I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 82

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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 Money-Making Talents — Episode 82
‘……He’s bringing out Taisa Byekbyeon right from the start?’
Without thinking, I found myself studying Kim Eun-woo’s face.
Expressionless.
A flawless professional who played harmonious Go without emotional fluctuation.
Yet he’d deviated from Joseki on the very first move.
A remarkably aggressive attempt.
I appreciated feeling Kim Eun-woo’s intention—not the calculation of an AI, but something genuinely human.
And directed at me, no less.
‘Yes. This is the kind of Go I wanted to play.’
A laugh escaped me.
A good-natured laugh.
I was confident I wouldn’t lose to anyone in my knowledge of Taisa Byekbyeon variations.
I responded boldly with a forcing move.
I cut through the two White stones that were attacking together.
The variation with the most complexity and change—a line even professionals avoided in actual play.
Lu Queran’s 9-dan had suffered a disadvantage in the early game within this variation.
Yet Kim Eun-woo didn’t hesitate for a moment before responding.
Tap.
A stone played with strength.
An arrangement in preparation for the battle that would unfold in the corner.
It was a move that conveyed his refusal to compromise.
‘I feel the same way.’
Tap.
I placed a stone down with a decisive clink.
The ripple spread like fire across a dried field.
This was no isolated skirmish.
Though it began with Taisa Byekbyeon, that spark would consume the entire battlefield.
Upper left, right side, lower edge, and center.
Every region became entangled.
Intersections and battles.
Move Reading and time strategy.
Waves of Instability Play.
Neither side gave ground—each move a best response, clash against clash.
‘……Playing well.’
I marveled quietly.
A flawless professional.
No mistakes revealed themselves, no weaknesses exposed.
Stable, without emotional swings.
Textbook perfection in execution and timing.
He didn’t force anything; instead, he judged half a beat faster than I did and pressed down.
He left almost no room to exploit.
‘This is…… the eternally unshakeable 2nd-ranked player in the country.’
Some people mocked Kim Eun-woo as the permanent second, diminishing his achievement.
Forever the runner-up.
But in my view, that assessment was wrong.
He wasn’t weak—Jung Si-hu was simply a monster.
By move 67 in the opening phase.
The board was delicate.
I was behind by roughly two points.
The moment we entered the midgame, I launched a fierce Instability Play at once.
Yet White didn’t waver.
Frenzied flexibility.
His sense of balance was extraordinary.
He grasped the center with precise compromise, and possessed an eye for reading the entire board state.
Nothing excessive, nothing lacking.
He maintained consistency—leaving no openings, holding his lead with quiet composure.
Then, from the midgame management onward, he closed it out to victory.
A player who maintains parity until mid-game but wins in the endgame—that’s the flawless Go of Kim Eun-woo.
And yet.
‘……Even if I’m not shaken, I can shake the board.’
Creating imbalance isn’t just a matter of sensation and intuition.
It’s not the blue spot that artificial intelligence pursues either.
It may sound somewhat far-fetched.
But it’s something only humans can attempt, something only humans can do.
Moves that can’t be calculated.
Moves that can’t be predicted.
A single stone born from unconventional, creative and innovative thinking that accepts risk—a paradigm shift that defies convention.
‘……I can do this.’
I picked up a stone slowly.
Without rushing.
Without hiding my intentions.
‘See the board state from farther away, from a broader perspective.’
I rewove the entire Go Board.
From a disadvantageous position to an advantageous one.
I created a fracture to make that shift.
Click.
A White Stone placed in quietude.
“……!”
For the first time, Kim Eun-woo Nine-dan drew a measured breath.
Eyes searching for the intent behind my move.
After a long period of consideration.
Click.
White penetrated the lower-right corner.
A weakness in my Black position.
An uncomfortably loose shape at first glance.
A point no one could possibly overlook.
‘Exactly as intended.’
I discard my own weakness voluntarily.
But not without purpose.
I decompose unnecessary forms and carve out a new path.
The concrete gains he seized.
The board state he secured first.
