The dragon's harem

Lilia dodged Merlin’s charge and quickly found herself surrounded by a titanic destruction array built directly by Kali’s hands, and growled. She wasn’t facing Merlin anymore, but everyone who was now following her orders, Arad included. Of course, Merlin couldn’t have possibly managed to subdue all of them, and even if she did, it was literally impossible to dominate Arad’s soul; this entire thing wouldn’t work if he resisted.

She could easily hold a few of them back, but not while being bombarded by all of them at once, especially Arad’s nymph beauty, Linda’s time manipulation, Luminous’s light speed, Kali’s destruction, and most importantly, Kossuth’s flames. What in the nine hells is she doing here?

Dodging the time rifts, destruction waves, and the endless rays of fire and light coming toward her, Lilia finally felt forced enough to pull her true staff out and swing it toward the charging Merlin. She was no longer fighting against a wizard, or even a goddess of magic. They were now two entities of great power playing chess against each other, and Merlin had pulled all of her pieces at once.

Merlin is a master of grafting; she can use magic to make that process easier, and her labyrinth can even act as a medium to allow her to graft living beings together. Looking closely, only Arad and Merlin were grafted together, and everyone else had become weapons that she could wield, and none of them took an abnormal form.

Kali could already take the form of a golden spear, and so Merlin didn’t need to waste energy and just called her here. The same goes for everyone else. Baal can become a black hole; Eris turning into a plasma spear isn’t strange, and even something like Doma’s ring was just that: the cursed ring Doma gave him in the past.

Even if this form looked crazy and scary, it wasn’t all that complicated and was cleverly put together under the restrictions of Arad’s stomach and Merlin’s labyrinth. To dismantle it, Lilia had to find the link between Merlin and Arad, and sever it.

The problem with that was twofold. The link was outside the labyrinth, so Lilia would need to escape it first, and the second was that it was right beneath AO’s soul, which is a deadly hazard to Yog. If Yog got too close to AO’s soul, he could absorb and fully integrate it into his being, so Lilia would lose her support and get crushed immediately. That was probably the reason Merlin made the link there, to make sure Lilia can’t approach it.

Lilia’s only option was to sever the link from Merlin’s side, which meant facing her and all of her dangerous weapons, which wasn’t ideal. So, as a wizard, she had to be smart about her moves and dismantle all of Merlin’s tricks.

The weakness of this form was that it could only work if it was both inside Arad’s stomach and Merlin’s labyrinth, which was now the case. The endless calm sea they were fighting above was a labyrinth created by Merlin, and all of this was inside Arad’s stomach.

Lilia didn’t want to pull this on Merlin, since it was basically bullying her with thousands of years of experience and mastery... but to end this fight without killing, that was her only option. Merlin had proved herself to be more than just a powerful wizard, but a genius talent that must be feared by both the gods and abominations.

She deserves to be the goddess of magic in the new universe, and so, Lilia stopped playing around.

[Elemental Expansion:...]

As a wave of pure whiteness swallowed everything, Merlin found herself standing alone in her own body, with everyone else standing around, looking confused, except Kali and Kossuth, who knew exactly what had happened.

In the next moment, everyone disappeared except Merlin, who was left alone, and soon saw Lilia approaching her. She tried to cast spells, but nothing came out of her hands, and she couldn’t feel a single drop of mana in her body.

”When two elemental expansions clash, the most refined one dominates. Your labyrinth is like an elemental expansion, so I dismantled it.” She looked at her with a smile, and Merlin immediately jumped to punch her in melee, only for Lilia to easily dodge.

”If Eris and Baal combined couldn’t beat me in hand-to-hand, you will never touch me.” Lilia easily made her trip with her staff and looked at her with a smile. ”Just wait a bit; my expansion takes time to load. I’m trying to reach a whole new reality after all.”

In the next moment, the two were standing in an empty part under the bright sunlight, and the people walking their dogs around all stared at them in surprise. ”Who are those two?” A man gasped, and a woman pulled her phone to record them. ”Are they recording something?” But when she looked at her phone, the camera wasn’t picking Merlin and Lilia. ”What?!”

”There is no magic in this reality, and humans here have lived for ages under my supervision. You could say that it was our first go at creating a new universe after AO’s disappearance, and I tried to use Yog as its creator.” Lilia started searching in her clothes, ”Where did I put that blasted thing again?”

After a while, she pulled a handgun and pointed it at Merlin. ”This universe operates under extremely different rules than ours, and sadly, it won’t last long, as I found it had been infected by the abominations.”

Seeing the gun, all the people in the park freaked out, ran away, and started calling the police, but they were too slow. ”So I thought, maybe giving them mana would allow them to survive longer.” She pulled the trigger and shot Merlin in the forehead, killing her there.

All of the mana Merlin had in her body exploded outward and expanded, engulfing the entire planet and even extending out to space. This was an entire universe that Lilia created with Yog’s power, and now, it was Merlin’s magic filling it.

The people of that universe didn’t know it yet, but that was the beginning of the apocalypse. Lilia looked back at the horrified people, smiled, and pointed the gun at her own head. ”The abomination will soon start appearing everywhere, take the Blessings that your goddess grants you, and clear the underworld.”

BANG! She shot herself and woke up again inside Arad’s stomach, sitting on Merlin’s unconscious body. ”Good morning. How did it feel to die?”

Merlin just growled as her entire body was in absolute agony. ”What... was that?”

”A failed Mini-universe of mine that didn’t have magic because I thought the abominations wouldn’t want to eat it. But I was wrong; they eat anything. Now that I killed you there and your mana now exists there, you’re that universe’s sole goddess.” Lilia stood. ”Arad’s stomach is good and all, but you can’t just rely on it, since if he got captured, you’ll need your own source of energy.”

She jumped from Merlin’s back and tapped her staff on the ground. ”Think of it as a wedding gift and as a congratulatory gift for becoming a goddess of magic.” With that, Lilia disappeared, and Merlin found herself both exhausted and confused.

”An entire mini-universe? So Yog’s initial plan wasn’t to just wake AO up, but to create a new body for him to resurrect in? At which point did she realise that that won’t work and shifted to getting a woman to give birth to him instead and allow him to create his new universe?”

Merlin didn’t know the answer to that, but from what she could sense in the universe she was now linked to, that place wouldn’t last long, as it was already infected by the abominations and they were about to start invading and killing everyone in it.

^So... Yog is AO’s brain, and thus knew how to create a whole universe, so she tried her hand at it, created one, but it wasn’t perfect like what AO made, so now she threw that mess at me to maintain.^