The dragon's harem

After the pitfall room, Capsella and Ginger found themselves faced with an even bigger room, but this time instead of a fall of doom, they were greeted with a barrage of poisonous arrows fired by ten serpent guards.

In the blink of an eye, the paladin rushed in front of Capsella and Ginger, lifting their massive tower shields and forming a protective wall. As the arrows were deflected, both Ginger and Capsella hid behind the paladins.

”This sounds more than just regular arrows...” Capsella asked in a calm voice, and Ginger nodded. ”Can’t you feel it? Lightning magic. They aren’t shooting arrows, but living snakes with lightning elemental magic.”

”Lady Capsella, the snake arrows are coming back to life and crawling up our shields. Should we just burn them?” One of the paladins asked, and Capsella replied immediately as she started checking her inventory to see if she had any suitable cages or nets to capture the guards. Merlin had tattooed a storage spell on many of the important people of the private quarter, and Capsella only recently got hers after she became a Vampire Lord.

”Kill the snakes, but don’t attack the guards yet. Endure until I see if I have something to store them in. For the Blood Lord!” She kept checking, and the paladins split into two groups. One maintained the shield wall, and the other group pulled their swords and started slashing.

”Lady Capsella. We got paralyzing magic; can we use it?” The nuns asked, and since Capsella was busy checking, Ginger took control in her place. ”Nuns, follow my orders. Paralyze the serpent guards to lower the pressure on the paladins.”

As the nuns started casting their spells, just seconds later, all of the serpent guards were paralyzed on the ground and twitching.

”This feels like training...” One of the nuns said with a worried smile, and everyone else looked at her. ”Well...” One of the paladins, a tall woman clad in heavy plate armor from head to toe replied. ”... we fought demons in the abyss.”

Even among the paladins, her armor was impressive. Each plate was at least an inch thick, and the entire suite weighted several hundreds of kilograms and could even tank cannon balls even without enchantments.

She looked back at the paralyzed serpent guards. ”Only if we could go all out and destroy this entire place...” Every one of them, even the nuns who weren’t suited for direct fighting, could probably set this entire place on fire with a single plasma divine blast. But they can’t go all out and erase this entire temple; the native people must live, and it’ll be best if they don’t notice anything.

At that moment, the door on the other side of the room burst open, and from it, a titanic lamina rushed out. The monster was massive, had a woman’s torso and the lower half of a snake, and that snake half was as thick as a horse. The woman’s upper torso was still covered in snake scales, and instead of hair on her monstrous face, she had living snakes.

”That’s a medusa; don’t let her get close, and don’t look at her face.” Ginger growled, but there was no stopping this massive monster as it charged toward them.

”I’ll hold her!” The paladin in heavy armor jumped over the shield wall and rushed toward the medusa with her eyes closed. Like many vampires and bats, she could use echolocation to orient herself, and if nothing else, this massive medusa was loud as hell.

But then, more serpent guards emerged from the door behind the rushing medusa and immediately fired their snake arrows at the rushing paladin. Even the ten who were paralyzed suddenly stood up.

She didn’t know how they could move under the nun’s magic, but that didn’t matter now. She was surrounded from the back by ten serpent guards and by the medusa from the front, while under arrow fire.

But all she could see were free targets, not enemies. In the past, she had once managed to convince Arad to spar with her and train her for a bit. What she got wasn’t a gentle exchange or a structured lesson, but a brutal beating.

Compared to that... this was as boring as relaxing in a bath.

She moved like a rabid beast, even with her eyes closed. One hand pulled a two-foot-long short sword, and her other fist punched one of the charging serpent guards to the ground with a hammer fist. Upon impact, the serpent guard’s head was punched down into its chest.

She then bent down, slipping beneath a wide swing of the medusa’s tail, and then jumped over her blindingly fast bite, only to land on another serpent guard and kill him.

But side the bastard was slippery with his blood and splattered guts, the medusa managed to smack the paladin directly with her second tail swipe. That smack should’ve sent her flying several meters back, but due to how heavy her armor was, the paladin only got pushed back two meters, and she immediately summoned a large tower shield and rushed back, pushing through the heavy rain of poisonous arrows.

When she reached the serpent guard, she started cutting down. With a single punch, another serpent guard was minced meat, and with a single swing of her short sword, two were split in half. The way she moved, the way she shifted her weight, and crushed them with one heavy hit after another, it was like a bull methodically stomping its way through fragile goblins.

She could clearly remember her training fight with Arad, how he moved, how he swung his arms, and the fear that she felt seeing his fist coming toward her. Even as a vampire, fighting at his level was horrifying, so the best she could do was to try and pray.

As she punched one serpent guard to the wall with a divine smite punch, the medusa took the chance and grabbed her, wrapping her massive body around her like a python would crush a small animal.

She could hear her armor groaning under the strain of the medusa’s muscles, and when she tried to struggle, she could feel the medusa’s cold humanoid hands grabbing her by the helmet and turning her head toward her.

At this close distance, it didn’t matter if she kept her eyes closed or not, she could feel the petrifaction curse seeping into her flesh and bones. In seconds, she’d be a mere statue, and the medusa would crush her to dust. She was certain that the others were already moving to help her, but what did Arad teach?

Never sit and wait for help, since it might never arrive in time. So she moved, resisting the curse with her blood and trying to push against the medusa’s strength with her own, but she didn’t have enough. Her blood alone wasn’t enough to suppress the curse, and because of that, her already freezing body was getting weaker and slower.

She had to pull power from somewhere. She tried to pull from Capsella, but that wouldn’t be enough to save her in time. She aimed for Zia, but she was too busy to respond, so the paladin’s only option was to knock on Eris’s blood uninvited.

That was like barging into the queen’s room and being surprised when you get sent to the rope. But she had no choice she had to try it, or she’d die.

She reached toward Eris’s blood, but then something grabbed her from behind, tightly, sinking its blood into her. It was massive, violent, but... she remembers that smell well.

Her arm burst through the medusa’s flesh and grabbed her by the neck. The paladin opened her eyes, glaring directly into the medusa’s face as the curse was being violated in her blood.

”Huh... damn, you’re ugly.” She spoke, but not in her voice, in one that was deeper, sharper, and louder, Arad’s voice. And then, the paladin’s body burned with magic as she released a shockwave and blasted the medusa away, and fell to her knees.

The others have already reached her, and Capsella asked. ”Was that Arad?”

The paladin was grinning under her helmet. ”I’ve been blessed; it was only for a fraction of a second, as much as my body could endure, but he possessed me.”