The dragon's harem

Astrid shifted back to her humanoid form and stared at them. “Yes, I’m a Fenrir.”

“That can’t be…” Tristina gasped. “Fenrirs aren’t just rare, they are extinct. The only remaining one is the Queen of the Beastlands, Hati, and her daughters.”

Astrid smiled. “I’m one of those daughters, Astrid. My sister Frida is just over the hill. We’re here on a mission from Arad, your Emperor, to dig a river.” She looked at the Black Rider Shrimp. “He got close to the worksite, so I came to kill him so he won’t bother my sister while she works.”

The four paled. It took them a second to realize, but when they did, it hit them like a truck. This wasn’t any random woman, but one of the Queens. After a long moment, Lisa realized that Chester had just insulted one of the queens. She could have him executed for that.

“I’m really sorry for this fool’s behavior!” Lisa cried, and Astrid laughed. “It matters not. I didn’t think I would be meeting you here. Arad told us about you.”

She turned around and called her sister. Frida had already started digging the river with magic. She had to make it at least a hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep, lined with stones and clay so it can hold water pretty well.

When Astrid called her, she sighed. “What is it? If it’s just a random group of adventurers then send them back to the guild. Nina would deal with them.”

“It’s not just any group. It’s Nigel’s group, the one Arad told us about. Come and take a look, they’ve gotten really strong in the past months.”

Frida stopped what she was doing and sighed. They were at least a few hundred meters away from her, but that wasn’t a problem. She bent her knees, took a deep breath, and jumped. The ground beneath her feet cracked, and in a second, she was already tens of meters in the air, flying toward Astrid and Nigel’s group.

When she landed, Astrid rushed toward her with a smile. “If they are here, how about we just have them deal with the local monsters?”

Frida shook her head. “No, that’s your job, not theirs. You even stole their kill.” She looked at them and smiled.

“Sorry for my sister. She tends to punch first and think later. You can take that monster back to the guild, and I hope she didn’t damage its carcass too much. If she did, please inform me, and I’ll send compensation your way.” As Frida gave them a single bow, Nigel cried.

“No! We can’t do that.” He waved his hands, “It was our fault for getting in the way of royal business here, and Chester even insulted her. We’ll just take a proof of kill to the guild so they can know the Black Rider Shrimp is dead. She can keep it.”

“Absolutely not. Our job was to dig a river from the mountain’s base to the river southeast. Subjugating monsters isn’t a part of it. I only let Astrid go attack that thing because it was standing in the river’s way.” Frida pulled Astrid closer to her. “I already sent the guild a notice. Someone should arrive soon to help us coordinate better.”

“Already sent?” Tristina gasped, and before she could finish speaking, something heavy fell from the sky by their side, shattering the ground and sending a massive cloud of dust into the air. From that, Nina walked out. “Frida, what’s the problem?”

As they saw her, Nigel’s group cried and jumped back. Last time they made her angry, Nigel was punched out of the guild and into a dumpster, Tristina was hanged from the ceiling, Lisa had her head punched so hard that it was buried in the wooden floor, and poor Chester was left with a broken leg in the horses’ dung deposited by the guild’s stables.

“We’re here by Arad’s command; you should know about the river. Those guys had a quest to kill a roach monster, and Astrid killed it, because it was in the way of our work.” As Frida explained, Nina took a few seconds to process what happened, think of a solution, and speak out.

“So? Where is the problem if its dead?” Nina couldn’t understand where the problem was, so Frida had to explain to her.

“The monster was bitten in half by Astrid. Nigel’s group might be one thing, but another group was looking for something specific; she might end up ruining their hunt. I want you to find, inform, and get us a good understanding of all the monsters and adventurers operating in the area.”

Frida scratched the back of her head. “Astrid and I never went into hunts back home alone, but I at least know that you don’t mess with someone else’s hunt. That’s bad manners, and it could cause a lot of conflict. Let’s say Nigel wanted to use that thing’s chitin as armor? Astrid already ruined most of it.”

