I'd Won
I'd won.
"Pfft—ha! This bastard's actually hilarious. I'm crying. I'm crying."
The moment I covered my eyes, he threw his head back and howled.
"Jeong-guk! Quit messing around and do it properly!"
"Postman, sir, that simply will not do, I must say!"
Do it properly. I couldn't have been trying any harder than this.
My odds of winning a bare-handed fight...
Even with my eyes covered, the probability was still there. I could have shut them completely and it would have shown all the same. That said everything.
0.4%
Win Rate — Bare-Handed
Give up my sight, and the win rate shattered. That a 0.4 percent chance of victory still existed, even now, was the only thing worth marveling at.
His five-man cheering section was howling right along with him.
"Man, postmen these days are out of their minds."
"Win this and it's still gonna feel dirty."
"I got a little scared for a second, not gonna lie."
"Boss! Don't you go easy on that bastard just because of it!"
Meanwhile, behind me, Jo Shin-hye and Hocheol kept firing off complaints until my ears rang. At least Jo An-na was sparing with her words. Small mercies.
Bite my lip until it bleeds, then drink the blood.
I'd triggered the ability twice that way already. Bleeding from somewhere other than my lip might work too. Drinking someone else's blood might work as well. I didn't have the leisure to test either possibility now.
I sucked my lower lip into my mouth and ground it between my front teeth. Keep this up and I wouldn't have a lip left. The moment the metallic blood slid down my throat, the bag grew warm, and the number that had been blue began to bleed slowly into red. The next instant the digits went hazy. When they sharpened again, they were no longer the same.
99.6%
Win Rate — Bare-Handed
I'd won.
"Well then, Mr. Postman. If you can't take it, yell surrender. I'll stop when you do."
"Start."
"Ha! I'll give you this much—you're confident! So confident I'm almost sorry to stomp you. Your people are watching. Getting humiliated in front of them would be..."
"Whoever ends up sorry can be the one to apologize."
"Clean. Then I'll do the stomping, and you get ready to receive an apology."
"I could apologize in advance, if you want."
"Pfft."
He closed in until he was right in my face. I didn't need eyes to feel a presence like that. The problem started now.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
He threw his left. Two jabs in a row. His fists were viciously fast, just past the edge of what a normal body could manage, but mine was already moving before I'd even registered the attack. A light slip. He froze for a heartbeat, then backstepped out of range.
"...The hell, Postman."
He'd meant to throw a straight after the two jabs.
"Pretty good instincts for a postman."
"The cutoff for postmen is high these days."
"Yeah? Didn't know that."
"Someone like you would fail the application no matter what."
A creak reached me—the sound of his jaw clenching, muscle cinching tight. There was no way a sound like that should carry so loud, and yet I was certain that was exactly what it was. My hearing had gone razor-sharp. The breathing of the people watching me stirred the air as clearly as an eagle's wingbeat, and the tapping on the ground was ants bolting. No question.
Pat-pat.
He closed the distance again and threw. The world in front of me was pitch-black, and yet the air itself seemed visible as it moved. Time crawled. Not for a second did I think it was an illusion. I was on a timeline of my own.
A jab. I eased my head back and let it pass, and felt his fist at the very tip of my nose—close enough to kiss it, not quite close enough to land.
A straight. I rode the current of the punch and slipped inside, and at the same time my left arm finished coiling, ready to fire.
"Ah!"
My turn. I swung the ready left and drove it into his flank.
Thud.
A liver blow, a little off the mark, but the power was all there. A shockwave tore through his torso and flashed like lightning across the black of my vision.
"Ghk!"
He staggered and barely stayed upright. I'd been able to feel exactly where his unguarded jaw sat for a while now, but I didn't go for it. If he dropped, I'd have to open the whole conversation over with someone else. Too much trouble.
"Kgh—you bastard, you can see—"
He backstepped, mouth running again. Useless talk instead of a surrender. I raised my guard and pressed in tight.
