The dragon's harem

As graceful as an archon could be, this one couldn’t hold back while facing Arad, a mere mortal. He had proved himself to be a monster and had hit so hard that it was probably only second to Kali smacking her in the past.

Looking at his massive and muscular body, she could only compare his physique to the ancient gods and archangels. People like Adam, the father of humanity. Lucifer, the first Angel. Asgorath, the First Dragon God. Asura, the wrathful destroyer, and Kali’s father. The fact that she could only compare him to those absolute legends made her fully aware that Kali had locked in a rare one.

She shouldn’t hold back and honor this man, she’ll show him what archons are really capable of, and so, she had to apologize to him and this entire planet they were training on. She gave Arad a simple bow.

“Lord Arad, I have to apologize. I, an archon, shall not hold back against you, a mortal. I know this is unfair, but I cannot honor your power any other way.” Her eyes burned with a pale pink radiance, and her body started shimmering.

Arad himself could sense a huge shift in her; she was done holding back and was going to face him in her true form. She wasn’t coming at him for mere training, but was going to fully commit to killing him with a single blow.

“Eris would come at me with the intent to kill, so don’t hold back.” Arad stood in his place and stared at her with a passive face. “This won’t be the first time I faced death, so show me the upper limits of what you can do.”

The archon took a deep breath, and her entire body started vibrating at a terrifying frequency. Then, the sky itself turned black, lightning started falling from the clouds, and a titanic storm formed above in the sky. Arad could tell at a glance that the body standing in front of him was now nothing more than a tool, a weapon, and that the archon’s true body hid somewhere above the dark clouds, hidden from sight.

[I AM GABRIELLA, SERVANT OF DESTRUCTION AND DESCENDANT OF MY ANCESTOR GABRIEL. I WHO WIELD HIS POWER IN THE CURRENT DAY SHALL USE MY ALL TO SHOW YOU RESPECT, ARAD ORION]

The storm started swirling above Gabriella’s head, and the other archons screamed at her to stop. “Are you trying to erase the entire planet?” But Kali stopped them. “Let her go all out for once. I’ll get in the way of anything that goes wrong. Besides, Eris should be able to output more power than this.”

Gabriella’s true body didn’t have a physical form; she didn’t have eyes, flesh, nor bones or magic. She was just a titanic existence of pure kinetic energy, innate vibrations in the fabric of the universe that were so powerful that they could rip atoms apart.

Arad had never once seen such a creature. Even Diana had a physical form that was a massive cloud of pure, destructive, and chaotic elemental energy. He wanted to take her hit with his void form, but that might be cheating. She took his punch with her physical body after all, so he won’t pull that out.

Looking at the raging storm in the sky, Arad smiled. “Come at me.”

At one second, the storm was raging, and in the next, Gabriella descended from above the heavens, and any atom that came into contact with her disintegrated into pure energy, getting shredded by the intense vibrations. The entire planet didn’t just get flattened or destroyed it got erased, melted into a pot of pure energy.

Kali took the other archons away, and in the middle of it all, Gabriella’s consciousness looked at what was once a planet, now having turned into a melting ball of plasma and pure energy. Arad should be dead, but he’ll be fine; his soul will land in Kali’s heaven and get resurrected with ease.

This should show him the ceiling of archons and that gods are above them in power. He won’t ever again dare take a direct hit from them, and that should save his life in the future. If he is ever to face an archon or another god, he should run away and call Kali or her archon to save him.

But then, a rumbling voice boomed through the blindingly white expanse of boiling energy.

[As expected, my body got erased completely alongside the planet.]

That was Arad’s voice, but it sounded strange, echoing as if it were coming from everywhere.

[But I have recently experienced worse, and only one of my bodies got destroyed.]

Darkness appeared in the middle of the blinding white expanse, and Gabriella knew that it was Arad; he was still alive out there. But what scared her more was that his voice rang in her head like that of a god, not resembling mortals in any way.

[You’re alive?!]

[Of course. But my body got destroyed, so you won the bet.]

Arad replied as the darkness rapidly expanded, and it was only then that Gabriella realized that it wasn’t just expanding, but consuming the energy and plasma left by the destroyed planet.

“Let’s go to another training world; this one would need time to be fixed.” Kali appeared between them and quickly sucked them both into another world that was under her dominion. Before the two could know it, they were both standing once more on solid ground, this time on a regular rocky planet.

Gabriella looked around her, then turned toward Arad. “How did you survive?”

“I told you, my physical body got destroyed, but your vibrations cannot harm void; that’s nothing.” He smiled, resting his fists on his hips. “So, I just regenerated my whole body. I’m not strange to losing an incarnation or two. To fully kill me, you have to destroy them all.”

To kill Arad, one must fully destroy all of his incarnations at the same time to prevent him from regenerating, and that could be done in two ways. One is to hunt them all and find a way to coordinate attacks to kill them all at once. The other way is to force Arad to use so much power that he has to summon them all.

“Gabriella, you can rest. Next, you go after him.” She pointed at another archon, and got a worried smile back.

“Do I have to? He is exhausted after withstanding Gabriella’s attack; we should let him rest a bit.” She spoke, and Kali stared at her with a smile. “If you think this Arad is exhausted, you must not know him. He can still fight, and fight like a monster at that. I say Gabriella is far more exhausted and weakened after that attack than he is.”

Kali was right. While Arad only had to regenerate a humanoid body with his vampiric blood, Gabriella had wasted enough energy to vaporize a planet. It was clear who exhausted themselves more, and Arad was indeed far better.

The archon was sweating; she didn’t want to fight Arad anymore, especially after seeing what he could do and survive. Clearly, something was wrong, and Arad was far stronger than he looked.

“How about it? Instead of fighting, I’ll teach you a strategy to use divine magic better, and counter it.” She approached Arad with a smile. “Care to learn a special technique?”

Arad smiled. “Why not? A skill might be far better than any training I do now. Show me what you got.”

She expanded her wings and pointed at her pale-white feathers. “Divine magic is a pure form of energy, and thus, even when used, it still can be reused. Mana can also be reused, and I’m sure you know how to do that for efficiency.”

“I already know that, and I counter divine magic with curses. A trick that Doma taught me.” Arad replied, and the archon shook her head with a grin. “Well, that works, but it consumes as much cursed mana to counter.”

She cut her forearm and then showered it with divine magic from her wings. “You attempt to change the properties of divine magic into healing or buffs. If you’re fighting a goddess, you can try and manipulate her attacks so they heal and buff you instead.”

“You can do that?” Arad never knew that manipulating other people’s divine magic was possible, but an archon was saying it, so it was possible.

“Well, it depends on the source of that divine magic. You can’t manipulate divine magic from a god stronger than yours. For example, I can only manipulate divine magic from gods weaker than Kali.” She threw a glance at Kali and then turned back to Arad. “Out of ten, how much do you think you’re dominating Eris, in terms of who has power over the other?”

“Eight out of ten for my favor.” Arad replied, and Kali nodded in the back. “That is true for Eris, she can be quite willful.”

The archon started sweating. “Between you and Kali?”

“Ten out of ten in her favor.” Arad replied, and Kali laughed in the back.

“As expected,” The archon smiled, but almost lost her mind when Kali talked behind her. “He is joking. Ten out of ten, he is the dominant one. I chose to be this submissive.”

The archon lifted her wing and released a wave of divine magic. “Stop joking, you’re confusing me. Lord Arad, here you go. Try to take control of this divine magic and turn it into healing; currently, it’s a smite.”