The dragon's harem

The madman looked around, his face. Even his madness wasn’t enough to cover the reality of facing Arad. Two massive void dragons, a werewolf, and a vampire lord, now added two black blood sharks, and now the darkness goddess that was with him, two of her in fact.

“You monster.” The madman growled, seeming to have returned to his sanity. No matter what he wanted to do, there were just too many adversaries that running looked like the only option. Or that’s what it seemed. The mad smile hid beneath his frowning face, hiding the trump card hidden in the depths of his rotten brain.

The madman jumped away, his body barely threading through the storm of chaos unleashed by Arad. Claws, darkness, fire, radiation and several lightning bolts, and even more. He felt like he is facing a whole army instead of one angry monster.

His chaotic and uncontrolled moves made him extremely hard to hit. While more rational people dodged, he took the hit and relied on hell’s power to heal himself. Sometimes he even refrained from attacking when he got the chance, all of his actions didn’t make sense, but that was where his power laid. Predicting anything from this madman was nearly impossible.

Soon, the madman clapped his hands. Everything had fallen into place, and the craziest of plans were put into action. All he had to do to win was throw himself and Arad into the maw of an even stronger creature.

The madman uttered some strange words, even Arad couldn’t understand what he was mumbling, but something else seem to still and react violently. Hell started to rumble and ground shook. Arad could hear the sound of millions of chains clanging as they crawled from the depth of hell, aiming at him and the madman.

As strange as it seems, hell hates smug sinners. It needs them to cry, to suffer, and curse the day they were born. It’ll lash out violently if taunted just right, and the madman had figured out how to do it after spending several thousand years imprisoned here. His mad plan was setting hell on himself and Arad, dooming them to centuries of pure suffering. But that’s fine to him, he has already spent several thousand years.

But to Arad, such a thing is a disaster. Or it should’ve been a disaster.

As the unbreakable chains of hell rushed out of the ground like starving snakes and wrapped themselves around the madman and all of Arad’s bodies. The madman laughed, “Welcome to hell!”

But his smile quickly died when one of the two dragons bit the chains and shattered them. The madman started with a pale and terrified face. Soon, the other dragon started shattering his chains, and so did all of Arad’s bodies.

****

Asmodeus sighed, looking at the chaos in hell’s capital. “He really thought hell could chain him. Well, that was a sane thought for a madman. But hell can’t chain him, or should I say doesn’t want to chain him.”

Alice, who was beside her, frowned, “That darkness woman is also breaking the chains.” She could see the black silhouette of a woman slipping through the chains and cracking them. “But… I guess he already retrieved her soul. Now she belongs to him.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t overestimate the capacity of his soul.”

****

As the hell’s chains shattered and all of Arad’s clones flew at the madman, the crazy fellow ran away. If there was someone who could break the chains of hell that imprisoned him for untold ages, he sure wasn’t capable of defeating such a monster.

“We need to run! We aren’t his…” The madman suddenly stopped, seeing a black elf that seemed to be made of darkness and ink rip the pain woman’s heart out… He couldn’t see it, but what Doma ripped was her soul, and she sent it straight into Arad’s soul.

Soon, a black silhouette of the pain woman appeared beside the elf. The madman paled, cursing the gods for letting such a horror live. “Just you wait! Once hell resurrects us, we’ll hunt you down.”

But at that moment, he hit something, Arad was already standing in his path like an unmovable wall. “Sorry, madman. I don’t play by hell’s rules.” He plunged his fist into the madman’s chest and grabbed his soul.

Hell, this horrid place of suffering, chains the prisoners by binding their souls to itself. When Arad takes someone’s soul, that soul is removed from Hell. They will never resurrect.

Soon, Arad was sitting alone on a large stone, staring at the three void creatures standing in front of him. Pain, Darkness, and Madness, former gods? Lesser gods, demi-gods? He didn’t know what they were, but he sure knows now has they are bound to his soul. Most of their memories, personalities, and powers were far too damaged by hell’s torment and their souls being damaged by his unskilled hand, but at least they could work as dolls.

Arad looked at Darkness, “Dance.”

She started dancing, awkwardly and with unbalanced moves. She didn’t look like she didn’t knew how to dance, but she couldn’t follow the orders well. With that, Arad understood that those Void creatures have a low intelligence that is enough to follow simple orders, but nothing else that is complicated.

So, I can control souls, to a degree? What does that have to do with the void? Arad doubted that this power belonged to all void dragons, but for some reason, it seemed awfully easy for him to use.

^The world was born from nothing, so the souls of living beings must’ve also come from nothing, from the void. Now they return to it.^ He smiled, “Did my family have a lineage that controlled souls? Maybe we dragons are the same as humans with bloodlines. I should ask Mom when I find her… or Grandpa? Would my grandparents even be alive? Why do I feel like finding them is easier than finding Mom?”

{Your grandma lives in Alina; Alcott’s mom is still alive and well there.} And there, Doma reminded him about why he felt like his grandparents were closer.

Arad stood, stretched his arms, and summoned a dark cloak. It was time for him to search for Mira’s father. Since they knew he was in this layer than he won’t hide forever. If he can’t find Mira’s father while knowing where he was, then he has no hope of finding his mother or her parents.

But as he walked for a while, Arad stopped and looked at his shadow. He then summoned one of the clones to look at himself. For a moment, he shivered. For some strange reason, while draped in the long black cloak and with his face not visible, he looked awfully similar to Nyar. Just instead of a yellow cloak, his cloak was jet black. They are even the same height, almost. Nyar was a bit taller.

But then Arad figured it out. Using gravity magic to float just one foot above he ground, he managed to glide forward. The same height, and could even move the same as Nyar.

The Emperor of Nothing moved through the world once more.