The dragon's harem

As Altair’s gun jammed and exploded in her palm, Samantha’s plasma blade flashed forward like a bolt of lightning, and she finally could land a hit on the drakaina. Altair was durable, tougher than many, but she was nowhere near Arad or the other older dragons. Her scales offered very little resistance against the raging plasma of Samantha’s blade, and like a piece of marbled meat getting cut with a sharp blade, Samantha’s sword cut her from shoulder to waist with ease.

Blood gushed out of Altair’s chest, and that blood was immediately incinerated by the burning plasma. Anyone else would’ve died, but Altair didn’t, even if this wound had finally tickled her survival instincts and made her understand that she was in deep trouble.

Without even realizing it, Altair swung her clawed hand at Samantha’s face, and since the attack was fuelled by nothing but survival instincts, Samantha read it like a book, and immediately pulled a pistol out of her waist and shot a hole through Altair’s palm.

At this rate, Samantha was actually winning, and all she needed was another clear wound on Altair’s body to achieve victory. The plasma blade she carried in her other arm was already flying toward Altair’s exposed neck, aiming to behead her.

Forced into a corner, Altair’s draconic wings and tail burst out of her body at a moment’s notice, and the blindingly fast end of her tail smacked Samantha’s sword arm, ripping it apart at the elbow. This was indeed the end, but not for the drakaina.

With a single flap of her wings, Altair took to the sky in a leap and barely dodged the last few desperate shots from Samantha’s pistol, pulled her rifle that had cooled, and aimed down, right at the orc’s forehead. ”This is THE END.”

A single shot, the bullet pierced Samantha from the shoulder down to the ground as she had moved her head a bit trying to dodge, and in the end, almost all of her organs were ripped apart by the bullet, dropping her to the snowy ground in a pool of her own blood.

As Samantha’s still warm body hit the ground, all of Altair’s senses screamed at her to get the fuck away. She didn’t understand why, but something about the dying orc giving her the middle finger triggered all of her danger senses, and soon, she knew that those senses were absolutely right.

Samantha wasn’t dying alone, even if she lost. The cylinder, which she didn’t hold anymore, had stopped producing the plasma blade and was now bright red. Without her holding down the button to eject the excess energy as a blade, the Orc Reactors overheated in a fraction of a second, and they couldn’t be maintained anymore as the super magnets heated up and lost their magnetism. The plasma was set loose, and they exploded all at once. The first thermonuclear explosion had a yield of almost 60 megatons of TNT, and that explosion had set off the cylinder in her rifle, causing a secondary blast of 55 megatons of TNT, blooming like a titanic rose behind the falloff of Arad and Arlo’s battle ending.

It was very rare to see such a talented sniper going on a suicidal battle and committing to the end, but Samantha wasn’t the first one to use the batteries like this, and it could have been seen as a trend. It had only happened six times before, and Samantha was the seventh. The orcs had a name for such an end, The Orcish Pride.

Let’s go back in time again, back to before Arad’s shadow killed Arlo, and before Samantha blew the battlefield to pieces. The clash between Beatrice and Merlin was just heating up, and their fight wasn’t going to be any less deadly.

Arad, Altair, and Merlin all had the same problem: they played with their opponents a bit too much, unlike Gamond, and that’s why her battle was the only one that would end without a disaster.

Beatrice flew back, watching as Arlo still fought with Arad and as Samantha and Altair’s shootout had just started. She knew that neither of those fights would end well, and so she was horrified. But there was no time for doubt and fear, since this witch she was fighting wasn’t going to give the pleasure of a moment of rest.

She flew back at blinding speed, dodging several lightning bolts that Merlin flung at her, and yet she was still barely managing to read her. Merlin’s magic was both streamlined and messy. She used a clear skeleton, yet filled it with an absolutely mad mix of spells and incantations.

[Cumulonimbus]

That was the first big spell that Beatrice tried to cast, and Merlin immediately knew that she was in for a fun fight. The clouds above them were about to shift violently, and instinctively, she pulled them into a labyrinth. When Beatrice found herself in a dense and warm tropical forest instead of the cold Arctic North, she was surprised, but never hesitated.

The clouds burned with magic, lightning roared, and rain fell down like the gods had poured a titanic bucket of water on the entire world. The water itself was salty and acidic; it burned the skin, but what made it worse was the lightning, which easily spread through it like a plague.

The rain immediately flooded the entire forest and was about to fill the entire layer of Merlin’s labyrinth in less than five seconds. The waves reached fifty meters in height, and even the biggest of trees were washed away with ease.

Merlin, who was now in her underwear, swam through the violent flood like a fish. She was using several combined spells to achieve such grace, and it only spoke to her mastery of magic.

The spells Merlin used were [Water Breathing] [Fish Takeover] [Mermaid Core] [Gills of Abalon] [Electro Skin] [Acidic Affinity] [Body Enchantment] [Shock Absorption]

Each of the spells had its specific job, like how [Water Breathing] allowed Merlin to breathe underwater with her lungs, and how [Gills of Abalon] allowed her to passively let the water out instead of letting it deposit salt into her lungs, while still acting as a second way to breathe.

[Fish Takeover] allowed her to gain the instincts of a fish, and [Mermaid Core] slightly transformed her body to give her some properties of Mermaids, like the composition of their muscles and density, so she won’t float or sink to the bottom, and it also allowed her to still function at deadly depths.

[Electro Skin] allowed her to passively disperse electric shocks through her skin so they wouldn’t reach her nerves or organs, and [Acidic Affinity] increased her skin’s tolerance for acids, which made surviving this strange rainwater easier.

[Body Enchantment] was what made it easier for her to swim, as it increased the general durability, strength, and endurance of her entire body. [Shock Absorption] was the simplest, as it allowed Merlin to survive impacts and shockwaves, and with all of those violent waves smacking her around, that last spell was the only thing keeping her limbs attached to her body.

Beatrice, who floated in the sky, glared down at the raging waves with a mad frown. ”Where did she go? Where are we now?” She waved her hand in front of her face, and a gas mask formed on her face. ”Doesn’t matter anyway.” She growled, and Merlin jumped out of the water like a flying fish.

”You have quite the output!” Merlin shouted with a large smile on her face, and Beatrice turned around, pointed a finger at her, and growled. ”Perish!”

Many of the sky’s endless lightning bolts all flashed toward Merlin at once and struck her down back to the water with a blinding flash, followed by a deafening roar. But even after she was struck down, Merlin was unharmed and flew out of the water again, this time swinging a massive green trident.

[RipTide] With this spell, Merlin swam through the pouring rain and pulled all of the raging lightning to her trident, using it as if it were her own magic. With a single thrust, she unleashed hundreds of lightning bolts and a titanic wave toward Beatrice, who was surprised to see her own magic turned against her.

Beatrice didn’t have the time to dodge such an attack, so she flew right through it and almost kicked Merlin in the face as their clash displaced millions of metric tons of salty water.

Merlin laughed, ”You don’t care about the environment at all, do you? I know you’re saving up mana! What are you trying to achieve?”

Beatrice smiled. ”Eat Shit and die!” As she pushed her fists together, she looked like she grabbed the air. It was at that moment that Merlin found out, and this time... she did wet herself for real, seeing what happened.

Beatrice had reopened the rift on her own, and from the crack, a titanic robot of steel walked out. ”This is my own rift! And this is...” She jumped into the titanic robot’s chest. ”My cute little baby!”