The dragon's harem

“So, how is she doing?” Arad walked into Merlin’s lab and saw her sitting on her desk, as usual, wearing nothing but her underwear. Her entire body looked as if it were on fire, engulfed by a halo of radiant blue flames. At this moment, while observing Poppy, she was also creating a whole teleportation gate.

“About Poppy? Just what did you do to her? She has been too quiet ever since we locked her up.” Merlin lifted a vial and looked at the glowing azure liquid inside it. To create the portal, she needed to first create what would fuel it.

“I did nothing beside force her to drink my blood. I had to do that to make sure she won’t attack us again.” He replied, and then shifted his gaze toward the maids sitting beside Merlin’s desk.

The maids just gave him a quick bow, and then left the room.

“I had her inside my throat the whole time as I fought Cain. Probably coming out and seeing half the planet torn apart wasn’t that good for her mental stability.”

Merlin sighed. “So, you scared her shitless. No wonder she’s been cooperative.” She put the vial back in its place. “She’ll need more time to calm down and return to her confident self. Then I’ll be able to fully study her as a pricolici, and I might even find some magic traces that could help us predict Cain’s attacks.”

Arad crossed his arms. “That magic Cain used to prevent us from helping each other?”

“Yes, the one Gojo broke. We’ll need an automated way, or at least a barrier to counter it, and Poppy is our only lead. We need to keep her alive until then.” She stood, “Check this out.” And then pointed at the vial on the table.

Arad approached the desk and looked closer at the azure liquid. “Looks like mana water, but denser. It’s like oil.”

“As expected, it.” Merlin smiled, “This is bone marrow tallow, and I’ve infused it with as much mana as I could. I used the bones of powerful monsters, so it could really withstand a lot.”

“You’ll use this to fuel the portal?” Arad lifted an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “For now, at least. Luminous’s mirrors are good, but fragile and expensive to use widely. But with this, I can create a huge monument and fuel it so regular people could use it.”

She pulled a large rough map of the world and where her labyrinths are, and then pointed at the Great Capital of Orion. “We’ll build the first waypoint here, and then one in each of the world’s capitals. After that, we’ll spread the network to the large cities and finally be able to extend it to outside the world.”

“So, you plan to link the separate worlds?” Arad asked, and she nodded. “Well, for now, I’ll have special access to both hell and the abyss. It’ll be a while before we can spread the network to the faraway worlds, especially those whose time doesn’t align with ours.”

That was a good plan. Different worlds usually have different needs and resources that could be helpful, so cooperation might be key to the future. “But won’t it be too dangerous? We don’t even have a way to establish the link.”

Merlin smiled as she sat on her chair, then lifted two hands, forming a holographic image of two trees. One was a lemon tree, and the other was a plum tree. “Yggdrasil and Plum, they’ll form the link. But, we need to experiment with Plum first before approaching Yggdrasil, and I’ll count on you to butter Cerilla up for the offer.”

“I see… but do you think Cerilla would refuse to help?” He pulled a chair and sat down, and Merlin rested her feet on his lap.

“Not her, but Yggdrasil. That old tree is quite stubborn, but she has a soft spot for both the Goddess of the elves, Sylph, and her heir now, who is Cerilla. I’m sure if one of them approached her with a reasonable request and was persuasive enough, she’ll agree to pretty much anything.”

Merlin was right, but the task won’t be easy at all.

“I’ll try. But what about hell and the abyss. I don’t think setting permanent gates would be possible.” Arad looked at her, and she giggled.

“Well, I actually solved that already. Well, at least half.” She looked toward her desk, flicked a finger, and several jewels flew toward her palm.

“For the abyss, I got Kali’s help, and setting permanent gates won’t be a problem. We’ll set one in each of the layers we’re currently ruling, including those of the twelve demon lords Kali brought.” She showed Arad the jewels. “The construction would take a while, though.”

“What is the half that you couldn’t solve yet?”

She sent the jewels back, pulled a sealed letter that had Amaterasu’s mark on it, and then summoned another from her pocket that had a mark of the hells.

“Amaterasu basically owns hell, so we could go with her route and get assistance. We could also go Asmodeus’s route and rely on Sara to mediate things for us.” She sighed, “I already made contact with both, and their demands are unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable? Well, it is Amaterasu we’re talking about, and I doubt Asmodeus would be any better.” He chuckled, and Merlin rubbed her eyes.

“Listen to this, Asmodeus wants you to help break the chains of hell on sinners on her demand in exchange for the permanent gate. So, if one day she wants to free someone, she could just call you.” Merlin pointed at the contract. “This doesn’t seem to have anything shady in it, besides the part where it says any… It means that if Asmodeus asks us to free someone, we can’t refuse.”

“That’s fine, I doubt she’ll release anyone dangerous. So, what was Amaterasu’s offer?”

Merlin sighed, “Unhinged debauchery as expected of her. She asked if we could build a church for her inside the private quarter.” She leaned back. “As expected, she said that you’re free to use the clergy there however you see fit. Her only two conditions for them were that they stay alive, and that Neptune, that angel she recently set to Eris, be their leader.”

“The choice is whether we trust the Queen of hell with the power to free dangerous sinners from hell, or play into Amaterasu’s hand.” Arad looked at the ceiling, “How about it, what do you think is best.”

“Neither sound safe to me.” She threw a glance at him, “So I say, why not take both and capitalize on the deal?”

“What are you planning?”

Merlin took a few long moments to think. “I think we could use a base in hell, so we could throw that in the contract with Asmodeus and get it. It would be helpful to be able to assess hell’s power and magic.” She then pointed at her desk. “And for the Amaterasu’s church, it could help a lot as a backup supply of divine magic. We might not need it now, but it could save us when it matters. Amaterasu has a lot of divine magic, so I’m certain she won’t mind making that church a powerful energy storing-array.”

“Asmodeus could twist our wrists on a deal later, and I’m certain Amaterasu wouldn’t leave the church unused; we’ve got a lot of reasons to suspect that she’ll use it to spy on us.”

Merlin scratched the back of her head. “But… I honestly don’t know why Amaterasu would want to do that. If she wanted something, she could just force it out of us. She doesn’t need to be subtle. She doesn’t even need to fear damaging her reputation; she can pretty much say anything and win.”

She looked at him. “Do you know why she would want to spy on us?”

Arad knew that he was the reincarnation of AO, the first overgod, and that might be the reason Amaterasu wanted to keep an eye on him. “I got a pretty good guess.”

“Is it a cause of concern?”

“I would say she is like a merchant, trying to bet on a deal before it could even happen.” He stood and then threw a glance at Merlin. “Fine, we’ll go with both. But keep an eye on everything, and let me know if something happens.”