two strengths weave together naturally.
When he builds momentum relentlessly,
those stones feel almost, somehow, alive.
Once he seizes the Momentum, there’s no stopping him.
‘……This is no easy opponent.’
That much was crystal clear.
To speak frankly:
Even if I played at full strength, there was no guarantee of victory.
Perhaps that’s why.
‘Why am I trembling like this?’
Not from anxiety.
A pleasant tremor.
A sensation of warmth spreading slowly through my body.
It’s thrilling.
And I’m anticipating it.
More than any resolve to win,
a single game against an opponent worthy of everything I have.
That’s what made my heart race.
“Please be seated. We will now commence the fourth match of the Ciel Bank Cup Integrated Preliminaries.”
The weighty opening declaration from Referee Heo Gyou, 9-dan.
Clink.
The stone was covered.
‘White.’
Black would have been fine too, perhaps.
But I’m not disappointed.
The komi—the compensation points—they bring their own pressure.
And that advantage, depending on how you wield it, holds more value than the player themselves.
Especially in a game like today’s.
I bowed.
Before the match began, when I bowed in greeting, my eyes met Byeon Woo-bin’s.
‘……He’s out for blood.’
I can hazard a guess.
Why Byeon Woo-bin dislikes me.
Elite professional player or not.
He’s only twenty.
Too young to keep his emotions in check.
And as for that—
It’s even worse when matters of the heart are involved.
‘That doesn’t give him the right to take it out on me.’
Byeon Woo-bin picked up a stone and placed it on the board.
Tap.
Upper right, Small Point.
I responded slowly, deliberately.
Lower left, Hoshi.
Then—
Tap!
Byeon Woo-bin’s hand came out immediately.
Fast placements for this early in the game.
Momentum.
Time.
He was pressing down on me relentlessly.
‘I’ll take it.’
I responded gently with a Hoshi move.
I didn’t clash head-on from the start.
Instead.
An invisible battle of momentum filled that space.
Moves exchanged rapidly.
The Opening Formation seemed ordinary.
But beneath the surface, currents flowed back and forth.
Attaching at the Small Point.
Pushing back.
Extending.
Cutting off.
We were each reading far ahead.
But.
Neither of us was backing down.
‘Here it comes.’
The flow that began from Joseki and spread toward the upper edge.
I sketched out the position in my mind one step ahead of what lay before my eyes.
Just before the stones would connect.
Black doesn’t have many options.
And among them.
The most dangerous path.
The one he’d be most confident taking.
Tap.
He came exactly down that path.
‘Just as I expected.’
The Go King Tournament finals I’d watched on video had followed a similar flow.
Leading the battle.
Inducing change.
He played bold, challenging moves.
This was Byeon Woo-bin’s Go.
In the end, Woo Seok, his opponent, couldn’t hold and collapsed.
But then.
‘Seo Yeon-seok was different.’
Taking in the entire board.
The strength to endure momentum.
A composure that held firm even when shaken.
And so.
Byeon Woo-bin could not break through that foundation.
The reason he finished as runner-up in the Go King Tournament.
The spear could not pierce the shield.
‘I tried, but… I couldn’t shake him.’
I made the same choice.
Not direct confrontation, but accommodation.
Not reckless counterattack, but patience.
‘There’s no need to be swayed by emotion.’
It wasn’t momentum pressing down on me.
Because I held White.
Because I had the advantage of the handicap.
Because I didn’t control the initiative.
I remained cold.
Simply because I saw no need to meet fire with fire.
A brilliant victory?
No such thing exists.
Even without capturing large groups.
Even without building a hundred-point lead.
Mere fractions.
Go is decided by half a point.
And so I.
chose the statistically highest probability of winning.
Not a direct confrontation.
But a method to be certain of strangling Byeon Woo-bin’s play.
Not intuition and emotion.
But calculation and precision.
Increasing the proportion of AI Go.

