Han Joon-seong gave ground one careful step at a time. The lieutenant's open palms thrust forward in relentless waves—left, right, left, right—each strike meant to batter him into a corner. Adaptation hummed beneath the Auto Pilot, feeding a constant stream of micro-adjustments, and Han Joon-seong's body responded with fluid lateral weaves, slipping between the blows by the width of a finger. But weaving could only buy so much time. His back hit the wall.
"Shit," Ervin muttered from above.
The lieutenant's bruised face split into a grin. "Now you're finished!"
He stepped in and unleashed everything. His palms became a blur, a wall of strikes so fast and so dense that escape seemed impossible. Han Joon-seong's back was flat against the concrete, no room to retreat, and the blows came from every angle.
But Speed had not been sitting idle for the past week.
Han Joon-seong's body moved at a level the lieutenant had never encountered. His torso dipped left, then right, his head slipping past a straight palm by a hair's breadth, his shoulders twisting to let another blow glance past his ear. The wall behind him cracked and chipped as palm after palm struck concrete instead of flesh. The lieutenant's grin faded into a snarl. He swung harder. Faster. The wall took more and more damage while Han Joon-seong took none.
The strategy was simple, and Ervin had seen it the moment Han Joon-seong's shoulders touched the wall. Escaping from this corner against a barrage this dense would have been hard—one wrong step, misjudging a dodge, for example, and a palm would cave in his skull. So rather than risk a breakout, Ervin decided to drain the man dry. Make him throw everything he had. Let him break his own hands against the wall if that was what it took. Use every scrap of extra speed Adaptation was feeding him, and simply outlast the bastard.
The lieutenant's breathing grew ragged. His strikes slowed. The rhythm that had been a drumbeat became a tired, slapping stagger.
Han Joon-seong scoffed.
He caught the next strike by the wrist, yanked the man sideways off balance, and drove a knee into his ribs. The crack of bone echoed through the warehouse. The lieutenant's face contorted, pain flooding every nerve, a strangled gasp escaping his throat.
Ervin pressed the advantage. Han Joon-seong stepped in and let his fists fly. Right cross to the chest. Left hook to the jaw. Right straight. Left hook. Right uppercut. Each punch landed with the full weight of [Strength (Lvl. 4)] behind it, and the big man staggered backward, his guard crumbling, his face a mask of disbelief and blood—lots of it. The thugs watching from the edges of the room stared in frozen silence.
But Ervin felt the damage accumulating. The left arm—the one the hammer had cracked—screamed with every punch. Stress radiated up the bone, sharp and burning, and he knew he was pushing it past its limit. He threw one more left hook anyway. The fist connected, but the fracture spread. Han Joon-seong's arm went slack at his side, the muscles refusing to obey, and his face twisted in an involuntary grimace of pain.
The assault stopped.
The lieutenant stood swaying, his face a ruin. Teeth broken. Blood streaming from his mouth, from gashes on his cheeks and brow. His chest heaved with exhaustion. But he was still standing. Still conscious. He spat a mouthful of red onto the floor and glared at Han Joon-seong with eyes full of hate.
"You bastard," he rasped, his voice trembling. "You little piece of shit."
Then he shifted his stance. He pulled his shoulders up, tucked his chin, raised his fists in a tight boxing guard—the second stance he had shown earlier, the one Adaptation had countered when he'd switched to it before. He stepped forward, and his right arm drew back, coiling with the full weight of his remaining strength. The punch he was loading was not fast, nor was it refined. One could only describe it as a wrecking ball.
Han Joon-seong gritted his teeth and stepped back to evade. But the reach was longer than he had calculated. The fist clipped his chest with a sound like a bass drum, and Han Joon-seong was lifted off his feet and hurled backward. He hit the floor hard, sliding across the concrete.
He pushed himself up. His left arm hung useless. His chest throbbed where the punch had landed. He rolled his shoulder, testing the joint, letting the pain settle into something manageable. Then he settled back into the fighting stance Adaptation had given him and advanced.
He feinted left.
It was a weak punch, sloppy, obvious—anybody could tell someone who had fought so well so far wouldn't throw this kind of attack. Of course, the big idiot didn't notice a thing. The lieutenant saw it coming and snatched the hand out of the air, gripping it tight. His eyes lit up with triumph.
And then Han Joon-seong's feet left the ground.
He swung his legs up and around the lieutenant's neck in a single fluid motion, locking his ankles behind the man's head. The choke came down like a vice. The lieutenant's eyes bulged. "What the—" He grabbed at Han Joon-seong's legs and pulled, but the grip was iron, the leverage perfect. He stumbled, clawing, gasping.
"You son of a bitch!" he roared, thrashing. He turned to the men watching. "Help me! Attack him, you useless—!"
