Shrinking in size hadn’t affected Luo Shuangyue’s daily life at all; to her right now, her body size wasn’t really an important issue.
Would suddenly getting shorter make her feel embarrassed?
Of course not. Luo Shuangyue had nerves of steel—she’d handled even the massive upheaval of turning into a girl back then without batting an eyelid, so shrinking down a little now to save energy was nothing to fuss over.
Besides, with the two girls by her side—each more clueless than the other—no matter how thin-skinned Luo Shuangyue was, it’d be impossible for her to feel shy in front of them.
Xiaozi was still in that muddleheaded, naive stage, acting much like a little puppy, while Zheng spent more than half the day in a daze, trying hard to fish out fragments of memory from the sea of her own recollections.
The three looked like a small group, but in truth, each was fighting her own battle.
In the first few days, Anxing would occasionally “brush past” Luo Shuangyue, but after several rounds of testing, she finally realized that Luo Shuangyue really wasn’t planning to run—she genuinely just wanted to slack off.
Once she confirmed that, Anxing relaxed her surveillance over Luo Shuangyue, and hadn’t shown up within her perception range for quite a while now.
“Thirty days and nights—so it’s already been a month.” In this world, there seemed to be no change in seasons; every day looked almost exactly like the last, making it easy for one’s sense of time to become muddled.
Sometimes when Luo Shuangyue opened her eyes to see the same familiar sky, she’d often wonder if she’d gotten the date wrong.
During these thirty days, by absorbing magic power from Xiaozi and Zheng, she’d finally raised her strength to about the same level as when she’d been a Magical Girl.
As for taking it one step further to reach Emperor Rank, that was still beyond Luo Shuangyue’s reach for now.
Trying to get herself to Emperor Rank by absorbing the power of just two Wang-Class monsters—now that was asking a bit too much.
By her conservative estimate, Luo Shuangyue figured she’d need to completely devour at least one whole Emperor Rank monster before her power could truly reach that level.
Of course, she could also just take her time.
There was no so-called bottleneck between her and Emperor Rank monsters; in terms of rank, she was already an Emperor Rank monster herself—just severely underdeveloped and heavily wounded, currently in recovery.
But the time needed for normal recovery was… well, just a little bit too long.
Luo Shuangyue reckoned it’d take at least half a year for her to recover.
She really was a bit lacking from the start. Compared to normal Emperor Rank monsters, her recovery speed was much slower, and even her potential was somewhat embarrassing for her rank.
“Dark Moth, up ahead there seem to be traces of a Black Calamity outbreak.” While Luo Shuangyue was lost in thought, Zheng suddenly spoke.
A very obvious boundary line stretched across the path in front of the three of them; the scenes on either side were completely different.
Beneath Luo Shuangyue’s feet was vibrant, lush green grass, but beyond the boundary lay a dead, pitch-black wasteland.
Not long ago, a Black Calamity had broken out there, destroying everything in its wake.
“No need to worry about it—Anxing probably already checked this area. Let’s just go straight through and see if there’s anything left behind.”
What was a forbidden zone to other beings in this world was no obstacle to Luo Shuangyue. In fact, this place was more like a supply station for her.
After a Black Calamity, the area would still hold some Demonic Energy. Even if it wasn’t much, it was still better than struggling to draw Demonic Energy out of thin air.
And after she absorbed the Demonic Energy here, the effects of the Black Calamity would fade from the land—a win-win.
Not only could she recover faster, but she’d also be doing something good for the world.
Luo Shuangyue felt that not taking a gulp here would be letting down her identity as a Demon Skin.
Without hesitation, Luo Shuangyue stepped into the area and took a deep breath, judging that the monster born here was likely on the weaker side.
Probably just barely managed to climb to the Wang-Class.
“Another humanoid monster?” Luo Shuangyue mused to herself.
At the Wang-Class level, there was a good chance of monsters appearing in human form. So, the monster here was probably persuaded by Anxing to leave with her.
