The dragon's harem

Chapter 1214: The Three Voids

The darkness surged forward, and the large snake slithered through the dark caves, abandoning all pretenses of stealth, and bolted forward at a harrowing speed. Darkness made a mistake; this thing was already blind.

The Leviathan Snake senses its surrounding area by tasting the air with its long tongue, thermal sense, and tremor sense. Its body rippled and its maw opened, snapping at the darkness with enough force to shatter the ancient bedrock of the mountains.

But darkness was still unyielding, its fangs and claws coming back to life again and again. The Leviathan Snake and Darkness fought across the caves, shaking the ground and reaping several tens of lives in the wake of their great battle. The clash took them deeper and deeper, causing the mountains to rumble and shudder.

But eventually, the Leviathan Snake was nothing more than a monster, it failed to match Darknessʼs intellect and cunning. He ended up with several fatal wounds and slowed down, allowing her to blast through its maw and aim her fist at where his soul was.

But then, something strange happened. She killed the Leviathan Snake, but found her palm empty; the monsterʼs soul was nowhere to be found. Darkness stood still for a few long seconds and then looked deep into the darkness, her burning purple eyes narrowed, and her darkness grew deeper. She got played.

While the Leviathan Snake was powerful, it didnʼt show any magical powers as the creatures of its power do. Darkness for a moment believed that it was a stealth brawler, but that was wrong. The Leviathan Snake had magic, and one of the most annoying kinds.

First, the Leviathan Snake was a she and not a he. Second, her soul had now appeared several kilometers deep. Darkness herself didnʼt guess what the Leviathan Snakeʼs power is, but Doma whispered in her head.

{That worm can reincarnate itself through her eggs. You have to either smash all of its eggs to kill it, or trap its soul with a soul trap curse. Arad himself couldʼve been able to harvest its soul, but you arenʼt him, even if youʼre borrowing that power.}

Darkness looked down at the endless abyss and relaxed her legs, letting herself fall straight down.

Madness walked through the snow, pushing the knee-high mounds away with unrelenting force as he stared through the billowing snow at the large open maw in the ground. A twisted grin crossed his face as countless whispers washed over his mind, tempting him to take shelter inside the monsterʼs titanic maw.

Madness reached down and conjured two twisted Shortswords. He leaned forward and took a deep breath, his eyes fixed on the unassuming monster. It was massive, bigger than anything he had ever seen except Arad. Hundreds of meters long and wide. After inspecting it for just a fraction of a second, he realised.

This thing was an ooze, like Loci in Alina. Just a larger, hungry, malevolent one.

{You donʼt have enough firepower to kill something of that size, retreat.}

Domaʼs voice rang in his head. But the madman wasnʼt going to care about something like logic and orders. Without hesitating for a second, he rushed forward and jumped into the monsterʼs maw. Itʼs inviting him to a deathtrap, so why doesnʼt he just go check it out? Letʼs see if this Loci can digest him first, or die by his blades first.

The moment Madness fell through the hole in the ground, it snapped shut, and he found himself drowning in darkness, thousands of sharp stone teeth closing in on him at an inhumane speed.

A large grin covered his face as he twisted his torso and fell on one of the teeth, using it to push himself deeper. This is the monsterʼs maw, there has to be a throat and a stomach somewhere deeper. Heʼll give them a rearrangement.

Doma informed Arad that Madness might end up dead because he threw himself into a death trap, and soon after, she told Arad that Madness had ended up dead. The teeth clapped at him faster than he could run down and ended up eating him.

Arad was still riding his moose on the streets when he felt Madnessʼs soul rise back inside him. He looked down and released the madman again through the shadows to go out and keep hunting. This was the first time one of his Voids got destroyed. Their souls return to him, and he can deploy them again at the cost of mana.

Madness returned straight to the large monster, and died again, and again, and again. Each time he repeated the same thing, jumping into the monsterʼs maw, and ending up eaten. But each time, he was reaching a bit deeper.

The monster was also slowly growing weaker and slower. It was supposed to be clenching its jaw this many times, and no matter how much it ate Madness, it never got any nutrients from the madman, causing it to exhaust its energy.

After thirty deaths, Madness finally managed to get past the teeth and found himself in the throat, this time giggling to himself as he saw endless meter-long worms rushing at him. And he was dead, again and again.

And down underground, Pain had finally found her target. She looked at the large, injured monster. The poor thing looked like a walking corpse, a massive lion with raven wings, a snake tail, and gills on its neck. It wasnʼt as massive as the other creatures of the depths, standing at 10 meters tall and 40 meters long, but that only explained why it got beaten up so badly.

Pain looked at it for a few seconds and decided to call it Pained Kitty, even if the thing looked like something out of a horrid nightmare.

Now, Pain knew well that a living being is the most dangerous when at their last leg. Thatʼs why she loves pain so much: when a body is pushed to its limit by pain and wounds, the gates of its power are released in a desperate struggle for survival.

She looked at the monster, and wounds slowly started appearing on her body. She fell to her knees, crying. Even if her body was made out of the void, her power allowed her to feel the monsterʼs pain and share its wounds, and it was agonizing.

The monster noticed her groan and stood, its cracked bones almost shattering.

Pain looked at the monster with a smile, lifted her hand, and conjured a dagger. But instead of attacking the monster, she stabbed herself in the left eye. At that moment, the monsterʼs left eye twitched, and a horrid wound appeared on it. Painʼs main power allows her to share wounds with whatever she is fighting, and then the one of them that succumbs to pain first and dies is the loser.

She lunged forward, and the monster swatted her away. At the same time, the monster recoiled and groaned, one of its ribs shattering. It injured Pain, but it suffered just like her.

There was a difference between Pain and the monster, though, a glaring difference. While the monster suffered in agony and convulsed, Pain convulsed for another reason; pain aroused her.

Arad signed up as they went back to the castle. Out of his three voids, Darkness seemed the most reasonable.