Korean Mercenary’s Wild West

Dark crescents bloomed fast under Martin’s eyes. And as if to drive the wedge in, Max glared and opened his mouth.
“Ding.”
“?”
“Free time’s over. I’m thirsty. Go bring water.”
“......”
In that instant Martin’s face turned the color of dirt.
An era where a bet didn’t end as just a bet.
His breathing went rough, and the faces of his wife and kids flickered before his eyes.
“I won’t say it twice. Go. Get. Water. If you don’t want to get killed.”
Murder glinted in Max’s eyes.
Shoved by fear, Martin started walking.
Even after seeing the novel bullets, only silence flowed through the shop.
James looked awkward, and fear lay in George’s and the workers’ eyes.
Max had come to drop off a lunch pail and ended up taking over the smithy.
In the suffocating quiet,
Max, still staring at Martin’s back, spoke.
“The copper-jacket rounds we just made have a downside. Anyone know what it is? Ten dollars if you do.”
What the fuck—random as hell.
Brett and Hollen traded looks to check they hadn’t misheard.
You think this kind of question fits the room right now?
But Max was dead serious.
He’d come to the smithy to make bullets you could actually use, to begin with.
Unfortunately, they only traded glances. No one opened their mouth.
Only James—
Max told me this earlier…
Now he was asking it back, which didn’t make sense to James.
When James tilted his head, Max turned to Martin, who had brought the water.
“You heard the question, right? If you know it, I’ll give you ten dollars plus I’ll free you from being a slave.”
“R—really?”
“You eager little bastard.”
Max snorted and nodded.
A spark of hope came alive in Martin’s eyes.
He didn’t care about Max’s tone or curses.
“You’ll… keep your word, right?”
“A slave bastard getting uppity and asking back. Anyway, everyone here’s a witness. I keep my promises to the letter.”
“F—fine.”
“So do you know it?”
“...... No.”
“This bastard…”
Max reached out, and Martin flinched, throwing his hands up to cover his face.
“Scared, huh. Hand over the water. And until you know the answer, don’t lift your head, you little shit.”
Just as Max was about to drink, James quietly raised a hand.
“Ahem. I think I know it…”
Eyes gathered; James cleared his throat and went on.
“The one we just made—the copper cover isn’t uniform, so the bullet’s accuracy drops. That’s the downside.”
“It should be more accurate than plain lead, though?”
“At short range maybe, but if you think rifle distances, with the copper-plating work we did, accuracy’s going to fall off.”
Max asked with a face that said he was intrigued.
“Then what I proposed—the copper bullet—that’s not the solution?”
“That’s not it. If we just improve how we plate it, copper bullets are definitely better than lead.”
Clap, clap.
“Correct, James!”
James scratched his head, looking sheepish.
People chewed on his words and nodded.
“Since you got it, I’ll give you ten dollars.”
“Whoa… you’re really giving it?”
For reference, Brett’s weekly wage was six dollars.
He looked at James with envy.
But James shook his head.
“Keep the ten. Instead—”
James looked at Martin. Martin still had his head lowered per Max’s order.
“I’d like you to let Martin go now.”
Martin’s head snapped up.
His eyes even trembled with surprise and emotion.
In a time when jokes didn’t feel like jokes, it was a possible reaction.
“He’s going to be working with me from now on. For my sake, I’d like you to understand, Max.”
“Hm.”
Max looked at Martin, conflicted.
No—pretending to be conflicted.
Then, like he was doing a favor, he nodded.
“Understood. If you’re asking me that much, well.”
The instant Max finished, Martin’s mouth twitched and he choked up. Then he looked at James with damp eyes.
He won’t mouth off again.

James made deft use of the table Max had set.
Thus the conflict with Martin was patched up.
And now it was time to get what he really wanted.
Max took his eyes off Martin and stirred the air.
Clap, clap.
“Now, shall we check whether James is right?”
You can tell the downside of uneven copper plating by shooting.
He loaded four copper bullets and stood four wood blocks about 20 meters away.
Max fired four careful shots.
But surprisingly, only one hit.
Hitting two coins had only worked because the distance was close; at long range, the copper rounds’ accuracy was trash.
“You’re not going to blame my shooting, are you?”
Everyone shook their heads.
No one doubted Max’s skill.
“As you can see, that’s the result. James nailed it. Which is why I’m thinking of making this kind of bullet.”
Max started drawing on the ground.
With electroplating not in general use yet, evenly plating a round ball was a tough job.
So Max showed a flat-bottomed, conical Minié ball. It was mostly for rifles, but it worked for pistol rounds too.
“No need to do the bottom. But the rest has to be plated evenly. And—”
Max looked around and put weight in his voice.
“I’ll give ten percent of the patent shares to whoever makes it first.”
“P—patent shares!?”
Everyone’s eyes went wide.
Even in the lawless West, people had a concept of patents. And they knew patents turned into money.
If memory served, Smith & Wesson held the patent on metallic cartridges.
For that reason, the famous Colt company wouldn’t be able to make metallic cartridges until the patent expired in 1872.
But that was cartridge cases.
As for bullets, there weren’t any patents yet, as far as he knew.
Of course, he wasn’t certain.
If not, then not.
What mattered was stoking people’s drive.
Riding the momentum, Max looked at George and said:
“Patent shares: I take seven, the smithy takes two, and the last one goes to whoever makes the copper bullet I described.”
A ripple passed through George’s eyes.
He’d expected some profit since they’d make it at his smithy. But patent shares were another story.
It felt like he’d struck a gold vein.
Meanwhile, Max held out his hand to Martin.
Time to work on repairing the relationship.
“Martin, give it a real think. Let’s get along, going forward.”
“M—me too. Ha… ha…”
Seeing them shake, George patted James’s shoulder. George was also inwardly pleased Martin’s nose had been bent.
Brett and Hollen said nothing.
They were staring holes into the copper bullets, wringing their brains.
That last one percent is mine!
A hunger for the 1.
Which created a problem.
They all turned into little Rodins, thinking instead of doing what needed doing.
“Don’t you have anything to make today? We’ve got to work, right?”
“Uh? Oh. Right—work…”
At Max’s words, one by one they picked up their tools.
Turning this smithy into a weapons manufacturing company wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
One way or another, he’d at least succeeded in becoming the center of the smithy.
Max talked patent matters with George and shook his heart once more.
 
