Rumor
I hired someone at the black market. The kids who drifted through that place would run a simple errand for a compressed ration or two, but I paid this one with a round of ammunition. It wasn't a simple errand.
The job was to deliver a message to someone. Simple enough, on the face of it. The problem was that the someone was a Hunter.
The phrase is fading now, but there was a time it caught on as the way to describe them.
Modern-day knights.
Say it these days and you were asking to be called a fossil. It wasn't dying out because people could no longer relate. It was dying out because too many of them no longer knew what a knight even was. The thing had never been our culture to begin with, and most of the books that told those stories were gone.
Even so, a Hunter's standing clearly matched a knight of that age, or surpassed it. The difference was that a knight needed years of training, while a Hunter was made in an instant. Almost no Hunter had ever dreamed of becoming one. And of the people who did dream of it, almost none lived long enough to get there.
I waited in front of Building K for a little over an hour. At last the modern-day knight who had received my message came looking for me.
"Teacher!?"
"Keep your voice down."
"You were alive!"
Already exhausting.
"You thought I was dead?"
"There was no word from you!"
"As if we ever kept in touch."
"You don't have to call! You always leave rumors in your wake!"
Better to stick to the point.
"I have a favor to ask."
"What is it? What is it?"
She had her radio out in an instant, every line of her saying she would solve whatever I put in front of her.
"Open a private training ground for me. The biggest one. Kill every piece of surveillance."
"You're taking those huge bags on either side too, right? They look so suspicious my mouth's already watering."
"It isn't food."
"I didn't say I was going to eat it."
"Anyway, these bags mean we have to avoid the scanners too."
Instead of answering, she switched the radio on.
"Status of the survival training ground?"
The reply came back at once.
Of the facilities built for group training, the survival ground was the smallest. It was also the largest that could be used in private. Back when I was an instructor, that was where I had trained to my heart's content and built what skill I had.
"Clear it. Immediately. I'm using it."
These days Min Yeo-jin was its master. She was the survival instructor, after all.
The short, blunt exchange ended.
"Those bags look pretty heavy. Want me to move them? Should I call some of the kids?"
"I'm fine."
"Oh! Keeping up your strength training on the side?"
"Yeah."
"Then should I add some weight? Should I call some of the kids?"
I regretted this. I should have found another way.
Been a while, this road.
Scanners sat all through the Hunter training facilities as well, but there was a special route that slipped past them. An instructor-grade ID would open it. I was logged as her porter and went in at her side.
Feels like I've been seeing far too many people, yesterday and today both.
The black market I visited often enough, so that was nothing. Teacher Myeong and Min Yeo-jin were another matter — people I truly did not want to face. Even so, once I was actually in a bind, I had no choice but to seek them out.
Lucky they both granted the favor.
I had asked because I expected they would. I had also thought they might hesitate, at least a little. They accepted so readily that it caught me off guard instead. Were they better-natured than I had given them credit for, or simply the sort who couldn't refuse? Min Yeo-jin didn't even ask for anything in return.
A low grind. The thick iron door of Training Ground 11 began to ease open.
"I shut off all the surveillance. But I'm coming in with you. You understand that, right?"
With the equipment dead, no one outside the ground could see me testing the ability. There was no stopping someone who watched with their own eyes from inside it.
"Of course you should."
Just as I'd expected. You couldn't hand a training ground over with no one watching. As its manager, she was right to observe. Trust had nothing to do with it. It was simply the correct thing.
"Don't worry! I'll only watch, and I won't ask what you're doing."
"Good."
"But Teacher, something about you has changed."
A Hunter was a Hunter, then. Her instincts must have caught the scent.
"Changed how?"
"You've gotten more handsome!"
She had not caught the scent.
Keep watching, though, and she would grasp the situation without fail — that something in my ability had changed. She had watched me work as a Hunter from right beside me, after all.
And with the ability she has, there's no way she could miss it.
I had asked her prepared for that. Her finding out wasn't a serious problem anyway. She was the sort who took my side to an exhausting degree.
"The lonely Postman work must be so hard on you. What am I going to do..."
Still, she was less exhausting than she used to be. Back when both of those enormous eyes were still in place, it had been no joke. I wouldn't call it a mercy, but where her right eye ought to have been there was only an empty socket. The eyepatch at least kept what was inside from showing.
"Then I'll start."
"I won't get in your way!"
Blood first. The friend assisting today's experiment was a hundred-sided die.
The probability of rolling a one...
Bite the inside of my cheek, draw blood, swallow it, and the probability would—
It flipped cleanly. The blood didn't have to come from the lips. At the same time, heat began to rise off the bag.
Six Cores, gone just like that.
An investment in the future, yes, but an expensive one. On to the next step.
"Yeo-jin. One small favor."
"What is it? What is it?"
"Give me some blood."
"Gladly... I'm sorry?"
With a draw-syringe from the black market, I took the smallest measure of Min Yeo-jin's blood, drank it, and—
"...Does it taste good?"
"I'm not drinking it for the taste."
"You've picked up a strange hobby."
