The dragon's harem

As the fight ended and the flame legions were driven away, Tina fell to the ground, exhausted from the sheer stress of being in a fight. Even after a long time here, she never got used to aiming her rifle at other people.

All of her limbs hurt, and she reeked of gunpowder. As she plumped beside Arad, her eyes shifted across the battlefield, where all of her classmates were. They were exhausted too, but were still far more energetic than she was.

Usually, she would endure and put on a strong front until she got back home to avoid any trouble, but now with Arad by her side, she could relax a bit. If the entire world were to flip upside down, nothing would ever manage to reach her by his side.

“Don’t push yourself too much.” Arad smiled, and she took a deep breath, resting at his side beneath the tree.

While all that she had to do was aim, pull the trigger, and occasionally scramble to reload, the sheer stress of being on the edge of taking someone else’s life weighed heavily on her mind, which ended with her almost never getting a kill shot.

She wasn’t born to be a fighter and certainly didn’t have a talent for killing. While she didn’t mind cultivating here, she hated fights like this the most. Too much stress for her liking.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t built for it. She knew well that killing is common, and that if she doesn’t end another’s life, hers would be the one snuffed. So, to protect herself and compensate for her lacking power, she took the natural path any other creature would and became hyper-aggressive.

Arad was surprised to hear that Tina did win her first match in the sect. The fight was against a noble brat, one that was far too powerful than her, a cultivator able to control the wind, fly, and punch like a hammer.

When the fight started, Tina immediately pulled a gun and shot the poor guy in the thigh. When he tried to stand again, she shot his other leg. When he called her a cheating whore, she dumped the entire cylinder into his legs. The most advanced handgun in this world was a revolver, and she found it quite useful to have more than one shot, like with the blunderbuss.

Today, when Arad looked at her, he could see that she had four revolvers beneath her skirt and over four kilos of ammo. Without counting the rifle, black powder, and steel balls she carried in a pack on her back.

Tina didn’t mind hauling all of that load on her back, but it was really putting a lot of stress on her back.

Compared to a normal woman, Tina was, in fact, quite strong and could probably hold her own in a fistfight, but due to her crumbling soul, her endurance was way below what it should be. She might’ve been a bit short at just above five feet tall, but that only made her build even more condensed.

Her arms were dense, her legs were thick, and her abs and back were built like bricks. She had grown up on a farm and handled heavy equipment a lot, and she suspected that had a hand in her short stature.

But sadly, that great body of hers was held back by her soul, and in the end, she never grew stronger than anything mundane.

She stood and leaned on the tree, then threw a glance over the distance at Peara. In an instant, she got a glance back. Peara was telling her to keep resting; she’ll handle splitting everything for everyone. At the start, Tina didn’t trust anyone, but after just a few days, she came to trust a rare few of the people in her class.

Peara was a rare case even among those, because the first time she spoke with Tina wasn’t even funny. Peara had offered to pay her a million jewels (A currency of this world) to let her sleep with Arad once and get pregnant by him.

What made it worse was that it wasn’t even Peara’s wish. Her family was basically forcing her to make that deal and get Arad’s genetics into their bloodline.

“Are you okay?” Arad moved closer to her side. Even sitting beside her, she was barely as tall as his head.

“Just tired.” She sat back down and pulled a small jug of water to drink. “It’s been a while, where have you been?”

He looked at the sky, “Stuck in Limbo, but that’s a solved problem now.” He stared at her, and she felt a shiver down her spine, but it wasn’t as bad as before. Arad has gotten used to looking at people’s souls and has learned how to make them feel less harmed. To do that, he had to not look directly at the soul, but keep it in his peripheral vision.

“I see, your soul got quite a bit better.” Tina had started with 2 soul power, compared to the commoners of this world who were around 100, but today, she was already at 10, five times more than she was before.

Granted, she was still ten times worse than any random person, but Arad couldn’t care less. What he cared about was that she improved, and by a lot compared to her starting point. “In just a few days, you’ve got so much better. It’s really amazing.”

“Is it really?” She looked at her feet. “To be normal, I need to at least become normal, meaning to reach a 100 soul power, and to solidify that growth, I should at least aim for 1000 after.” She lifted her head and saw Peara arguing with the others. “She is over a thousand, and Noah is in the nine hundreds.”

In this world, soul power was almost everything, and people always cultivated to grow stronger, increase their status, and garner wealth. When Tina started here, her 2 soul power was so low that no one could ever believe she was married. No one could even begin to imagine the fool who would marry her and jeopardize their own bloodline.

“All you need is time. You’ve been cultivating here for just a few weeks now, and that isn’t long enough.” He tapped her on the back, and she stared at him.

“Time alone won’t help, MONEY! Without money here, getting cultivating resources always requires you to fight something, usually multiple things, then make sure no one steals your stuff.” She sighed, “Like we were here fighting to get that jade.”

The Jade was worth a lot, and it would be divided among them based on contribution. That meant the strong who can contribute a lot to fights get the bigger share and grow even faster, while the weaker ones, like Tina, are usually left with nothing. Albeit in this class, she gets a decent amount thanks to her true aim.

But there was another thing that was eating at Tina’s money, and it was that the weaker a cultivator is, the more likely they are to fail at cultivating and waste their resources.

“That jade… is it really worth that much?” Arad lifted an eyebrow, and Tina giggled, “Of course, why would we be here risking our lives for if it wasn’t worth the trouble?”

Arad looked down, “I mean, there are a lot of them around, some deep underground, some in the jagged mountains north.”

She stared at him for a second and then sighed. “No one can dig that deep underground, and the mountains north are a dangerous place that even elders don’t dare cross alone.”

Arad looked at the mountains, “I guess we can’t suddenly start selling them without attracting trouble, and being a lumberjack can’t be that lucrative…”

Arad had to find a better way to get money for Tina. Usually, the cultivator would get their own funds by going on expeditions like this, but due to her circumstances, she needed more funds, and was weaker than everyone else, so she couldn’t secure as many resources.

As the two talked, Peara approached them, threw a glance at Tina, and then turned toward Arad. “If you need money, I can help with that.”

“Peara!” Tina glared at her, “I told you not. You’ll regret it. Believe me when I tell you, neither you nor your family understands what kind of hole you’re digging.”

Seeing them both, Arad smiled. He tried to look into their minds, and found the entire situation funny. He looked at Peara, and smiled. “That offer of yours. I’ll take it on one condition.” He stood, and suddenly Peara found her nose an inch away from his groin. “Your mother, and aunts who planned this, I’ll be paying them a visit first. So, tell them to clean up.”

Peara never told anyone who in her family ordered her or was supplying money, so when Arad spoke, she took a step back and paled. How did he know? Who was he? What did he mean? She had to report this back.

“Sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me.” Feeling disturbed by his smile, she turned around and left as quickly as she arrived.

Later that day, Peara returned home and went to report immediately. In the large meeting room of her family, her six aunts, their husbands, and even her parents were there. She had called them all to inform them about what happened that day. How Arad cleaved Leon’s father’s arm, how she made contact, and what he said about their offer.

Several minutes in, as she explained to them under the dim light of candles, something clicked behind them in the darkness. When they all looked, Arad was standing there in the shadows, and he had just locked the door.

“Whoo! Some old ones, and an audience as well.” When his face emerged from the darkness, they all cried, seeing this giant hunching inside the small room, glaring at them like a hungry bear that just shown up in the middle of a sheep barn.