The dragon’s harem

“Eldritch Monster! DIE!” One of the archons, the fastest of them and the one who managed to arrive first, didn’t waste a single fraction of a second and headed straight for Arad. The man was tall, but nowhere near Arad. He was beautiful, but with that scared and twisted face, he looked more desperate and less like a confident, all-powerful archon.

The archon swung his fist at the back of Arad’s head, and Zaleria’s voice failed to reach him in time. She was shouting, “Don’t touch him!”

Unlike the archon who lost his temper after sensing the disgusting amount of eldritch magic that Arad was releasing, she could see that beneath that cold and dark face was a tired soul, not a malicious one. Arad wasn’t angry, evil, or violent; he was just tired, and if this archon pokes him, he might get something shoved up his ass.

The archon’s arm went straight through Arad’s head, but didn’t pierce it. Instead, the arm burst out of the archon’s stomach, and before he could even understand what happened, Arad gave him a nasty backhand, and the Goddess of Peace, who was the master of that Archon, was the one to puke blood.

The Goddess of Peace still hadn’t arrived at the battlefield, but she could already feel it: Arad was standing right behind her. Her butt was rubbing his shin, and she knew he was big enough to just step on her like a bug. She could feel it in her bones that peace would never arrive if she decided to antagonize this nightmare.

“Pull them back.” Arad spoke behind her back, and she couldn’t even think properly. She felt an endless weight pressing on her shoulders, and with shaking hands, reached beneath her skirt to pull her underwear down. In the next moment, another one of her archons flew toward her with a clenched fist, and she swung at full force.

But there was a catch: the archon didn’t swing at Arad but at her own goddess, knocking her down before she could pull her butt out and cause a real incident. As she dropped the goddess down, she turned toward Arad, not knowing what to do. “We’ll pull the army back. EVERYONE! BACK AWAY!”

She knew that they couldn’t defeat him, and losing the entire peace army here would be a disaster. They have to find a way to survive until someone stronger, someone like Amaterasu or Kali, shows up.

Arad glared at her for a second, and she pissed herself, thinking that he was about to start rampaging, but instead, he smiled, and that smile looked far scarier than his stoic, stone-hard face. As Arad moved his arm, he threw the injured archon who attacked him first at the archon’s feet, right into her dripping piss.

“I healed him as much as I can, so take it from here.” As he spoke, he noticed that the archon was anything but healed. The gaunt man was naked, and all of his limbs were cut off and shoved down his now open stomach. That macabre piece of art, it seems, Baal got to him. Everyone froze for a second, but then, a loud, deafening rumble tore the sky apart. The weaker angels fled, and the remaining archons of peace all gathered up for one desperate clash.

Arad looked down, held his stomach, and laughed, “Well, I’m starving.” He had spent all of his energy to survive Eris’s pulsar, and now, for some reason, his body is running purely on eldritch magic. When his mana ran dry, when all of his other energy sources faded, an endless torrent of eldritch mana flowed out of his soul, and it allowed him to survive longer.

But now, it made him look like an abomination to anyone who sees him, and it didn’t help that he just threw them their friend’s torn body. So now, hearing him say that he was starving, it made the archons think they were about to get eaten, but to their luck, Kali appeared in the next instant, and without asking a question, all of them fled, taking their goddess with them. The peace army was mainly focused on healing and treating the wounded, not fighting. They were the fastest outside of the light dragons, but that was only because they needed to get to their patients quickly.

As Kali stared at Arad, a light dragon arrived, and the tall, gaunt man glared up at Arad, feeling stressed. “Divinity Kali, who is this one? He doesn’t look aggressive.”

Unlike the peace army, this man had spent thousands of years fighting the abominations and could tell at a glance from experience that Arad wasn’t going to hurt anyone unless attacked. But if he were to be attacked, he would retaliate with even more violence. Why does he remind him of that violent nightmare? In his mind, he was imagining Violet, Arad’s mother.

Sadly, at the moment, Arad’s mother had gone to stop the rushing void dragons because those bastards won’t approach and would instead blast this place from afar with their breath weapons.

Kali threw a glance at him and smiled, “I know he smells abominable, but give him a break. This is my husband.”

The light dragon froze. “The Alpha and Omega project?” He was a high-ranking general in the army and the emperor of the light dragons.

“Hold it there, dear nephew.”

A blinding light flashed from Arad’s body, and everyone had to close their eyes. The only one who didn’t need to squint was the Light Dragons’ Emperor himself. One foot stepped on the air, and was followed by a blinding nova of all colors, a blinding flash that dwarfed any star, and the one standing there beside Arad was Luminous.

“I sent you a letter, didn’t I? This is Betty’s husband.” She looked at him with a smug smile on her blinding face. “Don’t look so nervous; we’re all family here.”

