The dragon's harem

With Capsella down, Ginger and the remaining vampire paladins and nuns had to find a replacement. They weren’t going to send Capsella back, but they needed to call someone else to fill her spot, and that someone had to be powerful.

There are a lot of options, but not of many them could be called in. The paladins would die just to have Eris or Zia here with them; they’d carry them on their backs. But sadly, those two are extremely busy.

So when they sent their call back to the great cathedral of blood, they got someone they were divided on. Some loved her; some didn’t. Because she was once Arad’s enemy, and even after that, she wasn’t all that friendly with everyone.

From the shadows and blood, a swarm of bats burst out, and soon those bats turned into red mist; from that, she emerged. Bright crimson hair, blood-red eyes, and a slender, pale build that clearly portrayed her vampiric nature.

As Akasha walked to Ginger’s side, the two of them looked at each other, and they looked pretty similar. Red hair, red eyes, pale skin... someone who didn’t know them might mistake them for sisters.

”Two redheads?” Ginger smiled. ”I can tell from the smell of your blood: a child of the divine.” She leaned forward and sniffed her. Akasha didn’t smell like any other vampire, as her blood wasn’t rancid, or smelled like iron, but was pure, powerful, and ancient, holding traces of divine magic by the right of birth.

Akasha frowned. ”True, I’m Akame’s daughter, but I’m one out of many.” She rested her fists on her hips and smiled, throwing a glance at the other vampires. Half looked happy to see her, some didn’t even react, and some looked disappointed.

”Well, I did lose my divine power since Arad sucked it all out. But I’m still quite powerful, more than many vampires.” Standing there, it was clear that even without her Blood Lord status, Akasha was probably even more powerful than Vlad himself.

As she walked forward, all of the vampires moved aside, and Ginger walked by her side. She then looked to the side and smiled. ”You’re more familiar with this temple, right? So I’m counting on you to take the lead.” She patted Ginger on the shoulder, and everyone kept moving deeper into the temple.

”Of course.” Ginger walked in front and led everyone deeper into the temple, and soon they reached the next room, which was even stranger than anyone else would’ve expected. It was a large hall with a massive light crystal on the ceiling, and the ground was covered with neatly trimmed grass and flowers.

One of the paladins looked through the door and asked. ”What is this place? Don’t tell me there is a safe room here.” She frowned, and a nun immediately added. ”Impossible. I bet there is something extremely deadly there.”

Ginger was about to speak, but Akasha spoke first as she leaned forward and looked into the room. ”Wow, that’s a whole lot of corpses and ghosts there. Not even a cursed graveyard would have so many banshees in the same place.”

Ginger looked at her with a surprised face and smiled. ”You can see them?”

Akasha nodded, as she could clearly see that underneath the lush green grass and flowers were thousands and thousands of stacked corpses acting as the fertilizer of all of that greenery. And the souls of those people were all sealed into this room, having been turned into curses that consumed and cannibalized each other until only a few powerful ones remained in a stalemate.

She walked forward and waved her hand. ”Everyone, just wait here. I’ll deal with them.”

”Wait! You’ll need divine magic to hurt ghosts.” One of the paladins growled, and even Ginger tried to stop her. ”There is a powerful barrier that would weaken you and make those ghosts stronger. Once you are inside, you’ll need divine magic and a lot of it to survive. Since we got forty paladins and nuns here, we can all work together to win.”

Akasha smiled. ”There is no need to do all of that. They are just ghosts. It’s true that banshees can kill anyone with just their screams, but that isn’t something I need to worry about.” She then pointed at the room with one finger.

Inside the room, there were nine ghosts. Three banshees, a poltergeist, two wisps, a shadow orb, a death will, and lastly an accursed spirit ghost.

All of them were immune to physical damage, and had their own versions of instant kill moves.

The banshees’ scream can instantly kill whoever hears it. So one scream is enough to end a life, and there were three of them, so it was impossible to get rid of them all at once.

The poltergeist can control objects, even the bodies of their enemies. Which allows them to twist bones, limbs, and kill at will.

The wisps were blindingly fast and could cast magic, and their bodies were so tiny that they were hard to even hit with divine magic, making them a tricky opponent to fight. They were known to enter people’s bodies and explode them from the inside out with magic.

The shadow orb was on a whole other level of madness and could be in a class of its own, as it dwells within shadows and only emerges to attack, making it extremely hard to damage. But the deadly part was that by attacking someone’s shadow, it could reflect that damage onto their body. And it could even launch attacks from the shadows of someone’s organs if it manages to get into their body.

The death wills are born only from the souls of people who were powerful assassins and killers in their lives, and only from those who died with regret and frustration over failing to kill a big target. Now, all of their will and power get merged with the ghostly, ethereal form to spawn an undetectable, silent assassin that you won’t even see coming.

Then, there was the accursed spirit ghost, which was the cursed soul of a former spirit who got trapped here and was corrupted over hundreds of years until it turned into a killing machine that didn’t even have a physical body. It wouldn’t be strange for such a spirit to easily flip an entire city upside down in a fit of rage.

This room might not be an instant death like the darkness from the previous room, but it was still up there on the danger level. They needed to make a plan, strategize, and systematically take those ghosts down one after the other. Before coming here, Ginger had made a whole plan on how to achieve that. Now, she only needed to modify her plan slightly by exchanging Capsella for Akasha.

But while Ginger tried to explain the situation, Akasha slowly walked into the room on her own and reached up, taking off her robe and revealing what she wore beneath. A tight pair of leather pants and boots, a string bra on her chest, and nothing else, as she summoned a long steel chain and started spinning it.

[Elemental Expansion:...]

Blood exploded out of her body, drowning the entire room as skulls and pillars of stone burst out of the walls and ground. Akasha smiled as everyone outside the room gasped in horror, and she cracked her neck.

[... Blood Sea]