The dragon's harem

“Get those animals inside!” The witch growled, kicking a man on the back so hard that she almost broke his back and sent him rolling down a set of old stairs in the middle of the village.

“Come on, you’ll make that ugly face of yours even uglier, stop yelling.” A blue-haired red devil walked in and grabbed the man by the hair and threw him into a portal. He then looked at the witch, her short curly hair and plum round face contorted into a frown.

“Shut up, fiend. Do your job and keep your ass shut up.”

The devil sighed, shaking his head, “What do you say? She’s a whiny one, isn’t she?”

The large skeletal dragon sitting on the crushed houses moved, “Both of you, I’m not raising wyrmlings here. Work together, or I’ll make you regret it.”

His hollow eyes burned with dark magic, and his head shifted, glaring at the witch, “Don’t damage the souls. No, you already did, cut a finger.”

The witch paled and took a step back; the devil burst laughing beneath the stairs.

“What?” She cried, and the dragon moved, pointing at her with a claw. “You’ve been messing up a lot. So I won’t be letting you off the hook anymore. Cut a finger and I won’t skin you alive and find another witch.”

The witch looked at her hands and then reached to her hips, pulling a knife with a shaking hand.

“Are you sure? I won’t damage anything anymore.” She looked at him, and he grunted, “It is about what you’ve already done. Cut it, I won’t repeat myself.”

The witch took a deep breath, pressed the knife on her pinky, and slashed it off. With a cry, she hunched forward, panting. “Here…are you… happy?”

“Happy? I don’t feel anything.” The dragon moved and glared at her closely, “What I want is for you to understand that you can’t just mess up the plan. Next time, you’ll cut two fingers.”

But then, he went silent. The light in his eyes shifted a bit, and his head rose up like a cat. The sound of rattling bones filled the village, and his magic flow shifted a lot.

“What’s the matter?” The devil realised that something must be off. Even the witch was confused at how the dragon changed; they had never seen a dracolich act like this, lose focus for a second.

“FUCK! RUN, JUMP INTO THE PORTAL, NOW!” The dracolich growled, waving his claws and coating the whole village in a barrier.

The witch was still reeling back from cutting her finger, and the devil had just sensed what the dragon sensed. His face paled, and he flew up the stairs like a bolt and pushed the witch aside.

“FUCKING MOVE! BITCH!” He came at the last second and saved the witch’s life, but as a price, he lost his whole left arm. The tiny horror already pierced the dracolich’s barrier and was standing sideways on the wall behind them.

Zephyr looked up, her eyes glowing green, her green nails long and sharp, dripping with devilish blood. It all happened in a fraction of a second, but the devil still managed to make a spin, grabbed the witch by the hair, and threw her so hard toward the portal that he almost tore her scalp out.

They needed her to stay alive; damage can be healed, what matters most is getting away from this fairy.

Zephyr, of course, noticed the dragon and devil protecting the witch, so she aimed to kill her first, only for the devil to throw himself in the way and the dragon to smack the poor witch mid-flight to accelerate her further toward the portal.

Zephyr dodged the devil and flew away, dragging the dracolich away, “A dracolich, do you mind me killing you again?”

The devil turned around, lifted his one functional arm to cast a spell. He has to assist the dragon against Zephyr; no one can stall her alone. But at that moment, an arrow pierced his palm.

Aella was already there with her bow up, “Lexi, support.”

A barrier surrounded the devil as a barrage of arrows rained down on his head.

The devil’s eyes flashed red, and he growled, healing all of his wounds before the arrows could hit him. As the bones grew out of his shoulder and flesh covered them, turning into a muscular arm, that arm was already flying toward the first arrow, punching it out of the air.

Then it was a storm of fists, knocking all of the arrows down at blinding speed. He was faster than Aella’s arrows, which made them almost useless.

He then took a step, flapped his wings, and flew right out of Lexi’s barrier, shattering it with ease. In the blink of an eye, he was standing behind Aella, glaring her down with a dark face, painted black with rage.

Anyone would’ve died and had their soul crushed from just being stared at by such a harrowing devil, but Aella wasn’t just anyone. She didn’t move and kept looking forward with a passive face, the green fire in her eyes sparking with a disturbing light of twisted malice.

The devil swung his arm down with all of his strength, but Aella spun around faster, lifted her wrist, and blocked his attack, retaliating with a punch to his guts. And then, it was just violence. The devil swung and threw attacks, punches, kicks, tail swipes, only for Aella to deflect and parry them all with her small hands and cut him with bursts of compressed air.

As she learned that keeping up with a devil in a brawl might be hard, she flicked her fingers at his chest and sent him flying back with countless cuts and slashes on his body, painting the whole village with his blood.

Compressed air that takes the shape of crushing bursts, slashing blades, and piercing arrows. She might be fighting barehanded, but she doesn’t lack weapons.

The devil crashed onto a nearby hill and immediately jumped back at her, “So you’re the Herald of Zephyr, a monster like that tiny fairy. I thought S-ranks were a pain, but then you showed up.”

Lexi tried to help by casting some spells to slow the devil down, but all of her attempts failed; she was at best a lower A-rank, a wizard like her had no business fighting a devil that could toy with S-ranks.

The devil reached Aella, and she swung her plam, cutting him clean across the torso with a wind blade. But his upper half still had its momentum, and he managed to deliver a devastating punch, which Aella still managed to block, but still got sent flying back at blinding speed.

Aella hit a building with her back, shattered it, and came out of the other end with the devil already healed up and flying at her with a clenched fist.

“Elves are still fragile little worms like humans.”

Aella deflected his fist, flew with a spin in the air from the impact, and landed on the streets. The moment the devil got close, she swung her fist, blasting him away with a powerful shockwave.

Lexi rushed in to help once more, but she froze in place. This was her first time seeing Queen Aella fight, and the way she moved and fought was horrifying.

Lexi had always thought that Queen Aella was a graceful archer who snipes people from afar, not someone who grabs a devil by the arm and rips off his elbow like a banana.

Of course, while Aella couldn’t lift heavy things, jump high, or run fast, she could fly with wind magic, and her arms were used to pulling bows with enough draw weight to make the strongest fighters sweat, so if she grabbed something and wanted to rip it off, she would.

Lexi knew that Arad was powerful enough to blow the castle apart by mistake, but he was huge and intimidating, so that didn’t feel strange. But seeing the gentle, soft, and caring Aella ragdolling a devil that would make most A-rankers shit themselves was terrifying.

Speed, power, martial prowess, intellect, magic, and luck, Aella surpassed any adventurer that Lexi had seen in her life.

But at that moment, Lexi was about to see another terrifying side of Aella. The side where she stops looking like a mortal.

[Elemental Expansion]

A tornado emerged out of nowhere and consumed the whole village, clouds plunged the world into darkness, and a rain of arrows, blades, and impacts spun alongside the violent wind, hitting the devil like a hail of death.

Like a blender, Aella’s tornado ripped everything to dust, cutting, piercing, and crushing it into a fine powder, bloody mush, and the devil wasn’t spared.

As his body was ground into a paste, the devil’s soul smiled as his hellish regeneration outpaced the damage, and he was certain that Aella would get weaker after her expansion ends. She didn’t have enough magic to cast this tornado, so she must’ve pulled mana from Zephyr, meaning she would burn out afterward and get weaker, allowing him to kill her.

All he needed to do was wait for her to fall.

He was flung into the nearby mountain range, and Aella’s expansion disappeared seconds after it started.