"Check."
A calm male voice echoed through the tea room.
Amidst the curling fragrance of fresh tea, Su Mo casually placed his final piece with one hand, the other still turning the page of a book.
Before him lay a shogi board.
With that final move, the black pieces formed an inescapable net, checkmating the enemy king with absolutely no room to maneuver.
"How is that possible?!"
Across from the man sat a junior high school girl in a uniform, her silver-blue hair framing a delicate, pretty face. Despite being a professional shogi player of no small renown, she had just been defeated in under two minutes.
"How... How did this happen?"
Ginko Sora knelt powerlessly, her hands propped on the floor, her slender legs folded to either side of her trembling, petite frame.
"He gave me a handicap—a full ten-piece handicap, the largest possible! And he was reading a book the whole time, just making moves without a thought... How could I not even put up a fight? I didn't even last two minutes?!"
The girl's youthful face was a mask of pure shock, with none of the cool pride she usually carried.
For a professional shogi player to be so utterly crushed while given a ten-piece handicap was unthinkable.
Even if her skills weren't at the absolute pinnacle, not even the strongest Ryuo in history could have dominated her so completely under these conditions.
Seeing the girl in a daze, her entire worldview seemingly shattered, it was doubtful she would have reacted even if someone did something to her.
For Su Mo, the master of the villa, and the maid standing by, this was a familiar sight.
The blonde, twin-tailed maid presented a freshly brewed cup of black tea—a new recipe she had just learned.
Su Mo gave a slight nod, paying no mind to the girl who was now the very picture of despair, and continued to flip through the book in his hand, its pages covered in mysterious symbols.
It was several minutes before Ginko Sora finally clawed her way back from the depths of her shock.
She bit her lip, looking up at the man before her—a man whose looks and physique were both utterly flawless.
Under the weight of his absolute power, the shock in her eyes slowly transformed into reverence and admiration.
"You truly are the Sage of the Board, a talent unprecedented and peerless! Lord Su Mo, across all of human history, you are without a doubt the strongest!" she declared, her voice filled with sincerity. "A master of your caliber must have endured training beyond the imagination of ordinary people to stand at such a summit!"
Though proud and haughty since childhood, she couldn't muster an ounce of arrogance in his presence.
The man sitting before her was a legend who had conquered Go, chess, international chess, and shogi—a being who had even left AIs in the dust, hailed as the greatest Sage of the Board in human history.
Faced with such an existence, she felt nothing but the awe one feels when gazing up at a towering mountain; the thought of a challenge didn't even dare to cross her mind.
In Ginko's eyes, only someone with a mind as clear and tranquil as a mirror could reach the level of a Sage.
However, in response to her near-sycophantic praise, Su Mo simply shook his head.
"No."
"Eh?"
"Truthfully, I was just short on cash at the time, so I decided to win some prize money. I had barely touched shogi before that, let alone trained for it."
"Huh?"
Ginko was dumbfounded. That wasn't what the news reports had gushed about at all!
And...
"Someone who's never played shogi becomes the Sage of the Board in a short time just because he wanted prize money?"
Is that even possible?
Seeing the dumbstruck expression on his newly recruited little maid, Su Mo explained casually, "As a professional player, you should know that skill in a game has nothing to do with one's character, let alone spiritual cultivation. A 'board game,' when you strip away the mystique, is ultimately just a puzzle that tests your computational power."
His words, devoid of all embellishment, cut straight to the heart of the matter.
"As a game of calculation, shogi has promotion rules, but its overall complexity is far less than Go. And the upper limit of Go's complexity is merely 3 to the power of 361. As long as your computational ability is sufficient to encompass Go, winning a championship in any other board game is the simplest thing in the world."
Hearing Su Mo state such a mind-shattering fact in the calmest tone imaginable, Ginko froze once more.
"To cover every possible variation in a game not by relying on established patterns, but through pure, raw calculation?"
