The dragon's harem

Yog faded away, finally leaving Kali at peace. But that was only because another one was arriving. The labyrinth roared, writhing with magic as if in extreme pain. Its pale golden light shimmered with countless sparks of great magic, and the golden door crackled, as if about to be twisted and ripped apart.

Suddenly, the golden light flashed so brightly that it almost blinded Kali, like a lightning flash, the sky roared with a thunderclap. And inside the blinding light of the labyrinth, Kali could see a dark figure walking through the divine punishment of the great magic.

She backed away, her eyes opening wide at the strange sight. She will be fine, but most people would evaporate from such powerful magic, and it was even infused with her destruction, the one that she granted to Merlin.

One step after another, the huge figure leisurely strolled through the roaring magic, his skin burning and regenerating so fast that he didn’t seem to be getting hurt, not in the slightest.

As he reached the edge of the falling light, his large body pressed against it, stretching the golden glimmer like a sheet of translucent plastic. The Labyrinth struggled to keep him inside, groaning in pain, but the man refused to be chained, taking one step forward, and his foot broke through the barrier.

With a booming, thunderous thunderclap, the ground shattered, sending splinters of stone and debris hailing down from the sky in a pelting rain of death.

Through the blinding cloud of dust, ash, and flashing magic, Arad marched forward with a nonchalant face, smoke still coming out of his skin, engulfing his body in a mystical haze of clouds.

“You had to come out like this?” Kali approached him, and Arad lifted one hand, soon two figures fell from it, sparking in blue magic. Neige and Ombre were still unconscious from their fight with the vampire nuns.

“The door prevents all creatures inside from leaving, those two would’ve been teleported back in no matter what. I hate to get out through the killing array…” He looked back, “Too much of a killing array, it’s designed to be two times stronger than the strongest nightmare inside.”

Kali scratched her head, “Well, explain, I need details.”

While Arad recited all that happened inside to her, Merlin walked out the door with everyone else. All of them had embarrassed looks on their face. Upon walking inside, all of them had fallen into the labyrinth’s mind hex, forgetting all about Arad and Merlin, only focusing on clearing the floors.

“Arad, guess what. I found them on the floor three hundred, all busy clearing a massive forest full of demon apes. As expected of them, they blasted through most of the basic bosses.” Merlin looked at the embarrassed group.

Out of all of them, Sena looked the worst, her face pale and drained, her eyes as dead as a fish. Not because of exhaustion, not because of injury, but because she got influenced by the labyrinth’s strange will. She… of all people, should’ve been immune.

But… Merlin didn’t create the labyrinth without accounting for anything. The mind hex that the labyrinth used to give people the will and resolve to clear its floor was quite powerful, refined by Merlin herself to make sure that people don’t get bored.

“Come on…” Merlin looked at them, “You’ve gained a lot of scrolls and magic items, didn’t you?” She tried to cheer them up. The labyrinth had three main types of items that people could bring out with them.

Mana crystals, magic items, and spell scrolls. All of which can be created through magic, and Merlin had a massive working around those items inside the labyrinth. In fact, a newbie adventurer with nothing but the clothes on his back can enter the first floor, wrestle some weak monsters with his bare hands, and gather enough resources to buy a spell scroll that he can learn, or exchange them for money outside.

Technically, even a firebolt scroll can sell for 1 silver coin, which is enough to buy a simple sword. The labyrinth would now become a stable of an adventurer’s life, allowing them to better themselves inside a more controlled environment.

Merlin waved her hand and created a chair out of stone. After she took a seat, her eyes shifted to the still-shocked Aella, “You got to use that oxygen destroyer a lot inside. You killed twenty-five bosses with it.”

Aella could forget about using her arrow in the real world without causing a natural disaster. That thing kills all life, she’ll erase life from massive chunks of land with a single shot, destroying several ecosystems. But inside the labyrinth, and especially inside the desolate boss floors, she can fire as much as she wants.

Merlin also… may or may not have documented the structure of magic of the oxygen destroyer and all other forms of magic cast inside her labyrinth to learn later on… but that’s a fact she’ll keep to herself.

The benefit she gets from the labyrinth is having a way to observe and study magic that people might be keeping a secret from themselves, and she was already seeing hundreds of new spells showing up. For example, the stone chair she just created. [Stone Chair] A simple spell that creates a chair out of stone for the caster to sit on.

“I don’t feel tired at all, so…” Arad looked at Merlin, “Should we start now?” He stood tall, all the muscles on his body still slightly steaming from the onslaught of the labyrinth’s array, yet his magic silently rumbled beneath his scales, giving his skin a faint, dark purple glimmer.

Merlin blinked once, thought about it for a few moments, blinked again, looking at Aella, then back at Arad. “We can start, but it’ll be quite exhausting, so get ready. You won’t be carrying two Horrors or a random fairy, but Zephyr herself.”

A smile crossed Arad’s face as he slowly lifted his hand, and a black steel cube appeared floating between his fingers. A divine breeze whirled around it, radiating a weak hint of terrifying wind magic.