“I got it.” Nina nodded. “You four, get the kill proof back to the guild, and I’ll have the carcass delivered to you later. Now, I’ll go and find all nearby adventurers and warn them.”

As Nina jumped away and left everyone in her dust, Nigel sighed. “How come that even becoming A-rankers, we still can’t understand why some people are so powerful?”

Frida stared at him. “Do you realize how stupid you’re sounding? In just a few months, you lot became A-rankers. Your growth speed already surpassed that of regular adventurers, so you should stop worrying about catching up to monsters. I don’t mean it as an insult, but you’ll never match those who are built differently.”

Frida was right. Nigel started as a weak adventurer, one too poor to afford a sword, so he used a stick, roamed the edges of the forest, and smacked weak monsters, collected their hide, and sold it. Slowly, his friends joined in on the fun, and before they knew it, they were already registering at the guild.

Then one day, they met a strange guy, a clueless but powerful young man called Arad, who easily burned an entire group of goblins like they were nothing. Even though he looked human, he had no human emotions in his sharp and purple glowing eyes.

People usually feel fear; they understand that monsters are a threat. Even a regular man would feel something when they are bout to fight a small wild dog. But Arad showed none of those emotions; he killed those goblins as if it were a matter of fact, a normal thing he did. He showed no fear, hesitation, or regard for his own safety.

It was then that Nigel got a glimpse of the key to strength, and it wasn’t carelessness. As long as he thought of the monsters as a danger, he would never grow stronger than them. To become truly powerful, he had to become the danger, the monster to monsters.

Since that day, he trained and fought monsters daily. Not like an adventurer, but like a wild beast. He had to change his thinking from how to survive to how to kill. From how I could survive this fight with the least damage to how I could combine all of my skills and powers to cause as much bloodshed as possible.

His shield wasn’t there for defense; it was to bash and crack bones. His sword wasn’t there to slash, but to rip and tear. Going for a clean kill was never a good strategy. Instead of aiming for a heart shot or a decapitation, Nigel changed his strategy to aim at maiming his target first to make them easier to kill.

When facing a blood elephant, the common strategy for adventurers is to stay back and take it down with arrows, javelins, or use magic. But Nigel chose to fight like Arad; he rushed in headfirst, dodged the monster’s stomp, and slashed its ankles with his sword, then stabbed it in the eye when it fell down. He didn’t care who trained him as long as he learned something, and that’s what he did most of the time.

His friends also followed suit. Tristina stopped caring about morals, careful planning, and mana consumption, and started fighting as Merlin did in the past. Flames blazing and lightning roaring, if anything shows in her field of vision, she’ll blast it with the strongest spell she has, and then finish it with another blast.

One day, Tristina faced a basilisk that could turn people into stone, so she instantly blasted it with the biggest, fattest, and loudest lightning boom she could muster, blinding, searing, and tearing its eyes out. She ended up having her hand turned into stone, but that was a good chance for her to experiment with magic a bit. For that, she studied for a few days under Merlin in her lab.

Lisa, on the other hand, was a cleric, and her main job was healing, not fighting or being violent, so she did just that. She went on and joined Eris’s funeral parlor, where she helped embalm, dissect, and preserve corpses for funerals. Thanks to that, her knowledge about bodies and their composition skyrocketed and allowed her to far surpass regular healers who barely got a chance to test their power. In fact, she was later kicked out of the parlor when someone found her trying to heal a corpse back to life.

Chester didn’t need much to change about him. He was already near perfect. Ruthless, cold, and calculating when it came to killing things. His main aim was sneaking and silent killing, a true assassin, and for that, he went on and mastered a few basic shadow spells, and even learned invisibility, which he could use for a few seconds. But his greatest achievement must be bagging a nun cleric. Even though he and Lisa had a lot of fun, she didn’t lose her power, and in fact, she seems to have been blessed by Amaterasu and granted power over rot.

They had grown really quickly ever since they met Arad, and today, after meeting Astrid and Frida in the hills, they were directed to meet Arad once more in the castle.