The dragon's harem

After swimming for what looked like an eternity, Arad’s limbs started to grow tired and numb. The cold was too much to endure for a long time, and he had already survived longer than any human could.

Bit by bit, his vision started blurring, and his eyelids felt heavy; each stroke of his arms was more tiring than the last, and he already couldn’t feel his legs. He didn’t know if they were still moving.

His injured left arm was the first to give up. It halted moving, forcing him to keep swimming with just one arm, pulling his massive body against the waves using all that was left of his strength.

He was tired, too exhausted, and wanted to lie down and sleep, but he couldn’t do that. Arad knew that the moment he fell asleep, his body would stop moving, freeze, and die.

Arad had to think of a way to get out of the water. Just swimming in a random direction won’t take him anywhere. For a moment, he thought about letting his arm bleed again to attract another sea creature. He could then kill it and hide inside its body to get a few minutes of sleep without freezing.

But the question was whether he could kill another monster in his current condition? Even with how reckless and rabid he was, he wasn’t that confident in his ability to win a second fight in the water. He wasn’t that insane.

The next thing he tried to do was use magic, even though he already knew it was useless. He couldn’t even sense mana, let alone cast spells. At first, Arad thought this was like when he got locked in Merlin’s labyrinth, but this was a whole other beast. Not even simple magic was possible. He couldn’t even sense his stomach.

No, it wasn’t that he couldn’t sense mana. Something made him numb to it, like how he couldn’t feel his toes anymore from the cold; something was making him unable to perceive it.

There weren’t many things around him that could block his sense of mana. In fact, there was only one thing around, the damned sea itself. The water might be what’s getting between him and mana.

Having nothing else better to do, Arad lifted his one healthy arm and tried to keep himself afloat. The best he could do was fill his lungs with water and hope his legs were still moving below.

To his luck, his massive thighs were the last thing willing to give up. In fact, their thick, powerful muscles were probably the only thing keeping his body warm. If they had given up, he would’ve long since died.

As Arad remained afloat for a few minutes, his arm that was above the water started to dry in the wind. Before long, his palm dried, and he could feel the mana sparkling across his palm.

Arad smiled. As he expected, he was indeed a weak human once more, far away from his powerful draconic body. But he had access to magic, weak level 0 spells, but even those were powerful enough.

He wanted to create fire, a warm blaze to heat his frigid bones. But he didn’t. Instead, Arad conjured a small handle of barrier magic and anchored it into the air. Grabbing it, he slowly pulled him self up with one arm, getting his upper torso out of the water.

The handle was just half a meter long and an inch thick, but it was enough for him to lie on it like a shirt on a wire, folded in two.

He stayed there for a while, waiting for more of his body to dry. Soon, his arm was drying out, and he could sense more mana, thus creating better magic.

The handle turned into a half-meter square that allowed Arad to sit on it, finally getting his shivering body out of the cursed sea. He made sure to keep his dry arm away from the rest of his body, because the moment it got wet again, his magic would disappear.

He was finally out of the water, but his troubles were just beginning. He was shivering, shaking to the bones as his body tried to keep him warm.

Arad looked at the platform beneath him. It was a half-meter square, but he didn’t need it to be that large for him to just sit on it with his legs dangling down, so he cut it in half. He made it a 0.5/0.25 rectangle, then used the mana to conjure a small flame on his palm to heat and dry his body.

Arad waited, and waited, then waited some more. After almost half an hour, he was finally dry. The first thing he wanted to try was to heal his arm, but sadly, he couldn’t. All of his links to the divines are blocked by something, and it wasn’t the sea.

For magic, he could use level 0 magic, the weak spells that don’t require much mana. But he was limited by his human output. For now, his output was 135 MP.

That was enough to create a 1m/1m {100 MP} square barrier that could only be used as a platform, a fist-sized flame {10 MP}, and leave him with just about 25 MP.

Arad didn’t have anywhere near the output he wanted to survive this cursed sea, but he wasn’t completely hopeless. He could fight back.

Arad quickly made the barrier move using what little remained from his output. He needed to get away from the sea, so going up was his only option.

The barrier moved, albeit as slowly as a snail. It climbed up, and up, then up some more. After half an hour, Arad was finally fifty meters above the water. If anything could get him at his height, he probably couldn’t survive it anyway.

Arad picked a direction and sent the barrier forward. All he could do now was warm himself up with the flame and wait.

Hours passed with Arad floating around on his 1/1 barrier; he was already getting hungry and planning to try hunting something up. But something else was on his mind, something amazing.

The stars above were stable; since he got out of the water, none of them shifted, and he could use them for navigation. Albeit, they were nothing like the stars he was used to.

What was more promising was the dark shadow in the distant horizon; it was faint, too faint for Arad to see it with his flame on, so he had to look really carefully. He didn’t want to get his hopes up, but it might be land.

Two hours later, he could see it more clearly, and it was indeed looking like land. Not that big, but at least a small island.

Another two hours passed, and Arad could see the island better. Now he was certain it was land, and he couldn’t wait to reach it and finally get to take a nap.

He was already warm, so he dropped the size of his flame to half to accelerate the barrier a bit more. He was already moving with 25 MP, so with half of the flames up, he was now moving with 30 MP, leaving just 5 for the fire.

After another two hours, he finally reached the island. There were no trees, no dirt, just jagged black stone everywhere. It was less than half a kilometer wide, which allowed Arad to get a good look.

It wasn’t empty; someone was there, asleep.

In the middle of the island, a naked Gojo was lying on the cold stone, snorting.