The dragon's harem

Chapter 1011: Coffee Break

”My lord, I can see the storm. Itʼs around an hourʼs walk to the north.” A vampire woman called back to Arad through their blood. ”Should I investigate further?”

^No, return immediately. Itʼs too dangerous.^ Aradʼs voice resonated inside her head. ^If you froze then Iʼll have no way to find you besides sniffing in the snow. And I doubt itʼll be a good experience for you either.^

”Itʼs already freezing here. Getting into the storm shouldnʼt be a problem.” The storm did look bad, but that was for humans. Sheʼs a vampire, she should be able to endure it...

^Youʼll die, that isnʼt a normal storm, itʼs sustained with magic. In my world, we wouldʼve called that an elemental expansion. Get in there and the Moving Glacierʼs magic will freeze you to death, itʼll be a waste for you to get lost in the snow after coming back.^

After Arad saved her from the dragonʼs den and she got to meet her parents once last time she wanted to help Arad through his trip as the last things sheʼll do in life. After he leaves for his world she will give her vampirism up and herself and die to return to Yogʼs embrace. She was a nun after all, and just like how hardheaded all of them, she still believed a monster like she had become now should only live for a noble goal.

Arad was sitting in a cafe in the city, sipping a large full mug of black coffee as he awaited the response from his vampire and werewolf scouts all over the area. In his old world, he had only seen tea, but in this world, he had found black coffee and found its powerful taste appealing.

”Sir, did you call me?” The waiter looked at him with a smile. He had never seen a man so large before.

”Bring me another full mug. No sugar, and make it as strong as you can.” Black, bitter strong coffee had found its place on Aradʼs menu, and he plans on finding a way to get it back home.

Altair walked into the cafe and found Arad sitting alone in the corner, ”Youʼre back here? You came in the morning, didnʼt you?”

”Youʼre his wife?” The cafeʼs owner called from behind the counter, ”He drank three large mugs of coffee this morning now heʼs drinking his second. Four large mugs in a day is too much, I fear he might hurt himself.”

Altair looked at Arad for a second, he isnʼt a human for coffee to hurt him, right? After remembering all the chaos and carnage this man caused, she couldnʼt image him getting hurt by drinking too much.

She sat with him, ”He can handle it.” She sighed and the owner looked even more worried. She looked back and saw what everyone ordered, they all only had small cups akin to drink shots. While Arad was the only one with a massive mug before him.

”But...how much does this...” She looked at the waiter and he looked worried, ”Thatʼs the mug we usually serve beer or milk in, not coffee. It holds about thirty shots...”

”Wait! So he drank 120 peopleʼs worth in a day?!” She snatched the mug from Arad and looked at it, he still had a bit in the bottom, but not much. ”You need to stop!” She growled at him and looked again at the cup.

”Whatʼs good about this anyway?” She took a sip and immediately spat it out, ”Bitter! How the hell do you drink this?”

Arad took his mug from her, ”I like it, thatʼs it. Now, why did you come to get me?”

”The others are at the lordʼs house and the people there are asking about your whereabouts.” Hearing Altairʼs words everyone in the cafe gasped and stared at Arad with a shocked face. If the people at the lordʼs house are asking for him...those arrogant nobles...who could he be? If he was a normal commoner they wouldʼve sent the knights to drag him, and if he was a noble he probably wouldnʼt be sitting in a no-name cafe in the streets.

The waiter looked at Arad again. Arad wore clothes like those of a lumberjack that you find out in the forest...and certainly didnʼt have the nobleʼs charming, bloat. Now that he thought about it, Arad paid for his morning coffee without saying a word about the price, even though he drank three mugs, thatʼs 90 peopleʼs worth and it did cost a pretty penny.

”Everyone is scouting and I want to sit in a quiet place to process the reports. The nobles keep asking questions and are annoying.” Arad replied with a straight face, that was the reality.

