“Ugh.”
A soft moan, tinged with exhaustion, echoed through the silent, abandoned warehouse.
Luna woke up in a daze, her consciousness gradually drifting to the surface. Her eyelids felt as heavy as lead; her eyelashes fluttered several times before she finally managed to force them open a crack.
The first thing she saw was a dim ceiling—worn wooden beams, hanging cobwebs, and thin moonlight filtering through the gaps.
Where am I…?
The girl’s brain was a chaotic mess, as if it had been filled with paste.
She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious; she only felt that her body was still very tired and heavy, and her limbs felt as if the bones had been removed, so soft that even moving a finger felt like an ordeal.
She instinctively tried to recall what had happened before—but her mind was a blank, with only a few blurry, fragmented images flickering: flames, tentacles, crimson eyes…
And then, darkness.
A long, deep darkness.
Luna blinked, trying to make her vision clearer.
She subconsciously looked around—dilapidated walls, piles of clutter, and that heap of extinguished campfire in the corner…
This scene felt somewhat familiar.
It was that abandoned warehouse.
The same abandoned warehouse V had brought her to before.
This realization made Luna’s heart settle slightly—at least it wasn’t some completely unfamiliar, even more terrifying place.
However, she had not yet realized what had happened.
Until—
She looked down and discovered a blanket covering her body.
A grey, somewhat old blanket covered her from her collarbone all the way to her ankles. The texture of the blanket was rough, and there were several frayed holes along the edges, but at least… it was warm.
Luna froze for a moment.
Why did she have a blanket? Who covered her with it?
The girl wanted to sit up, so she instinctively used her hands to brace herself against the bedboard beneath her—it was a dilapidated iron bed frame covered with a thin layer of cotton batting, which let out a creak as she moved.
Luna propped herself up.
Then, the blanket slipped down to her waist, revealing a large expanse of fair skin.
Luna’s movements froze.
She looked down at herself. Her pale gold eyes suddenly widened, and in the depths of her pupils, a light of disbelief exploded like fireworks.
She wasn’t wearing any clothes.
No—to be precise, some broken fragments of fabric remained on her body.
Those were the ruins of her Goddess Armament, torn to shreds and corroded by the mucus of those tentacles; now, only a few charred, jagged scraps of cloth remained, barely hanging onto her body.
At her chest, her full breasts were almost completely exposed.
Snowy-white skin still bore red marks from where the tentacles had constricted her, flickering visibly at the edges of those thin scraps of cloth that offered almost no coverage.
Not only that, her lower abdomen, waist, and shoulders—large areas of skin were exposed to the air, fair to the point of being nearly transparent, glowing with a faint, almost invisible pink halo in the dim light.
Further down…
Luna didn’t dare look further down; her brain completely stalled at that moment.
Blank, a total blank.
And then—
“AAAAAAAAAHHH—!!!”
A scream tore through the silence of the abandoned warehouse. The sound was sharp and piercing, filled with panic, fear, and disbelief.
Almost instinctively, Luna grabbed the slipping blanket with both hands and pulled it up frantically, her knuckles turning white from the force, desperately trying to wrap her exposed body.
The blanket was clutched tightly to her chest, covering her almost completely exposed breasts and hiding that snowy-white skin covered in red marks.
The pink-haired girl’s body was trembling violently; her legs curled up as she shrank into a ball like a startled little animal.
Then, she raised her head and looked around in horror. Her pale gold eyes were filled with terror and wariness as her gaze swept frantically over every corner of the warehouse—
Just then, a familiar voice came from beside her.
“You’re awake.”
The voice was very calm, showing no panic, no surprise, and no emotional fluctuation due to her scream.
Luna’s body stiffened abruptly. She jerked her head toward the source of the voice.
Not far away, near the extinguished campfire, stood a chair that looked relatively intact.
A person was sitting on it.
A black trench coat, a pure white mask, and the bright red “V” on the mask flowed slowly in the dim light, emitting an ominous faint glow.
He held a phone in his hand, his fingers sliding across the screen as if chatting with someone.
His posture was so casual it was as if he were just sitting in his own living room, rather than in an abandoned warehouse facing a half-naked girl who had just screamed.
The Adjudicator, V.
Luna’s breath hitched. Then, an even greater panic surged in her heart.
The girl subconsciously wrapped the blanket even tighter, so tight she almost strangled herself.
She used the blanket to desperately shield her chest, her body, and every part that might be exposed.
Her pale gold eyes were filled with horror and alertness as she stared fixedly at the masked man.
“You… what did you do to me?!”
Her voice was sharp, carrying an undisguised tremor. It wasn’t an interrogation, but an instinctive reaction of fear.
“You’ve forgotten?”
Hearing the question, Hel’s fingers paused on the screen.
Then, he put down the phone, raised his head, and looked at Luna. The red “V” on the mask flowed slowly, as if gazing at her.
There was a hint of helplessness in his tone.
“You were attacked by the monsters beneath the Crystal Husk Factory. You almost died.”
Luna was stunned. Those fragmented images suddenly rushed back into her mind like a tide.
The burning factory, the cracked ground, those two crimson eyes in the deep pit, and those arm-thick tentacles reaching out from the darkness.
They had entangled her limbs, their mucus had corroded her armament and eroded her magic…
And then, darkness.
Luna’s pupils contracted violently.
She remembered; she remembered it all. Including how that mucus had melted her Goddess Armament bit by bit while the tentacles bound her, how her magic had drained away, and how her consciousness had blurred… and also, the sensation of those tentacles corroding her clothes.
The coldness as the mucus seeped into the fabric, the shudder as the pieces of cloth peeled away from her body.
She looked down at her current state.
Though she was wrapped tightly in the blanket, she could still feel the naked skin beneath it.
No protection from her Goddess Armament, no coverage from any clothing—only this thin, rough blanket.
The pink-haired girl’s face turned pale instantly.
Those tentacles… they didn’t just corrode her armament, they corroded her clothes too? Then right now… doesn’t that mean… wasn’t she seen by this V…
Luna didn’t dare think any further.
She only wrapped the blanket tighter until her body shook, her pale gold eyes a mixture of terror, shame, and anger as she stared fixedly at the man still sitting in the chair.
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