The dragon's harem

“You fur face!” A large serpentine demon with four arms growled, deadly poison splashing out of his open maw as he hissed at another demon. The other demon was a massive brown minotaur; he had just stumbled into the serpentine’s home and wrecked one of its many demonically beautiful walls.

Those walls were pieces of art made of black wood and bones, decorated with gems and polished metals dug out of the abyss’s land.

The serpentine demon is called Kodono the slithering hunter and the minotaur is Grambleg the walking ravager. Each of them had been summoned before into the mortal world and had wrecked whole cities using their power and legions of powerful demons. Their achievements have handed them residency beside Sawless’s castle so they can be called into action quickly.

This was happening after Arad’s fight with Alaric and Sawless, and the poor demons were still recovering and trying to get their lives back in line. Kodono is now utterly pissed off, his house which barely survived the clash now has a large hole in its wall.

Kodono wrapped his massive body around Grambleg’s torso, trying to crush his ribs. Grambleg on the other hand grabbed Kodono by the head and glared at him, threatening to gouge his face with his sharp black horns.

As the two demons released their demonic aura, all the demons around them backed away. Those two were generals even among demon kind, two monsters that no fool dared fight. Due to their power, they can kill any demon or abuse them however they want without anyone daring to stand in their way. The demon’s law is power, and those two are far above everyone else.

“Amazing! I never knew wood could support so much weight!” An excited voice cried beside the two raging demons, halting their argument. The moment they looked down, they saw her. Mira was standing beside them, pointing at Kodono’s house with an excited smile on her face. It took the two demons a second, but they could realize it, the woman was no mere mortal. They couldn’t even see the complexions of her face the moment they sensed the divine magic in her veins. To them she looked like a humanoid being with a shadowy face, only her eyes glowing with bright golden light. A demi-goddess in the flesh, to demons, such a being was akin to seeing a demon in the mortal world for humans, rare, but a call to immediate action. It took the two demon generals just a fraction of a second to put their differences away and get ready to crush the holy invader.

Mira’s eyes glared at the two demons about to attack her. “Think again.” Those two simple words came out of her mouth, they were threatening beyond belief and the two demons halted their punches. In the coming fraction of a second, they managed to notice the large figure behind her.

Darker than black, deeper than the abyss, the beckoning night sky, a faint rumble from nothing, glaring down at them with indifference. “Is this your house?” Arad glared at Kodono and the demon smacked his face to the ground, “Please pardon my rudeness, our great lord. That is indeed my humble house.”

Grambleg already had his head between his legs, his long nose digging beneath the ground like an emu. He was far larger than most demons, but that showed how violently his muscles were trembling. His instincts told him to run away, but his brain cried that turning his back to Arad and fleeing is just asking presenting his ass for a whooping.

Arad reached down and grabbed the tip of Kodono’s tail, he twisted it into a knot and tightened it hard enough that the bones shattered. The demon sat in silence, swallowing the pain without daring to even look Arad in the eyes.

As Arad dropped Kodono’s tail and turned toward Grambleg, Kodono said, “Thank you for showing mercy.” To demons, getting off with a simple injury like this was a blessing. Sawless would skin them alive and hang them for months in the wastelands to dry.

Arad ignored the Kodono’s words, grabbed Grambleg’s horn, twisted it, ripped it off, and then dropped it on the ground. “I’m not worthy of such mercy, my lord.” Grambleg barely managed to speak with the surging pain in his head, his lips dripped with his blood as he didn’t dare to even look up.

“Next time any of you…” As Arad growled, Mira smacked him on the back of his head. “Arad! What are you doing?”

“No…just trying…” He tried to speak but she didn’t let him. “Why be violent? There is no need for that. They were threatening a bit, but they didn’t harm me or you.” She looked at the two demons, “And to demons, demi-gods are something they attack by nature.”

She lifted her hand above them and a divine light flashed out. For a moment, the demons felt their skin burning and Mira gasped, “AH! Sorry, I almost forgot demons get hurt by holy magic.” She wiggled her fingers and they started healing beneath her holy light.