He threw punches at random. I felt every target, every order of attack. No—feeling wasn't the word anymore. I could see them: trajectories blinking red in the dark, the route of his next strike. While I slipped the first and second shots already in flight, the paths of the third and fourth drew themselves ahead of time. Even the fifth and sixth appeared—blows he hadn't yet decided how to throw.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
The sound of fists cutting air filled my ears. All that touched me was wind. Dodging was nothing now. I'd wait for a decent opening and take the last shot.
"What the hell is this! This bastard can see!"
He was guarding his right flank more than anything else. That earlier hit must have been worse than it looked.
"You cheating son of a bitch!"
"Yeah? Think I can see?"
"Obviously, fuck—does this even make sense?"
He was starting to let the tension go. The edge in the wind faded, and lost punches came in wild and aimless.
"But does seeing even matter?"
"What?"
"There was never a condition that I had to fight blind. So what if I can see? What's the problem?"
"Th-that's—!"
I found the gap. It would open two punches from now.
Whoosh.
I turned my head and let the fist slide past. I could feel the moisture of sweat flicked from his arm.
Whoosh.
Now. Hit a man where you've already hit him. That's just human nature.
Crack.
Another liver blow.
"Ghk!"
This one landed clean. He stumbled, then dropped to his knees, clutching his side, forehead pressed to the dirt, and started to groan.
"S-surren... kgh."
"Surrender? If the word won't come out, tap the ground three times."
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Surren... cough."
"I'll apologize. Sorry about that."
Seven Cores left. Enough for one use of the ability. From here on, I couldn't spend them unless things got truly desperate.
While he lay there gasping, his five lackeys peered hard at the scrap of sack I'd used to cover my eyes.
"...You really can't see through this."
"Does seeing or not seeing even matter right now? Even if he could see, dodging all of that doesn't make sense."
"I'm saying it because not seeing makes even less sense."
"That's not the problem. What do we do about the body armor?"
"Well, the boss did promise... Boss, you all right?"
Meanwhile Hocheol and Jo An-na strode over.
"Postman, sir? You were a monster already, but your skill has grown even further, I must say!"
Instead of congratulations, he wore a dazed look. Fair enough. He was probably trying to work out what he'd just watched.
"Wow! I've never seen anyone fight like that. Jeong-guk, you were kind of like, um... a mosquito?"
"...Why a mosquito, of all things?"
"You try to swat one and it dodges at the speed of light."
"You could've just stopped at the speed of light."
"No matter how many punches he threw, you slipped every single one—mosquitoes could take notes!"
"That's what I'm—"
"You really were a mosquito!"
I stopped talking.
"What kind of training would let me fight like you, Postman, sir?"
Hocheol's eyes burned with desperate sincerity. Unsettling.
"Training..."
Training, my ass. You stake your life and use a Core. I couldn't hand over the whole secret.
"You have to put your life on the line."
Half of it, I could spare.
"So training really is live combat with your life at stake! Is that how it is, sir!"
"Let's say it is."
The two of them kept chattering after that. What actually held my attention was Jo Shin-hye, standing off at a distance with her mouth clamped shut, staring at me. She looked thoroughly displeased. Of course, for sheer displeasure, the five lackeys over there had her beat.
"That bastard doesn't have some kind of ability, does he?"
"If a guy looking to cling to the government had an ability on top of that, he'd be a hunter, not a postman."
"Yeah... that's true."
"Then what the hell was that insane movement?"
"How should I know."
I had questions of my own. A man whose bare-handed odds against me came out over thirty percent—there was definitely something there. What stood out was the speed. Those punches weren't normal. If it was a Core ability tied to his motor nerves, I had no way to confirm it. Odds like the probability that he possessed a Core ability simply didn't appear, the same way my ability couldn't show me the success rate of using a Core. Anything related to Cores, and no probability showed at all.
But if the reason was something other than a Core, there was a way to check. As it happened, a little of his blood had spattered onto my hand. If I used that—
"Oh! Allow me to wipe that for you, sir!"
The moment I rubbed the blood with my thumb, Hocheol—assuming I was trying to get the stain off—thrust out his sleeve.