* * *
‘He’s scared.’
Byeon Woo-bin muttered mockingly to himself.
He didn’t know much about Kim In-ha’s Go style.
As an amateur, there was no environment where official game records or game notation could be preserved.
Still.
Kim Dong-gyou, 8-dan.
Lin Shui, 8-dan.
Lu Wei-an, 6-dan.
Defeating strong players of considerable reputation deserved acknowledgment.
But.
That was all.
He didn’t care at all.
‘No matter what kind of Go he plays, pure skill will crush it.’
He was confident.
Because he was Byeon Woo-bin.
He had competed against the professionals Kim In-ha faced for years now, and accumulated far more victories.
Some nameless amateur.
Simply being on the same board was an insult.
‘……Anything irritating needs to go.’
Yu Zu-ha.
Her lingering around him grated from the start.
What’s more.
The way she looked at In-ha.
It was he who had stood by his side since his days as a research student.
It was he who had proven results on the professional stage.
And yet.
The hand that reached out.
Was not his.
But that of a mere amateur.
It was an affront.
One he could not bear.
‘Compose yourself.’
Byeon Woo-bin drew a deep breath and cleared his mind.
The game was still underway.
He refocused on the board.
‘Crush him with momentum.’
That was his way alone.
And the reason he had survived.
The clearest language of proving one’s strength.
Sweep the battlefield.
Shake the opponent.
Finally, pin him down.
Click!
Against his relentless offense,
his opponent fell back.
He did not meet the momentum head-on.
Defense.
Evasion.
Retreat.
‘Mimicking AI Go?’
Byeon Woo-bin’s mouth twisted.
AI Go is formidable.
But.
It carries a fatal weakness as well.
If the depth of study is shallow.
If analysis is insufficient.
The moment the game enters the middle game, bad moves multiply relentlessly.
All the more so for an amateur.
‘How long can he keep this up?’
Byeon Woo-bin began to introduce variations into his stones.
The momentum.
The pace of change.
He dragged the entire battlefield into greater complexity.
Then.
Click.
A white stone landed on the board.
To any observer, it seemed.
Entirely ordinary.
And yet.
Something grated, subtly.
An uncomfortable sensation.
As though the board itself had twisted, ever so slightly.
A sinister premonition—perhaps a Blue Spot.
‘Coincidence. He can’t sustain this.’
Byeon Woo-bin dismissed it.
One lucky move out of many was possible.
He reached out again.
Never breaking momentum.
Instead, pressing harder.
That was how the opponent would crumble.
Click.
A white stone was placed in stillness.
adapting to the changing shape of the board.
A move that doesn’t crumble the form.
‘What is this move…….’
Byeon Woo-bin drew in a breath without thinking.
There is no forcing in that move.
No momentum either.
But precise.
It cuts off the lifeline.
‘Impossible. My moves are being read? No, that can’t be.’
An unease seeping in, formless and vague.
This game right now.
Perhaps he doesn’t hold the initiative.
Perhaps the flow itself has been orchestrated by his opponent.
Byeon Woo-bin bit his lip gently.
‘This is absurd.’
He couldn’t accept it.
Couldn’t admit it.
And yet.
This vile feeling…… it felt familiar.
‘Wait. Could it be?’
For a moment, memory stirred within him.
The 41st Go King Tournament.
The finals against Seo Yeon-seok 8-dan.
The game he ultimately could not overcome.
When his momentum had been rendered powerless.
That sensation he’d felt then.
The very feeling of his momentum breaking without him even realizing it.
‘Were you aiming for this all along?’
It wasn’t breaking the momentum.
It was letting it drift away.
In the direction White intended.
Not a professional.
Just some amateur.
Byeon Woo-bin felt sweat gathering in his palm.
‘Am I being led? Me, Byeon Woo-bin…… by some mere amateur?’
He denied it.
But nothing changed.
That ill omen.
Slowly seeping in, tightening around his throat.
‘……It can’t be. Absolutely not.’
Byeon Woo-bin ground his teeth.
Losing was acceptable.
Anyone could lose.
But.
There was one person.
The man before him, Kim In-ha—he would rather die than lose to him.
A trivial pride.
Yes, that was it.
Which is why he had to win all the more.
Even if he played a reckless move.
Even if he took an absurd path.
Click.
Byeon Woo-bin threw down his gambit move.

* * *
‘Blue Spot.’
AI Go.
Enduring Black’s probing.
Enduring it again.
Until the most favorable position arrives, maintaining center.
Tap.
Thick.
Tap.
Solid.
A calculated retreat.
An intentional concession.
Not to kill the momentum—
But to let it find its own path,
Flow naturally forward.
‘My AI Go was…… its weakness was that the accuracy rate was only high in the opening.’
That’s inevitable.
There’s no way around it.
As the board grows more complex, following AI’s moves becomes nearly impossible.
A human being,
After all, is not a machine.
Precise position assessment,
And value judgment—I can only reveal their limits.
‘If I could raise the accuracy rate even through the early-middle game…… or at least the early stages.’
I don’t necessarily need the Blue Spot.
The Green Spot works too.
What matters
Is not to waver.
The most stable move.
The most optimal move.
The most efficient move.
I don’t need to be ahead.
Only until these stones accumulate, until they create an opportunity.
I just have to endure until then.
Tap.
One of my White Stones settled gently against the Black Stones’ shoulders.
Like Mount Tai itself—
Unmoved,
Yet its very presence
Made him reconsider his entire sequence of play.
‘I’ve seized the initiative.’
Imperceptibly.
But unmistakably.
His flow was beginning to bend.
It’s not that I’d ‘won.’
The momentum had shifted.
For anyone who plays Go, it’s something you feel instinctively—
The subtlest reversal of the air itself.
Byeon Woo-bin
Could hardly have missed it.
Tap.
Without hesitation, he struck back.
An aggressive Pincer Attack.
A direct assault to seize the initiative.
A forceful move strong enough to shake the stones I’d carefully stacked.
‘I hold once more.’
But not blindly.
I follow AI’s recommended moves,
Yet weave my own intuition through them.
One stone.
Then another.
I parry without stopping,
Yet I don’t charge forward.
Quietly.
But firmly, I advance.
Tap.
Upper left pincer attack.
Click.
Right side breakthrough.
Click.
Resolving the disconnected area in the center.
All of it ordinary.
Moves without artifice.
And yet calculated.
Accumulating without wavering.
The more this happened, the more Black’s momentum dulled.
And finally, it broke.
Though there was no particularly decisive winning margin.
My Go was advancing.
Black faltered and could not keep pace.
‘Ah.’
In that instant, my mind became clear.
This Go contained.
No violent turmoil.
No extraordinary reading.
No subtle moves that exploited weakness.
It was nothing like.
The Go I had been playing until now.
Rather than obsessively chasing the AI’s Blue Spot.
Intuition.
Data.
The moment those two wove together as one.
Chime!
[Your talent has crossed the threshold of evolution.]
[Congratulations. Your talent is evolving.]
[Your talent ‘Go’ is being upgraded from Grade A to Grade A+.]
The system message window appeared.
Unlike when I first obtained talent through the roulette ticket.
There was no forced injection into my mind.
No system update.
‘I understand.’
The corner of my mouth curved up slightly.
This was not the ability that talent gave.
This was not the path that the AI showed me.
This was.
Kim In-ha’s Go.
Go by Kim In-ha.
Go that only Kim In-ha could play.
‘My Go.’

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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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