The dragon's harem

Watching the group heading into the distance, Merlin sighed as she sat down on the golden throne. She was now inside a labyrinth, one that she specially made to watch over this entire operation and make sure nothing went wrong.

Thanks to Doma’s curse, she now couldn’t use her eldritch magic outside of her labyrinths, but from this throne, she can. There wasn’t that much she could do besides watch and record, but that is enough. Kali, Kayden, Alcott, and Neil are powerful people with enough skill and knowledge of the land that there was no way they would ever fail.

”What is Isdis doing?” Lucy was there in the throne room with her, so she approached. ”I expected her to be here as well.” She asked and looked around, using her divine sense to try to find any traces of her sister, but found nothing. All she could sense in this room was Merlin, and that wizard was an absolute unit herself.

From what Lucy could see, Merlin was far more beautiful than many nobles; all of her clothes looked fancy, even though she mainly confined herself to robes. Probably thanks to her curvy body that was impossible to hide even with baggy clothes. It was hard to believe that Merlin was in her late forties, almost old enough to be called a hag. Lucy wanted to call her big sister, but aunt sounded more fitting.

Lucy had already asked Kali about it, since she had noticed that she hadn’t grown taller ever since she became a goddess. Thankfully, she got a positive answer. She’ll grow in proportion to her control of her own portfolio instead of time, since gods are timeless creatures that will live for all eternity as long as their souls are stable. All gods will eventually settle in a form that resembles what they would have looked like in their late twenties to early thirties in human form.

The fact that Lucy hadn’t grown at all since she became a goddess only meant one thing, and it was that her ultimate potential was still far away even though she had grown much stronger.

”Isdis isn’t inside this labyrinth; this one is separated from the one used to make the private quarter inside Arad’s stomach.” Merlin replied with a smile as she slightly shifted her head to look at Lucy. One thing was clear; she was monitoring something that required most of her attention. ”Isdis is back there trying to control her divine magic. What were your first days as a divine like?”

Lucy stared at her for a second, focusing on Merlin’s body, which seemed to glow like that of a goddess, even though she wasn’t one. She then looked down. ”Awful. If not for Gojo being there, I would’ve consumed everyone and everything around me. I was surprised that sister didn’t go berserk immediately.”

She was starving when she first became a goddess, and she saw everyone around her as nothing but food. She knew no one and cared about nothing. But out of everyone, the only one who stood to face her and was powerful enough that she couldn’t eat was Gojo.

Merlin smiled. ”She did go berserk for a few seconds, but that happened when she was training with Eris. That was the moment she became a divine, and as you expect, Eris smacked her right back to the ground.” Sparks of blue magic crackled all over Merlin’s body, illuminating the throne room for a fraction of a second. ”Those are perfect for each other. One heats, and the other cools. One is calm and calculated, and the other is a rampaging draconic vampire; one is a murdering scoundrel, and the other is a noble queen.”

”Calling Eris a murdering scoundrel, aren’t you afraid of divine punishment?” Lucy stared at her with a grin, and Merlin giggled. ”Of course not. I’m not wrong after all.” She then opened one eye and stared at her with a smug glare. ”Want to try me?”

Lucy backed away, holding her butt. ”No, thank you. I’d love to still be able to sit.” It wasn’t that long ago that Liliana whooped her ass for a prank that went too far. For some reason, having her butt smacked as a goddess felt more humiliating and painful than Gojo punching her guts out in training. For what she did, she pretended to be getting hungry, which scared her maidens nearly to death. Their job was to take care of her and for Lucy to eat them if she ever got too hungry.

The maidens were there and ready to sacrifice themselves so Lucy wouldn’t eat innocent people and strangers if she ever went berserk, so scaring them like that was bad, and Liliana had made that clear.

”At least sister is fine. I thought she went on a rampage, freezing everything.” She rested her hands on her hips as she approached the throne. ”I was going to teach her a bit about being a divine, a little advice from her big, little sister.” Being a goddess was the only thing Lucy was better at than Isdis, and she wanted to play the big sister’s role a bit.

Merlin giggled. ”I would arrange it for you to teach her.” She waved her hand and summoned a smaller throne for Lucy. ”For now, take a seat. We both still have a lot of work to do.”

Merlin maintained the entire magic array that now spread across the Arctic North to act as their basic communication and support network, while Lucy’s divine authority over the land she ruled helped track and protect the people from any sudden calamity as well as sense the orcs’ movements. Those guys were always hungry, and so she could pick them up like bright flames in the middle of the night.

Unlike how young Lucy looked and acted sometimes, she was quite mature compared to other kids her age. She was calm, calculated, and had far more tolerance and patience than most adults. It was a direct result of her upbringing as a royal princess, and sometimes Merlin couldn’t even tell that she was talking to a kid.

She could count on her far more than she could count on many other mages, and strangely enough, Lucy seemed to be aware of her shortcomings and always left the parts she couldn’t handle to those who could. Probably because of how blunt Gojo was, and the fact that he probably didn’t shy away from telling her when she was acting like a brat.

Lucy closed her eyes, focused her sight on the magic, but quickly started sweating and clenched her fists on the golden throne, almost cracking the armrests. ”It is difficult; I feel like my mind is about to split apart.” As much as she wanted to handle things on her own and look cool in front of Merlin, she knew well that if she couldn’t handle the job, she’d better speak up.

Merlin looked at her. ”Then don’t draw so much magic. You don’t need to look at an entire hill at once. Just slowly scan from the sky with a regular field of vision. I’ll handle everything for now; you just get used to it. Explore a bit on your own, and we’ll see after you get used to this magic.”

After just a second, Lucy opened her eyes and looked back at Merlin. ”You say that, but you’re using a field of vision a thousand times bigger than mine. How are you able to do it?” Those were one of the lessons that Gojo drilled into her. If you don’t know or understand anything, ask. It was, in fact, going against what the royal tutors taught her. They said that even if a noble lady didn’t know something, she should pretend and keep her image of wisdom and grace.

Merlin smiled. ”I do load the entire field of vision, but since my brain can’t handle it all, I’ve got several circles to obscure and lower the information flow from any point that I’m not directly looking at. It is an advanced technique developed by a mage called Falacion; he was a master at scrying magic.”

Lucy didn’t need a longer explanation to understand that Merlin had spent years honing her skills with scrying magic, and that was the reason she could handle this much information all at once. Even as a goddess, Lucy can’t catch up without spending just as much time and effort mastering magic. It was Gojo who taught her the hard way that magic wasn’t easy to learn, and that it needed years of study, experimentation, and training to be mastered.

”I barely have a hold on wild magic, and that isn’t the kind of magic that needs study.” Lucy scowled as she lowered her field of vision to a single small cone. ”Gojo said that the best way to master a spell is to divide it into multiple smaller and similar parts, and then master those.” She lifted one hand. ”For example, mastering the level 0 [Firebolt] would make it easier to master the level 3 [Fireball], and mastering [Fireball] would make it easier to master the level 7 [Firestorm].”

”He is right: bigger spells are just smaller spells linked together within a complex array to keep them stable. It is like knowing that a castle is just built from bricks, or that a house is built from wooden beams. If you can’t master carpentry and make the wood, there is no way you can build a house.” Merlin smiled, ”Or how a baby can’t learn to run before they learn how to crawl and walk first, or how most kids learn to speak first before learning to write.”

”Yeah, Gojo also said something similar. He said that magic is like speech. You learn letters, then words, then sentences, then how to use grammar to make even more complex sentences and paragraphs. Writing a single word is easy, but a whole scroll is hard.” Lucy smiled as she could sense herself getting comfortable with the magic.