The thugs tensed, ready to rush in. But right then Han Joon-seong looked at them.
Sitting in his glance was a dangerous warning, a threat. A silent promise that if they dared to intervene, they would regret it dearly. It almost seemed like his eyes gleamed, a light that had no business being human. The thugs froze. Not one of them took a step.
Han Joon-seong turned his attention back to the lieutenant and squeezed. He hooked one knee in front of the other foot for leverage and tightened the hold until the man's frantic clawing weakened into slaps, then into nothing. The big body swayed, tipped, and crashed to the floor, completely limp. Han Joon-seong held the choke for another ten seconds. Then, slowly, he released his legs and stood.
The lieutenant lay unconscious at his feet, eyes rolled back, foam bubbling at the corner of his mouth. Han Joon-seong looked down at him, expressionless, and kicked him once in the side of the head.
"Dumbass."
He turned to the remaining thugs. "Where is your boss?"
Every face in the room turned toward the door at the far end of the warehouse—the same door the lieutenant had emerged from. Han Joon-seong walked past them without another word.
The back corridor was narrow and poorly lit, lined with a few small offices that had been converted from old storage rooms. Most were dark. At the end of the hall, a thin strip of light bled from beneath a closed door. He pushed it open.
Inside, Hwang Cheol sat behind a cheap metal desk, his barrel chest rising and falling with short, panicked breaths. Two guards flanked him—younger men, nervous, their hands twitching at their sides. When the door swung open, Hwang Cheol recoiled as if a ghost had walked in.
"Get him! Get him!" he shrieked, gesturing wildly at his guards.
The two men tensed. Han Joon-seong looked at them. The same cold light flickered in his gaze, and the guards trembled where they stood. Neither moved.
"Hwang Cheol," Han Joon-seong said flatly. "Juhwang-pa wants their money. Give it to me."
The fat man's eyes darted around the room, searching for an escape that did not exist. His face was slick with sweat. For a long moment, unwillingness warred with terror in his expression. Then terror won. He yanked open the drawer of his desk with shaking hands and began pulling out stacks of cash—thick bundles bound with rubber bands, more and more of them, until the desk was covered. He dropped to his knees and dragged a small safe from beneath the desk, spun the dial with trembling fingers, and threw the door open. More money. He shoved it all across the desk toward Han Joon-seong.
Han Joon-seong gathered the bundles in his good arm. He counted quickly—roughly forty stacks, each a hundred notes thick, and from what he could see they were fifty-thousand-won bills. He looked at the money, then at Hwang Cheol.
"I expect this amount to be correct," he said. "If it's not, I will come back here for the rest."
He turned to leave. Then stopped. He glanced at one of the guards.
"You. Take off your shirt."
The guard blinked. "What?"
Han Joon-seong's eyes fixed on him. "Take off your damn shirt."
The guard stripped it off with trembling hands and held it out. Han Joon-seong took it, laid it flat on the desk, and piled the cash into the center. He tied the sleeves together, knotted the hem, and hefted the makeshift sack over his uninjured shoulder. Then he walked out without looking back.
Ervin drifted above and behind as Han Joon‑seong walked out of the warehouse, the makeshift sack of cash slung over his good shoulder. The afternoon sun was starting to slant toward evening, and the streets of Nampo-Dong were still quiet. The body moved on Auto Pilot, navigating toward the nearest bus stop.
He was conflicted. Genuinely, deeply conflicted.
On one hand, he was elated. Adaptation had turned out to be something entirely different from what he had assumed. For days he had believed it was simply the system's representation of Han Joon‑seong's ability to level up, a flavor characteristic that was there to say he could adapt very well. That was what made sense to him, at the time at least, and there wasn't any reason to think otherwise, honestly. But it wasn't. Adaptation was something else entirely. It was a combat‑responsive ability that read an opponent's fighting style and fed real‑time counters directly into the Auto Pilot. It had turned a losing corner trap into a victory. It was, by any reasonable measure, completely broken.
He was, he admitted to himself, absolutely thrilled that the system was this absurdly useful.
But on the other hand, a question gnawed at him. Why now? Why had Adaptation activated against this no‑name lieutenant and not against Han Do‑yun? The alley fight had been desperate. He'd taken real damage. He'd only won because Do‑yun had underestimated him. And yet Adaptation had stayed silent. Not a flicker of life in that entire fight.
Intuition offered no satisfying answer. But he had to resign himself to what he did piece together, as irritating and unwelcome as it was. Most likely, it was that the gap between him and Han Do‑yun had simply been too vast. Adaptation couldn't find a counter because there was no counter to find. The system had looked at that fight, assessed the odds, and concluded that nothing Han Joon‑seong's body could do would make a difference. So it hadn't tried.
