The dragon's harem

Nina sighed as she sat behind her desk. It had been two days since Merlin built her tower, and Isdis had informed her that she was in line for crowning, and that was troubling her. She hated complicated things. She didn’t want to deal with nobility, other royals, a whole festival, and try to dress and look nice in front of the masses.

”Nina, your shift is over.” Another receptionist approached her, and Nina looked at her with a large smile. ”Really? I can go?” Of course, Nina loved nothing more than having nothing to do. Her job here at the guild was better than anything she could get at the castle, but it was still not as good as her barbarian and peaceful life.

The receptionist smiled and shook her head. ”What are you saying, your highness. You’re one of our empire’s precious queens. If you want, you can leave whenever you want.” She leaned on the desk. ”Why are you even still working here?”

”Because I hate the castle. Work here is simple, easy to understand, and doesn’t need a lot of thinking. If an adventurer is too weak for a quest, I don’t let them take it, and if I think they can come back alive, I let them go. I can also keep them in line since they all fear me.” She stood, stretched her arms, and looked back at the wall behind her desk.

Even though the guild had been moved from Alina to Orion, they still allowed her to hang her axe in the new guild hall, and there it rested. They even made a hatch on the ceiling so she wouldn’t shatter it when summoning her axe.

As Nina stretched her arms, the receptionist could see the muscles rolling beneath her skin like steel cables. She could even hear her clothes groaning as she almost tore her cuirass. Everyone had already heard that Nina did fight the emperor once and did pretty well against him in a physical fight, and they couldn’t figure out what was scarier. That she could face the emperor, or that the emperor could face her.

She was about to head out, but then the guild’s large door opened, and Arad walked in. It was almost unheard of to see the ruler of a kingdom or an empire going around casually as Arad does. It was the same with Nina, who, even though she was a Queen, still walked around unguarded.

”You done with the day?” Arad asked, and all of the adventurers who were sitting around and drinking looked at him. Some were amazed, some terrified, and some just confused. They remembered when he first came to the guild and almost got killed by Nina. She kicked him hard enough to drop him down, but now, just a few years later, he had become such a titanic existence that they doubted even Nina could drop him down.

”Yes, got nothing else to do.” Nina approached him with a few careful steps. She wasn’t smiling, didn’t look angry or show any emotions, which scared everyone except Arad. Then, her entire body turned into a blur as she flashed forward, a single straight kick aimed directly at Arad’s torso, and it landed with a shockwave, shaking the entire guild down to its foundation.

Arad took the hit directly, and thanks to his weight, he didn’t even get moved an inch from such force. Nina clearly wasn’t serious in her kick. Otherwise, half the guild would’ve been blown to the clouds, but even still, the power she showed was beyond what any adventurer could even dream about.

”Why kick me? Did I do anything wrong?” Arad asked with a smile. He knew Nina was just playing around, and barbarians preferred to converse with their fists rather than words.

”You did nothing. That’s the problem.” She pulled her leg back and sighed. ”I told Isdis that I didn’t want any flashy crowning ceremony, so why is she still preparing one for me? Can’t you tell her off?” Hearing that, Arad sighed.

”I told her, but she said it must be done. Something about the people having the right to know how their Queens look so they don’t grow ignorant of their royalty. She even asked me to remind you, in case you asked, that unlike a barbarian clan who only has a few people, the empire is home to millions of people.”

For a second there, Nina almost seemed to turn back into a simple-minded barbarian as she mumbled. ”Chief is big, chief is strong, chief is obvious. Not here...”

That was the problem. In a barbarian clan, everyone knew each other, and so they all knew who the chief was. But in a human civilisation, if Nina were to go now to a strange village or city, there was a good chance the people hadn’t seen her face as the queen, not even once.

The ceremony allowed many people to see her face, and the artists to draw and spread her face across the entire empire so that if she were to travel far away one day, everyone would know she is royalty, not just a random, smelly, brutish barbarian.

Arad touched Nina’s shoulder and teleported with her back to Alina, right to her house there. Even after becoming a queen and getting to live in the castle, Nina still owned a small house in Alina, which she used a lot, especially if she had work at Alina’s guild branch.

Nina approached the wooden door and unlocked it with her keys. The house was a bit small, but it was tidy and well maintained, even though it wasn’t like this before. Inside the living room, a maid who was there cleaning threw a glance at Nina and smiled. ”You’re back.” But the moment she noticed Arad’s presence. She rushed in to kneel in front of him. ”Your Majesty, welcome.”

Isdis had forced Nina to take this maid to work in her home and keep it clean, because this place was a rat’s nest before. As expected of Nina, who was a barbarian, while she could clean, she wasn’t all that good at keeping things organized.

”Drop the formalities.” Arad walked in past the maid and looked at the inside of the house. ”It looks better than the last time I was here.”

”Listen, it wasn’t all that messy.” Nina sighed. ”Now I can barely find my socks without asking her.” The maid immediately stared at Nina with a baffled face. ”They are in the drawer beside the bed. How many times have I said that?”

”Did you really expect me to remember that?” Nina wasn’t even joking. Even if she was smart enough to work at the guild, she had very little focus on the little things in her life.

As the two were arguing, Arad approached the suspiciously large black door on the kitchen wall, pushed it open, and it led directly into the Private Quarter. He immediately closed it and then touched the wall in an empty spot, spawning a second door. This door led directly into Merlin’s new lab, and specifically to the physical testing room where she was trying to study Nina’s Tarrasque body and find a way to cure her hunger.

”I got it linked. Now everything should be in place.” He turned around and could see Meryem standing there arguing with Nina and the maid... ”What?”