The dragon's harem

After getting out of the bath, Arad headed with Kory directly toward the new church inside the private quarter, which was now standing right behind the maids’ living quarters. From the hallways, it looked like a gold-decorated great door of dark oak, but anyone with a sense of magic could sense the burning divine magic seeming from it.

But something was off, and Arad noticed instantly and without fail. The door didn’t have Amaterasu’s holy symbol, which was a burning sun. Instead, it was decorated with golden rivets, thousands of them all sparkling like stars on the dark wood.

This wasn’t a church of the sun, but a church of the stars, encompassing Amaterasu’s true power, not just what the people of the mortal world believe in. That was right, the people of the mortal world only see Amaterasu as the goddess of the sun, and most of them don’t even know that the stars are suns under her command.

But from the look of it, those stationed in this church should know and fully understand Amaterasu’s power, so they couldn’t be any regular nuns and clerics. Imagine living your entire life, not fully grasping the power of the sun, then suddenly learning that the billions of stars in the sky are all suns, and hold far more power than your mind can even imagine.

It also put in perspective the difference in power between Eris and Amaterasu.

“Who are inside?” Arad asked, and Kory looked at him with a smile. “Shrine maidens, while we call it a church, Amaterasu said it is more like a shrine.”

As Arad pushed the door open and looked inside, he found a whole mountain waiting for him on the other side. The mountain existed in its own pocket dimension, powered by Amaterasu’s power and maintained by Merlin’s labyrinth magic.

Arad looked at the green mountain, the near-endless stairs going to the peak, and the large shrine standing at the summit, which looked more like an oversized pagoda than a regular shrine. Looking closer, Arad realized it was just several shrines stacked over each other, with each one being dedicated to a separate goddess.

The base floor was dedicated to Cerilla, the one above to Mira, then Eris, and lastly Amaterasu’s shrine that stood at the top with a direct ray of light coming down from the starry sky to fuel the entire place with divine magic. That order seemed to allow Arad’s wives to draw power from Amaterasu in case they needed divine magic, but there were several filters in place to make sure no one get harmed.

The divine magic falls from the stars, gets pooled in Amaterasu’s shrine, then drips down to Eris’s shrine, where it is diluted and controlled, then from there it could flow down to Mira, then Cerilla, who is the weakest of them now.

“So, she didn’t just put this here without giving it a use.” Arad smiled, and Kory sighed. “Don’t get me started. Lady Isdis can’t trust her, neither could I.”

The two walked toward the mountain, reached the stairs, and slowly started climbing them, which reminded Arad of Sylph’s heaven. At least he won’t get shot at here.

As the two started climbing the stairs, Kory quickly felt her body growing heavier with each step, and soon, she could barely stand, with sweat rushing down her whole body. They were just fifty steps in, and there were thousands of steps waiting.

“Arad, I can’t keep going.” She called to him, and Arad looked back. He didn’t feel any pressure at all, or… There was some pressure he could feel, but to him, it was too small to bother him.

“I see, the divine magic gets denser the higher we climb, and you can’t endure it.” Arad walked down the stairs, picked Kory in his arms, and started climbing with her. The entire mountain had seven thousand steps, and Arad only started feeling the pressure hurting him when he walked past the sixth thousand step.

His body felt heavy, his muscles burned, his bones cracked, and his soul suffocated under the starlight, but for some reason, he was still able to push forward. Kory, who he carried in his arms, had long since retreated to his stomach, and he was now alone, pushing through the divine barrier protecting the holy mountain.

When Arad finally reached the peak and looked around, he saw Neptune staring at him with a pale face as she pissed herself in fear. The barrier around the mountain was built by Amaterasu to burn anything, even the gods, and prevent their gazes and powers from reaching the pagoda. The crushing weight and fire were enough to kill even archons, so how in the nine hells did this man manage to climb the stairs without any protective talismans?

Arad looked at her for a second and then sighed. “Are you serious… well, just swipe it away. It’s holy water after all; archons are similar to the gods who leave no waste.”

It was then that one of the shrine maidens, who looked far more terrified than Neptune, approached. “Lord Arad, did you climb the stairs without a protective talisman?”

“Yeah, I would’ve died if I didn’t suck all of that divine magic into my stomach.” Inside his stomach, Arad now had a massive lake of liquified divine magic. He was running out of that divine lake he got from Vorvadoss’s prison, but now his stocks had filled once more.

The shrine maiden rushed toward him and handed him a talisman, “Look, one like this. Take it, and you’ll feel better.” As Arad touched the talisman, the divine magic stopped trying to crush him, and he could finally stretch his back.

“Where should have I got that?” He asked, and Neptune approached him. “Did you inform Amaterasu that the shrine was fully built by Merlin? She should’ve sent the talisman from the church.” She then scratched her head, “No, she should’ve been able to leave some beforehand…”

Arad shrugged, “I bet this was another of her games. Besides, I was informed first, and this is her shrine, so she should know.”

Arad was right, Amaterasu knew and didn’t send the talismans, to either test him, or show the angel here something terrifying. With how Neptune reacted to Arad walking through the barrier, the latter was the most likely option.

Neptune knew that divine spells didn’t work on Arad and Gojo, but for Arad to just stroll into a divine mountain protected by Amaterasu’s barriers like this was absurd. Does this mean that he could break into Amaterasu’s real heaven? Probably not, but just doing this here should be enough to make Amaterasu’s archons sweating buckets if he showed up at the door.

She sighed, shook her head, with a flick of her fingers, cleaned her whole body and dried her clothes. “Well, for now. Welcome to the shrine of the stars.”