The dragon's harem

“Damn it, he’s one annoying dragon, and I’ve been getting rusty after all of those years.” Dendron was slowly getting faster, stronger, and better at handling Arad’s harrowing barrage of deadly attacks. Getting stuck in the blender, that is, anything within fifty meters of him, wasn’t so bad now.

And then, Dendron lifted her army, engulfing her tiny wrist in a brown wooden armor, deflecting Arad’s blackhole swords with a deafening shockwave.

In the same move, she slipped between his other arms and slashed at his chest, opening a massive wound. “I’m getting used to you. The World Tree has the power to spread across all of the worlds and dimensions. Did you really think that black void of yours could harm it?”

Arad took a step back, healing while sending a rain of [Ho-white Nova]s at Dendron’s head.

She dodged all of the falling stars, their head, and explosions in one swift move. Her prime was near; she could feel her blood flowing again, the magic that had rotted in her ancient bones finally coming back to life, and the fog clouding her brain had cleared.

“You just don’t have enough firepower to burn my armor.” She dodged several of his attacks, slipped behind him, and flew up, grabbing the back of his head. “And it’s over.”

With that swift move, she ripped Arad’s head off. Thorns exploded from the wound and lifted Arad up, sealing his body in the branches of a great, radiant tree.

“One year old and you’re this powerful. I see, the World Tree had to force me to kill you before you became a real threat. Another year, and your threat of burning the tree would’ve been real.” She looked at Arad’s head in her hand.

“Come on, I’m sure you can still hear me. The brain doesn’t die that quickly. In your next life, don’t fight me and run away.”

But as she was talking, something terrifying happened. Arad’s eyes flashed red, and suddenly, the radiant tree exploded behind Dendron.

Dendron turned back, gasping as she saw another Arad standing beside the shattered tree, the body in there healing as well as the head in her hand disappeared.

“Don’t fucking tell me.”

She was then standing alone in the middle of four Arads. “…You’ve still got more to show.”

Each one of Arad’s incarnations flashed with a different light, and this time, Dendron almost shat herself as she sensed the heavy spirit magic rushing out of his body.

One Incarnation got Zephyr on its head, the other got Nar, one got Undine and Salamander, and the last one got Plum.

“Spirits as well? Those…” But before she could speak, another wave of magic rushed out of Arad’s body, one that felt oppressively strange. No, upon looking closer, it wasn’t magic; it was Arad sending mana to his Expansion.

Dendron could clearly understand what order Arad gave, and it was simple. To turn on the oven. Which oven? Whatever was causing the darkness of his void to flash bright blue and the death curse to start rapidly filling the place alongside searing heat.

She was barely able to deal with one Arad; now she has to deal with four, each empowered by other Spirit Queens to counter her spirit magic, and do all of that, inside a boiling nuclear reactor.

Welcome to Phase Two.

Now Dendron found herself on the defensive all the time, barely managing to run away and protect herself from being fried alive while getting chased by four crazed void dragons, each possessing enough power to rip the world apart. It didn’t matter how much power she drew from the World Tree, Arad always seemed to have more.

Then everything fell apart when Arad pulled another trump card, a simple spell he learned long ago called [Time Slow]

In the blink of an eye, Dendron found her barrier shattered and her body withering and burning away under the merciless inferno of Arad’s nuclear engine.

She, who was once known as the undefeated guardian of the World Tree, has finally found her match, billions of years into her service. And that match was nothing more than a young void dragon with barely any experience or knowledge about the world, a hatchling who had just started stretching his arms. Yet he carried enough harrowing might to put into question the laws of the world that allowed him to be born.

“Why…do you even exist?” That was the last question Dendron asked before turning into ash and evaporating into Arad’s nuclear engine, a question that was left unanswered.

With Dendron dead and erased, Arad finally cooled down and looked around, waiting for the heat and radiation he caused to dissipate a bit so he could release his Elemental Expansion. All of the powers that supported him faded away alongside his incarnations, and he exhaled a torrent of blinding white flames, standing alone in the middle of the radiant hell he spawned.

^The death curse won’t go away that easily. But, I’ve got a way to cheat it.^ He disappeared into nothing, and an incarnation spawned back in the tree where he was before.

“I was right. When I conjure an incarnation anew, it doesn’t carry whatever curse I had. So all I had to do to get rid of that pesky death curse was to use a new incarnation.” He took a deep breath of the cold air and then looked beside him where Doma had just appeared.

“That Spirit Queen was something else. I can’t believe her wood could resist the pressure of that black sword of yours, or even not get burned by a [Ho-white Nova]’s fire.

“She got her power from the World Tree. This tree had been cultivating its power since the dawn of time, it won’t be surprising if her wood could survive a heat powerful enough to melt the universe.” He looked around and was about to call Cerilla and everyone else. Now, with the biggest threat to them gone, the trip would be much safer and easier.

Sadly, Arad saw something terrifying, a bud appearing at the wall of the tree like a transparent cocoon, a grape or a pimple, all at the same time. Inside it, a naked Dendron was getting reborn.

Before he could say anything, the cocoon burst open and Dendron fell out, landing on the ground. “Ah…I almost forgot this.” She growled, pushing on the ground with her hands to stand.

“Oh, so you’re a part of the World Tree.” Arad started getting ready to cast his Elemental Expansion again. “I can kill you as many times as I need until you decide coming back to life isn’t worth it.”

“Yeah, no, we can stop this here.” Dendron fell on her back, spreading her limbs apart to relax a bit. “You talk a lot of bullshit, but you follow through with that bullshit, so I’m not going to dive face first into a pit of rotten manure.”

“The hell you’re talking about?”

“I’m saying that you say a lot of thing that means nothing, like burning the world tree or killing me. But you’re able to turn that nothing into a reality, so whatever crap you spit out isn’t crap anymore, but a reality. And I’m not stupid enough to get stung from the same hole twice.”

She sighed.

“Every previous king or queen brought an army with them, many talented mages and wizards, powerful fighters, and thousands of skilled soldiers.” She looked at him, “But the current queen brought a sinner Dark Elf, two of them in fact, an epigone of the World Tree, and whatever the fuck you are.”