The dragon's harem

“I know she is up to something, but we can’t know if it’s malicious or not. Besides, with her power, she could’ve already killed us all if she wanted. There is nothing preventing her from getting what she wants, whenever she wants.” Arad sighed and Aether nodded.

“Yeah, we play ball, and twist to her whims. We gotta keep it simple, keep it nice. Kick up too much dust, and she’ll snap; kick too little, and she’ll get bored and leave. I hate it, having to plan around some crazed nutsack.” He leaned back, glared at Amaterasu for a second, and she looked back at him with a smug smile, causing him to flip her off. “Figures, she can see and hear me.”

Aether could see over a hundred futures of the next moments at once, and in all of them, Amaterasu never spoke back to him. No matter how much he taunted her, in all possible scenarios, she would just take it with a smile.

His father might be right; she might not have any malicious intent. But just as he thought that, he noticed that, Amaterasu turned toward him and Arad, then spoke. “One.”

While Arad only heard that one word, Aether heard over a hundred different words. Amaterasu was counting all of the parallel futures and timelines Aether was looking into, and she replied with a different number in each one, showing that she was conscious and well aware of all of her other versions.

“Father, she is a monster. Just now, she showed me that she is one with all of her other selves from the different timelines. The same property of time dragons, or to be exact, of an elder time dragon like mother.” It didn’t matter how Aether tried looking at her; Amaterasu was a cut above all other gods with so much power and authority that it seemed stupid.

“Gotta go; I can’t stand looking at her face. Father, don’t drop your guard.” As he was about to leave, Arad called him.

“Where are you going?”

“Where else? The city, I’ll fly around, watch, and maybe see something nice. I’m a bodyless soul, all I can do is observe, so that I’ll be doing.” He started floating away, then looked back at Arad. “I’ll hit the tavern, maybe the inn, and drop by Uncle Abel’s crib, if nothing else, he’ll have something worth observing.”

As Aether left, Arad sighed and sent Linda a call through magic. “Linda, just how old is Aether now?”

She replied almost immediately. “Counting all of the timelines he is living all at once, he’ll be over five thousand years old by now, even though it should only be around a hundred years if counting the time he spent in my womb learning.” She giggled. “What you see as a second, he can live it up to a hundred times.”

“I hope he is doing okay. He looked to be really stressed out to me. Can’t we just give him a doll to control or something like that? To use as a body until we manage to make him one.” Arad leaned on his arm, and Linda spoke back into his mind. “I’ll work on that. First, we test, try, and then hope it’ll help.”

“Hoo! She is finally here!” A voice called, and Arad turned his head, seeing a few noble ladies heading toward the door to greet Ganta, who had just walked into the ballroom fully washed and dressed as befitting a queen.

Ganta’s eyes opened wide, “Wait, you’re the guys from that village.” She smiled and approached them.

“Lady Ganta, it’s a pleasure to see you once again.” The woman, who looked in her late forties, gave Ganta a gentle bow and smiled, causing her to reel back.

“Ah! By the gods, I’m going to puke. Stop it, you know I hate those formalities.” She waved her hand. “You helped me when I was lost. I can’t have you bowing like that here.”

In the past, when Ganta left her clan for the first time to head to the university, she got lost on the way and eventually found herself in the small town ruled by this noble family. She was injured, starving, and at the end of her endurance, but they nursed and healed her back to full health. In exchange, she hunted the young red dragon that was forcing them to pay gold and sacrifices.

“Helped you? You’re the one who helped us. That young red dragon had killed tens of aspiring adventurers, and no one was willing to travel weeks for a deadly quest. If you didn’t show up, we might’ve ended fully under that dragon’s rule.” The noble woman shook her head. “We are the ones who should thank you.”

Ganta scratched the back of her head. “Listen, you fed and healed me, I killed the dragon. We became even. But then, you gave me gold and a map to reach the university, so you got one on me.” She smiled, “If you need anything, just let me know…” She then looked at Arad. “Still… I might’ve caused one or two problems, so I don’t know if I could be of help or not.”

Ganta’s clan, her entire kingdom, had been ravaged by a civil war. Now that she is becoming one of Arad’s queens, he is going to support her kingdom to rise from the ashes. She already cost him a mountain of gold, and wasn’t willing to keep costing him more. So, if those nobles needed a big help, she might not have the face to ask Arad for it.

The noble woman smiled. “Worry not, we aren’t here to ask you for any favors. In fact, we just learned that you are one of the queens. We came here today to witness the faces of all the queens and take their likeness with us.” The noble woman looked back at two of the maids standing around. “Didn’t they tell you? They are handing paintings of the queens and the emperor to all nobles.”

Handing paintings like that served one purpose. Travel in this world was expensive, exhausting, and took a long time. That is why those paintings would serve as a great way to show those who couldn’t come here today how the queens and the emperor look, so they won’t mistake them.

“I was away at my kingdom in the past few weeks, so I didn’t know. I bet they don’t even have paintings of me.” Ganta sighed. “I’m pretty sure they’ll drag me to tonight to get them painted.” She then frowned, and started closely at the woman’s face.

“Anyway, I can see it in your eyes that you’re thinking about something. You wanted to ask me for something, I can tell.” Ganta’s senses were strong, and seeing past the noble woman’s mask was reasonably easy.

The noble woman looked away. “Honestly, we didn’t come here wanting to ask you for anything. I told you, we didn’t even know you were one of the queens. But, we came here intending to appeal to the castle, hoping to get some roads built between our town and the other major cities.”

“Yeah…” Ganta face-palmed, “Your roads are pretty shit… if you can even call them roads, they aren’t even trails if I, out of all people, got lost trying to cross them.” She had experienced firsthand how bad the roads are. In some places, there isn’t even a clear road for days of travel, and getting lost is far too easy with how thick the forests are, without even counting the threat of monsters.

Ganta started sweating as she thought about her life so far. She tried to steal Aella’s husband, and now got to be with him, which made her feel bad for her friend, and then came with baggage: a whole crumbling country and a bill worth millions of gold coins, and now, those nobles want her to ask for more money to build roads…

“At this rate… they might just kick me out.” She sighed, and the noble lady gasped. “What?!”

“No one is getting kicked out.” Arad sighed as he appeared standing behind her. Ganta jumped and gasped in surprise, and the noble lady fell to her knees and knelt down. “Your highness!”

He looked at them, then started thinking. “Roberta just sent a servant to inform me of what happened with the dragon-eating apes. I never expected it to go so badly so quickly.” He looked at Ganta.

“The bill isn’t just in millions, but in billions. But we got a plan to reduce that cost.” He shifted his gaze to the noble lady. “For the roads, your town is closer to Beastlands than our major cities, so I’ll have Queen Hati’s people help. I’ll pay her for the resources here, and she’ll have her people work to build your roads. But their living expenses are on you, so shift the taxes coming to me to support their living and working conditions. For monsters, I’ll see if the guild can help, and if it isn’t possible, I’ll get a dragon there to do the job.”

He smiled. “I heard you had a bad experience with a dragon, as most people do, but I hope you won’t mind.”