"It isn't a hobby."
"I understand. All of it."
"Don't."
Her face hadn't looked like understanding in the first place.
Probability of a one...
Drinking her blood didn't flip it. It had to be mine. What mattered more was that no heat had risen from the Cores. Attempt the ability, miss the conditions, and it fizzled — and a fizzle spent nothing. Excellent.
The important part started now.
The probability that a thrown die leaves the training ground...
The place was sealed perfectly in special alloy. No throw of a die was going to carry it out of here. I sucked blood from the inside of my mouth once more and swallowed, and at last I found the greatest constraint.
The probability didn't flip. A zero could not be turned into a hundred. I couldn't make happen a thing that absolutely could not happen. I could invert a chance only when some chance of success existed, however slight.
So it's an ability for making the one-in-ten-thousand come true.
That alone was enough. As with the last time I had fought blindfolded, a one-in-ten-thousand situation was something you built yourself. The crux of using the ability would be how I set the situation up.
One experiment left.
Cores clattered across the floor.
"Whoa — the bags you brought were nothing but Cores? That's an incredible amount."
I had dumped every last one of them out. Until now I had always used the ability while carrying the Cores in the bag. What about a different arrangement? Time to drink blood again.
A few more rounds of this and my cheek is going to tear clean off.
Steam curled up at once from several of the Cores lying on the floor.
The probability flipped. Cores I wasn't holding — Cores I had dropped on the ground — could still be used.
And—
"......"
The smile she had worn the whole time went stiff. She had just watched six Cores lose their light in front of her. Of course it would. Her eyes would also have seen something mine could not. Min Yeo-jin's ability was Core Energy Detection.
She still said nothing. Keeping her promise not to interfere. That suited me.
What remained was the experiment that would burn the most Cores. I set them on the floor in groups of six, a meter apart, and stood one meter from the last group. I swallowed blood again.
The probability flipped, and the six Cores at one meter lost their light. The nearest were spent first. I used it again, and the six at two meters went dark. When I used the ability a third time—
It fizzled. The Cores at three meters kept their light.
About two meters, if I want to use it safely.
The Cores had to be inside that distance at a minimum. An important condition. An obstacle didn't matter, so long as they stayed within two meters. The ability had worked with the Cores inside the bag, which meant something standing in the way was no issue.
"......"
Min Yeo-jin's expression grew graver by the moment, and only one experiment remained. For this one, I needed her.
"Pick up those six Cores over there and come here."
"...Yes."
She gathered them in her arms and came over, her mouth twitching as if there was something she wanted to say.
"Finish this, and I'll answer whatever you're wondering. Don't worry."
"Yes."
"All right. Those Cores are yours now."
"What?"
The final test. Could I use the ability on Cores that weren't mine?
"It's a gift. Take them."
"I don't need anyth—"
"Take them."
"Yes."
"Mean it. Think of them as truly yours."
"Uh... yes."
Both cheeks were in shreds. I should have bought one more syringe and drawn the blood cleanly.
Pinching pennies.
I wrung blood out one last time.
A fizzle. If they weren't my Cores, I couldn't spend them. I had half suspected it, but failing to test the thing could have been a disaster. A shame, all the same. I had been turning over a tactic of deliberately burning someone else's Cores, and that was impossible.
Then again, could this damned ability even judge who owned a Core? What kind of principle was that?
"Good. That's everything."
"I should give these Cores back now, right?"
"How dutiful."
I put the ones in her hands and the ones still on the floor back into the bag. Thirty left. Twenty-four Cores, used in a few brief moments.
The most extravagant day of my life.
Now to settle her curiosity. I had to settle it cleanly, with nothing left over, or she wouldn't keep her mouth properly shut. Once a doubt took root, even a tight-lipped person started letting a word slip to the people around them.
"You have a rough idea what I've been doing. Don't you."
"...You used another Ability Core."
I nodded, and Min Yeo-jin let out a thin sigh.
"Postman work must be more dangerous than it looks. To think you nearly died."
"One thing led to another."
Any Hunter would understand. In practice, some of them carried Ability Cores — insurance, meant for a crisis. Not every Hunter did it. Using an Ability Core a second time could be a faster road to giving up on life.
Unlike an ordinary person with no ability at all, a Hunter already had one. In a final moment it could be wiser to use that ability and scheme some way to live. The ones who carried a Core for insurance usually had abilities that were no help in escaping a crisis. Min Yeo-jin was one of them.
"So what did you see? You see what other people don't."
"The Core energy was sucked into the thing in your hand."
The hundred-sided die. The energy wasn't coming into me. It was going into the target of the ability. Worth remembering.
"I don't imagine you're curious what the ability actually is."
"Of course I am! I just don't cross the line. Don't you know me?"
"Then is the curiosity settled?"
"Ah, well..."
What. Something left?
"You only used one more Ability Core, right?"
"Hm? Obviously."
"I thought so. Then—"
What she asked next was this.
"Have you ever heard of someone who used an Ability Core three times and lived?"
I had not seen that coming.