The dragon's harem

Arad looked at the heart for a moment with a complicated expression. For once, this was the first time he had a heart. He had swallowed many humans and monsters, but in almost all of those cases, he acted like a great snake, swallowing them whole. The few times he ate something butchered like this were when Aella cooked them for him, even though she can’t stand the smell.

Arad shook his head; this wasn’t the time for his mind to wander back to his wives. Especially Aella. She’ll feel better if he were focused on saving Zephyr rather than on how she cooks meat for him.

He lifted the heart, looked at it for a moment, then frowned. It looked like any normal heart, but the magic density in its fibers was far beyond anything that Arad had seen in his life. He looked at his arms, even his muscles weren’t as well developed as this dead heart.

^I bet it sounded like a great drum. Get the overgod nervous, and his heart would start rumbling like war drums.^ He opened his mouth, and it was horrifying to see how wide Arad’s jaw could open. With Arad’s size, large and wide shoulders, his head looked fairly normal, while in reality, it was bigger than most people’s. When his jaw opened, the large heart fit inside it with ease.

As the heart slid down his throat and into his stomach, Arad could finally understand what the big deal was with the heart. It wasn’t powerful because it belonged to the overgod. It was powerful because it had to keep up with the overgod’s growing power.

It was a mundane heart, no, even less. It was fated to die in a couple of short years. Cursed by its birth as the heart of a sickly high human. But this thing refused to stop beating; It kept pushing and pushing; it challenged death and prevailed.

It seems that through the years, it found itself failing to keep its master alive, and thus, to survive, it developed magic on its own. The deadly waves of repulsion and attraction this heart has, the thing they need to break the seal caging Zpehyr… the heart developed that power so it can keep beating, keep pushing blood through the overgod’s veins.

As if it had a mind of its own, this heart was more than just a mundane organ. The magic it held was powerful enough to pull the whole beast kingdom in a single swoop and then push it away. And now… It’s slowly getting digested.

Arad closed his eyes as he stood in place for a few seconds, feeling the heart’s magic slowly fading, melting, and mixing into his veins. It was a strange feeling, but one he knew well, the process of absorbing souls, and this heart felt as heavy as a thousand powerful souls.

Arad’s eyes suddenly shot open, and he glared up, dark magic slowly covering his skin. The cavern started crumbling as the stones lost their durability now that the heart they were supposed to keep inside disappeared.

Arad turned into his half-dragon form and expanded his wings, a worried expression on his face. He had never felt such a pressure on his soul, and thus had no time to waste. With a single flap, he flew upward and dug his way straight toward the peak of the mountain where Merlin awaited.

Time is running away, and he could feel it.

When Merlin saw him, she cried, “ARAD! Did you get the heart?!” She had seen the magic of the heart fade away, which meant that Arad got it. The problem was whether he could use the power. How much power he managed to save before the heart was digested.

Arad didn’t have the time to answer her question and just growled, “Hurry! We’ve got no time.”

The storm around the mountain roared louder and louder, the lightning grew brighter and brighter, and the mountain’s peak shook, now devoid of all the snow.

Merlin flew down and extended her hands forward, the cube floating above her hands. She looked at Arad with a worried face, mana dripping out of her eyes, “The magic is ready. I’ll keep as stable as I can, for as long as possible. Just go inside and pull Zephyr out.”

Using the whole mountain as a medium, Merlin’s magic forced the cube’s sides to open. But now that she did that, the moment she lets go, the walls would crumble down and destroy the cube, killing anyone who’s stuck inside.

But that was the only way to allow Arad inside, he now has to reach Zephyr before Merlin’s magic fails, and even when he do, he has to swallow Zephyr and use the heart’s repulsion to withstand the crumbling of the cube.

Arad’s body turned into a black haze of magic, and he faded, sinking into the cube. In the next moment, he found himself inside the crumbling space of the cube. Both space and time were being ripped apart, reality itself cracked under the cube’s magic. This thing was a weapon, not a tool.

Yog had made those cubes so they could easily trap even the strongest of abominations and allow even mundane humans to kill them. While the cube looked almost indestructible from the inside and as vast as a whole world, the outside was quite fragile and could be cracked with a single strike from a sledgehammer.

When the outside gets cracked, the cube would implode and kill the abomination inside, allowing the weak humans to get a vast amount of experience. It was mainly used to level up soldiers.

Now, Merlin was doing her best to delay the inevitable destruction of the cube to give Arad time to find Zephyr. Which wasn’t easy.

With the space shattered and the magic in turmoil, it was impossible to track Zephyr’s magic inside the chaos. It felt like trying to smell the cool breeze inside a house fire. All Arad could smell was the scent of the cube’s magic crumbling apart and disintegrating.

All around the world, wizards could feel it, the raging magic in the skies. A wizard was now resisting the might and will of the goddess of magic with their mortal body and knowledge. The cube was made by Yog, the goddess of magic, Most wizards couldn’t even begin to comprehend its outer shell, let alone the hope of keeping it from imploding.

With her eyes burning with waves of purple magic, her whole body burning in a violent thunder of magic, Merlin screamed, holding the cube between her hands as she did her best to resist Yog’s magic.

Just a second later and everyone in a thousand kilometers from the mountain couldn’t use magic, all of the power got sucked out of the world by Merlin, fueling her clash with the goddess of magic.

Merlin growled, glaring at the cube, “You little midget!”

Yog growled in the sky, “Go on! Little girl, you can do it. Most humans would’ve evaporated in the first fraction of a second.”

But even with how bad Merlin was having it, Arad had it much, much worse inside the cube.