[Rare Lucky Draw – Used]
[Obtained Skill: Reconstruction (Rare)]
[You have learned skill: Reconstruction 1 (Rare - Initiate).]
Judas blinked. A healing skill? After reading the constraints of the skill, he frowned.
"Direct skin contact..." he murmured, looking down at the woman.
Her armor was shattered, and the dark fabric of her dress was soaked in blood around her midsection. The injury was severe—shattered ribs on her left side, directly beneath her chest.
He hesitated. His initial plan had been to scoop her up and take her back to the safe house after getting a healing potion from the draw. But since the draw gave him a healing skill, that plan had to change.
Also, the forest was crawling with beasts drawn to the scent of high-grade blood. But as he reached for her, a cold dread settled in his stomach.
If I take her home...
He pictured his three wives. They were already on edge. If he dragged home a staggeringly beautiful, incredibly powerful, and currently hostile woman, the misunderstanding would be catastrophic.
Also, he wasn't sure if she would survive a journey.
And that was the best-case scenario. The worst case was that this woman would wake up in his living room, panic, and unleash an abyssal blast that would kill his wives instantly.
"I can't risk it," Judas whispered. "I have to stabilize her here. I need to lower her hostility before she meets the others."
He knelt beside her. To heal the ribs, he had to touch the skin. To touch the skin, the clothes had to go.
"I'm a healer," he muttered to himself, trying to convince his own conscience. "Just a field medic doing his job. Nothing to see here."
With careful, trembling fingers, he reached for the tattered remains of her bodice. The fabric was stuck to the drying blood, so he had to be gentle. He unclasped the broken armor plating and peeled back the dark silk.
Judas's breath hitched.
Despite the gruesome bruising and the jagged cut across her ribs, the woman's body was a masterpiece of temptation.
As the fabric fell away, her left breast was partially exposed, the pale curve of it glowing softly in the dim light.
She was voluptuous, far more endowed than her armor had suggested, with a softness that contrasted sharply with her violent power.
"Focus, Judas," he hissed, mentally slapping his own cheek. "Don't stare. Don't be that guy."
It was impossible not to stare.
The rise and fall of her chest was hypnotic, and the sheer perfection of her skin—unblemished except for the wound—was testing his willpower. He felt a dry heat rise in his throat.
He shook his head violently and placed his glowing hand onto her side, his fingers brushing against the soft undercurve of her breast to reach the shattered ribs.
He activated Reconstruction.
A soft, golden light emanated from his palm.
It was slow. Agonizingly slow. The bone was knitting together, grain by grain.
After a few minutes, the air pressure around them dropped.
Judas froze. He looked up, and his heart skipped a beat.
The woman was awake.
Her eyes were wide open, glowing with a malevolent, abyssal violet light.
She wasn't moving—her body was still paralyzed from the trauma—but her gaze was locked onto his face, and then it drifted down.
She saw her clothes torn open and his hand grasping her breast.
'Bastard...'
The voice didn't come from her mouth. It slammed directly into his mind, echoing with the force of a sledgehammer.
'How dare a lowly human touch me? How dare he defile the Princess of the Abyss!'
Judas winced, a sharp pain stabbing behind his eyes. But then, another voice echoed in his head—different from the first. Where the first voice was imperious and enraged, this second voice was warmer.
'Why is he healing us?' the second voice whispered, cutting through the first voice's screaming. 'He had the chance to kill. He stripped us. Yet... the mana flow is restorative.'
'Silence!' the first voice roared in his mind. 'He is a pervert! A dog! I will flay him alive! I will tear his soul into shreds!'
'He is saving us,' the second voice argued. 'Observe. The ribs are mending.'
The two voices were arguing inside his brain, their psychic wavelengths clashing and using his skull as the battlefield. It was like having two ice picks driven into his temples simultaneously.
"Shut up!" Judas growled aloud, sweat pouring down his face. "I'm trying to save your life, you crazy woman!"
He didn't stop. He couldn't. If he let go now, the partially healed bone might snap back into the lung, killing her instantly.