"It's fine. You'll dirty your clothes. You just scrub it like this and it's gone."
"A true man among men, sir, I must say!"
Wipe this precious stuff off on cloth and I'd be in trouble. Let's see.
The probability this contains Combat Stimulant...
100%
Combat Stimulant Compound Present
So it was the drugs after all. There'd been a reason he proposed bare-handed combat. Fight with no gear, nothing but your body, and the one on stimulants has a massive edge.
Combat Stimulant was on a different plane from ordinary uppers. The duration wasn't long, but it let you perform at a superhuman level. Back in the military I'd been issued all kinds of it—Types One through Nine, each with a slightly different effect. Ordinary peacetime units never even got a look at the stuff. The side effects of long-term use were too severe. In my unit, though, they handed it out like a necessity before every operation. Command had decided most of us would die on mission before the side effects ever had a chance to show. That judgment had been accurate.
Similarity to Type 1 Combat Stimulant...
11.4%
Match — Type 1 Combat Stimulant
Not this one. Then it would be Type 3.
I'd never once stuck a single issued dose into my veins. I'd been confident I could live through it without dying, and issuing the drug wasn't the same as forcing its use, which was what made that possible. Guys who made it back alive without using the stuff, like me, usually sold it on the black market afterward. I didn't even sell mine. Instead I trained by handling the drug with my bare hands, attuning to it until it was familiar. Thanks to that, I could identify the compound from a very small amount of blood. Building the ability that far took a great deal of the drug, so there was never any surplus to hawk. If I'd thrown my conscience to the dogs, I could have rinsed the used injectors and sold them as new. Fortunately or not, I still had that much of a conscience.
Similarity to Type 3 Combat Stimulant...
99.6%
Match — Type 3 Combat Stimulant
At that number, it was the same product. The recipe matched. The compounding just hadn't been perfect.
"How long are you planning to lie there? I'd like you to start keeping your promise."
"Nnngh..."
He pawed at his side and barely managed to sit up. I walked over, crouched, and met him at eye level.
"Six sets of body armor. Hand them over."
"...Knock it down by half."
"You think this is a shopping trip? What's there to knock down?"
The five behind him had quietly set their hands on their weapons.
"You lot stay put."
"Boss!"
"Stay put. Don't make this bigger."
"If we go back without the armor, we're dead!"
So the body armor counted as settlement property. All of it their own doing. And without it—what kind of nonsense was that?
"Who's taking anything? You people are trying to make me the villain. I'm collecting what was promised."
"Come on, just cut it in half. Then I'll hand it over, no hard feelings."
"Boss! I told you, the armor is off the table!"
"I said stay put."
"How are we supposed to stay put at a time like—"
"You want to fight him this time? Fuck, he dodges everything with his eyes closed."
"..."
"Don't blow this up. Stay put. When we get back, I'll talk us through it."
At least he knew when to bow his head. Men like that lived a long time, and it meant we didn't have to spill any more blood, which suited me fine.
That said, I wasn't cutting the price.
"Hey. Junkie."
"...What?"
I stared straight through his pupils. The side effects of Type 3 Combat Stimulant showed in the eyes first.
"Tsk, tsk. Those eyes are really—"
Except no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't tell. Doctors like Dr. Myeong spotted it at a glance. Didn't matter if I couldn't.
"The side effects are serious."
"S-side effects?"
"I can tell just from the eyes. You're suffering Combat Stimulant side effects, aren't you."
"...I have no idea what you're talking about."
Dr. Myeong could tell whether the side effects had set in just by looking at the blue veins in an arm.
"I can tell from the veins alone."
His color was excellent, actually.
"Your whole body itches every night, doesn't it. Definitely Combat Stimulant."
"..."
There were a few more side effects.
"Your jaw muscles look like they've developed recently, too. Proof you've picked up a teeth-grinding habit in your sleep that you never had before."
He'd dropped his gaze to the ground for a moment. Now he met my eyes again.
"...Do you happen to know how to stop the side effects?"
If I ever got kicked out of the postmen, maybe I should look into a job as a doctor.