novelraw Chapter 64 : Divine Move (9)
Chapter 64 : Divine Move (9)
Chapter 64: Divine Move (9)
"I won."
"So did I."
As planned, a smooth series of easy wins was continuing.
The worst-case scenario had been meeting among ourselves in the preliminaries and shedding blood.
Only eighteen people would survive to the finals.
Since it was a tournament format, the chance of not encountering each other and being evenly distributed was actually lower.
Fortunately, the tragedy of fratricide hadn’t occurred until the middle stages, and the preliminaries were already racing toward the halfway point.
Today’s opponents: seven.
To make it into the top nine, I had to win seven times in a row.
Frankly, it was a burdensome task for me.
I hadn’t even considered the possibility of placing in the rankings from the beginning.
Even if it was just an online Baduk game, with a prize of twenty million won on the line, every opponent I met had extraordinary skills.
And I had a penalty on top of it.
-Tak.
"Hoooh! There goes the stone!"
"I know."
"I’m just letting you know, in case you didn’t!"
It was Sanyi.
I didn’t tell her to go play somewhere else because I was afraid of hurting her feelings.
It was because if I let Sanyi loose in the café right now, it might disrupt the pace of the Immortals.
If someone had to deal with Sanyi, it was best it be me—someone with nothing to lose.
Sanyi had a habit of always taking a seat out of curiosity whenever something was going on.
Once she got into it, not even Ria’s coaxing could stop her.
Just like now—she had climbed onto my lap and wouldn’t be satisfied until she spectated from there.
Still, having Sanyi on my lap didn’t feel entirely uncomfortable.
'It’s a game I don’t need to win.'
That’s what I thought to myself, but each time I was about to place a stone on the Baduk board, I hesitated.
It was because of the desire to win and the pressure of it being a tournament, even if just the preliminaries.
With Sanyi distracting me, I was actually able to play more lightly.
Wasn’t it just like any ordinary weekend?
The window seat that had become my designated spot, the air conditioner that had started a bit early to combat June’s mild heat, and the moderate chatter of regular customers.
That familiar chaos dispersed my focus in a way that actually eased the tension.
And so, the match was heading toward a fourth consecutive win.
[Match Result: Black (Dangsari) wins by 2.5 points]
It was a victory barely snatched in a tight contest.
"Starting to get hard now, huh?"
"But I won. Why would it be hard?"
"The next opponent will be even better."
"Then Jinseong just has to play better!"
"If it were that easy, I’d be a pro by now."
They say that the condition of the day and the opponent’s style can sometimes override your strength, but this was as far as I could ride my luck.
Having played four matches, the pool had already been cut down from over 2,000 people to just a bit over a hundred.
If the survival rate was 5%, that meant most of the lucky ones like me had already been filtered out.
[Would you like to start the next match? (Wait time after acceptance: 300 seconds)]
Break time ended, and the next match began.
But the moment I hit the accept button, my laptop started acting weird.
The game window lagged, and the cooling fan on the laptop—running nothing more than a Baduk game—started spinning with a loud “wuuung” noise.
I thought I might have left the laptop running too long, but then I saw the opponent and realized it wasn’t the laptop.
In the last match, there had been only about 50 spectators. Now, it had shot past 2,000.
『Opponent: Han Sewoon 9-dan (Pro)』
An old acquaintance. Not that he would remember.
I had thought only the real heavyweights were left, but now the final boss had appeared.
Still, I had no intention of losing quietly.
I didn’t know what led him all the way to our café. But it was filled with a desperate resolve that had withstood the energy of the Divine Tree and the talismans of shamans.
If what he was searching for was my clumsy Baduk, then this meeting bordered on fate.
What is bound to happen, will happen one way or another.
And if he had found his answer, my own desperate wish—that he never come to our café again—was poured into this match.
One encounter with a yokai was enough. Joo Dohyuk had already experienced that.
I quietly closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared to activate the Divine Eye.
I had to be cautious. This time, I wasn’t trying to see the future.
-Tak.
'Have I read too many game records? I can see all his moves now that he only attacks.'
Han Sewoon Kuksu, flushed with exhilaration as the match began, settled his mind again upon seeing Jinseong’s predictable maneuvers.
He was, without a doubt, the person who had studied and analyzed Jinseong’s game records the most.
The weak early opening couldn’t help but be exposed, and when someone fixated on attacking, their moves inevitably became monotonous.
-Tak. Tak.
Seeing the moves clearly, the moment Jinseong’s black stones were placed, white stones followed in succession.
A solid shield was already in place where the spear would strike.
Soon enough, the fortress that had solidified claimed over half the Baduk board.
'It’s over.'
Han Sewoon Kuksu thought to himself that if Jinseong were sitting right in front of him instead of online, his expression would be quite a sight.
He had a bad draw.
Had he not encountered him, Jinseong would have had a solid shot at making it to the finals.
All the renowned pros had already dropped out of this tournament, after all.
Though top AI programs lay in wait like landmines here and there, if one were lucky enough to avoid them, the rest were merely mediocre rivals.
But in the world of competition, even luck was a skill.
After a defeat, nothing made one look more pathetic than saying, “It was bad luck.”
'Is he about to resign?'
The opponent wasn’t placing any stones.
He couldn’t find a place to play.