I fracture them one by one, dulling the edge of his strength.
‘……Flawlessness also means Go without mistakes.’
Go is won by those who avoid error.
Rather than fights they can win, they choose to avoid fights where defeat is possible.
That is Kim Eun-woo Nine-dan’s Go.
To defeat him, I must accept risk and shake the board.
In ways that can’t be calculated, that can’t be predicted.
‘Large Group Exchange.’
My gaze hardened as I gripped the Go stone.
I erase the stretches where I was losing, and revise my grip whenever an opening appears.
This isn’t a fight of gain against gain, but Go that transforms the structure and flow itself.
I keep overturning the board.
With each exchange, I overturn the structure, and in that gap, I shift again.
This is the Go I play now.

* * *
Kim Eun-woo Nine-dan.
He despised the label that clung to him.
Eternal second place.
But it hadn’t always been that way.
Until Jung Si-hu Nine-dan’s second year as a professional, he stood at the pinnacle of world Go.
He’d held tournament titles domestically, and had even won the world’s four major tournaments.
There was a time when he’d reached first place in the world Go rankings.
But that was the end of it.
As Jung Si-hu Nine-dan’s era of dominance began, he was gradually pushed back.
Over the past two years, his record against Jung Si-hu Nine-dan stood at one win, fifteen losses.
Eight championship titles surrendered in domestic tournament finals alone.
Moreover, in recent years, the dominance of Chinese players on the world stage had become unmistakable.
After his elimination from the Ciel Bank Cup.
He’d slipped outside the world’s top ten rankings in five years.
Some called it a slump.
Others drew a line, attributing it to a lack of skill.
Still others spoke of it coldly as an aging curve.
All of it was true.
Kim Eun-woo, now a 9-dan, felt it instinctively.
The time to descend from the pinnacle.
That moment was drawing near.
‘……Behind me is a cliff. If I don’t climb higher from here, it’s over.’
Endure.
The most meaningless word in the world of competition.
To lose was to be discarded.
With that resolve, he entered the National Promotion Tournament.
It was the last major tournament of the year, and he wanted to claim victory in the National Promotion Tournament, steeped in tradition and history.
That’s why he’d opened with the Taisa Byekbyeon, a challenging Joseki, right from the start of the game.
But then.
‘……He’s strong. Far stronger than what I saw in the records.’
Kim In-ha.
A prodigy.
The same age, twenty-nine years old.
He’d even won the Ciel Bank Cup while still an amateur—and at a late age at that.
Unprecedented in Go history.
Unconventional. Anomalous.
Especially that game in the Ciel Bank Cup finals, the second match—the one Lu Queran had played against a 9-dan.
Even after allowing cheating twice over, he’d ultimately triumphed.
‘Even “prodigy” falls short.’
Which made him all the more dangerous.
All the more wondrous, all the more threatening.
Kim Eun-woo felt almost grateful that such talent had only emerged now.
And.
In this very game, that genius was revealing itself without filter.
The variation following the Taisa Byekbyeon.
The opening strategy in the early midgame.
And the Instability Play in the middle game.
Moves that, though unorthodox, were sharper and deeper than any classical Joseki.
Bold, relentless, they cut deep into the position.
Kim Eun-woo maintained his composure through several crises.
‘……Instability Play has no substance. I just need to respond with my own style.’
The matchup of styles favored him more.
The philosophy of Go he pursued was stability.
In a sense, he was precisely the opponent least susceptible to psychological pressure.
‘Protect two points.’
Even as the midgame deepened, the board state remained favorable.
Then.
Kim In-ha played a stone in a place he’d never anticipated.
‘……A blunder? No, think carefully.’
He thought it through, and then again.
There could be a trap lurking anywhere.
But the conclusion remained the same.
An inexplicable mistake.
Without missing the opportunity, he penetrated the corner.
A ladder fight.
But that didn’t matter.
The gain was clear cut.
Four points of advantage from the ladder exchange.
There was no reason to decline.
And in the end, he lost in that ladder fight.
