The dragon's harem

Haru kept shivering for a long while, prompting Arad to take her up to his room, where she could lie and rest for a bit.

The mere idea of them being stuck in Limbo was about to drive her mad, and she is a devil that lived in the ninth layer of hell.

Fear made people tremble, cold made them shake to generate heat, but knowing of Limbo was far worse. Much like seeing a Nymph, thinking about it wasn’t something mortals are supposed to do.

Usually, just hearing the name or description of the place wasn’t enough to cause harm, because that knowledge itself was delivered by a mortal to another.

But Haru is a Seer; she can see directly into the reality of the place thanks to her connection to the Fates.

Arad couldn’t imagine a worse place than hell or the abyss, where literal existence would cause a mortal unimaginable pain and suffering for the rest of eternity. Compared to the birthplace of devils and demons, Limbo looked relatively tame.

But when Haru calmed down a bit and explained what Limbo is on the surface level. Arad’s whole perspective shifted. Describing Limbo was simple, albeit chilling.

Limbo wasn’t just any plane of existence, it was THE PLANE of existence, the primordial soup of energy that all the other worlds float through. It was the remnant of the first burst of energy that the first Overgod AO breathed to create the universe.

Hell is an eternal prison where the mortals suffer for their sins and where the most harrowing of horrors can be jailed.

The abyss is an endless pit with infinite layers and untold billions of horrifying demons, a literal endless army the universe can use if controlled right.

Limbo was the place where it all started, and where it shall all end. The only reason Arad and Gojo fell into an ocean and not an explosive, chaotic storm of energy on cosmic proportions is that Entropy probably didn’t want Kali and the gods reaching up her ass for killing Arad and Gojo.

In fact, just now Arad got a theory about why the black ocean’s water blocks magic, because it melts and dissolves it back into its primal nature.

That form of energy is so primal that it might predate mana itself, which explains why Arad and Gojo couldn’t even sense or understand how their mana was just unable to flow through it.

Arad described the black sea to Haru, and she frowned, telling him that it’s most certainly bottomless.

She told him that if they dive deep enough, they are bound to start finding entire sunken worlds there. For all they know, the mortal world could be encased in a single bubble of void, desperately trying to float to the surface.

That didn’t make sense in his head for a second, but it then came crashing down. His mother is carrying the mortal world in her stomach and swimming through the void… the void is dark and black, the sea was also dark and black… Were they swimming in a liquid void? No, that is making even less sense.

Does going deeper compress that void, or decompress it? Is his mother just like a fish swimming at the bottom of that endless black sea?

No, it was getting dumber. He saw a shark and a tuna in that black sea; they shouldn’t be able to live there if it were a liquid void. And, what about him? How massive is he now? How large would an entire world look at the bottom? Or is he just thinking about it too much?

So, going deeper decompresses the void instead of compressing it. Life shouldn’t exist in it, but it does. Arad should be massive to endure it, but he is as small as a giant, and where does magic get in the middle of it all?

CRACK! Arad suddenly felt a sharp pain surging up his spine, and he fell to his knees, groaning. Looking down, he could see Haru’s foot between his legs. She had kicked him.

“ARAD! ARAD!” She kicked him again and shouted in his face. “Stop thinking about it! You’re already bleeding!”

When Arad lifted his hand to calm her down, he noticed that blood was seeping out of his eyes and ears. A skull-cracking headache slowly engulfed his brain, and he then fell on his back, gasping for air.

Haru sighed in relief. “Don’t think about the chaos, it doesn’t make sense, and will consume your mind. This is the place where reality doesn’t make sense and is the most dangerous mental hazard in the entire universe, beside the gate of forbidden knowledge.”

She stood and stepped on his jewels with all of her weight. “If you die in hell, you’ll be chained by its power. If you live in the abyss, you’ll be molded by it. If you think about Limbo and its chaos, you’ll go mad and drown in its immensity.”

She rubbed her foot on his, “The fates taught us that strong, mind-washing feelings and emotions are the only way to clear our minds if we ever beheld the chaos of Limbo. For now, I only know of pain for you.”

Kicking Arad in the nuts was her only way of causing him pain. Seeing how massive, muscular, and dense he was, it wouldn’t matter if she lifted a chair and smacked him with it, it won’t hurt.

After a few kicks, Arad finally caught her foot and pushed her back to the bed. “Stop it! I need those.” He stood, stretched his back, and groaned. “Damn it! That hurts a lot…” He fell back down and sat on the floor.

“I know you’re around, Yog. Did you know we were stuck in Limbo?” He called, and then a second later, Haru felt two small hands massaging her chest from behind.

“Of course I did. When will you understand that I know of things but only act upon that knowledge when people achieve it…” Before she could finish speaking, Haru elbowed her in the eye, sending her rolling down the edge of the bed.

“Who was that?” Haru cried. “Those hands were small, a kid? No, is it a halfling?” She tried to detect who touched her with sound or through her divination powers, but got nothing.

“You can’t see me.” Yog climbed back on the bed, covering her bleeding nose with a handkerchief and rubbing her darkening eye. “Thank me later. You don’t want to behold my true form, Devil Seer.”

She sat beside Haru, then looked at Arad. “Yeah, you’re in Limbo. I brought her here because her power could allow you all to somewhat navigate the place without ending up in a deadly chaos storm.”

She jumped and fell on Haru’s lap, looking at Arad with a smile. “Trying to understand this place is meaningless for you now. I understand it, and I can’t find a use for that knowledge here. So, try your best to survive whatever Entropy throws at you. I can promise that she won’t cheat too much, unless she wants to suffer later.”

Yog then spun around and grabbed Haru by the face, looking at her face with a wide grin. “Right, Amaterasu.”

****

Back beneath hell, Amaterasu looked at the dark void with a gentle smile. “Of course. Let’s see who would win. A Trillion Billion Suns, or one primordial concept.”

Haru was Asmodeus’s priestess, and those twins were Amaterasu’s archons, by extension linking Haru to the goddess of the sun. People always thought that divination was some kind of evil magic that devils could use, but what they failed to understand that the stars guides all.

When a divine like Haru looks at the stars at night to tell the future, they are looking at Amaterasu’s expansive wisdom for guidance.