He had pushed forward almost abandoning the foundational opening strategy of Baduk, and the resulting black territory was pitiful and fragile. It was a price paid for a chaotic approach that wouldn’t even make it to the endgame.
'Defeat was inevitable. What I’m curious about is what you’ll do after.'
Before his loss to Jaypha, he had been undefeated in the professional world.
Meanwhile, Dangsari had rapidly risen to strength in just fifteen matches, but he was still an unrefined gem.
And just as the countdown timer ticked toward its end—
-Tak.
A black stone was placed.
In a place I never expected.
And for some reason, I had the illusion that a soft blue light was flowing from the placed black stone.
Was it because I was too focused?
I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but it was definitely light. The faint glow gradually grew stronger, and soon it was too bright to keep my eyes open.
-Whoooosh.
When the blue light faded, the surroundings had changed.
‘Where am I?’
It wasn’t the charnel house where my master was enshrined.
The shelves packed tightly with urns were gone, and I had opened my eyes in the middle of a living room in an ordinary house.
The floor was covered with yellow linoleum, and a tiny CRT television, small enough to be covered with two hands, was tucked deep inside a TV cabinet like a sacred relic.
That wasn’t the only strange thing.
A thick-dial telephone, an ashtray placed next to a matchbox.
This was a space far too familiar to Han Sewoon Kuksu.
It was his master’s home. Also the place where he had lived and been taught for five years.
As Han Sewoon Kuksu wandered around the dearly missed space, recalling memories, he stopped at the main wooden floor.
On the floor sat an elderly gentleman in a loose suit, a Baduk board laid out before him.
"Ah, where’s that Baduk player gone? He said he’d just pop to the restroom, and now he’s only just arrived?"
"Master?"
"Hehehe, you rascal. A grown man crying like this."
It was unmistakably his master.
The smile with a cigarette dangling from his lips, the chuckle—it was just as it had been before he passed away, when he was still healthy.
I already knew this wasn’t real.
Had I dozed off for a moment, having stayed sober lately?
It didn’t matter. As long as I could sit face-to-face with my master for the first time in twenty years.
"Master, after you passed away, I became the youngest Kuksu. Even the endgame you always scolded me for—I’m pretty good at it now."
The voice, once hoarse from smoking and drinking, grew clearer. And soon it was the voice he had back when I learned Baduk in his house.
"And also... Oh, right! Sometimes I even made comebacks in the endgame. I even beat all those annoying students of Sabom Choi without a single title to their names! Didn’t I do great?"
My tone had also shifted to that of an excited seven-year-old child, bragging enthusiastically.
"Aigo, my ears are ringing, you rascal. Just finish the game already. Isn’t it your turn?"
"Huh?"
Only then did Han Sewoon Kuksu notice the Baduk board in front of his master.
Anyone could see that he had the upper hand.
For some reason, his master’s house had turned into a ragged wreck, and just a few more moves would leave the large group in jeopardy.
"Eh, I’ve already won this."
-Tak.
The white stone in my small hand blocked the black’s attack without hesitation.
Seeing the student, head held high and grinning like a crescent moon in confidence, the master showed the next move.
"What about this?"
"Huh?"
It was a deep thrust over the solid wall.
"Hehehe, didn’t I tell you many times? When a solid-looking place has a gap, that very solidity becomes a deadly weakness. Oh my, there must be five captured stones here."
As the wall was breached, the mansion-like house instantly turned into a field of grass.
"Want to call it here? If so, this old master will take you for a walk. We can even get that chewy candy you love from the stationery shop over there. How about it?"
"Chewy candy?"
It was a lost game anyway.
With the house collapsed and five captured stones on the board, it was already a situation where I should’ve resigned long ago.
If I quickly cleaned up the stones, I could have that nutty chewy candy.
Han Sewoon Kuksu picked up two stones for resignation.
But the stones in my hand wouldn’t go down on the worn Baduk board.
"Ah, what are you doing? Hurry and resign so we can get going."
My master, already standing and putting on his coat, urged his hesitant student.
"It’s not over yet."
"Hmm?"
-Tak.
The student placed a stone again on the grassy field.
The master smiled gently, took off his coat, and sat back down across from his student.
-Tak. Tak. Tak.
The silent match gained speed.
When black came in through the broken wall, white blocked.
Sometimes black pushed in too deep and got cut in the middle, increasing the number of captured stones. Sometimes a seemingly dead enclosed group turned into two eyes and came back to life.
And eventually, after a drawn-out match that reached the endgame, white emerged ahead by just half a point.
"I won!"
"Hehehe, so I lost."
"I was so nervous when you almost played that atari in front of me! And when you extended there and didn’t follow up, I could immediately counterattack! And then..."
"How was it? You held on, and the chance came, right?"
"Yes!"
"Life is the same. If you give up and go eat chewy candy just because you lost, you won’t even get another chance to turn things around. Even if your group dies or captured stones pile up, if you keep placing stones, you can end up with a beautiful game record like now."
"Really! Master, let’s go over the game quickly! We can’t forget it!"
"Yes, don’t forget."
-Whooooosh.
From the densely packed Baduk board, blue light burst out again.
And when the light subsided, the game Han Sewoon had just played with his master remained exactly as it was on the tablet.
Along with a small popup window.
【Match Result: White (Han Sewoon) wins by half a point】