The dragon's harem

Arad’s eyes slowly darted around the room. He finally sighed and looked at Claug, “End of day or not… how come Lunara is drunk?” He could smell something odd from the beer, and that odd thing smelled like a certain green drakaina that was sitting right beside him.

“She never got drunk since she became a Demon Lord. So when she found out that I could reduce her resistance and allow her to get drunk… You can see the result.” Behind them, Lunara was armwrestling Zephyr, who was strangely winning.

Arad reached forward and knocked on Merlin’s head. “Wake up, are you asleep?”

Merlin didn’t smell of beer and alcohol like everyone else, but she seemed to be low on mana. Even in her fight with him, she never seemed to run out. What would be draining her to this point? Arad had no idea.

Merlin slowly lifted her head with a pained groan; The migraine assaulting her head was slowly growing weaker, but she couldn’t rest yet. “Who… ARAD!” She immediately gasped.

Cerilla looked at her with a smile, “He’s been here for a minute. Are your senses that low?”

Merlin scratched her head and massaged her temples. “I don’t have either mana or energy to maintain a single scrying spell, let alone my usual array.” She rubbed her face and sighed. Her gaze then stopped at Arad. “What’s up with the beard?”

“Still undecided. I can just get rid of it.” He rubbed his beard and then looked at them, “So? No one told me anything in detail, but I can already guess some.” Isdis had once told him about Cerilla and Jasmine’s arrival when they were in Hati’s house, but seeing all of them here was quite abnormal.

“In short, we’re all for Isdis’s crowning. Baltos wants to retire. He said that building the new capital should be a part of Isdis’s legacy and not his. An achievement like that would earn her the people’s trust.”

But there was another thing on Merlin’s mind since Arad returned, the reason for his absence. “How are you? You look a bit thinner than before.”

Arad clenched his fist. “Not from starvation. I never felt better. Many things have changed now that I have become an adult void dragon. But the most important of them all is that I don’t have access to the system.”

****

Name: Arad Orion.

Race: Void Dragon.

Stage: Adult.

World Cores: 0/1

****

For a start, Arad’s first goal should be finding, liberating, and consuming a whole world. Aria had told him about how much power a single world can grant. Everything from a safe retreat to an endless stream of mana.

But that wasn’t all that he got. Instead of the system that grants people power, what he sees now is still a system made by Aria, but this one reads and displays his vitals. More like a diagnosis of his body and mind.

****

Curses: [Pricolici]

[Pricolici] {Once, the Great Old One was cast away by the Unholy Jester of a thousand eyes into the trial of wits. Little did the Unholy Jester know, the Great Old One had a thing for the accursed. By blood and fur, buried in the black depths, the Great Old One gave birth to a new life.}

****

As Arad expected, most of his skills and abilities have disappeared. He could still feel and use them. But not in the same way he was before. The power of Gemini, for example, instead of feeling a torrent of magic flow into his soul from an unknown source, he could feel it forming directly inside his soul.

With that came a deeper understanding of many things. The first of them was his soul. He had one massive soul, far bigger than anyone he had ever seen before. If Merlin’s soul before him was an apple, his soul was the moon.

He could now directly see the souls of people, and what he wanted to do the most now is find Tina and get a good look at her dying soul. Maybe he’ll be able to learn something or figure out a way to help her.

The second largest soul here was Zephyr’s soul, which was almost as massive as his, explaining how oppressive her power was. He could also see several golden, black, and red strands dancing in her green soul. That explained several things to him: she was cursed, blessed, and touched by an abominable force.

Arad’s own soul was pitch black, like a massive black hole that roars silently in the black night sky, surrounded by a blinding accretion disk of glowing magic. After seeing this, he could finally understand the process of absorbing souls to grow older. He was simply feeding this massive black hole of a soul that he had. The more he fed it, the larger it grew, but thanks to geometry, the larger it grew, the more souls it needed to grow further.

But that wasn’t everything, Arad noticed more than one strange thing about his soul. He didn’t have just one, but three. All of them had mixed into the massive black hole. The first was massive and burning with a dark-purple magic, his dragon soul. The second was relatively small, the size of an adult person, and pure white, his human soul. The third one was hard to see, transparent and devoid of all power, empty as a soul could be, but it still seemed to exist, as if waiting to be filled with something.

Several souls orbited his soul as well. Doma’s soul was massive, as large as a whole continent, and engulfed in the blinding pink flame of cursed magic. Shi’s soul was as large as a small house, brown and dripping with red blood, but it held in place. And in the outer edges, Arad could see thousands and thousands of souls flying around, the souls of the vampires resting inside his soul. One of them was especially massive, Akasha’s soul.

At that moment, Jasmine kicked him on the shoulder, “What’s up, handsome? Glaring at us with that hungry stare of yours. We can be eaten, but not now.” She leaned forward, finally taking her legs from the table, and smacked him on the back.

Arad shook his head, waved his hand, and said in a calm voice. “I can see souls, the flow of magic, and the structure of matter.” A mug formed in his hand, followed by a stream of wine that seemed to appear out of thin air. He took a sip and then gave the mug to Jasmine.

“Taste this.”

She took a sip, and it was normal red wine, if a bit too sweet for her taste. “Wine, a bit fruity…”

Arad shook his head. “That doesn’t matter.” He touched the surface of the wine with his finger and asked her to taste it again. This time, she immediately spat it out. It wasn’t because he put his finger in it, but because what she tasted wasn’t wine, but vinegar.