The dragon's harem

As Arad finally landed back inside his world, his incarnations had already returned to their duties. But the biggest part of his consciousness was now dedicated to this delicate task, to find out, and root out all doubt, about the new tree taking hold in his inner stomach.

He stood there, in the desolate land, staring at the charred great stump, and he could feel the encroaching death and painful doom. This sapling doesn’t have much power or life in it. It was already dying, and unlike Yggdrasil, it didn’t sound that arrogant.

She cannot take hold, but she also cannot fold. She was asking him, as this world’s lord, to make sure the story of her spirit at least doesn’t go untold. She didn’t want her moon elves to die in the cold, but couldn’t pay any gold.

Arad frowned as listening to the Qliphoth’s thoughts felt strange. He wasn’t talking with the original tree, but with this sapling specifically. As he understands it, she wasn’t exactly like Yggdrasil, which was a single tree with countless extensions; Qliphoth had multiple versions.

Yggdrasil had a single consciousness, and all of her saplings were just an extension of her. Qliphoth’s saplings weren’t extensions, but versions of the original tree at different times. This sapling was the great tree itself when she was 44733 years old.

Arad couldn’t fathom how the tree worked, but he at least understood that she was now dying. He had killed her with that nuclear blast, alongside the infection taking root under her bark. She had been deceived and controlled by that abomination for far too long, and she had already given up.

But what the tree didn’t give up on was the spirit she held, her guardian. That little fairy had suffered and been tortured by the abomination for untold eons, and had now been reduced to nothing but an empty shell of spirit magic, unable to even form a real body and instead using the tree’s bark as a vessel.

In human terms, she had suffered long enough to lose all of her emotions, will to live, and thinking mind. She had been fully turned into a mindless, obedient slave of the abomination. The tree couldn’t stand for that, and so, she was going to use the last remaining droplet of her sap to mend as much of that damage as possible, and at least try to save the spirit.

But there was a big problem now, the tree didn’t have a suitable trunk or the power to rebirth the spirit and give her life; she was hopeless on her own, and so, she was asking Arad for one last favor. She wanted him to go and see if Yggdrasil would take the spirit in and birth her instead of Qliphoth.

Yggdrasil and Qliphoth were on bad terms; it was so bad, in fact, that Yggdrasil might just laugh at Qliphoth’s sapling and watch its spirit die. That was the most likely result if she were the one to ask, and so, she wanted Arad to try asking in her place.

Arad had another suggestion in mind, and he looked at the tree with a smile. Why would they need to ask Yggdrasil when he got a world tree right here in his world? And Plum immediately appeared on his shoulder.

Plum was willing to take in the spirit from Qliphoth, but had two conditions. The first was that they could take all of Qliphoth’s timber to use, and the second was that Plum wouldn’t just take the spirit normally, but would give birth to her as a world tree of time.

Plum explained that she would take the spirit’s soul, all the time magic left in the Qliphoth’s sapling, get pregnant from Arad, and then give birth to the spirit with all of that combined. The spirit should be reborn quite quickly, but it would be the same kind of creature as Plum, a world tree that could take the form of a spirit.

Neither Arad nor Qliphoth understood what Plum’s plan was, but she explained it better. She alone couldn’t fully block the abomination and Qliphoth’s influence on Arad since she isn’t a time world tree, and thus, this spirit should fill that role.

That means that after the spirit would be born, Arad would have both a space and a time world tree bound to him, which would be almost unheard of. Arad was the first to even have a single world tree growing inside him, and now he would be the first to have two.

What they didn’t know was that this was just history repeating itself. AO had first created Yggdrasil and Qliphoth to stabilize the flow of space and time in the universe and create an environment suitable for life.

Qliphoth agreed to Plum’s terms, and soon Plum’s bark engulfed the burned stump, and she started absorbing all of the time magic left in its wood. After just a few seconds, Plum’s bark crumbled, and what was left was a titanic black tree stump that could be used for timber.

Plum looked at Arad with a smile, “Great, I got both the spirit’s soul and Qliphoth’s time magic. Now, just to have a little bit of fun.”

“Really? Is that it?” He shrugged, grabbed her, and walked away. Plum flew out of his hand and sat on his shoulder. “What should we name her?”

“Doesn’t she have a name? She isn’t going to lose all of her memories after this, would she?” He looked at Plum and got a smile. “She would probably lose a lot of memories from the time she was under the abomination’s control, but she should remember the past well. The only change that would happen to her is that her magic would now include time domination as well.”

“I see… but what about you then? Don’t you mind another world tree being here? Yggdrasil didn’t seem to like it that much.” He was right, two world trees can’t exist in the same world, and even if they did, one would always be extremely weakened and suppressed. In the Mortal World, the Qliphoth’s sapling only existed because of the abomination’s barrier that shielded them from the gods, which means that Qliphoth might have made a deal with it to steal some of Yggdrasil’s land, but got scammed.

“It’s a bit crammed, but since you’ll be consuming more worlds, it should be fine in the future.” She leaned on Arad’s head, “And even if we don’t get any more worlds, unlike Yggdrasil, I don’t mind sharing.”

She lifted her hands and clapped with a smile. When Arad blinked, he found himself inside a large wooden room, and the room was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The bed’s frame was made of growing vines, the walls weren’t walls, but a still living bark, and even the windows were covered with massive leaves.

“This room is inside my true body. Everything from walls to furniture is still alive and grown from my own wood.” She flew and sat on the bed, quickly growing to a humanoid size. “Should we get started? This time, it’s guaranteed.”