The dragon's harem

When Merlin and Doma came out of the labyrinth, what they saw was surprising. Arad’s titanic draconic body was knocked out, bleeding on the snowy ground as Gamond sat by his side. She had lost an eye, a chunk of her lower jaw, both of her wings, her right arm and left leg, as well as half of her tail. There were at least four deep gashes on her belly, which she used her ice to freeze shut and prevent her intestines from spilling out.

”GAMOND!” Merlin shouted as she flew up toward Gamond’s massive head. ”Are you still alive!?”

Gamond shifted her bleeding skull and gave the naked wizard a look. ”Yeah, and I won. What a tough bastard, even when he is out of it.” Her voice was shaking and hoarse. Many of her ribs were shattered, and she probably has a collapsed lung and several damaged organs.

”Forget about him! He’ll regenerate... We need to get you help first.” Merlin immediately sent a call to Eris, not just asking, but telling her that she should get herself here immediately. After the quick call, Merlin gave Gamond’s wounds a second look and then threw a glance at Arad, who looked unharmed.

”He already regenerated. He wasn’t himself, weakened and disoriented. Otherwise, he would’ve killed me in seconds.” Lifting her severed arm, Gamond chuckled. ”Look how I ended up.”

Far at the peak of one of the glaciers at the edges of the Arctic North, a demigod stared right toward Gamond with a horrified face drenched in sweat. What he had seen was utterly terrifying. That black dragon was a pure nightmarish demon, and that white drakaina who managed to fight, slow down, and even take him out was just as monstrous.

Even as she is injured and at death’s door, he could see, feel, and know for certain that she could kill a thousand of him. She might look weakened, but the truth was still that she could turn the entire Arctic upside down if she wanted.

He had come here hoping to help a bit, and maybe put in some favor with Gojo and Lucy, but he ended up coming late, and the only fights he could see were far above what he could endure and fight. Silently retreating, he disappeared into the blowing snow.

Merlin floated down and landed on Arad’s back. Looking beneath him, she could see his shadow was where it should be. It must’ve returned somewhere after she dragged the Mech Angel into the labyrinth.

”Gamond, did you notice Arad not having a shadow while you fought him?” As Merlin shouted, Gamond looked at her and nodded. ”He didn’t have it at first, but then regained it. I can’t remember at which exact point it came back, but it wasn’t there when we started fighting and was back when we finished.”

Above them, Eris burst down from above the clouds and landed right beside Gamond. ”I’ll start the healing immediately! Don’t melt the ice preventing you from bleeding out; keep it there until I tell you otherwise.”

Eris started using as much of her divine magic as she could to heal Gamond, but quickly found herself almost stuck. Gamond’s Elder body wasn’t like any regular draconic body; it had been perfected after surpassing the twilight, and fixing it required more divine magic than most lesser gods have.

With that, Eris noticed several traits that an elder body would have, which are far better than those of any Great Wyrm. The first was age immortality; Gamond’s cells will never degrade, so she doesn’t age and would live indefinitely unless killed.

Then there was the incredible resilience and regeneration ability. Gamond’s whole body acted as one, and her entire nervous system worked as a brain; her veins pumped the blood alongside her heart, and every one of her organs could stand in for the rest. As ridiculous as it sounded, Gamond can breathe by swallowing air, and use her liver to filter blood instead of her kidneys, which would then pump the waste into her intestines to dispose of it.

Arad had damaged her brain, torn a hole into her heart, and collapsed both of her lungs, yet she still lives and is awake. All dragons had a measure of this insane biology, but being an elder just cranks everything to the absolute limit, literally perfecting the draconic body.

But... what surprised Eris the most was that she finally understood the innate rule of elder dragons for the entire dragon species. They have the full genetic code of their color, meaning that even if all the white dragons were to go extinct, Gamond alone could repopulate them all. To achieve that, Gamond can use any other living creature, humanoids, other dragons, animals, or even bugs, and it would still work, and the shocking part is that even if she were the last living creature in the entire universe, she could still reproduce on her own.

”Gamond, your body is amazing.” Eris gasped as she healed her, and Gamond laughed. ”Well, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Eris looked at her and then kept working. ”But... isn’t there something strange attached to your soul?” As she spoke, Merlin and Doma also looked, and they could see it. A faint thread linked to Gamond’s soul and faded into the distance. Too thin and weak to be noticed under any normal circumstances.

”Ah, you mean that.” Gamond looked at the sky. ”After becoming an elder, I laid an egg on my own. It is buried beneath a thousand layers of snow and ice in my old world, the one I killed. That egg...” She looked at them. ”Is mine. If I were to ever be killed, my soul won’t pass to the afterlife, but it would fly back to that egg, and I would be reborn again.”

”I would go back to being a wyrmling, but I’ll survive. It really isn’t that bad, since I could grow back into an elder in less than a hundred years if I ate well. I won’t even go through twilight again.” She looked at them with a smile. ”I don’t know about dragons, but to an elder drakaina, that is a way to survive.”

As Gamond’s wounds closed, Merlin had already pulled a spare robe and was wearing it. Sitting on Arad’s massive head, she looked at the destruction they left and the rift that was the only thing that didn’t get destroyed. Arlo, Beatrice, and Samantha... they were all weak, but when pushed to the limit, all of them could easily turn into absolute destroyers.

They were small, fragile, yet determined and showed what they are made of.