The dragon's harem

Arad stood in the middle of the desolate landscape of Hati’s world. Kayden was just a few meters ahead, sitting on a boulder as he usually does. This time, he looked a bit mad, tired and exhausted. It was probably because he still hadn’t fully recovered from the fight with Nyar, but Arad had a hunch that a little pink-haired girl had something to do with it.

“This is the sixth day of training. What will it be?” Arad asked and Kayden’s eyes finally looked up. “You learned how to accelerate and decelerate. You learned how to teleport in the middle of that. You learned how to attack and then learned how to defend. Lastly, you went to Lilia’s world to learn magic. How was it.” The wind started blowing from behind Kayden.

“How much do Yog know?” Arad asked.

“Everything. She knew the past, present, and future. She knows how it feels to sit on a chair, how it feels to be a bug, and how it feels to not feel. She knows what you did yesterday and what you wanted to do. Nothing gets past that thing, not even the current overgod was able to withstand the pressure of her omniscience for more than a decade before giving up and returning it to her.” As Kayden spoke a table suddenly appeared between him and Arad with Yog sitting on it.

“See?” Kayden sighed, “She knew we were going to talk about her and came here. You don’t need to bother hiding anything from her, she already knows. If you hate her then just say it to her face, she won’t care.”

“Come on Kayden, even I got one little heart that can easily get hurt.” She looked back at him with a smile, “What about you Arad? Are you scared of me? Creeped perhaps?”

“No…” Arad said with a passive face.

“You really aren’t…and yes, you can go to Yggdrasil and ask the elves’ goddess Sylph for help, she’ll doesn’t work for free though, gotta be ready.” She replied with a smile and Arad sighed, “You really know without me even asking.”

She waved her hand and both Kayden and Arad got sent far apart as a massive chess board appeared between them. But unlike any normal chess, this board had over a thousand piece on each side.

“I’ve done my part now. The rest is up to you Kayden.” She disappeared and Kayden looked at Arad.

Each of them had a thousand pieces, Arad was playing with the white ones while Kayden took the black ones. But just from a glance, it was clear that this chessboard wasn’t normal, all of those pieces had their own will and wouldn’t easily follow orders.

Each piece had a moral state, the higher the moral state the more risky moves the piece would be willing to take. To win the player must manage a complicated chess game while also having to deal with the problem of keeping the moral of his pieces up. The pieces can even rebel and switch sides if their morale drops to 0.

The most important piece in the table was the church piece, it could give the pieces a second state called faith. The higher the pieces’ faith the more stable their moral is. And what mattered most is that the player can’t command the pieces directly, they move on their own.

“This game simulates two kingdoms going into war. Each player is a god and his mission is to guide his kingdom to victory.” Kayden waved his hand and moved his first piece. “Most newly appointed gods end up dead because all of their faithful end up wiped out in wars. Most gods take centuries if not hundreds of years to master the art of growing their religion and protecting their people. This game allows gods to practice without putting actual people at risk.”

“But it’s overly simplified, right?” Arad looked at the table, “Real life should be far more complicated.”

“You’re right. But it’s enough as a start.” Kayden looked at Arad, “It’s your turn.”

Arad slowly lifted his hand, “So it’s this kind of lesson.” Those should be real lives, real people living and struggling to survive. This might be a game, but it’s a mirror of real life.

^I must try my best for they as well could be the people from the empire in the future.^ Arad started playing, thinking each move for way too long.

The first match lasted half an hour and ended in Arad’s defeat. Kayden managed to quickly turn his people against him and swallow all of his troops.

But…something strange happened starting from the second match. Arad’s whole strategy changed. Each player had ten church units so they could maintain their army, but Arad did something unexpected.

Each of Arad’s churches started giving different instructions than the others, and they even fought among themselves sometimes. Kayden found it hard to predict what would those ten churches would do. It was as if Arad didn’t have a single religion ruling his kingdom but had many at work.

What’s more…the church moves almost made no sense, as if Arad wasn’t the one controlling them. It was far harder to play against Arad but Kayden managed to win five more matches in a row before finally losing. And from that point till the end of the day, Kayden never won a match again.