The gap had widened further.
Now, just by consolidating his position, he could be certain of victory.
‘No. This is…….’
Kim In-ha had neutralized the emotions Jung Si-hu held by conceding material advantage.
It wasn’t a simple exchange of territory.
Not a straightforward trade, either.
He abandoned his weak stones without hesitation.
It was an exchange that transformed the very structure of the board state itself.
And that was only the beginning.
No compromise.
No allowance for prediction.
Even when he placed what seemed like static moves, the transformation continued.
Again.
And again.
Reshaping the board.
‘……Another one?’
A Large Group Exchange.
A structure that forced losses on him if he refused to engage.
Kim Eun-woo read, and read, and read again, calculating endlessly.
But at some point, his Move Reading could no longer keep pace with the flow.
His initiative was being neutralized.
His designs were being undermined.
His very strengths were dulling.
The exchanges continued.
This wasn’t mere board evaluation.
He was controlling the momentum itself—not the outcome, but the direction.
‘……I’ve never seen Go played like this.’
The very conception was different.
What madman, what lunatic,
would trade stones at a loss, discard weaknesses,
and intentionally neutralize his opponent’s strengths in the process?
Not once. But twice, three times over.
An unconventional genius.
Then came a flicker of emotion.
Vague. Fearful.
What if Kim In-ha had achieved Professional Promotion at the same age as him?
He didn’t want to imagine it.
He refused to even think about it.
If Jung Si-hu alone weren’t enough, and Kim In-ha had also been active in his era.
Second place?
Would such a title have ever come his way?
It didn’t make sense.
It was far too irrational.
‘……How can he play moves like that so casually?’
They were dangerous moves.
Moves no one would readily attempt.
Moves that required staking the entire board to execute.
Yet he was playing them as naturally as routine moves.
Not just once, but continuously, in succession.
The entire board transformed, its shape, its contours, its central axis overturned.
And in the end, he had created a reversal.
“…….”
Kim Eun-woo lifted his head.
Their eyes met in silence.
A man gazing at the board, saying nothing.
Eyes that had never wavered, not once.
Go aimed at reversal alone.
This Go transcended every rule of victory
that he had ever known.

* * *
“……I lost.”
Kim Eun-woo placed a White Stone quietly beneath the board.
The referee approached, confirmed the formal resignation, and withdrew without a word.
I bowed my head.
The game was over, but neither of us rose from our seats with any haste.
The weight of the match lingered thick in the air.
A moment later, Kim Eun-woo pointed upward with his finger, tracing the upper right corner.
“I should not have answered that exchange…….”
A Ladder Fight.
And through it, the entire board state had transformed.
He traced each stone methodically, continuing the post-game review.
“Nowhere did you place your stones as I expected. Your way of recovering from disadvantage…… it was different.”
His voice was measured, yet touched with genuine recognition.
I nodded quietly and met his gaze.
Then I spoke slowly.
“……If you had not played quite so aggressively, I would not have won.”
I drew a short breath and continued.
“I learned much from you.”
Kim Eun-woo’s eyes widened slightly at those words.
A flash of surprise in his gaze.
Yet his expression soon softened, as though something within him had settled into place.
“I feel the same. I wish I could have played Go like this with you…… much sooner.”
He rose from his seat with a small smile and a bow.
Then he left the studio without another word.
Alone, I took a moment to breathe.
Just as I released the tension and moved to lean back in my chair—
—Ding!
A system notification sounded.
[You have advanced to the Main Tournament Quarterfinals of the 60th DN Automobile National Grandmaster Tournament.]
[You have defeated the Entry into the Divine Realm of Flawlessness.]
[The system confirms evolution potential for your talent ‘Go’.]
[Congratulations. The Realm of Enlightenment expands in part.]
[The talent ‘Shogi’ for the mind game awakens within you.]
[Your talent ‘Shogi’ is rank C+.]
[This talent is not connected to your Primary Job or talent maintenance conditions.]
“……Shogi?”
Japan’s traditional form of chess.

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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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