The dragon's harem

Arad growled as he fell to his knees, feeling a sharp pain crackling through his entire body as if his very bones were shattering. This pain, he had felt it before. The pain of one of his souls shattering to pieces, and as he looked inside, it was indeed his weakest soul, the human one that was about to burst.

The shadows around him crumbled as Arlo’s body exploded everywhere, and with his human soul incapacitated, there was nothing left to regulate Arad’s power.

A few moments ago, a bit before the coming disaster, everyone else was still fighting. Samantha had just shot down another one of Altair’s bullets and was already terrified as she noticed that Altair was curving her bullets as well, allowing her to shoot behind cover. It didn’t make sense; Samantha had needed years of training and high-tech bullets to achieve that, and she was certain that this world lacked the technology.

When Samantha looked over the snowy hills, she could spot Altair once more, seeing her running at blinding speed with bare feet over the glaciers above the horizon. ”Hunting a galactic beast on my own? And with such limited weaponry... it’s just impossible.”

She then smiled, ”So... this is what Arlo meant. A death battle.” She accelerated even further and suddenly changed her direction to run straight toward Altair. There was no more hesitation or fear in her eyes; she already knew this was her end, and so... she could take as much risk as she wanted if the result would never change.

Altair could feel the change in Samantha’s mentality as her entire fighting style had changed. From simply shooting at each other from afar, Samantha seems to be coming in for a direct shootout. ”Fine, I’ll play along.”

Altair stopped running and turned toward Samantha, aiming directly at her face. ”BANG!” As Altair fired a bullet, aiming right between Samantha’s eyes, she saw something scary. This orcish woman was looking directly at the barrel with a grin on her face.

With an electric crackle, Samantha pulled the spare battery of her large sniper rifle and swung it. This battery wasn’t a simple tool to hold the electricity feeding the rifle’s rails, but it was also the secondary weapon for snipers like her. A desperate, last measure in case they ran out of ammo and were forced to fight up close.

A blade of pure light and plasma roared from the batterie, and with a single swing, Samantha slashed Altair’s bullet down. That was a super-heated plasma sword, and it is designed to cut through reinforced alloy plates like an orbital laser through butter. It was powered by four compact nuclear fusion reactors stacked one above the other like in a cylinder.

It had taken the orcs two centuries to figure out fusion, and then another thousand years to refine it to a small, portable size. Their fusion reactors had gone from being several tens of meters wide to being able to fit in the palm of their hands. Some wanted to name them the arc reactors since they spin the fusion plasma in circles, but in the end, they ended up naming them after their entire race, and there the Orc Reactors had come to be.

Four Orc reactors, each just a few centimetres wide, were stacked in a cylinder, making them the new batteries of the future. Just one cell would be able to power Samantha’s rifle for years, and that is why they were issued on this expedition, since they were expected to operate remotely for a while.

She had two cylinders, one of which was still in her rifle, and the spare one she pulled out was full. By opening the top part and slowly letting the fusion plasma of the Orc Reactors spill upward, the blade was formed. Using the cylinder like this would reduce its lifespan to just a few days of use, but Samantha already didn’t expect to survive this fight, so that was more than she needed.

Altair fired several rounds at Samantha in the blink of an eye, using her void stomach to reload her single-shot rifle faster than anyone else could. But what she saw was just impressive. Samantha slashed the first bullet, dodged the second one, spun in the air, and slashed the remaining three in a single swing.

^She is reading the trajectory of my shots and slashing pre-emptively. Just how good do you need to get at shooting to be able to see someone else aim and tell perfectly where the shot would land?^ Altair kept firing, and Samantha slashed all of the bullets down one after another, and was honestly moving like Alcott.

Altair’s rifle, which wasn’t made to fire rapidly like that, overheated quickly. If Altair kept firing, the barrel would warp and the rifle could explode, jam, or get wasted forever, so she stored it for now and pulled two guns.

”You have time to read my shots and react when I’m far away, but what if I got up close and personal?” Altair accelerated toward Samantha while firing her two guns, but Samantha could still read and slash down all of her shots.

When the two finally got close, they didn’t stop moving or start talking. Instead, Altair aimed right at Samantha’s forehead at point-blank range and pulled the trigger, only for Samantha to kick her wrist up and try to slash her down. The bullet, of course, missed, but Altair had a second gun, and she almost drilled a hole into Samantha’s groin if she hadn’t spun right after her kick.

When Altair was young, many dragons couldn’t keep up with her shots, and now, as a young adult void drakaina, her speed, accuracy, and endurance are monstrous, even by the standards of dragons. It was clear as day that Samantha wasn’t faster or stronger than her, but she surpassed her in one important thing: pure, raw, and unadulterated skill.

Altair, who relied a lot on her inborn talents and abilities as a void drakaina, could never reach the same level of mastery that Samantha has. She didn’t have to struggle; she was never pushed to death’s door. While Altair could take hundreds of shots and survive, Samantha would have died with just one.

Billions of orc snipers had fought and lived like Samantha, and most of them had died at some point. Some died on their first day, and some survived for years before they perished. But... she survived, and for that reason, she got picked up for this mission. Luck, skill, tenacity, will, and pure determination had carried her this far, and Altair was just facing her.

Samantha swung her blade, dodged all of Altair’s shots, and held her ground, giving the void drakaina chills. ”Bitch! How are you keeping up with me? I’m a Young Adult void drakaina!”

Far in the distance, they could see Arlo’s shadows exploding into a storm of tentacles as he went all out against Arad, and even if she didn’t look toward him, just hearing the echoes of the battle made her blood boil. Arlo was also pushing himself to the limit, so how could she fall behind?

She had survived thousands of battles, and today would be the same.

Using that moment of distraction, Altair aimed at Samantha’s head and pulled the trigger. Samantha didn’t have the time to dodge or the distance to slash the bullet; this was her end, but at that moment, Altair’s gun jammed and burst in her palm.

Luck was also on her side.