The dragon's harem

Valeria flung several arrows at Arad. Her moves were so fast that most people failed to notice that she had rushed forward. She was faster than a flash and more confident than a dragon. Her bowstring pulled back, and her bloodied eyes flashed with determination.

She had seen it, the future where she defeats Arad, the possibility of landing a wound on him.

Arad was arrogant, or at least too soft, to actively resist someone far weaker than him. He will stand there, block and deflect all of her attacks until she gives up, and only then will he fling a stone at her.

Valeria understood that she didn’t stand a chance against him with a single arrow, nor would she with a hundred arrows. He is too fast to be hit by her slow attacks. He also had a strange magic that slowed the arrows even further, which was probably a form of gravity magic. That is how he managed to catch the arrows without breaking them.

The way to penetrate Arad’s defense was to overwhelm him with numbers. Like any living being, he needs to move at a certain speed, which means he needs time to catch an arrow. As short as that time could possibly be, it still exists and is tied to each arrow he tries to stop.

She also needed time to fire her arrows, but she could make it shorter by firing more than one arrow at once and aiming at Arad from angles that make him take longer to turn and catch the arrows.

Using that strategy, she started running around Arad at blinding speed, carefully firing arrows at the most awkward angels for Arad to catch, slowly bridging the gap in time between them.

Valeria already saw it whole. Each angle, each arrow, each move, and each counter Arad could pull.

With each arrow she fired, the strings of fate wrapped themselves tighter and tighter around Arad, cutting all paths of escape one after another. But he kept slipping through, catching all arrows with relative ease, and at some point, Valeria even questioned if what she saw was true or not.

Fate can’t be changed. It is the Inevitable Truth. Each arrow that Arad caught drew him closer to the end, shaving what time he had and bringing the next arrow even faster.

At first, Arad would have caught Valeria’s arrows before she even knocked another on her bow, but now, the arrow was already leaving the bow, while the one before it just got caught.

It was close, the arrow that Arad wouldn’t have time to catch, the one that would land and bring her victory. After several thousands of arrows, a long battle that lasted for two whole minutes, and with her stockpile of arrows running dry in her magical pocket, she could finally see the red string of fate.

She was mid-air, jumping over Arad’s head upside down with her bow aimed down at his head. The red string flew from the tip of her arrow straight at Arad’s face.

The string drew tight, and the strings of fate flashed. Valeria smiled as she released the arrow, watching it swim through the tapestry of fate, slipping past the storm of Arad’s arms and miraculously getting closer to his flesh than any of her arrows did.

She had shaved enough time that Arad now didn’t have enough to catch the previous arrow and stop this one after it. It doesn’t matter what he does. He will always be late.

She actually won against this horror. When she first saw him, she never thought that such a victory was possible. He was just too fast and strong to be something she could challenge.

Valeria knew well that if this was a real fight, landing one arrow on him meant nothing. She was wasting all of this effort for just one scratch if her arrows could even damage his skin.

But then the world seemed to stop, time slowed down, and Valeria’s eyes opened wide as she saw a ghostly black arm emerging from Arad’s back and extending toward the string of fate.

The black arm grabbed the red string in a fist, twisted, and then ripped it apart. There was only silence, but Valeria could swear that she heard one word, [Useless] booming across the air.

Arad’s body disappeared, and the world shattered to pieces. Valeria could see several images of herself flying around, countless arrows flying backward, returning to her bow, and then disappearing back into her magical storage.

Before long, she was standing where she was before and then began to move on her own, tracing the whole fight back until she fired the fated arrow, only this time, Arad’s pink-glowing eyes were glaring directly at her soul, and the string of fate was nowhere to be seen.

She saw Arad’s arm fly upward, catch the arrow, twist it around, and throw it away. A tiny pebble emerged between his fingers, and he flicked it right at her.

Valeria tried to dodge the tiny pebble but then realized the reason behind all of her fears, the main reason why she felt terror the moment she saw Arad standing in front of her. A red string of fate flew from the pebble, twisted many times, and linked to her forehead.

It didn’t matter what Valeria did. The pebble traced the string of fate, pulled toward Valeria’s body with gravity magic like a guided missile. Before she knew it, Valeria was on the ground with a bulge on her forehead.

While she was on the ground, looking at the blurry sky above, she saw Arad approach her. She looked at him. For a moment, he was the same giant and muscular man, but when she blinked, she could swear that she was seeing a naked, pink-haired, elvish woman standing beside her head.

“Are you alive? That shouldn’t have cracked your skull.” Arad knelt down and looked at her face, “But your head jolted back quite rapidly. How many fingers do you see?” He lifted his hand in front of her face, holding two fingers in a V shape.

Valeria didn’t reply. She already passed out from exhaustion. The hit to her head only helped put her to sleep.