The dragon's harem

Arad silently swam through the void and prowled around the drakainas, keeping hidden behind the debris and making sure he leaked no magic for them to detect. Arad looked as calm as a whale gliding through the dark depths of the ocean, but his stomach burned with life.

The three incarnations inside his stomach stood facing each other, their fingers dancing in the air as they touched the fabric of space and curled it up into a ball, using the [Ho-white Nova]s in Arad’s stomach as a base.

He could notice the drakainas looking around, searching for him. They know he is prowling close by, but they can’t start wasting their mana to look for him. They need the mana to conjure air to breathe and heal their wounds.

Their eyes were sharp, so they could see him even if he was blending into the darkness of the void, which meant he must always keep something between them and him. Luckily, there is plenty of debris to hide behind.

With each passing second, the black hole inside Arad’s stomach grew larger and hungrier. The space trembled but kept still, forced into submission by the will of a great void dragon.

It grew from a speck of dust to the side of a grant of sand, then to a pea, and after that, to a large peach. It was terrifying to know how much power was hidden in the small thing. Even this tiny black hole is so powerful that it’ll rip a world apart, but Arad wanted something bigger, stronger, darker.

What Arad wanted wasn’t defined by power but defined by the best he could make at his current power. What is the biggest black hole he can keep stable? That’s what he wanted.

In the end, a six-inch wide black hole was the limit of what he could make without it consuming everything in his stomach. He could make up to a foot-wide one if it was the only thing inside his stomach.

Now that the black hole was as big as it could be inside his stomach, he had to decide between throwing it as an attack or keeping it inside his stomach. Arad chose the latter. It’ll be a waste to throw it after using hundreds of [Ho-white Nova]s to start it.

Arad got as close as he could to the twins and looked at them, getting ready to test his new breath. In reality, this wasn’t new at all. His first breath was just him instantly sucking everything in a cone in front of him, which caused a deadly shockwave when all the air collapsed on itself afterward. It was simple, in that cone, everything, including air, gets instantly sucked into his stomach.

But as Arad expected, people could resist it, explaining why alive humans weren’t sucked into his stomach. That had made his original void breath quite weak compared to his nuclear one. It was why he didn’t use it much, because it won’t harm anyone well enough.

That is changing now. By putting the black hole at the back of his throat, he isn’t just sucking things into his stomach. He is exposing them to the deadly and inevitable pull of the black hole. Space itself gets severed and ripped apart, then thrown into the dark depth of his stomach, where it’ll get eaten by the black hole.

In short, before, Arad just pulled things violently into his stomach. Now he cut the literal space and swallowed it with everything in it, living or dead.

Since Arad got close enough to the twins now, he got ready. He only has one chance to make this work.

Diana was clear that if he couldn’t be 100% sure that his attack would take the enemy down, it was best to not attack and try evading them. Sadly, Arad now has no way of evading the battle. That is why he decided on something daring, to use a distraction.

Since Arad can control space well, he’ll use that. He grabbed the fabric of space and twisted it a bit, making a small knot. That knot was slowly getting pulled apart by the tension of the fabrics, which meant it’d get undone in just a few minutes. It looked like the world was a reflection in a twisted mirror, not making any sense.

Arad left it behind a large boulder and swam to the opposite side of the drakainas. Once the knot gets undone, it’ll cause a faint ripple, drawing their attention toward it. And when they do, he’ll attack from the other side.

The only important thing Arad has to keep in mind now is his timing. He has to attack at the exact moment the knot gets undone because Rey and Ray won’t get distracted for long. If he attacks too early or too late, they’ll discover him and retaliate, which would probably cost him a lot.

Arad laid low and waited, then waited, and the knot was about to get undone now. He got ready, opened his jaw, and looked at the drakainas.

The knot got undone, and Arad unleashed his attack. Only he was now in trouble. While Rey looked toward the knot, Ray looked in the opposite direction and saw him. They were protecting each other’s backs, and Ray had just managed to pull Rey and herself out of Arad’s breath cone.

Now that they laid their eyes on him, they won’t let him go. Just a fraction of a second, Ray’s claw was already around Arad’s neck, and Rey, who was a fraction of a second late to attack, was now at his side.

They were mad, and Arad knew immediately that he’d get blasted with a harrowing spell right about now.

Knowing that well, Arad unleashed the full might of the black hole to suck everything around him into his stomach and expand the range of his…

[Elemental Expansion: Devouring Void]

In that fraction of a second, the black hole consumed all of the debris of the shattered world, and Ray and Rey were locked inside Arad’s expansion, but that didn’t matter much to them.

Ray grabbed Arad by the neck, and his expansion shattered. Before he could understand why, he got his answer.

The expansion didn’t shatter. Ray teleported him and Rey out of it. They were now in a whole other dead world, standing on acidic mud.

Arad growled. He doesn’t have enough blood to stall them, and he is certain they won’t allow him to reach the planet’s core this time. He has to come up with another plan. Otherwise, it’ll be his loss.

Ray dropped to the ground, and so did Rey beside her. The two finally could breathe, and the mana here was rich. “If we keep fighting, we’ll win eventually, but you’re better than we thought.” Ray waved her hand, “I give up. We’ll be the submissive ones anyway, so I’ll take the loss.”

“Me too,” Rey leaned on her sister’s back, “One day, you’ll be stronger than us, so we’ll invest in you.” The two shifted into their humanoid form, and Arad did the same.

“You’ll just give up?” Arad looked at them, and Ray sighed. “Unless you want to repeat everything, and we’ll not let you play the same tricks again.”

Rey nodded, “Already sealed the core of the world. Ray also picked a world that doesn’t have any water, just acid.” She looked at Arad, “So, we give up. It’s your win. It’ll be ours if we keep fighting, though.”