[Reconstruction 1 -> 2]
The golden light intensified. The knitting of the flesh sped up slightly.
The woman's glare didn't falter, but her breathing hitched as she felt the warmth spreading from his hand. T
he sensation of his rough palm against her sensitive skin sent a tremor through her body that she couldn't suppress.
'He... he is continuing?' The first voice sounded confused now, though still dripping with venom. 'He withstands my mental pressure? Who is this human?'
'What! You used your mental pressure on him? Very good. Now, I will be depleted of mental power for a month.'
'That… that… sorry.'
Judas focused entirely on the system notifications, using them as an anchor to keep from passing out from the mental pressure.
Reconstruction used the Intelligence attribute. To stop such a gruesome wound, his mind had to suffer a bit due to his low Intelligence attribute.
If this skill wasn't Rare quality, he couldn't have healed her even if he became an Apprentice Healer.
[Reconstruction 2 -> 3]
He could feel the texture of her skin changing under his hand, smoothing out as the bruise faded.
It was soft—impossibly soft. His thumb inadvertently brushed against the side of her breast as he adjusted his grip to heal a fracture further back.
The woman let out a small, involuntary gasp. Her face flushed a deep crimson, a mix of fury and something else she clearly didn't want to feel.
'He touched it again! He squeezed!' The Princess screamed in his mind. 'Death! Instant death!'
"I didn't squeeze!" Judas shouted back at the empty air, looking like a madman. "It's the position of the wound!"
The voice inside his mind suddenly stopped.
A quiet, startled breath echoed through the mental space.
'Did you notice it? He can hear you. He can hear me.'
Judas rubbed his temples. Her panic buzzed in his skull like a trapped fly.
"Of course I can hear you. Can you lower your voice for one moment and let my mind breathe?"
She froze.
'So you can hear me…? Truly? I am Zephriya, Princess of—'
'Enough.'
Summer cut her off instantly, but the scolding slipped out of her physical mouth instead.
"You can hear our inner monologues?" she asked, pale and wide-eyed.
"Yes," Judas replied simply. "I know you are Summer, and the one screaming in my head is Zephriya. Are you two satisfied now?"
A ripple ran through their bond.
[Affection: -100 -> -90]
Zephriya's mental voice exploded like fireworks.
'This is… this is wonderful. Summer, look. Someone other than you can hear me. Someone finally hears me. Is he… is he my fated one?'
Judas exhaled sharply. "I already have three wives."
'They can be concubines.'
"No," he said flatly. "I do not take concubines. Only wives."
Zephriya's gasp rattled in his mind.
'You cannot expect a princess to share the same title as common villagers.'
Judas shrugged. "The real question is how a wandering consciousness living inside someone else's skull expects to become anyone's wife."
'I have my methods.'
"Zephriya, you bitch—" Summer began to curse, but the words died on her tongue.
Her eyes shifted.
The crimson faded to a deep, glowing violet. Her red hair drained into a shimmering, amethyst shade that glowed faintly even under the trees.
Her lips curled upward.
"See," she said. "Like this."
But the voice was not Summer's.
It was Zephriya's.
A pulse of energy traveled across Summer's body.
[Reconstruction 3 -> 4]
[Reconstruction 4 -> 5]
A violent flash of violet light burst around her limbs. Shattered bones realigned. The internal bleeding ceased. Skin knotted back together seamlessly, leaving no wound behind.
In less than a breath, she looked completely unharmed.
Then she lunged.
Her arms wrapped around Judas's neck in a sudden, eager embrace, pulling herself against his chest with surprising strength for someone who had been dying moments earlier.
"Look," Zephriya whispered into his ear. Her breath was warm. Her tone held a playful, dangerous sweetness.
"You healed me. You touched… perhaps not me directly, but I shared every sensation with Summer. That means you touched me as well."
She leaned closer, her lips brushing the edge of his ear.
"That means you owe me responsibility."
His eyebrow twitched.
[Affection: -90 -> -80]
Zephriya smiled in triumph.
"Marry me. Make me the wife. The others can be concubines."