I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 65

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

Too Many Profitable Talents — Episode 065
The second restroom.
Lu Queran, nine-dan, had done nothing.
He’d urinated, washed his hands, shaken off the water—that was all.
A stall?
He hadn’t entered one.
Or rather—he *couldn’t* enter one.
I was standing behind him, and the tournament official was watching with eyes wide open.
And at worst.
‘……I was even prepared to check myself.’
I was ready to go back in there the moment he came out.
We walked through the hotel corridor with a deliberate interval between us.
An awkward silence.
Thin whispers of footsteps.
We returned to the studio with almost no time gap.
To our respective seats.
Lu Queran, nine-dan, sat down slowly in his chair.
I took my seat across from him.
“…….”
A heavy silence descended, as if the air itself had stopped moving.
The Go Board unchanged.
The stones unchanged.
The board state unchanged.
But for Lu Queran, nine-dan, it could not have been so.
The last move I had played.
His eyes trembled faintly as he studied it.
He’d grasped it instinctively.
That the next move might decide the game.
‘How will you respond?’
Lu Queran, nine-dan, chose long consideration.
The longest he’d spent since today’s match began.
And then, at last.
Click.
He picked up a stone and played his move.
A retreat.
‘Caught.’
Tap.
I pressed down on him with a forcing move.
White had no choice.
Capture.
By capturing a single black stone, White’s position solidified—in appearance.
But I didn’t care.
This exchange opened a path to life for the four black stones that had infiltrated the third line on the right side.
By forcing White’s next move and creating a mirror situation, I’d succeeded in compelling a false choice.
Which meant.
‘Initiative.’
I picked up a stone without hesitation.
And released it on the right side.
Tap.
The diagonal at the fifth line on the upper edge.
A move that shored up Black’s weakness in the upper-right corner while harmonizing with the left-side position, creating substantial territory.
‘……Perhaps two points ahead, maybe even three.’
By AI standards, this had to be approaching eighty percent advantage.
I felt Lu Queran’s nine-dan expression harden, even as he maintained his poker face.
After hesitating, he played his next move.
Tap.
Trembling.
A tremor in his fingertips.
The speed of stone placement.
A very subtle hesitation that hadn’t been there before.
I saw hesitation in his play.
‘He’s wavering.’
A move attacking my corner stone on the left.
An attempt to secure territory while doing so.
But that was all.
‘There’s no sharpness to it.’
Call it a corner stone attack, but the shape itself lacks substance.
The structure isn’t fatal to survival.
I responded appropriately, paring down White’s influence without overextending myself.
Click.
Lu Queran, a 9-dan, matched my move with calm precision.
A long, drawn-out sequence.
The desperation to chase territory was written plainly into every stone.
I accepted it with composure.
Tap.
A move that didn’t press too deep, yet decisively forced White to retreat.
I lifted my chin and looked at him.
‘So… you’re not going to resign?’
With that single move, I was asking him.
Hadn’t the board state already tipped in my favor?
If you’re thinking of walking away, this is your last chance—what will you do?
Then.
Lu Queran’s lips curled inward, ever so slightly.
A faint twitch.
But he didn’t rise from his chair.
In that moment, I felt it.
The rhythm had fractured.
His composure had shattered.
The mechanical, sterile flow of his Go up until now—it cracked.
Once more, Lu Queran reached for a stone.
Hesitation.
Uncertainty.
No strength in his fingertips.
Click.
The move he barely managed to place.
Nothing but a defensive position born of a wavering mind he couldn’t suppress.
‘Time to solidify.’
I didn’t hesitate.
Working methodically within safe bounds, I began to tighten the endgame.
A dash along the first line.
A cut along the second line.
Pat.
With precise sequencing, I left him no room for reversal.
Lu Queran’s options became increasingly constrained.
Desperate moves.
More desperate moves.
Forced, reckless moves.
His position crumbled so thoroughly that even counting wouldn’t save him.
‘I could win just by defending.’
But that wasn’t what I wanted.
I wanted to ride this momentum and break his will entirely.
Driving him into a corner.
Tightening the noose until he couldn’t move.
Strangling his breath.
A trampling so thorough that even his last, desperate struggles became meaningless.
Snap.
Lu Queran’s brow contorted as he gripped the stone.
He couldn’t make his next move.
Strength drained from his hand as he returned the stone to the bowl.
Then he quietly lowered the lid over the stones.
Resignation.
The arbiter completed the final confirmation and declared my victory.
‘I won.’
Both my fists clenched hard against my knees.
I’d done it.
Game One of the World Masters—I’d claimed it with my own hands.
A surge of elation coursed through my entire body.
What made it even more thrilling was the fact that it had been a prepared, calculated victory.
Lu Queran rose quietly from his seat.
His expression remained impassive.
But I saw it clearly.
The faint twist at the corner of his mouth.
He was swallowing his emotions, pressing down the frustration that the game hadn’t unfolded as he’d intended.
Whoosh.
The moment he turned to leave the studio.
I opened my mouth.
In Chinese.
Low but clear, and resolute.
“I will chase you to the very end.”
At those words, Lu Queran turned back to look at me.
For a fleeting instant.
A violent emotion flickered across his eyes as they met mine.
But with remarkable composure, he smoothed his expression and gathered himself, turning away once more.
I watched his retreating figure in silence.
Ding!
A system notification chimed.
A new line had been added to my Career log.
[Victory in Game One of the 30th Ciel Bank World Masters Final.]
This much was foreseeable.
What mattered was what came next.
[You are continuing to achieve feats unrecorded in history.]
[You have won Game One of the World Masters Final as an Amateur.]
[As an Amateur, you have defeated one suspected of Fraudulent Conduct while in the Transcendent Realm.]
[Your strategic use of tournament regulations is highly commended.]
[Bonus rewards are being applied to this achievement.]
‘…Wait, this is better than I expected?’
I drew a short breath.
I suppressed the corners of my mouth rising uncontrollably.
I’d only just won the first game.
But the system’s language and phrasing had clearly shifted.
Particularly.
‘Suspected of Fraudulent Conduct while in the Transcendent Realm.’
Words that hadn’t appeared before.
Fraudulent conduct.
In that instant, countless thoughts crossed my mind.
But there wasn’t enough time to sort them out.
A staff coordinator approached and spoke to me.
“Kim In-ha, please head to the media wall for interviews.”
I nodded and stood.
I left the studio and turned along the corridor.
Lights.
Flashes.
The shutter sounds of cameras erupting from all directions.
More reporters than this morning pressed against the barrier, their eyes fixed on me.
As I took my place at the media wall, the moderator began to speak.
“Kim In-ha, congratulations on your victory in Game One of the final.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve claimed an important win today. It was a victory no one saw coming. How does it feel?”
I turned my head to look at the moderator.
“Disappointed, actually—that you didn’t see it coming.”
“…Sorry?”
The moderator offered a sheepish smile at my question.
“I came here intending to win, and I’ll be going in tomorrow with the same intention.”
Laughter rippled through the room.
The next microphone went to Gu, one of the reporters.
“When Lu Queran vacated his position as a 9-dan earlier today, Kim In-ha, you accompanied him. Was that intentional?”
Every reporter’s gaze locked onto me at once.
A brief silence.
The moment when camera shutters and laptop keyboards fell quiet.
I lifted my head, let a moment pass, then nodded slowly.
“Yes, it was intentional.”
A short, decisive answer.
Among the Korean reporters, a small but unmistakable murmur of excitement escaped.
By contrast, the Chinese reporters maintained a cold silence.
Displeasure and unease were written plainly across their faces.
“Could you elaborate on your reasons for that?”
I lifted my head.
Looking each reporter in the eye, I continued.
“Isn’t it the reason you’re all thinking of?”
In that instant, a note of tension rippled through the gathered press.
It wasn’t direct.
But it carried enough weight to resonate.
“And will you proceed the same way tomorrow?”
The next question followed.
There was no hesitation in my mind.
“Yes. That’s my plan.”
I answered calmly, decisively.
A quiet tension settled over the room.
Especially among the Chinese reporters, murmurs began to swell and threaten to break into argument.
The animosity directed at me was vivid enough to see.
The moderator, sensing the shift, quickly stepped in to mediate.
“Kim In-ha, you’ve come as an amateur to within one game of winning the World Masters — something unprecedented in the history of Go. Do you believe victory is possible?”
“…Possible?”
The reporters held their breath.
I let out a short, slow laugh.
“I’ve come this far because it is possible.”