Everyone in the coffee understood it wrong, really wrong. If he had people scouting, he would have been in the army, and if the nobles were asking for him nicely, he would have been a high-ranked captain, no, probably a general. That would explain his large size and muscles, heʼs a man who has seen countless battles.

Arad said he was processing reports but they never seen him meet anyone or pull any papers, which meant he was a mage communicating through spells. That quickly explained how he could sit alone for an hour looking at the wall and drinking nearly a gallon of coffee this morning.

Arad finished his mug and stood, ”Letʼs go.” Altair stood but the waiter looked at them, ”They are already preparing the second mug, should I cancel the order?”

Arad looked at him for a second and sat back down, ”No, since they started Iʼll drink it.” ”No, you wonʼt!” She growled at him but he just waved his hand for her to sit back down, ”Relax, itʼs not like the nobles need me for anything important. At least nothing more important than the current mission.”

”Excuse me, but can I ask?” The waiter looked at Arad, ”Are you a knight?”

”Didnʼt wait for me to answer. But no, Iʼm not a knight. But I do a similar job, just more dangerous.”

They knew it, if he wasnʼt a knight but did something more dangerous, heʼd certainly be a high commander or a general.

Arad had already started to plan an attack on the Moving Glacier. Heʼll use the two red dragons he got to break through the blizzard and force a direct fight. The report heʼs getting now mentions two adult white dragons and a flock of over fifty ice wyverns that accompany the Moving Glacier, which means heʼll need to look for more monsters for his army.

He needed monsters to face the wyverns, and his werewolf team had already spotted some promising candidates. A cult of pyromancers to the east, theyʼve caused the locals enough trouble for rumors to start spreading. Confirming those rumors wasnʼt that hard for a pack of ten werewolves so he had set them to work.

Heʼs now waiting for the werewolves to report back about whether they managed to turn the cultists into werewolves or not. In the meantime, some vampires have spotted a pack of griffins that were feeding on the horses of travelers and merchants in the past few years. Arad wouldʼve loved to face the Moving Glacier in an ice battle, but if that thing was to move around too much itʼll probably destroy a few cities and cause more damage in minutes than it did in the past years. Cold is also limited unlike heat which can rise infinitely, or Arad at least didnʼt find a limit yet.

Absolute Zero, Isbertʼs title. The closer cold magic got to that point, the difficulty and cost of magic rose exponentially with diminishing returns. What Arad understood from playing with temperature magic and trying to get things cold, itʼs not worth it to make things colder than ice in most situations, unless youʼre aiming for Absolute Zero, itʼs not worth it.

Now that he has some serious sources of heat, he needs to look for a way to damage the Moving Glacier itself. For the lack of better words, that thing was a mountain of solid ice that moved. Ice is exceptionally tough to break and requires a tone of heat to melt quickly enough to cause damage or surpass any potential regeneration the Moving Glacier would have.

Arad could use the slashing techniques that Kayden taught him, but heʼll have a problem called range. Even if he extended his sword with blood he wonʼt be able to cleave a mountain. He can grow larger with Plumʼs size magic, but that would just make him an easier target for the Moving Glacierʼs crushing blows.

Even with how bad the situation looked, Arad still had a rough plan. The Moving Glacier canʼt be all made of living ice, as far as he knows, Ice canʼt be alive, itʼs just frozen water. That thing is similar to a golem so it might have a core somewhere, probably deep inside its massive

body.

Arad can try to dig the ice to find the core but heʼll probably freeze in seconds, which means time is important. He must know exactly where the core is before the battle even starts to be

able to reach it.

In the past when he got the curse of death after Vorvadossʼs fight and hid inside the desert the wizard of the various kingdoms used detection magic to try and scan the area and detect him. Arad knows that he must learn that magic now to scan the Moving Glacier and find its core... knowing that Yog mustʼve planned this to make him learn that magic made him quite frustrated, but she indeed knows to get him to learn the most boring of spells.

After finishing his coffee Arad stood, ”Letʼs go.”

”Finally, I bet those nobles are going...”

”Weʼre going to the library, there is something I need to look up.”