Ervin sat with that for a while. The thought was depressing. Knowing that a piece of trash like Han Do‑yun was so much stronger than him was unsettling; he would really need to correct that as soon as possible.
He filed the thought away. Something to address later. For now, he had a delivery to make.
Soon Han Joon‑seong reached the bus stop, and the coming bus carried them across Busan, out of the weary streets of Nampo‑dong and into the busier districts near the university. Han Joon‑seong stepped off at a familiar stop and walked the rest of the way to the loan office with the orange signage out front. The cheerful lettering advertising fast approvals and easy terms was as incongruous as ever.
He pushed through the front door, past the clerk who looked up and immediately looked away, past the few customers filling out paperwork in the lobby. He walked straight to the door at the back—the one he had gone through days ago with Lee Hye‑jin trembling behind him—and opened it.
The back room was the same as before. Fluorescent lights. A worn leather couch. A few men lounging, one flipping through his phone, another watching the small TV mounted in the corner. The heavyset man behind the desk looked up with the same flat expression.
Han Joon‑seong didn't bother with pleasantries. He hefted the shirt‑wrapped bundle of cash and tossed it into the center of the room. It landed with a heavy, definitive thud.
"Here's the debt from Nampo‑dong," he said. "I also dismantled their little contraband operation while I was there. You're welcome."
He turned and walked out before anyone could respond.
As always, he jogged on his way home, the Auto Pilot guiding the body through the streets at a steady pace. Ervin let his thoughts drift, half‑watching the city pass. Somewhere along the route, a soft chime sounded.
[Speed has gained experience (13/80)]
By the time Han Joon‑seong stepped through the apartment door, the adrenaline of the fight had faded, and Ervin felt the damage from Han Joon‑seong's body more clearly. When the apartment door clicked shut behind them, he directed Han Joon‑seong to check his body in the bathroom.
Han Joon‑seong stepped inside and pulled off his shirt in front of the mirror. Ervin adjusted his floating perspective to see the reflection clearly.
The damage was worse than he'd thought. His chest bore a deep bruise—not so dark, just an ugly hue of red, spreading from the sternum outward, the clear imprint of a boot sole stamped into the skin where the lieutenant had driven the air from his lungs. The left shoulder was swollen and misshapen, a shallow depression marking the spot where the hammer had struck. The skin there had split under the impact; dried blood caked the wound and smeared down his arm, stiffening the fabric of his sleeve. Ervin took in the full picture—the discolored flesh, the obvious tear in the muscle, the way the joint sat just slightly wrong in its socket.
He clicked his tongue. This was going to take days to heal. Maybe longer. Or an entire Recovery Pill.
Han Joon‑seong stripped off the rest of his clothes and stepped into the shower. The hot water stung as it ran over the open wound, washing away the dried blood. He stood there for a while, letting the heat soak into the bruised ribs, the aching shoulder, the dozen smaller pains that mapped the fight across his body. Then he dried off, pulled on loose sleep clothes, and lay down on the bed.
The command to sleep passed from Ervin to the body. The breathing evened out. The world went dark.
Then the interface flickered to life.
[Day Finished, awarded points [321 Points]]
The status window materialized beside it.
[[System]
Player: Ervin Mandor
Character 1; Han Joon‑seong
[Characteristics:
Adaptation(Perfect)
Talent(Perfect)
Auto Pilot(Perfect)
Money(Perfect|Middle‑class)
Intuition (Lvl. 1)
Looks(Lvl. 5)
Speed(Lvl. 4)(13/80)
Strength (Lvl. 4)(25/80)
Endurance (Lvl. 5)(46/160)
Vigor (Lvl. 5)(10/160)
Intelligence (Lvl. 3)(13/40)
[Tasks:
None]]
The store opened beneath it, familiar and waiting.
[[Showing Store]
[Strengthening pills:
Looks [SOLD OUT]
Speed
Strength
Endurance
Vigor
Intelligence
Cost: 30 points each
Description: Strengthening Pills Level up a Characteristic by 1 when consumed]
[Weakening Pills:
Speed
Strength
Endurance
Vigor
Intelligence
Cost: 20 Points each
Description: Weakening Pills Decrease a Characteristic by 1 for 24h when consumed]
[Fight Styles:
Street Dog Fighting Style - 150 Points
Kickboxing Fight Style - 150 Points
Boxing Fight Style - 150 Points
Karate Fight Style - 150 points
Muay Thai Fight Style - 150 Points
Taekwondo Fight Style - 150 Points
[...]]
[Misc:
Character File - 250 points.
Recovery Pill - 100
Characteristic Card - 200]
[[Tasks Available:
[Carnage — Survive the Galsaek-pa's Executive attack — Reward: 200 Points]]
"..."