* * *
The moment I stepped into my room, the first thing I did was check my phone.
Missed calls.
Message notifications.
Dozens of them had accumulated.
Congratulations on the victory, encouragement for fighting well, and cheers pushing me toward the final win.
As I scrolled through them, the phone rang.
Jung Soo-yeon, my team leader.
“Yes, this is Kim In-ha.”
—Congratulations, In-ha. I didn’t want to hope, but you’re proving me right with results.
“It’s too early to celebrate.”
—You’re not getting complacent either. You keep raising the bar.
I laughed quietly.
A win-win.
There was something good about the fact that we were both giving our all in our respective roles, doing our own work.
The call wasn’t long.
She was being considerate, letting me rest after the match.
I took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank.
“Ah.”
I caught my breath and sank back into the sofa.
Seoul’s skyline settling slowly into sunset.
Beyond the glass, the world was tilting quietly into dusk.
Then.
A system window hung at the edge of my vision.
I looked again at the message I’d missed in the chaos.
[You have defeated a Transcendent Realm of suspected fraudulent conduct as an Amateur.]
[Your actions utilizing tournament regulations are highly commended.]
[Rewards are being added to your achievements.]
“Three sentences. But…”
Terse, yet the weight beneath them was anything but light.
‘A Transcendent Realm of suspected fraudulent conduct.’
Only suspicion, only circumstantial evidence—yet the system had defined him in precisely those terms.
And.
‘Your actions utilizing tournament regulations.’
It explicitly commended Lu Queran’s act of preemptively blocking the Nine-Dan’s possibility of cheating.
I settled deeper into my chair.
Rewards.
Addition.
I turned those two words over slowly in my mind before posing the question aloud.
“But what if—hypothetically—I’d beaten that suspected Transcendent Realm through pure skill alone?”
My eyes closed on their own.
Not ‘a victory that blocked fraudulent conduct.’
The system would have recorded it as ‘a flawless victory that overcame fraudulent conduct.’
A result transcending mere achievement, soaring past the remarkable.
A far higher commendation would have been given. Far greater rewards.
“No, this won’t do.”
This first game.
It was undoubtedly a meaningful victory.
But it wasn’t complete.
I touched the armrest lightly with my fingertips and smiled quietly to myself.
“Why do I keep wanting more?”
One word surfaced.
A flawless victory.
I craved it with desperate hunger.

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