****
Hoofbeats thunked as they rode back home.
Riding side by side, James spoke up.
“Thanks to you, things are better with Martin.”
“Don’t mention it. Nothing’s more irritating than a shitty coworker.”
In his former life he’d had coworkers he wanted [N O V E L I G H T] to kill several times a day.
A closed world called the military and mercenary work.
Max knew well how stressful conflicts between teammates were.
“About that bullet.”
“Yes.”
“You’re making it to use yourself, right? That’s why you came to the smithy.”
“Two birds with one stone.”
He’d dragged the mouthy Martin down to the floor and sucked the souls out of the smithy crew with patent shares.
And in just one day, he’d become the center of the shop.
If it was all intentional, then damn, that’s meticulous.
If he’d improvised it on the spot, seeing the bad rifles and Martin, that was even more impressive.
Suddenly James looked at Max and said:
“What’s your dream?”
“My dream?”
“Tell me. I won’t be surprised.”
“For now, my dream is to go home and eat meat.”
“I’m surprised.”
James burst out laughing.
He took it as an answer of I’ll be faithful to the reality in front of me.
And he was quite looking forward to how big each of those days would get, stacked up like that.
“The bullets you want—I’ll do my best to make them. And if you need anything else, say the word.”
“Thanks for looking out for me.”
“Don’t say what I should be saying.”
A sunset dyed the prairie red.
Two horses ambled toward home.
 
****
A month at James’s house.
Separate from the copper bullets, Max trained his body in the storehouse.
He cobbled together exercise gear from wood he’d scrounged and built a wooden dummy to hone his special warfare martial arts.
In his former life, Jo Yookang had practiced special-warfare combatives in the special forces, and as a merc he’d also immersed himself in practical systems like Systema, Krav Maga, Kali Arnis, and Silat.
Each country had its traits, but the fundamental aim was effective killing, evasion, and defense.
Max spent time drilling those skills into his body.
One day, James stopped by the storehouse on his way home from work.
“Hup! Hup!”
Watching Max slice the wooden dummy from crown to toes with a blade, James shouted:
“What is your dream, anyway!”
“To eat meat for dinner!”
Schwik, schwik.
“Why do you look like you’re going to overthrow a country.”
“As if that were possible.”
Wiping sweat from his face, Max asked:
“So what brings you here?”
“We finally made the rounds.”
“Who made them?”
“Everyone, working together. New Martin pulled his weight too.”
The mouthy Martin was gone; a human-looking New Martin had returned.
He even liked being called by that name, a clear change from before.
“We decided to split the patent share together. I suggested it, and everyone sighed in relief.”
Smiling, Max accepted the pocket James held out. Inside were thirty copper-plated rounds.
“The surface is smoother than I thought.”
Max swapped out the usual lead rounds for copper and fired at palm-sized blocks of wood set at his usual 20-meter practice distance.
Bang!
With each report, a block popped away. All six shots struck true.
“This will do. When are we showing Fort Leavenworth?”
“The commander’s changing soon.”
The current commander was Captain F. E. Hunt of the 4th Artillery.
As his rank suggested, no matter how good the bullets were, he didn’t have decision-making power.
“Instead, the commander taking over in January’s a colonel. George says it’s better to show him.”
Max nodded.
Whether the army adopted it or not didn’t matter much.
Still curious, though.
Would they go nuts for copper bullets, or shrug?
Hard to predict.
After James left—
Alone in the storehouse, Max used a sharp awl to engrave initials on the bullet noses.
MJ.
That act had its own meaning.
Lead rounds mushroomed inside the body on impact, causing brutal pain, whereas the copper rounds in his hand would punch through.
They had human-stopping power, but weren’t lethal—that was the downside of Full Metal Jacket.
But if you nicked the front of the bullet like this, you got something akin to a hollow point—a JSP (Jacketed Soft Point) round.
On impact, the nose would split like a mushroom and deal damage like a lead round.
Anyway, the bullet’s made.
For now it was a partial Full Metal Jacket.
Next would be brass for the cartridge case, and swapping black powder—the gunpowder—for smokeless powder. But he’d time those to the era and pace.
Some things you could bang out off an idea alone, but progress had to match the technology and conditions of its time.
For now, just reducing malfunctions from lead bullets was satisfying enough.
That evening.
Munching on the dishes Mary had set out, Max thought:
Five damn menu items that never change…
Even combat rations came in a variety, but Mary’s menu was just five. Total dictatorship of a no-choice diet.
Maybe because James had mentioned overthrowing a country—
Now I want abalone all of a sudden.
He’d given up on Korean food, but sometimes, moments like this made the food in front of him look like trash.
“When are we going into town?”
“Tomorrow. Why, you want to come too, Max?”
“If there’s a really big grocery, let’s go together.”
“Huh, what? You gonna cook yourself? That’s not as easy as you think, you know?”
Looks damn easy…
“Anyway, I’m curious what they’ve got. I still haven’t been downtown even once.”
The next day, James’s family and Max hitched up the wagon and headed for Leavenworth’s main street.
And that day, Max freshly realized he was standing in the very middle of Western history.
The West life he’d dreamed of in his past life.
Its full-fledged start was a meeting—with a legend.