The dragon's harem

A young wizard who looked no older than twenty ran across the open fields. His face was pale, drenched in sweat, and most of his hair was burned to a crisp. Just a few meters behind him, a bright crimson explosion bloomed like a rose and was followed by a deafening shockwave that sent everything flying.

The young wizard was violently thrown to the ground, and he rolled forward with a pained cry. “Damnation!”

With one hand, he hit the ground, and it split apart. The crack wasn’t massive, but it was a big enough trench for him to roll into and catch his breath.

[Shape Earth]

“Damn it all to hell! This war…” He gasped for air, and blood gushed out of his shoulder where he had been stabbed. He had a gaping wound on his upper right shoulder, shattered ribs, internal bleeding, a burst eardrum, burns, and an acute case of mana deficiency.

Gritting his teeth in anger, he looked at his bloodied hand and clenched a fist. In the distance, he could hear someone yelling.

“By the sixth circle of hell! By the falling stars and roaring clouds. I call forth a shattering hellish roar!” The chant was followed by an ear-shattering thunderclap and a cacophony of agonized screams, the sound of flesh tearing apart, and that of bones shattering like candy.

A burned and severed hand found its way to the trench and fell inside, landing right beside the young wizard, and it was still twitching.

A small war had just broken out outside the capital, where over fifty wizards were fighting among each other. The young wizards didn’t get a chance to count how many of them were there, but he had at least seen twenty red wizards.

He wasn’t built for this; he had just become an adventurer last year to make some quick money and get a woman or two… but now he had ended up roped in this whole mess. He had just wanted to gain experience, grow a bit stronger, and then leave for the wizard’s tower for formal training, but here is where he ended up.

“If you stay down, you’ll die.” A deep and gentle voice called from his side, and when the young wizard looked, a three-meter-tall giantess was squatting by his side, glaring at him with burning purple eyes.

“Who are…” But before he could finish asking, the entire trench that he had made exploded into pieces, leaving a massive hole in the ground. From the sky, a small meteor the size of an apple had hit, and it caused far more damage than any regular fireball could.

The young wizard growled in pain as his vision blurred for a second. He did feel the impact; he felt his bones cracking, but… somewhat, he was levitating. No, someone was carrying him. He looked around and quickly found out that the giant woman from earlier was carrying him by the cloak’s collar.

“There you are! The tall one!” A wizard screamed in the distance, and his eyes were fixed on Arad. “That size, that body, that powerful magic, you must be extremely blessed!” The wizard exclaimed as he lifted his staff up and shouted.

“That power shall be mine! Surrender, and I’ll let that kid live!” He tapped the bottom of his staff on the ground, and a massive earthquake followed by hundreds of dirt hands flew toward Arad and the young wizard.

“Earthen Hands! And this many? I’ve never seen such a thing in my life!” The young wizard cried with a terrified face. Earthen Hands was a spell that would make a giant hand out of dirt and stones, which could be used to move things, block attacks, or even punch. Each hand was massive and powerful enough to carry a whole cow, so one smack could kill a man.

Arad threw the wizard up with a simple and swift move, then started dodging the tens of hands with horrifying grace for his size. His moves weren’t agile, but they were sharp, fast, and powerful. That woman wasn’t graceful… her moves were those of a warrior.

As Arad dodged the hands, most of them ended up hitting each other and getting destroyed. The last of them flew right at Arad’s face, and he stopped it with a single palm, not even worth a sweat. As the young wizard landed on Arad’s shoulder and puked a mouthful of blood as the impact pushed one of his shattered ribs into his lungs, the wizard laughed.

“You’ve fallen for it!” He clapped his hands together.

[Elemental Expansion: Dark Domain of the Blazing Flames]

Shadows burst from beneath the wizard’s feet, rushed toward Arad, and engulfed him and the young wizard, sending the two of them to be on the calm surface of a silent black sea. As the wizard’s laughter echoed through the darkness, only Arad’s purple eyes cast a light in the lightless expansion at the start.

[Fireball] To a wizard, an elemental expansion was an area effect spell similar to sanctuary that expands and allows them to cast spells faster, and from anywhere within the expansion instead of their hands or arcane focus.

This function of elemental expansion was mostly useless when fighting apocalyptic threats since their defenses and speed allowed them to shrug off most basic spells, but in the real world, in the realm of what most wizards and adventurers face, it was an advanced technique only mastered by a few and one that guaranteed a win against even the deadliest of monsters.

Arad and the young wizard were surrounded by tens of massive fireballs, all rushing at them at the same time from every direction possible. Dodging at regular speed was impossible, and if Arad wanted to go faster, he would rip the wizard’s organs out of his body from the sheer acceleration.

Arad could teleport out of the way, but that won’t solve the problem, and they would stay in the wizard’s expansion, so he had to break it.

The wizard could see a bright purple light flashing where Arad was; the entire expansion shuddered for just a fraction of a second. He could feel his magic getting stretched and ripped apart, something from the outside of the expansion, from within it, from the past and future, all collided down on his body.

The wizard’s hands stretched in front of him in the blink of an eye, extending toward Arad as his entire body followed after as if he was getting sucked into a black hole. But instead of getting ground to dust, he found himself standing an inch away from the towering Arad, getting glared down at by his purple eyes. Sadly, the wizard was already blind as his brain couldn’t fathom what stood in front of him.

Space was ripped apart and was digested, time stopped making any sense, and the fireballs that still hung in the air were torn to pieces and extinguished like candles. The darkness exploded, the ground beneath them shattered into splinters, and the air itself was set ablaze, all of which was followed by a thundering implosion.

The wizard’s dismembered body was turned into mush and splattered across the entire battlefield, which now lay silent in the wake of the echoing blast of what Arad just did. All of the fighting stopped, and the wizards, red, grey, and blue alike, stared in Arad’s direction, terrified.

They had just heard a wizard casting an elemental expansion to kill someone, but to think that wizard wasn’t just dead, but had his expansion violently shattered like that… that woman…

“Go kill each other somewhere else.” They were trashing the fields, which Arad had spent a lot of money on to feed the people of the capital in the next harvest.

At that moment, the most horrifying thing happened. All of the red wizards’ souls were ripped out of their bodies, leaving them as just breathing corpses. The souls found themselves not going to hell or heaven, but instead, getting funneled into the jaws of something far darker.

There were red wizards, who had a red aura. There were also grey and blue ones… but this woman standing there was different than all of them. Looking at her, the wizards didn’t see any aura, just pure, unforgiving darkness. What was worse, it wasn’t just around her body; the entire region, thousands of kilometers, was drowning in the black, thick, tar-like magic of that unknown woman, to the point that any wizard who dared sense her power either died outright or fell into a coma for weeks.

“Shit! What was that!” A young kid jumped down and landed beside the terrifying woman. “Look, you destroyed the entire place! Is Loci all right? Hold back a bit!” He shouted at the woman, and she looked at him with a confused face.

“Loci are fine, this dirt was created by magic… and… I just stopped the fight here, so they’ll leave the people’s food alone.” Arad replied, and Agnar sighed. “Just, I told you to only restrain people. You didn’t need to blast the entire place… and what did you do to those wizards? They are dead!”

He rubbed his face and pointed at the terrified young wizard Arad still carried. “Also, put the sorry bastard down! Let’s go back and plan for the next move.”

Arad just dropped the wizard down, and turned to follow Agnar. It was then when the wizard cried. “Wait! Who is she?!”

Agnar paused, looked back, and replied. “My Mother-in-law.”