The dragon's harem

That was a good question. What could Betty do besides move at the speed of light and shave all of those apes before they could even notice her moving? What could she, a three-foot-six-inches-tall halfling, do?

Who is she without her radiant light? Without her speed and draconic power. Who was Betty before being called the Bright? Well, nothing. She was called the Bright before even showing or needing her light magic, simply because she was bright, a genius wizard.

No one can just become the chairman of the biggest magic university in the world with raw power alone.

“You know, I find it offensive having to strain my neck to look at your ugly mug.” Betty stared at the ape with a smile, and suddenly, his face hit the ground. He wasn’t beheaded, he wasn’t forced down with magic, but something was missing. As the sharp pain jolted up from his hips to his chest, he realized it. His legs were gone.

As he screamed, the other apes around cried and jumped away. Behind the injured ape stood another halfling made of dirt in Betty’s image, but this one carried a large greatsword, and it was dripping with fresh blood.

“Ah! This feels better.” Betty walked forward, stared at the ape, then at everyone else. “If you want a war, then I’ll give you a way. Your army, against mine.” As she spoke those words, more earth golems in her own form started rising from the ground, thousands of them.

Halflings are born retired; they never need to work or lift a muscle in their whole life. They live off inherited lands and businesses, and the way they achieve that is through controlling golems to work for them.

When Betty was born, her parents already had a large farm with countless crops and animals. Each day, her father would wake up early, eat his breakfast, pull his rocking chair, and rest on his porch to read the news. Then, with the pipe he is smoking, he’ll cast a spell that conjures over a hundred smoke golems and send them to work in his place.

Her mother preferred to rest by the fireplace in the living room, and with a flick of her fingers, she would conjure tens of mud golems outside the house and send them to tend to the animals, shear the sheep, and collect eggs.

If they lacked something, they would send a golem to take it from their neighbor. Among themselves, the halflings don’t even use money or trade; they take what they need and let the other halflings take what they need from them. The only time they’ll deal with money is when dealing with foreigners who don’t contribute to their lifestyle.

Betty herself was quite talented and could control over a hundred golems like her father from a young age, and the number just kept growing. All she needed to do was summon the golems once, show them what to do, then forget about it.

The halflings already automated their lives with golems and were all naturally gifted with a high affinity for magic. Betty, who was a genius, had now spent hundreds of years honing her skill. She, who was supposed to live her entire life retired and lazing around, had spent centuries tirelessly mastering magic and spellcraft.

[Create Elemental Golem: Earth]

“Sir! Thousands, no, tens of thousands of strange golems are surrounding us!” An ape screamed his lungs out as the golems in Betty’s shape started emerging everywhere, inside and outside the city, in large numbers.

“There are exactly ninety-five thousand Earth Golems. I left the other one-hundred-thousand back home working in the fields.” Betty floated back and took a seat on Ganta’s shoulder. “Now, do you want them to use magic or not?”

The apes growled as they found themselves surrounded by an entire army. Little did they know, this wasn’t even the beginning of what Betty could do without her light magic. Those golems are what she learned before treading the path of wizardry, and it wasn’t what got her the role of chairman.

The golems did get stronger and more numerous the more skilled she got with magic, but even before that, she could still create a couple of thousands, far more than any of her parents ever could.

There are four sides to Betty’s power:

The halfling, The Master of many thousands of golems.

The Archwizard who mastered magic and reached its summit, taking the chairman’s role.

The light bloodline wielder who dances at the speed of light.

The blessed cleric of Yog, a level of divine power that Yog grants to all of her skilled magicians.

There was one reason why she mostly only uses her light magic, and it was simple. It gets things done faster. If she wanted to go from A to B, it would be faster to just run at light speed than teleport.

Betty’s golems moved first, and they rushed the apes in the blink of an eye. The clash of swords, the screams, and the violent shockwaves and blasts exploding in the distances all mixed together into a harrowing cacophony of terror.

The ape who lost his legs, the one who spoke first, watched in horror as the golems and the rebellious apes clashed. Where did those golems come from? Was it magic? Should this even be possible?

He didn’t know, and didn’t care anymore. This halfling must be killed, and even without his legs, he still had a fighting chance. Using both of his massive arms, he smacked the ground and sent his torso flying into the air. He had lost his legs and must stop the bleeding first. Without them, he is just a sitting duck.

He knew no magic that could regenerate them, but he was certain that a powerful healing spell would be able to reattach them. “OOO!OOho!”

He roared, and two arms jumped in like the wind and snatched his legs and brought them to him. It seems that Betty wasn’t going to join the fight herself, and even Ganta and Sebas were staying still. He has the time and opportunity to heal.

“You can heal as much as you want. I told my golems that they aren’t fighting to win, but to break your spirit. Heal and prepare as much as you want. I’ll keep crushing you over and over until you give up.” Betty stared at them with a smile, and the ape started getting healed with a large smile on his face.

The cut was so clean that no major blood vessels or nerves were damaged beyond repair. The apes only needed to put his legs back into their place and keep casting healing magic until they were attacked.

But the situation wasn’t going in their favor. At this rate, they’ll lose, and he knew it. If one golem could slash his legs with ease like this, then the other apes have no chance of dealing with hundreds of thousands of them.

This short halfling was an absolute monster beyond anything he could’ve imagined, a true terror. Who would’ve guessed that inside her tiny body, she carried an entire army? Now, he only had two choices to pick from.

The first choice was to send an order to all the other apes to eat whatever dragon scales they had and directly fight the golems, or he could pull a national treasure and waste it on killing this halfling, and potentially lose his own life.

It was a difficult decision. On one hand, he’ll be risking the lives of all of his soldiers against soulless and replaceable golems. But on the other hand, the national treasure is a single-use only, and its mere existence is a deterrent keeping them safe from other races around their land.

It was such a hard decision to make that the fact he might die didn’t even count. But in the end, he had to make a call. He will pick the choice that will result in the least deaths today, and leave the problems of tomorrow to the apes from tomorrow.

“You’ll regret not killing me on the spot. Should’ve gone for the head.” From somewhere, he pulled a blindingly bright scale.