The dragon's harem

Facing a dying star, Arad smiled from ear to ear as his scales were seared by the unimaginable divine heat and roiling plasma. In less than a second, everything happened, causing a super nova that shone brighter than Arad’s entire arsenal of [Ho-White Nova]s.

For a fraction of a second, Eris used her divine authority over the star to halt the nuclear fusion taking place inside the core, causing a deadly imbalance in the star’s structure.

What would’ve usually happened in a regular star was as follows. The core’s nuclear fusion is what generates enough pressure for the sun to exist and endure its own weight, but when that halts, the gravity wins, and the shell collapses inward in less than a second, bounces back on the solid core, and then explodes into a radiant supernova.

But what Eris had to do now was to crush the core into pure energy at the right moment between halting nuclear fusion and before the shells crushed it into a singularity. She had to race against gravity, and if she failed to crush the core in time or did it too quickly, she would fail.

The moment the nuclear fusion halted, Eris unleashed her divine power to crush the core back into pure energy. She had the power, ability, and authority to do it, so it was possible, but… she never knew if she could actually do it or not; she never tried such a thing before.

Crushing something the size of an apple was easy for her, the same way Arad could do it, but the sun’s core was utterly massive. It was like asking a woman if she could bake bread, and when she says yes, you ask her to cook a loaf the size of a mountain.

Even if she could do it, that didn’t mean she could pull it off at such a massive scale.

Eris’s divine magic had already engulfed the core when she halted nuclear fusion, so it reacted instantly to her command to be crushed and pulverized into pure energy. But it wasn’t that easy.

As if she suddenly bit a bone while eating and cracked her tooth, she felt her divine portfolio crack the moment the stress of the entire core fell upon her. That thing was massive, hard, and absolutely resistant to her influence.

Eris felt like she was in the middle of a collapsing room, being asked to crush a stone with her teeth to survive, and one of her teeth had just shattered without the stone cracking. The situation was bad, very bad, and she had already wasted so much energy on her first attempt.

She could try again, and she might even make it before the star’s shell fully collapses on her and the core. Right now, her divine essence engulfed the star’s core, so it was as if her body engulfed the whole thing; so, failure would mean death, being maimed for years in the best case.

Risk was fine, she faced as much danger to her life in the past, so she won’t hold back. This is for Mira’s son, for her future son, and for all of Arad’s children. She must succeed.

Eris charged her divine magic once more and glared at the collapsing shell of the star. A fraction of a second had passed, such a small and insignificant time, it wasn’t even worth mentioning, but in this situation, it was like a tense century.

She will do it, and won’t skimp, not even a single drop of her divine magic shall be left unused. Eris’s entire divine power, will, and portfolio all gathered at her as she went at the core at full force, using all of her godly powers to crush it.

But at that moment, Arad appeared beside the core, his hand touching her divine magic.

In that collapsing room, where Eris was once alone, now Arad stood by her side. He only had one order for her, and it was to retreat. She can’t do it in time, and the risk is just too great. If she remains here and fails, she would end up maimed for years, and Arad won’t let that happen he won’t even take the risk.

The moment Arad showed up, Eris knew that he wasn’t asking her to get out; it was an order. He wasn’t giving her a choice or a chance to argue; they just didn’t have the time for that. He had decided that she couldn’t do it, and that it was too risky, and was here to get her out, whether she liked it or not.

But it wasn’t that easy for her, since she had already committed such power to the cause, and couldn’t just turn around and leave. She was like a ship that had already accelerated to its top speed, and now can’t turn away and evade crashing into a glacier.

And it was at that time that she felt it again, true fear. Not because she could die or get harmed by the collapsing shell, but because at the moment that she didn’t comply with Arad’s command, she knew that what was coming wasn’t going to be gentle at all.

As the ship neared the glacier, a titanic whale burst from the water and smacked it aside with its head, using just enough force to change its direction without fully destroying the ship’s hull.

In that collapsing room, Arad had slapped Eris hard enough to send her flying through the wall and out of the room, violently getting her out of harm’s way. In reality, Arad grabbed the core, sank his fingers into the boiling plasma that made up Eris’s divine body, and then teleported it away using the authority of his stomach and void.

Eris was his wife, and her will didn’t resist him.

She was a goddess with a heaven inside him, so her portfolio obediently submitted under Arad’s hands.

Her vampiric blood couldn’t even resist; she was beneath Arad, and he could control her as a slave if he wanted, so that didn’t get in his way either.

Eris’s entire being got flung away like a doll, and even Amaterasu was surprised by how Arad had just violently dominated a goddess as a mortal. A mortal wasn’t supposed to be able to do that; becoming a divine being granted the authority and power over everything else.

Even if Arad was ten times stronger, he shouldn’t have been able to do that. The portfolio of murder should’ve offered the most resistance, but that thing spread its legs to Arad in a heartbeat, which was expected.

This was the reason why the gods couldn’t get on Arad’s bad side. The universe answers to AO’s will, and theirs would just get dominated if they came to a direct clash of wills.

Eris was now outside the star, far away and embraced in the soothing cold of Arad’s void. But, where was he? Where is Arad now? That was the question that made Eris cry and Amaterasu stand in her bed with sweat dripping across her whole body.

He was at the core of the collapsing star and was about to get crushed by it. The sun is under Eris’s authority, so Amaterasu would have to wrestle control out first and then send an order to stabilize it, which would take longer than it would take the sun to explode with Arad’s at its center and kill him.

Eris should be able to save him, but not in her current condition. It all relied on Amaterasu’s quick reaction and… Something was off; the star was still collapsing instead of exploding.

All of Arad’s incarnations disappeared at the same time, leaving one at the heart of the star.