Even the most advanced supercomputers today couldn't perform calculations on that scale, could they?
Most people in the outside world believed the Sage had defeated the AI by exploiting its weaknesses.
But listening to Su Mo now, could it be that he hadn't used any strategy at all, but had simply crushed the AI with overwhelming computational power?
Was that something a human could even do?
"If that's a 'simple' thing, then what in this world could possibly be called difficult?" Ginko muttered, exasperated.
It was a rhetorical exclamation, but to her surprise, Su Mo answered immediately.
"Of course there is."
"What?"
"For example... transcending humanity."
His tone was tinged with a slight complexity.
"Huh?"
Hearing this completely unexpected answer, Ginko looked up at the great Sage, only to find that his attention was now fully focused on his book. Unlike his casual demeanor when facing the shogi board, his expression was now intensely serious.
Looking at the various books scattered around his seat, their covers adorned with esoteric symbols, Ginko felt a sense of bewilderment.
Hermeticism: A Society of Psychological Alchemy, The Emerald Tablet, The Book of the Dead... Why is Lord Su Mo so interested in mythology and religion?
She opened her mouth to ask, but then remembered the maid's handbook she had just memorized. She held her tongue and instead fulfilled her duties.
After reheating the tea that Eriri-senpai had prepared, she cleared the shogi board and, along with Eriri-senpai, bowed and quietly left, giving their master a quiet environment.
Several minutes after Ginko had gone, Su Mo turned the final page of the book in his hands, shook his head, and set it aside.
"The theoretical framework is sound, but there's still no effect in practice... Even Hermeticism, condemned as the evil of all evils and the heresy of all heresies, yields no reaction. Could it be that this world truly has no potential for the supernatural?"
As it turned out, Su Mo was a transmigrator.
Upon arriving in this slice-of-life crossover world, he hadn't received any extraordinary cheat—other than a mind that worked exceptionally well and an enhanced ability for insight. In modern society, however, that alone was enough for him to thrive.
In fact, the title of "Sage of the Board" that Ginko held in such high esteem was one of his most trivial accomplishments.
With his powerful insight, he had achieved unimaginable success in economics, politics, culture, and technology, gaining enough influence to sway the world.
He'd reached a point where even a powerhouse like the Shinomiya conglomerate dreamed of sending their daughter to serve as his handmaiden.
But after reaching the apex of secular society, Su Mo's gaze had turned toward the supernatural.
If I was able to transmigrate, there must be some kind of mystical power out there.
Unfortunately, no matter how much he studied this world's religions and histories, or how deeply he delved into the knowledge of secret societies, he couldn't find a single trace of the supernatural.
By now, he had read every piece of occult material available in the world, mastering numerous esoteric theoretical systems. One could say he had become the world's foremost master of mystical knowledge.
Yet, he still found no hope of transcendence.
This world, it seemed, was just an ordinary, magic-less plane of existence.
No matter how heaven-defying his insight was, he could never achieve transcendence in a place where the rules of the world themselves forbade it.
Does this mean that even after transmigrating, I'm doomed to live and die like an ordinary person, turning to dust after a century?
Despite the sigh in his heart, Su Mo wasn't discouraged.
If he wanted to pursue the supernatural, how could he give up so easily?
Even if there was no path forward, he would carve one out himself! With his level of insight, even defying the heavens themselves wasn't entirely out of the question.
Just as Su Mo was about to reorganize his research materials, a mechanical voice suddenly rang out in his mind.
[Esteemed Member, welcome to the Dimensional Chat Group.]
Madoka: "Welcome, newcomer!"
Kanae: "Welcome, newcomer!"
Rin Tohsaka: "Welcome, newcomer!"
Erica: "Welcome, newcomer!"
Staring at the translucent screen that had suddenly appeared before him, and the welcoming chorus on it, Su Mo's breath hitched. He clenched his fist tightly.
The supernatural opportunity he had yearned for, dreamed of, had actually arrived... just like that?