episode_0002

“Aaaaargh!”

With a headache like being hit not by a hammer, but by an industrial process robot, he grimaced deeply and got up.

Got up?

His head throbbed maddeningly. He barely managed to recall his memories, and remembered that the last place he was conscious was Luna’s bar. Only then did he check his surroundings.

Instead of the shabby sofa that served as his bed at home, he was on a bed with a soft mattress, with subtle lighting, and holograms displaying a map of Eclipse Point and auto-generated natural scenery floated on the wall.

“Where is this place now… I was definitely…”

“It’s the staff room.”

At that moment, a familiar voice with a chic tone sounded.

He turned his head towards the direction of Luna’s voice, and there, leaning against the door, was Luna, dressed not in her usual bartender attire, but in a thin T-shirt and short pants.

Even when she was in her bartender outfit, his gaze would subtly drift towards her chest without him realizing it, but now, in such light attire, their volume was incomparable.

It was practically at the level of violence!

However, he tried hard not to show it, and as he looked at her enormous chest, he clutched his head again, remembering the headache he had momentarily forgotten.

“You drank so quickly, you ended up passing out. I couldn’t just leave you in the bar, so I had you sleeping in the staff room.”

“Oh, really? My apologies. I’ve caused trouble again. By the way, isn’t it business hours now?”

“It’s fine. And today’s business is over.”

“Didn’t I come in the morning? Has that much time passed already… I’m really sorry.”

Luna’s bar, strangely, didn’t open in the early morning, and closed promptly at midnight.

So, her saying that business hours were over meant at least 16 hours had passed since he drank himself unconscious.

Feeling sorry, he scratched his head and got out of bed.

And only then, he felt something empty.

“Huh?”

He lowered his head, and saw himself completely naked, not even a pair of underwear left, just as he was born.

At that point, his thoughts rapidly accelerated.

‘I couldn’t have neatly taken off my clothes and peacefully gone to sleep in Luna’s bar staff room, and Luna wouldn’t have anyone else to ask to do this. So, Luna was the one who undressed me?’

His thoughts continued, and he began to connect the place, situation, and atmosphere.

The enclosed room where no one would come, the soft bed, the lighting being adjusted to create a subtly intimate atmosphere, and even Luna in her thin clothes.

‘Surely, this isn’t…!’

*He shot up*

As his thoughts reached that point, the embarrassing situation that would follow unfolded in his mind, and naturally, blood rushed downwards to an embarrassing degree.

While working as an employee for a company that overworked him to the point where he barely had time to masturbate, how much comfort he had found recalling Luna’s enormous breasts.

Of course, it was a world overflowing with stimulating adult videos, but her breasts, belonging to a woman who was as straightforward as a man, yet more suited to the word ‘maternity’ than anyone he had ever met, possessed a different kind of magic than merely watching sex between strangers.

Without any excuse, looking up at the sky, was his erect penis.

Luna, as if noticing the change, let her gaze drop, and it landed on his erect penis.

“I’ve already seen it, but it’s really big… No, anyway, that’s not it.”

“What?!”

Luna, looking embarrassed, slightly averted her gaze and waved her hand.

“You mean this isn’t leading to sex…?”

“Is this really so disappointing?”

“Luna. This isn’t ‘just’ anything. You need to know how much your body excites people!”

“…Oh, really?”

Disheartened, he sat back down on the bed, and hung his head so low it almost touched the ground.

As a low-class citizen who couldn’t even manage his own affairs, he, who rarely met women unless they were prostitutes, returned to the reality of being stuck in the gutter.

Indeed, why would Luna, who even owned a respectable bar, have anything to do with a tramp like him?

“Anyway, enough with the despair, let’s talk about something more constructive.”

“How much constructive talk could I possibly have…? By the way, why did you strip all my clothes off?”

“If you want to know, would you mind standing here?”

Luna tapped the spot directly in front of her with her foot, calling him over.

Standing naked in front of her was a bit embarrassing, but with the mindset of ‘what would she gain from seeing a man’s naked body anyway?’, he stood on the designated spot as she instructed.

‘It’s even more embarrassing facing her this close.’

Close enough to feel her breath.

The tip of his still un-deflated penis was almost touching Luna’s stomach.

“By the way, did you get a GoodStuff™ implant?”

“It’s 100% natural, the kind even rich people can’t get their hands on. Don’t compare it to some shoddy mass-produced garbage like that.”

“My goodness.”

GoodStuff™ was an adult genital implant that corrected penis size and rigidity, allowing for a more pleasurable sex life.

But on his penis, which was excellently endowed even without such things, Luna’s gaze, though she pretended not to look, he could feel it darting glances.

‘Actually, the reason is just that I don’t have money for such things.’

As he was having such slightly sad thoughts, *Jolt*, he felt as if the ground supporting him had suddenly disappeared.

And it didn’t take long for him to realize that the feeling was not an illusion, but truly because the floor he was standing on had vanished.

*Crash!*

If he were to fall, he expected it to be from the creaking elevator of a mega-apartment building. He never imagined he’d be pulled by gravity in such a basement.

If there was any silver lining, it was that the dive, without any safety measures, was over in less than a second.

