The girl expression was filled with panicking and fear as she stood dead in her tracks.
The rest of the group stopped talking when they noticed her sudden, unnatural reaction. They walked back over to her, their expressions filled with mild confusion.
"Hey, what’s wrong with you?" the first boy asked, frowning. "Why did you stop?"
The girl didn’t look down. She slowly raised a trembling hand, her index finger pointing directly toward the sky as a shaky, terrified whisper escaped her lips.
"L-look... isn’t the moon acting strange tonight?"
"What do you mean the moon is acting stra,..."
The boy’s words caught completely in his throat.The entire group looked up at the sky, and the color instantly drained from their faces, leaving them as pale as sheets.
The silver moon had begun to violently change color. First, the clean white light shifted into a deep, vibrant pink.
Then, within a matter of seconds, it turned a heavy, dark crimson, looking exactly as if it had been thoroughly soaked in fresh, pooling blood.
An unnatural, dark red light cascaded down from the sky, bathing the entire planet in a crimson glow.
The atmosphere instantly shifted, giving off a cold, haunting, and suffocating vibe. Even the gentle night wind suddenly felt freezing against their skin.
The leaves on the trees stopped rustling, the distant sound of city traffic died out, and everything went entirely still, as if the laws of the world had completely stopped for a single, terrifying moment.
Just then, two of the boys in the group gasped out loud. Their faces turned completely white, and thick beads of sweat erupted from their sweat glands, soaking through their shirts.
"Aaahhh! Ahhhh!"
Without any warning, the two of them dropped heavily to the hard pavement, writhing in sudden, violent agony. Tremendous screams tore from their throats as they clutched their own limbs, their bodies contorting on the ground.
Their friends panicking completely, running up to them and dropping to their knees on the concrete.
"What’s wrong?! Where does it hurt?! Someone call an emergency medical team!"
"Look at their bodies! What the hell is happening to them?!" the first girl pointed out, her voice shrieking with terror.
They looked down at their two writhing friends and immediately saw a horrifying sight.
A strange, vibrant red glow was leaking out from beneath their clothes. The crimson energy rapidly expanded, enveloping their entire bodies like a dense, pulsing cocoon of raw supernatural force.
"What is happening?!"
"What the hell is going on?!"
The remaining four friends were completely panicking, their screams echoing through the empty park.
Just then, one of the boys seemed to connect the pieces in his head. He looked up at the blood-red moon hanging directly above the skyscrapers, and then looked back down at the glowing, tattooed shoulders of his screaming friends as a horrific realization hit his mind like a physical blow.
"It’s the Red Moon!" he screamed, his eyes wide with pure terror.
"The Red Moon is coming again! It’s the Second Awakening!"
Inside Jet’s locked bedroom, the entire space was suddenly painted a bright, violent crimson, as if the walls had been thoroughly bathed in blood.
The high-density red radiation from the sky had pierced directly through the thick curtains, flooding the dark room.
On the hard floor, Jet was completely down on his knees, writhing violently as sharp, agonizing screams escaped from his mouth.
"Ahhhh! Ahhhh!"
His facial features were twisted and contorted to such an extreme point that he looked completely hideous, his jaws locking in pure torment.
He felt an absolute, unimaginable pain tearing through his biology. It felt exactly as if his entire skeletal frame had been set on fire, while millions of tiny, venomous ants were actively boring deep into his raw flesh, chewing through his individual nerve endings and muscles.
The ten high-density the tattoos etched into his skin had turned into literal lightning rods for the cosmic radiation.
Because he possessed ten tattoos, the influx of energy was thousands of times more dense than what an ordinary human frame could handle.
His entire skin began to split open along the lines of the ink.
Blood welled up from the fractures, pouring out continuously. His eyes turned entirely red, thick drops of blood dripping down his cheeks like tears.
His ears, mouth, and nose, all of his natural orifices were actively oozing dark crimson blood as the raw cosmic energy violently tried to rewrite his internal cells.
"T-the pain... it’s too much... I can’t take it..." Jet choked out, his fingers clawing desperately into the hardwood floorboards, ripping his own nails to pieces.
His entire body was being transformed into a mangled mass of torn flesh and ruptured veins. It felt exactly as if he had been run over by a high-speed freight train and thoroughly crushed into a meat paste, only to be forcibly pulled back together to experience the trauma all over again.
His agonizing, unhinged screams filled the small room, bouncing off the walls.
Fortunately, the soundproofing of the high-end apartment structure was excellent. Otherwise, the sheer volume of his suffering alone would have awakened every single resident in the entire three-story building.
But even with the thick insulation, the muffled echo of his agonizing screams could still faintly be heard vibrating through the outside hallway.
"I... I’m dying... I can’t... I can’t take it... anymore..."
Jet’s consciousness started to violently slip away. The sheer intensity of the physical trauma was overriding his brain’s survival mechanisms.
His vision went completely foggy, blurring into a dark, crimson void as his heart rate began to fail, dropping toward absolute zero.
He realized his own greed had killed him.
He was about to explode into raw meat chunks on the floor.But right before his consciousness could completely extinguish, a massive, red glitching digital screen popped up abruptly in front of his fading eyes.
A cold, mechanical, and perfectly neutral voice ringed loudly inside his ears, shattering the darkness.
[ Ding! ]
[ Red Moon System Initializing... ]