The dragon's harem

Walking past the prayer room, Mary headed into the dark shadows of the Blood Church. This entire place... it might’ve been better to call it a cathedral instead, as over the days, months, and years, Arad’s vampires have transformed it into a titanic castle with more than three thousand nuns living inside, endless secret passages, and more rooms than anyone could ever hope to remember.

The ten vampire nuns followed her silently, and so did the vampire maids in the back. Their first objective was to retrieve some of Arad’s stored blood to give it to Eris. But there was one huge problem: the blood itself was now outside of Arad’s body, and there weren’t that many vampires who could resist the temptation of it’s scent.

One of the nuns, Sister Beatrice, looked back at the maids. ”If you can’t handle the smell, then stop here. If you follow us and go insane, then don’t blame me for being a bit rough.”

As the maids looked at her cold, grey eyes, her large athletic build, rising brownish-grey hair, and extending fangs, and saw her black nails extending into claws, they all gulped. ”Yes, we are fine. We will stop when we can’t go any further.”

Before Beatrice could nod to them in agreement, another nun slapped her on the butt. ”Give them a break, Bea. Not even us would be able to go all the way down.”

The one who spoke was Sister Clara, and unlike Beatrice, she looked a bit friendlier with her cheerful smile, pinkish-blond hair, green eyes, gentle-looking build, and beautiful face. She reminded the maids of Zia due to all the freckles on her face.

Beatrice shivered and flinched at Clara’s tap. She tried to speak back, but when Clara glared at her, she went silent.

This time, Mary was the one to call them out. ”Clara, don’t bully the maids or the sisters. Another mistake, and I’ll have you spend the next month naked and crawling like a dog.”

Mary then looked back at the maids. ”Clara once led a small cult of vampires that hunted other vampires for blood. She basically led a cannibal cult, and one of her hobbies is giving vampires a sense of security before feeding on them. Be careful of her. Also, those nine nuns were once her servants.”

It took the vampire maids a second, but then one of them gasped. ”Wait! Clara... the Leech!?”

Clara shrugged. ”That’s me, I was fine by myself until Her Highness Zia showed up, beat me and my servants to a pulp, then dragged me here.”

Mary kept walking, and everyone followed her in silence after that. Clara clearly wanted to keep talking, but after a few sharp glares from Mary, she went completely submissive, walking with her head down, looking at the ground.

The maids looked at her for a few moments, but they were soon far underground, where Mary asked them all to sit and wait. She is the only one who’ll go further. In front of them was a massive sealed steel vault.

The vault was made of steel and enchanted with several layers of Merlin’s magic, making it almost impenetrable. Arad’s spare blood was stored behind it. Usually, Eris would just pull blood from here with Magic or by using Arad’s void, but since he is now evolving, those systems are down.

So for now, the quickest way to get the blood is to manually transport it. Of course, Merlin could set up some magic to do it like before, but that would honestly take too long and too much of Merlin’s precious time.

But there was one problem... Arad’s blood isn’t something that any vampire can approach, especially when Arad himself isn’t around to suppress the blood’s scent and power. It is similar to when Arad summons a black hole. No matter what, if such a black hole showed, it should immediately crush and absorb the entire mortal world in the blink of an eye; the only thing preventing that would be Arad’s authority over it.

Right now, Mary is the only one who could go in and bring the blood without being overwhelmed by its smell; the reason is simple: she is still human. As Mary touched the vault door, it slowly opened, so she looked back at the vampire nuns and maids. ”I’ll be back.”

She walked past the great vault door, and it closed behind her in seconds. The maids and nuns were left standing there, watching in silence. It was only a quarter of an hour later when Mary finally came back out, looking exactly the same.

One of the maids approached and asked in a worried voice, ”Lady Mary... did you get the blood?” She couldn’t see or smell anything on her. But Mary then pointed to her chest and explained in a calm tone, ”It’s inside me. The safest way to carry Arad’s blood without having it leak out is to swallow it. It’s safely stored in a glass vial that I swallowed whole. Eris can pull it out of my stomach with teleportation magic.”

The maids looked at her with surprise, and the nuns just shrugged in the back. ”That’s the safe way to transfer pure blood. We can also inject Arad’s blood into human cattle’s bones, and they’ll produce diluted blood for more than a month.”

Another nun smiled, licking her lips. ”The blood is almost ten thousand times weaker and only has as much mana as a human has, but it is a way to make a few droplets of Arad’s pristine blood into a supply of blood that feeds tens of nuns.” Looking at her face, the maids could clearly see that this maid enjoys her blood.

”Anyway, we should hurry back to Lady Eris before she snaps. I’m also worried that Lady Gamond will punish us for taking too long. I’m not looking forward to being forced to take another cold bath.” As she spoke, the other maid shivered. ”I feel you... those shouldn’t even be called cold baths; they are frigid torture.”

Then one of the maids smiled. ”I do like those baths though I always feel relaxed after them.” But everyone stared at her with disappointed faces. She was the weird one here.

Not long after, the maids were standing outside of Eris’s room with Mary and her nuns in toe. The murder divine magic had disappeared, but they could still feel Eris’s murderous will inside. In her current state, she probably won’t shy away from beating them up if they dared annoy her.

One of the maids approached the door, gulped, and opened it without knocking. This wasn’t a mistake, but a deliberate choice, as Eris had already sensed their presence when they entered the Private Quarter.

Inside, they saw her lying on her bed with Zia by her side. Eris’s face was red, marked by the imprint of a fist, and parts of her hair were frozen solid. From the look of it, Eris and Gamond had been fighting.

”We brought Arad’s blood,” the maid spoke, and moved aside to let Mary approach. Mary then took a few steps forward, looked at Eris’s face for a second, and then burst laughing. ”Wait! Don’t tell me Gamond really did punch you in the face? I know she can be violent, but she is surprisingly tolerant.”

Eris stared at her. ”Shut up, Mary.”