“Aaaaargh!!! My tailbone!!!”

*Slap* “Since you already have such an excellent attachment, you can endure that much.”

“What in the world just happened?!”

The place he had fallen into was the second basement floor, which had no visible entrance from the outside.

He had lived in this vicinity for ages and never once heard that this building had a second basement floor. But Luna jumped down with extreme familiarity, landed lightly, and equipped a medical mechanical arm.

The mechanical arm, proudly stamped with the insignia of NanoCircuit Labs, a leader in the medical supplies market, gave a sense of reassurance that it could unconditionally succeed a surgery with only a 10% survival rate, as long as you paid the money.

The problem, perhaps, was that it was attached to Luna’s back.

“Ugh… Couldn’t you have told me now?!”

He rubbed his still aching buttock, and got up from what looked like an integrated bed, a surgical table.

*Click* More accurately, he *tried* to get up.

Because as he tried to stand, restraints emerged from the surgical table and bound him, preventing movement.

“Luna? This piece of junk has me tied up, you know? Can you make it stop operating?”

“Oh, I operated that, so you don’t need to worry.”

“Please explain to me, in under 500 characters, where in that statement I can find less worry.”

The second basement floor looked like a street engineer or techie’s workshop, with all sorts of unopened implants, artificial organs, prosthetic arms, prosthetic legs, and other devices, and surgical tools hanging everywhere.

And it was more professional than he thought.

“Damn it. I thought you were definitely a rich lady born into a wealthy corporate family, who ran away because you hated your stuffy home.”

“Where would you find a lady walking around with a scar on her face?”

“I don’t know. There must be one somewhere. There are women who walk around with dildos instead of noses, you know.”

“It’s sad that I can’t deny that.”

As if she had finished preparing, Luna, wearing two mechanical arms and a medical visor, walked to his side and snapped on latex gloves.

“You said it yourself, that you could do anything.”

“Wait! Wait! Don’t you know the law that verbal contracts made under the influence of alcohol are not valid? And my organs wouldn’t fetch much money anyway!”

“There’s no such law in Eclipse Point. And I’m not going to steal your organs, so stop being so dramatic.”

“Stop being dramatic in this situation? I haven’t had an artificial heart implant, so I don’t think I can do that.”

He felt like disgracefully wetting himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he forcibly endured.

Nevertheless, lying motionless on the cold operating table was not a pleasant experience, so cold sweat poured off him, and his body becoming drenched was unavoidable.

“So what exactly is all this? I know I said I’d do anything, so whether I become a participant in a snuff video or get my organs harvested, I guess it can’t be helped, but what is this facility? Weren’t you just a normal bar owner?”

It had been a whole ten years.

Even though it had been ten years since his acquaintance with Luna began, she had always greeted him as the owner of this small bar.

When they first met, Luna was still a cute little chick, uncorrupted by this city.

Thankfully, he himself possessed an even softer mindset.

“Hah… Do you really think I’d do something like that to you?”

Luna, as if finally surrendering to his whining, placed her hands on her hips and sighed.

“You said you wanted to earn money, didn’t you? And since it’s hard for you to get a job at a corporation anyway now, I’m going to ask you to help me with my work.”

“…What kind of work is it that you have me restrained like this for?”

At his question, the corners of her lips curled up fiercely.

“Naturally, it’s mercenary work, operating in the middle of the corporate war that’s turning Eclipse Point into a mess!”

“Mercenary?”

If you were to define a mercenary, you might think of professionally trained special agents from PMC with military implants plastered all over them. However, in Eclipse Point, a mercenary refers to a prospective criminal or criminal group who wants to wreak havoc in the city.

Yet, they are different from a complete criminal organization like a gang, in that they move according to the demands of someone living in the city.

They could be called outlaws who operate individually or in teams, receiving jobs from fixers who bring them such requests, much like the now extinct bird, the stork.

“Allow me to introduce myself again. I am Luna Asher, a fixer who operates the fixer office Luna’s Bar, and a techie doctor who leads a private mercenary team.”

“Your bar was a fixer office?!”

“How many people in this lower district do you think could afford to frequent a bar selling high-end liquor? Why else would I set up shop here? I can’t believe you hadn’t noticed until now.”

No wonder she gave so much credit, even though there weren’t many customers.

At the sudden revelation, he gaped.

“Then why am I tied to this surgical table?”

Luna made a face as if asking why he would even ask such an obvious question, and moved the mechanical arms she had temporarily paused, activating a medical assistance program.

“You’re going to be a mercenary now, and you think you can do that with a body that hasn’t been modified at all? I’ll put the fee on your tab, as always.”

*Whirr* *Whizz* The joints of the mechanical arms moved as if mocking him, and terrifying scalpels and surgical tools of unknown names were pointed at him.

“Wait! Wait! Aaaaargh!!! Anesthesia! Anesthetize me! You bitch!!!”

“If you’re a man with such an excellent attachment, just endure it a little!”

*Spray*

From a fountain implant he’d never even had installed in his body, red liquid spurted towards the ceiling.

“Blood! Blood is gushing out!!!”

He fainted from the immense pain.