“What are you doing?” Kayden asked, “Why does it feel like each of those churches has a mind of its own? Each of them is playing a different plan, a single person can’t think of all of those plans at the same time.”

Arad smiled, “I’m just playing how would I do if those were real people? I’m not going to hold back and advantage just because it’s unfair to my opponent.” Arad looked at the churches, “Each of those churches is controlled by a whole council… of vampires.”

Arad had the ten thousand vampires inside his blood learn the game and divided them into several teams. Some simulated Kayden’s moves to predict his next move, and some tried to decide what its the best possible move.

“I picked the smartest ten of the vampires I have and put each of them as the leader of a church. They lead the churches and people while I lead them.” Arad explained with a smile and Kayden listened.

^That’s…how the overgod works.^ Kayden expected something but not this. ^The gods lead the people and the overgod leads the gods. A king doesn’t rule his land on his own, he rules over the ministers and nobles and they rule the land for him.^

“You can take the game back with you and play it with your wives. We’ve been playing for hours and should stop here.” Kayden waved his hand and the whole table shrunk and flew to Arad’s hands.

“I thought you’d be angry. What I did was cheating.” Arad looked at him with a smile and Kayden shook his head, “There is nothing called cheating in real wars, especially when the lives of millions are on the line.”

Kayden cracked his neck, “And since we finished today’s training, we can talk about something else.” He glared at Arad, “Kali.”

“She is the one jumping at me. You can’t blame me for that.” Arad gasped and Kayden smiled, “I’m not blaming you. But I want to make sure you’re good enough to not disappoint her.”

“So we’re going to fight?” Arad took a stance and Kayden waved his hand, “No, we aren’t fighting. I wanted to tell you a few things about her.”

“Like what?” Arad sat down and so did Kayden. “Kali first showed interest in you when you picked Tina and Serin. Tina was a widow and Serin was half-orphan, if not for you both of them would’ve ended up dead.” Kayden smiled, “Her interest only grew stronger when you picked that little wyrmling, Ignis.”

“Just that alone?” Arad laughed, “I didn’t expect that doing that would draw the eye of a goddess.”

“That was just interest, she merely glanced your way at that time. But she started thinking more about you when you blasted Vlad’s whole kingdom into ash, and she couldn’t contain herself when you flew outside the universe and destroyed the abominations’ settlements while chasing Vorvadoss.” Kayden looked at Arad with a grin, “Care for the orphans and destroy the enemies. Keep doing those two and her attention would remain fixated on you.”

“Is that all? But I can see her liking that…then what about me taking on the barbarians and the people of Riverside?” Arad asked and Kayden started thinking about it. “I raised her for thousands of years but even I can’t get into her head. But…Lily told me something else.” Lily is Kayden’s wife and Kali’s foster mother.

“What is it?”

“Kali says you look like her father Asura. You’re both huge and muscular with an intimidating glare, people see and fear you, but those close to you know that you’re in fact extremely gentle.” Kayden leaned back, “Tomorrow you’ll fight her as your last trial. Use everything you have to survive.”

“I’ll survive, I know how powerful she is. Instead of winning I’ll focus on survival and use everything I’ve learned so far.” Arad stood and Kayden shook his head, “There is one thing I know. You don’t know anything about Kali’s true power.”

The training day ended without much trouble and the next day arrived…the last day here, this will be the end. Arad couldn’t sense Kayden around and the whole world was locked by several layers of sealing magic, far stronger than what kept him locked in the bath.

He saw her, walking toward him. Wearing a skirt of arms and a necklace of the severed heads of Arad’s wives, her six arms waved in the air, her sharp nails drawing a line… [Hakai]

Arad’s head disappeared from above his shoulders.

^The hell is this?!^ This wasn’t the same Kali he knew…

Doma burst out of Arad’s body and waved her hand, charging a massive curse. But in the next moment, her head was already hanging in Kali’s necklace among the wives’ heads. “The last one…” Kali said with an emotionless face.

True Destruction, when everything falls apart, chaos rules, the gates of the abyss open, and the demon of horror is set loose.