The dragon's harem

“Hell, I’m the black scorpion of the desert.”

The black scorpion stood at the entrance of the cave, staring at the burning red sun in the sky with a somber face. His mandibles rubbed on each other, and he used his stinger to scratch his back.

All around it stood several dead monsters. Large black beetles, drakes, large lizards, spiders, and even a long serpent that was almost a hundred meters long. The scorpion sighed, cleaning his claws from the blood in the sand.

For the first time in decades, he had eaten a full meal, and more importantly, drank enough water to almost throw up.

He looked back at the cave entrance. The woman didn’t wake up yet, but the man sitting by the fire was still there, unmoving. The scorpion had to be honest with himself; he saw the two fighting from afar and didn’t expect that he would remain alive now that he stumbled on them.

The large man had even offered him food and water. But he knew that was no man, but a horrifying, massive black dragon.

What are the chances? But… the poor scorpion had another problem to worry about. All of those monsters he killed while guarding the cave’s entrance, all of that blood, had attracted the attention of something nasty.

He crawled forward, clicking his claws with vicious blood lust. Soon, the sand shifted and dunes rumbled. A massive maw that’s at least twenty meters wide slowly emerged. A brown sand worm.

The titanic creature was almost two hundred meters long and boasted brown scales of unimaginable durability, and could swing through the sand like water. Those monsters hunt in the desert and lung at their prey from the depths of the sand, killing countless caravans and travelers.

The worm looked at him, showing no signs of backing away.

The scorpion looked back at the cave. He could call the dragon inside to help… but he would be leading the worm to the sleeping woman as well. Even a monster understood it, if a male and a female that looked similar were together, it’s quite dangerous to approach them.

He has to fight, and thus he did. Charging forward as fast as he could, his tiny legs raced across the desert. The worm shuddered and its body lunged forward, its maw ripping through the surface of the sand as it approached the tiny monster daring to stand in its way.

But while the worm was absolutely monstrous, the scorpion was far faster. He dodged the maw and climbed on the worm’s back. He quickly started running across its back and stabbing through the scales with his stinger.

The worm immediately dove into the sand to throw him off, but the scorpion didn’t budge, latching on to its scales with its powerful claws and mandibles. He might’ve been an S-class threat, but this worm is a whole disaster.

Usually, he would run away, but not this time. “I already survived an encounter with two monsters far bigger than you, worm.”

Driven by rage and madness, the scorpion latched onto the worm with its legs and stinger and started ripping its scales out with its claws and mandibles, trying to burrow its way inside it.

That was a gamble, a deadly one. The worm was better suited to fight under the sand than him. If it managed to shake him off, the next thing he’ll see is the angry maw.

But that bet, he lost it. His legs failed to hold onto the worm’s scales, and he was thrown off into the sand. Immediately, he knew this was the end. He could feel it, the worm had pivoted and was now heading toward him with its maw open. But just before that, the sand shook and exploded.

The scorpion rolled on the sand, disoriented. What had happened? He couldn’t tell; his vision was still a bit blurry, and his senses were all in shock. He had just been violently pulled out of the sand, and all of his body hurt.

He looked around, noticing that he was in the shade. There weren’t that many shades in the desert, let alone one big enough to cover him. That immediately sent alarms through his mind, the worm’s shadow! Jump aside as fast as he could, it only took him a second to throw his stinger at the source of the shadow.

As if hitting steel, the stinger deflected with ease and sent a jolt of pain down the scorpion’s tail. That pain finally pulled him back to his senses. The thing he tried to sting was black and massive.

Looking up, the scorpion saw Arad in his draconic form slurping the titanic worm like a noodle. The worm didn’t even stand a chance, he had pulled it from the depths of the ground with ease.

After finishing the worm, Arad looked at the scorpion, “Should’ve called me if a large monster showed up. You’re powerful, but not enough to defeat the true horrors that dwell in the desert.”

The scorpion stumbled and fell on the sand, exhausted. It then dawned on him that he tried to stink Arad and stared at Arad’s leg. There wasn’t even a single scratch on it.

“Don’t worry. You can’t pierce my scales. And even if you did, your poison isn’t enough to harm me.” Arad shifted back into his humanoid form and patted the scorpion on the head.

Back inside the cave, Arad and the scorpion sat beside the fire, waiting for Nina to wake up. With how much death surrounded the cave, most monsters were too terrified to approach. Especially now that Arad transformed and everyone saw him. No one would dare approach the lair of such a dragon.

The cave is now relatively safe, not that it matters. Arad is now supposed to be powerful enough to venture into space and liberate whole worlds from the abominations. There is no chance that anything in the mortal world can be a danger to him, since if they did, they would be a danger to the world itself.

But thinking about that for a few moments made Arad freeze. What if someone like Gamond came after him? Countless powers are hiding in the shadows of the mortal world. He is powerful, but he shouldn’t get arrogant. Now that he is powerful, it is time to hide and build his might in secret so he won’t draw the ire of the unknown.

It was then that Nina woke up, her nose sniffing the air for the grilled meat before her eyes could even open.

****

Back at the castle, Isdis was looking at a black orb with a pale face. “This is bad.” In that orb, she saw the image of a burning hell, the silhouette of a single devil flying through it.