The dragon's harem

Under the flashing flames of Arad’s blood magic, Akasha growled, empowering her elemental expansion even more to withstand the pressure, and to her shock and surprise, she was getting pushed down by Arad’s blood magic.

It was almost unheard of for regular magic to overpower an elemental expansion in raw presence like this, because fundamentally, expansions are created to force an element on nature while regular magic just throws it out there.

It was more similar to a regular fire overpowering the head of the flames confined inside a blast furnace. There is a reason why people build furnaces instead of trying to melt metals out in the open; you need the insulation and extra oxygen to push the heat to those levels.

But... it only took Akasha a fraction of a second to find out why Arad’s magic is so potent, and it had nothing to do with his blood magic or being a void dragon. It was the way he cast it.

Magic usually has several key components that are needed for it to function. Mana is the fuel; then there is control, precision, and raw power. Arad uses only as much precision and control as he needs, then burns all of his mana as fuel in a single blast of powerful magic. He then recycles that mana by sucking it back into his body, and then releases it again. This process happens thousands of times a second, which results in his horrifying output.

The only energy lost is the energy that actually dealt damage and was consumed, meaning that the harder her defense is, the longer Arad can keep the pressure on her.

It felt like getting hit with a sledgehammer a thousand times in a row, but she withstood it all and smiled, watching as Arad’s bloodied draconic form grew out of his head and spine, immediately swinging a claw down at her.

The elemental expansion she cast was Blood Sea because it was the fastest to pull, and she would’ve been left vulnerable if Arad somehow cheated her Infinite Maze. She looked at Arad with a smile.

”With this, we’re at least somewhat equal.”

That wasn’t much, considering that she needed her elemental expansion to withstand a fragment of Arad’s blood magic, and he doesn’t even have his full consciousness up. She was just facing an instinct-driven puppet using Arad’s power, and those instincts were already on a level that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

Now, she didn’t know what Arad’s current form could do, but she sure wasn’t going to wait and find out. The first thing she did was reject Arad’s blood from her expansion and try to burn it away, so he’d wither away and that seemed to at least put a bit of pressure on Arad’s newly formed draconic form.

But something was off... a bit; an overly powerful and terrifying dragon form was overly flashy and wasteful. Would Arad, who was so stingy that he only used a little bit of blood magic to blind the Accursed Spirit instead of killing her, waste so much of his power?

Of course not. She turned around, lifted her arm, and blocked a punch that would’ve been fatal. Behind her, Arad stood with a smile on his face. That dragon was just a flashy distraction to pull her attention away, and now she could see what he was doing. Everyone else was beaten to a pulp.

Ginger was smashed to the wall like a fly; all of the paladins and nuns were decimated, and one was even planted in the ground like an ostrich. But what surprised Akasha the most was that the Accursed Spirit was just tied up and knocked out.

Before she could think about it any further, she had to return her focus to Arad, as he had started swinging at her like a crazed monster. His arms moved at blinding speed, brushing over her face with enough force to cut her like blades.

To her luck, she had the speed and strength to keep up, and her expansion was slowing Arad down, so she could match him, but that only lasted for a fraction of a second. Every move that she pulled out was soon made useless as Arad started countering her moves.

At the start, she thought that she could just keep adjusting her style, but was then surprised when Arad started creating counters preemptively for moves that she didn’t even pull yet.

Akasha was already sweating as this level of power was far beyond anything she expected, and no matter what tricks she pulled, he skipped them all with just enough moves. She even mimicked the Accursed Spirit by raining blood bullets at him from all directions, only for him to deflect them all with a cloak of his own blood.

”Do you really think...” She growled, jumping back. ”Am I this easy to overpower?” Looking at him, she finally decided to go all out, pulling 100% of her power as she focused on her own blood, then conjured a massive blood chain and started swinging it.

Arad stood still for a second, looked at her, and she immediately attacked, using that moment of calmness as an opportunity. Her chain flew through the air, ignited with flames, and was aimed directly at Arad’s head.

He dodged, but the chain kept following him like a living viper, and it was getting faster and hotter exponentially every fraction of a second. A regular human would just see the chain appear, then a blinding flash, followed by the entire room bursting into flames in less than a second.

But neither Arad nor Akasha was going to let it get to that point. She had taken a page out of Arad’s book, and this big move was just a distraction to keep him busy long enough for her to lift her hand, point her fingers up, and cast it.

Time slowed to a halt, and Arad looked as if he were suspended in the air, weaving through the flaming chain with a level of grace that didn’t match his massive and muscular body.

Ginger had recovered and was moving, and none of the paladins or nuns had recovered yet, but one thing was clear. Akasha was the only one who could finish, this fight as Capsella hadn’t woken up yet.

[Elemental Expansion: Infinite Maze]

Akasha’s hair turned white, her eyes became blue, and Arad got sucked into her elemental expansion as easily as water gets sucked into a sinkhole. She gasped for air and didn’t even dare go inside to confront him. She will just let him chill inside for a whole year. She is certain he’ll fade away and crumble after just a day or two, though, since the energy given to him by the AGENT shouldn’t last that long away from the temple.

Every second in reality is a whole year inside her Infinite Maze, and the longer she keeps it active, the more stress it’ll put on her own body and mind. The stress itself was so extreme that while the Infinite Maze is active, Akasha can’t even move, speak, or do anything besides focus on maintaining the structure.

A second had passed in reality, so she should be safe to turn off her Infinite Maze. But the moment she tried to look inside... she paled. She can’t close it.