The Light Dragons’ Emperor lifted his head and strained his neck to look at Arad’s face. He thought he had a tall humanoid form at three meters tall, but seeing Arad standing at five meters made him look like a kid.

The two sized each other, and after a short glare, it was obvious. If they were to fight, the Light Dragons’ Emperor would win, but not without losing a few limbs. For an adult void dragon, Arad eclipsed all the other recruits by a landslide, and he was even stronger than that.

If Arad were in the army, he would’ve sent a petition to not send him to fight and instead focus on giving him time to grow older. It would be a waste to send such a talent to the front lines at a young age and have him die there before becoming an Elder Dragon and reaching his peak.

“This is Betty’s husband? She can’t be taller than his… no, why does he reek of abominable magic?” He scratched the back of his head, sighed, and then looked at Kali. “Project Alpha and Omega, I’ll get everyone to leave this place for now. But keep in mind that they would need an explanation, and hopefully one from Amaterasu as well.”

Arad looked at Kali and Luminous and then smiled, “Luminous, what are you doing here?”

“What do you mean? Eris lost, and it looked like the entire army of the gods was about to gang up on you.” She threw a glance at Kali, and the demon goddess giggled. “Well, they are scared because he has as much eldritch magic as one of Nyar’s avatars, if not more.”

Luminous giggled. “Well, let them come. I might be retired, but I can still tear a few of them apart.” She was a veteran far more experienced than even the Light Dragons’ Emperor, and everyone in the army knew her.

Arad looked at his arms and took a deep breath. “I ran out of energy inside that thing, and eldritch magic was the only thing I could use. I could’ve used the matter from the beam, but I feared it might kill me if I tried to both absorb and digest it.”

Luminous looked at him for a second and then floated up and licked his chest a few times. “You… taste like you’re about to evolve again. Your scales are reaching their limit.” She licked her lips. “If you want a place to sleep, you can rest with me.”

Arad shook his head, “There is no need for that. I can sleep inside my mother or Gojo’s void, and I’ll still need to figure a few other things.” He tapped his chest. “Besides, there is still a bit before I have to evolve.”

Amaterasu appeared behind them. “Before you evolve, you better deal with that eldritch magic first. You reek, and it’ll soon attract the other gods to kill you.”

Arad tapped his stomach, “I’m starving, and I need to eat.” He then looked to where they were before, and he could see Yog, Kossuth, and Zaleria staring at him from afar. In the next moment, they were all standing around him, and just so they didn’t need to keep staring up at him, he had to get smaller.

The moment Arad used size magic to shrink, everyone understood one thing. He didn’t use mana but eldritch magic to cast regular spells. This was AO’s primal energy, and Arad could now use it instead of anything else. The only downside was that it made him look more like an abomination, and that would be problematic.

“You can use that to cast spells?” Luminous asked with a smile, and Arad nodded, “Of course, it is a bit complicated, but I can do it. I used Vorvadoss’s space magic and my own space magic so much that I could come up with a make-shift conversion layer for simple spells.” He waved his hand, “Of course, I cannot use any complicated spell with this yet, and some need to be reworked from the ground up.”

“If that’s what you want. I’ll give you this.” Yog appeared standing on Arad’s head with her bare toes and threw him a large, black book locked by ashen chains and tentacles.

Arad caught the book, looked at its cover for a moment, and then looked up toward Yog, seeing only darkness beneath her robe. “A grimoire?”

She smiled, “You’ll see no hole; got real-time censorship figured out.” She then jumped and landed on the book, tapping it with her foot. “This will teach you safe ways to handle complicated eldritch magic and also have a translation guide and a few hundred unique eldritch spells that the abominations use.”

Arad threw a glance at her. “Why do you have this?”

“Why? Of course, I had an abomination pound all my holes at once; his name was Cain Lisworth, and he wrote this; you know he was half-abominable.” She jumped toward Amaterasu and landed on her head.

“Well, I’ll give it a read.” Arad said, fully ignoring her comment.

Luminous sighed and jumped back into Arad’s stomach, and Kali leaned on him. “What will you do?”

“Go back home, eat, and rest for a bit. Eris gave me a real beating.” He looked at her with a smile, “Or… do you want to fight next?”

She tapped him on the back. “Don’t get full of yourself. You still can’t beat me. But we’ll play later on.”

Yog waved her hand, “We’ll be leaving as well. The fight ended, and we saw everything that we wanted to see.” She lifted her foot and slapped Amaterasu on the face with it. “Let’s be on our way.”

Amaterasu didn’t move but instead grabbed Yog by the ankle, yanked her down, and gave her a sharp glare. “It seems that I need to take you away and tan your hide.” She then threw a glance at Arad, “Tell Eris that I will call her when she recovers.”

Yog, Amaterasu, Kossuth, and Zaleria all disappeared at once, and Arad was left alone in the void with Kali before the two of them teleported back to the mortal world as well.