But this guess hadn’t even settled in Luo Shuangyue’s mind when the faint sounds of destruction from afar told her she’d guessed wrong.
The monster that descended here wasn’t a humanoid Wang-Class—it was just an ordinary one that Anxing couldn’t be bothered to deal with.
“Zheng, can you fight?”
Luo Shuangyue flexed her wrist. So she’d guessed wrong—no big deal.
With her current strength, dealing with a weak Wang-Class monster would be a piece of cake. To her, it was nothing more than a meal on legs.
Black mist billowed from behind her, taking the form of a cute girl.
Now that Luo Shuangyue had recovered her strength, Phantom Scythe could finally appear in human form again.
Brandishing her little scythe, she let out two fierce cries, looking like she could hardly restrain her urge to fight.
Win the fight and get extra food! Woohoo!
In every sense, Phantom Scythe and Little Butterfly were absolutely two peas in a pod.
“I think I can.” Zheng nodded a bit hesitantly. She didn’t know much about fighting and only remembered a few battle instincts etched deep in her bones.
Threads of black silk condensed in front of her. She reached out and gently brushed across the neatly arranged strings, making them emit a sharp, piercing hum.
Actually, Zheng’s technique wasn’t wrong. She even had a faint touch of skill in her movements. But the sound she played was totally at odds with her technique.
If you said she didn’t know how to play—well, that was unlikely.
Because someone who didn’t know at all could never produce this kind of sound.
Zheng’s music sounded like it was made solely to destroy the listener’s hearing—a true Demon Sound, harsh and grating beyond belief.
Even Luo Shuangyue felt her head ache at the sound, a testament to Zheng’s lethal skill in this area.
“Is this also the result of being twisted by Demonic Energy?” Rubbing her ears, Luo Shuangyue blamed everything on the root of all evil—Demonic Energy.
Zheng used Demonic Energy while playing, and Demonic Energy never led to anything good. So the music she played was piercing and destructive. It made sense.
Still, it wasn’t a bad thing. Right now, Luo Shuangyue needed a teammate like this to help her fight.
“Alright, let’s go see which little cutie our Miss Anxing left behind for us.” Raising her hand to summon her giant scythe, Luo Shuangyue’s eyes darkened slightly.
Fighting monsters was one of the rare times she could let her true self run wild.
She didn’t like those restrictive battles—she preferred the kind where you aimed to beat your enemy to death.
Spreading her wings, Luo Shuangyue shot toward the source of the noise, and with just one glance, she saw the huge monster wreaking havoc across the Wasteland.
The monster was now a fair distance from the epicenter of the Black Calamity. From the look of things, it hadn’t stayed put after being born; it picked a direction and slowly moved forward.
Along the way, it destroyed everything it came across, leaving nothing but ruin in its wake.
“A textbook monster, huh? Let’s go teach it how a real monster should behave!” Gripping her blade, Luo Shuangyue charged straight at the massive black spider monster with ten legs.
She didn’t bother hiding her approach; before she even got close, the spider sensed the unfamiliar and dangerous Demonic Energy.
Countless jet-black eyes scattered around its body all locked onto Luo Shuangyue at the same time.
This monster looked like a spider but was more akin to a giant robot. It had no front or back, no head—directions held no meaning for it.
Its eyes were distributed all over its body, giving it a full 360-degree field of vision, making sneak attacks almost impossible.
But that only applied to ordinary people—Luo Shuangyue was never ordinary.
She’d already tested it herself—her teleportation ability still worked in this world, though she couldn’t teleport as far as she could in the human world.
The magic dimension here was more dangerous, and its size corresponded with the world’s own.
Her maximum teleportation distance had shrunk from countless meters in the human world to just a hundred meters now.
Still, that was plenty.
The Nightmare King had no way to threaten Luo Shuangyue from afar; whether it was Magic Artillery or any other attack, with Phantom Scythe protecting her, it might as well have been air.