The two demons looked up, “It’s warm?!” They were as shocked as Arad was behind them. “How could this be?” Kodono’s eyes opened wide as he looked at Mira.

“Mira, you can heal demons with holy magic?” Arad asked, looking at her.

“Of course, Merida gets injured all the time. Eris is busy most of the time and we can’t just keep bothering Lydia.” Mira replied with a passive face; her magic fully healing the two demons. “After I saw Lydia use curses with divine magic, I noticed that I could just flip the healing upside down and it’ll work on demons and undead. But that’s only possible with how weak my divine magic is…” She giggled, “It’s too weak and easy to flip.”

She looked at the two demons, “I’m his wife, one of his wives to be exact.” She smiled, “As you can see, my husband is very protective and aggressive. Do anything funny around me, and you’ll probably end up deader than a withered tree.”

“Should we get back home?” Arad looked at her and then at the two demons, “This place isn’t that safe.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure they won’t try anything.” Mira replied with a smile, “And I want to see how that frame is built. If this wood is a tree native to the abyss, I would very much love to have some of it to work with.”

“Does this wood come from here, the abyss?” Arad asked as he looked at the two demons.

Grambleg nodded, “Indeed, the trees growing in the eastern forest are cut down for wood.” He looked back at Arad with a scared face. “After the recent battle…most of it was burned

down though.”

Mira glared at Arad, “You burned it?” She instantly knew that if anyone was crazy enough to burn the abyss, it was her husband who wrecked a layer of hell.

“Can you blame me? I was fighting two demon lords…” He cried, whispering in the middle, “Even though I was playing a bit…” He gasped, “I didn’t know I’d own those two layers. If I did, I might’ve been a bit more careful.”

After getting scolded by Mira, He and she ended up being guests at Kodono’s house alongside Grambleg. They all sat on the large demon hides carpeting the ground and one of Kodono’s many wives slithered into the room with a large platter of strange food.

In the abyss, demons ate lesser demons who were less intelligent than them. With how vile the place was, the wives had argued about whether they could try to make the food look like the mortal world or not. If a demon walked on earth, what would you feed it, fresh human corpses, blood and gore, or a well-cooked meal with champion and roses? Just as no one would know what a demon’s taste is, no demon knows what would be presentable to a resident of the mortal world.

As the wives came with food, some platers made Mira want to throw up, like rows of still wiggling eyes and beating hearts lined in a basket like fruit. And some were mildly creepy like the roasted head of a goat demon.

But suddenly, a human woman walked out of the kitchen with a large platter in her hand. She was tall, a bit muscular and her long red and black hair emitted a faint demonic aura. Mira thought she was just a demon that looked like a human, but Arad knew it at a glance.

“What is a human doing here?” He asked with a passive face.

“I’m one of his wives.” The woman replied, “After several painful events, I ended up here. It’s already been three centuries.” She looked at her flowing hair, “I’ve only got the pale night to

thank. I would’ve not survived for this long if not for her.”

Arad glared at Kodono, “Are you keeping her here by force?”

“No! No!….” Kodono waved his hands… “At least, not that I remember…probably for the first few decades.” He looked at her.

“Twenty-five years, idiot.” She growled at him, “Well, that’s well past us now. It’s been like 280 years now.” She looked at Arad, “I agree with you that I might not have been okay with him at first, but I’ve grown quite fond of him in the past decades.”

“Want to share?” Mira looked at her.

“No.” The woman glared at her, “It’ll be a long story. In short, I had an abusive husband who

sometimes even brought other men to toy with me. One day, I snapped and summoned a demon using myself as a sacrifice.” She giggled, “I honestly expected to be eaten by that demon as an appetizer.”

She glared back at Kodono, “It was this idiot who came out. He killed everyone there and squeezed my husband until he popped like a grape, it was satisfying to watch.” She sighed, her lips curling into a smile as she remembered her dying husband. “What I didn’t expect is that he’ll take me as a wife instead of just killing or eating me.”

She sat down, “I even ended up having a kid with this wiggly fool.” She looked at him, “Well,

probably it wasn’t as bad as I thought.” Her eyes shifted toward Arad, “Do you know what is born when a serpentine demon and a human have a child?”