The dragon's harem

Arad’s current goal was to survive the clash, not win it. He wasn’t strong enough to face either Yog or Amaterasu, and since Cain could challenge them both, he was certain that he couldn’t face him either. But he was strong enough to understand their intentions from the pulses of magic surging through the air.

The assailant, Cain Lisworth, had a goal to capture Yog. His magic and expansion surrounded her magic and tried to seal her away. It was clear that he wanted to capture her alive. Arad could almost wish him luck since Yog isn’t the kind of woman to be captured so easily.

Yog’s intentions were similar to Cain’s, and probably even more sinister. She didn’t try to capture him directly, but instead wanted to infect him with her forbidden knowledge and control him that way. This entire clash was just a massive tug of war between Cain and Yog as each tried to dominate the other.

So, what was Amaterasu doing? She had decided to take a simple approach and blast the other two. She wasn’t going to argue or play their games. By the end of this clash, she wanted both Cain and Yog to be bedridden. She was like an angry father who had just come home and found his two children fighting, so he took his belt to their arses without asking any questions.

Arad didn’t know how long their clash would last, but he knew that if Amaterasu won, he would end up having to suffer an even more painful fate than when he got stuck in the heart of a dying star.

That is where he had to come up with a plan, and he had one. Amaterasu, Yog and Cain, all of them has to be somewhere in this place. Arad was certain that Amaterasu is at the centre of her big bang, and that Yog must be chilling by her titanic gate.

So, where is Cain? The root of all problems?

Arad had a pretty solid guess. Cain must be the titanic terror hiding at the bottom of this accursed sea.

Arad surfaced and floated above the waves as Poppy walked out of his titanic maw and stared at the sky with a terrified face. The very fabric of space was being torn apart, the sun burned as a flaming rose with several rings of radiating light flashing around it, and there was this titanic black gate that blocked half of the sky and radiated black smoke.

All around them, the raging sea boiled as waves as high as a hundred meters rose, lightning fell from the black clouds in the sky, and volcanoes burst so much lava from the depths of the sea that their flames reached the surface. This planet they were on was getting cooked by Amaterasu’s heat and poisoned by Yog’s gate, slowly crumbling as Cain’s magic barely kept it together.

“Is this the world’s end?” She gasped, and Arad replied with a deep, grumbling voice.

“Yes, it is this world’s end. If this planet explodes, then Amaterasu won. If it gets sucked into that massive gate, then it is Yog’s victory. And if the gate falls to the ground, then it is that bastard who achieved his goal.” He looked up and then asked Poppy to hide inside him again. She could use her blood to share his vision and watch the fight, as he won’t sit idle.

Poppy paled like snow. “You want to fight him? Even with all of your power, you aren’t his opponent.” She was right. Right now, Arad couldn’t face Cain and win. But he didn’t need to win this time. All that Arad needed to do was harass him enough that either Yog or Amaterasu would wins.

“I know, but he is at the bottom of the sea. We’ll pester him enough that one of the other two kills him. The problem is that when this world crumbles, we’ll be bathed by Amaterasu’s fire and Yog’s knowledge.”

“You’re really, going to fight that thing.” She was going to die either way, and so dying here with Arad’s foolish plan might be better than being his slave after. She hid inside Arad’s mouth, held to the back of his tongue, and suddenly got covered with several layers of barriers and magic as Arad made sure she is well protected.

From now onward, Arad had cast away his humanity and turned back into a violent, arrogant, and vicious dragon. The moment Poppy sensed Arad’s magic and aura changing, she immediately understood that the Arad she saw, the Arad his wives knew, and the Arad the world itself saw was nothing but a front, a mask to hide the bloodthirsty monster inside.

The moment Arad stopped caring about nature and let his radiation lose, everything around him in a four-thousand-kilometre radius instantly died of acute radiation sickness. Only a few of the biggest, strongest, and most durable horrors survived Arad’s unleashed nature, and of those few, Poppy could count on one hand the horrors who had the power and endurance to gain the privilege of approaching.

When the titanic, a sea serpent that was over four hundred meters long, approached with malice and hunger in its malevolent eyes, its body was already falling apart from Arad’s radiation. It gazed on Arad for a few seconds and then died. That monster that would’ve turned an entire ocean in the mortal world into a death zone, it couldn’t even stand in Arad’s presence for long.

Arad dove down, and his body periodically pulsed with radiation. He made his own air and crushed matter for energy; he used the water of the sea they swam through to fuel his power, and Poppy rapidly realized that Arad was as comfortable in the water as on land or in the air.

She watched in utter terror as monsters that would give her and even the gods nightmares for centuries fell before even approaching Arad. This was a world of nightmares, but compared to those horrors, Arad was an even nastier abomination that far surpassed the ugliest of nightmares.

Finally, someone who looked worthy approached. A titanic crustation that looked like a mixture between a sea horse and a lobster. Its entire body was covered in thick plating, and it looked completely unfazed by Arad’s radiation.

The creature’s eyes glared at Arad with rage and malice. Its home had been erased, all of its kin had been killed by Arad’s presence, and it came here to seek vengeance. Poppy didn’t understand the monster’s words, but she could tell from its eyes and the flow of its blood.

“By what right do you come here, ravage our territory, and kill what we hold dear?” The monster’s large claws clacked in rage, and Arad responded.

“I’ve warned everyone, didn’t I? The flashing light of my body, that isn’t just for looks. It is to tell everyone to fuck off before they get killed.” Arad started swimming toward the large monster. “So fuck off, before I send you to everyone that you lost.”

The monster growled and swam toward Arad, his claws flying forward at blinding speed. It wasn’t going to back off. Its massive claws grabbed Arad by the throat and snout and started exerting an unimaginable level of force. Poppy knew that a thousand of her couldn’t possibly scratch this monster, so how was Arad going to get out of its grasp?

Arad wrapped his front arms around the monster and squeezed. As if made of crumbling plaster, the monster’s carapace shattered, and its insides splashed out into the sea like a cloud of white goo. It ended that quickly, and Arad kept swimming downward, leaving the corpse behind.

“Arad… how durable are you?” Poppy asked, and he replied with a calm face. “I survived the explosion of a dying sun, while at its core.”

She giggled with a terrified face. “Really, and how much damage can you do? If you got serious?”

“I can destroy this entire planet and eat it whole in an hour.” His reply came so quickly that Poppy was certain he wasn’t lying. Probably, if Cain wasn’t protecting the planet, Arad would’ve already done that and blasted the entire thing.

“We’re there.” Arad spoke again, and Poppy looked forward, seeing thousands of titanic black tentacles rising from the depths of the sea like ancient trees. “It is time to break the balance.”