The dragon's harem

Yog left Arad and Gojo alone. The two of them looked at each other for a moment before turning around and taking a look at the massive land that just appeared behind the horizon.

“She is a monster.” Gojo sighed, and Arad nodded. “True. But you didn’t see the Spirit Queens at work. They built a whole world inside my stomach in just a few hours.”

“The Spirit Queens are one thing; that midget is another. Because of one difference. Didn’t she say there are monsters there?” As Gojo pointed out, Arad froze in place upon realizing the reality of what Yog did.

Yog didn’t just create a massive plot of land, she also filled it with life, plants, animals, and monsters. The Spirit Queens merely raised elemental energy and gave it shape. Yog, on the other hand, carefully created multiple ecosystems and balanced them in seconds.

“Remember that massive spell book she showed us? I bet most of it is about how to create life, set ecosystems, and make sure things don’t die out.” He looked at Arad with a grin. “She is on a whole other level above the Spirit Queens.”

“You’re going to have a blast reading that book of hers.” Arad smiled, and Gojo shook his head.

“She never does anything for free. Most of the time, she only asks for stupid prizes. Last time I tried to use a forbidden spell, she asked for thirteen scales, five pieces of old wood, and a jar of cookies.”

“I can under the scales, but what up with the other two?” Arad looked at him and Gojo sighed.

“Nothing special, really. I picked the old wood from a random alley, and Liliana cooked the cookies.” He looked at the horizon. “I guess she just needs the formality done.”

Gojo took a step forward and formed a floating barrier. “Let’s go. I’ll use the magic.”

Arad jumped on the platform, and the two of them flew away, heading toward the new land. Just from how far it looked, it’ll take them several hours to reach it.

****

In the seventh layer of hell, a woman in leather armor walked across the wastelands, cockroaches and spiders crunching beneath her boots. Even though she was alone, not a single bug or devil dared approach carelessly, because her eyes burned a disturbing red flame.

She looked forward, frowning at the rotting stench. Slowly, she lifted her hand and covered her mouth with her scarf, only leaving her brown hair and long ears out to the wind.

She had been tracking the scent of death for hours now, and she was finally getting closer to her target. Everything leads back here, to the seventh layer of hell.

Coming to hell alone is stupid, Eris knew that. This isn’t the place to spend a holiday. She looked at the ground, seeing that she was stepping on a skinless, moaning woman with bugs crawling out of her eyes and open guts. She was a sinner suffering here as a breeding ground for bugs.

The skinless woman wasn’t the only sinner around; with just one glance, Eris could spot several dozen of them in every corner. Alive, but barely, suffering for all of eternity.

At that moment, a massive pillar dropped from the sky beside her. It was black, hundreds of meters wide, and extending endlessly above the clouds. Looking into the distance, Eris could notice several more pillars moving.

They were limbs, the legs of a massive bug.

Eris lifted her head and looked at the clouds, finally spotting the black monstrosity. Eight red glowing eyes glared back at Eris, each the size of a castle. The spider’s massive abdomen was the size of five mountains stacked in a pyramid.

“Eight? No, ten kilometers in the sky.” Eris sighed, finding it annoying to look at the spider’s head, which was so high in the sky. The spider was so massive that if a passenger airplane was flying nearby, it would smack right into its fangs.

But the spider didn’t remain massive for too long. Its body disappeared into the clouds, and seconds later, a woman with long black hair, red eyes, and wearing weaved silk landed in front of Eris. She approached, her massive butt swinging from one side to another with each step. Eris could tell that she was better built than even Gamond.

“Hello there, lovely. I see you aren’t either a devil or a sinner.”

As the woman spoke, tiny spiders crawled out her mouth and nose, crawling all over her face and body to other holes.

Eris didn’t speak; instead, she kept looking at the strange woman. Her vampire eyes could see a sea worth of blood flowing through the woman’s veins, charging something up.

As the woman stood there, two more pairs of arms burst from her shoulders. Then all of her six arms formed a dark symbol, boiling with black magic.

“You aren’t allowed here. HELL’S MAGIC!”

There was only one flash, and a cone of dark red raw curses exploded at Eris’s face, blasting everything and even punching a massive hole in the mountain behind her.

“Hohoho! Rest in piss. I’ve been really looked down upon in the past few days ever since she left for the war. I’ll show you all.” She laughed for a moment.

As the smoke cleared, the spider’s laughs died. Eris was standing in the same place, unharmed.

Eris took a single step forward, closed the distance, and swung her fist. With a single backhand smack to the face, she unleashed enough force to evaporate everything in a hundred-meter radius and sent the spider flying through the air at blinding speed.

The spider’s shapeshift came undone, and her massive body returned. Eris’s hit was so powerful that she lost consciousness and lost control of her magic. She crashed through two mountains and seemed to be slowing down, rolling on the wastelands and digging a massive trench.

But then, she sped up again, dragged violently on the ground by an invisible force. In the middle of the sky, a several hundred of kilometers wide purple sun burned.

The titanic spider got dragged on the ground, lifted to the sky, smacked onto the layer’s ceiling, and then smacked back on the ground. It didn’t matter how massive and heavy she was; to the unforgiving gravity field of a sun, she was as light as a feather.

The spider, the brood mother growled, using all of her magic to try and fly away from the sun’s grasp, only to fail and get hammered back to the ground with an impact powerful enough to crack her abdomen open and shatter her titanic legs. It was only then that she realized that it might be easier to escape the gravity if she were lighter.

The brood mother shifted into her humanoid form to escape, but the sun instantly pinned her to the burned ground. Anything within several thousand kilometers of the sun started melting and burning, turning the bug layer of hell into an infernal purgatory, and everything else was slowly getting cooked.

The brood mother coughed a bucket of blood as her humanoid body rested on the surface of the boiling lava, looking at the purple sun with eight dried eyes.

Eris flew down, leaving the sun in the sky for the time being. She landed on the brood mother, pinning her down by stepping on her chest and making sure she can crush her heart and lungs with one move.

“I ask questions, not you. Where are the abominations and this layer’s Devil Lord, it can’t be, you’re too weak, it feels like a joke.” The lava beneath the brood mother froze, and Eris pushed down with her foot, threatening to crush her.

“You’re killing my children.”

“Sol and Los, the Goddess of Murder and a lesser sun deity. So no shit, I’ll murder everything until you tell me what I need to hear.”

The brood mother growled, but then her face paled and she pissed herself. Eris got confused because she hadn’t done anything yet, only for the voice coming from behind to catch her by surprise.

“You’d better do what she says, little one. Everything’s place is beneath the sun’s foot, all things are to be looked down upon by our grace.” Amaterasu was floating behind Eris with a grin on her face.

It doesn’t matter how small or weak the sun is; no living being can even begin to approach it’s power.

“What are you doing here?” Eris gasped, and Amaterasu floated a bit down, until she looked to be standing beside Eris.

“Other gods too over in the war, so I’m taking a short holiday. And I just heard Nyar was up to something, and that you’re trying to locate him. So I’m here to take care of you and help you a bit.” She leaned on Eris’s shoulder.

“Can you just take care of it?” Eris sighed, and Amaterasu giggled. “I can, but I won’t. I won’t always be available to bail you out, so I’ll teach as much as I can so you can stand on your own.”

She looked at the brood mother. “First lesson, no one stands in front of the sun. If it’s a stranger, their face should be kissing the ground when they speak to you. Make it a rule.”