As for close combat… Luo Shuangyue had never been afraid.
When the spider noticed her flying toward it at high speed, it immediately reacted, spewing black Magic Artillery from its mouth. The firepower was so weak it almost made Luo Shuangyue laugh.
After fighting so many high-level battles, playing in this low-tier match was just too enjoyable!
She didn’t even bother dodging—Luo Shuangyue let Phantom Scythe eat those long-range attacks for her. Once close enough, she teleported under the spider and slashed upward with her blade.
Black-purple Demonic Energy tore through the monster’s tough hide, leaving a deep, bone-revealing wound.
The monster’s impressive regenerative powers were useless against it—the wound kept writhing, trying to heal, but the magic lingering on the cut kept it coldly at bay.
Was there something strange inside this monster? Luo Shuangyue frowned at the wound she’d made.
Maybe it was just a trick of the eye, but she thought she saw what looked like human limbs inside the monster.
But… how could that be?
There was only one human in this world—Xia Mo—and there’s no way Xia Mo had been eaten by this monster. So where did the limbs come from?
Zheng!
A piercing wave of sound crashed down from above, like countless invisible little knives, leaving fine wounds across the spider monster’s upper body.
Zheng had arrived at the battlefield, joining in to support Luo Shuangyue.
Now it was Luo Shuangyue, Phantom Scythe, and Zheng—a three-against-one. For the monster, even picking one of them to fight didn’t give it much hope of winning.
No doubt about it—the outcome of this fight was already decided.
The only uncertain thing was just how this monster was going to die.
“Tear it apart for me—down to its last part!” To answer her own questions, Luo Shuangyue chose the most brutal method of combat.
She was going to rip this monster to pieces—dismember it alive.
“Phantom Scythe, Zheng, go take its legs!”
First up were the monster’s ten long legs. The giant spider’s height was all thanks to those legs, and most of its attacks came from them as well.
So, Luo Shuangyue had to pull its fangs first.
This wasn’t hard. Working together, the three soon severed all of the spider’s legs.
After cutting them open to make sure nothing she wanted was inside, Luo Shuangyue tossed the trophies to Phantom Scythe and Zheng.
Limbs from a monster of the same rank were a feast for them.
As for herself, she strode over with her blade to the spider’s main body, now lying helplessly on its back, and slashed along the wound she’d first made, widening it enough to see what was inside.
And the scene inside made Luo Shuangyue—who’d seen plenty as a former Magical Girl—feel nauseated and dizzy.
She hadn’t been seeing things. The monster’s belly really was stuffed with human limbs. Not just one, but countless limbs.
You could say the entire inside of the beast was packed with these broken appendages—a sight to chill anyone to the bone.
“What the heck are these things?” Fighting the urge to vomit, Luo Shuangyue tried to pull a large leg out of the monster.
But she quickly found she couldn’t—the limb was now a part of the monster. No, it’d always been a part of the monster from the start.
The limbs inside its body didn’t belong to people it had eaten, but were structures recreated by the monster itself with Demonic Energy.
This really was… the height of the bizarre.
Why would a monster recreate such things inside its belly? What were they for?
While dodging the grasping broken arms, Luo Shuangyue kept carving her way deeper inside the monster.
At last, after pressing forward for a while, she found a head—a head with eyes wide open.
With so many arms and legs, a head wasn’t out of place.
But one detail about the head made Luo Shuangyue pause.
The ears—they weren’t round, but pointed.
The limbs inside this monster didn’t belong to humans, but to the civilization of Elves destroyed by monster disasters.
“Elves? Why are they showing up like this here?” Luo Shuangyue waved a hand in front of the head’s eyes, her face shadowed by a flicker of doubt.
The secrets this Wang-Class monster was hiding might be more than she’d ever imagined.
“Could there be a whole bunch more heads in here…?”