The dragon's harem

Chapter 1449: Shattering Space

After just two hours of waiting, Mathilde looked up at the branches in the middle of her training with Dalla, ending in her taking a hot slap to the face.

”Don’t suddenly stop moving!” Dalla gasped; she was already in the middle of an attack and expected Mathilde to be able to dodge it. She didn’t intend on slapping her like that; this was just training after all.

”Arad, we need to move at once. The gap won’t last long, and this place will soon get drowned in a wave of space magic.” She turned around, and everyone was suddenly lifted up with golden radiance. She was using her divine magic to carry them as she rushed up Arad’s back as he transformed.

”Where to go?” Arad asked, and she flicked her foot, kicking a tiny ball of light into the horizon, ”Follow that. Closely.”

Arad flapped his wings and pushed on the ground with his massive talons, causing the branch to shatter as he burst into movement, flying faster than sound in a second. If not for his gravity magic and Mathilde’s divine magic, everyone would’ve had their organs minced.

At first, Arad was worried that he might not be able to keep up with a ball of light, but to his surprise, the thing wasn’t moving at the speed of light. It was just a glowing ball of magic that Mathilde controlled to show him where to fly and how fast to move. Sometimes it moved painfully slow, and at other times it was hard for him to keep up, but he could still stay close to the ball’s back.

”I can sense the space shifting around us, but is it really that dangerous?” Arad asked, and Mathilde frowned. ”You had to ask? Brace yourself, your tail won’t make it in time.”

At that moment, Arad felt something engulf his tail. It was soft and warm, like warm water or cotton. He looked back with one eye, and it was just in time for him to see the true horror of this place. He felt a sharp pain across his whole tail as it was forcibly stretched like dough, pulled apart, and disintegrated in the crushing space.

”What the hell is that?” He asked as his tail regenerated. Arad wasn’t a stranger to painful wounds, and such a thing won’t even make him flinch.

”Yog call it spaghettification. The process by which space is forcibly stretched alongside anything inside it. Your tail survives a second in that pressure, I bet that it wouldn’t have lasted that long if you weren’t an adult void dragon, so keep flying as close to the light as you can, and keep your tail pulled in if you can.”

Mathilde looked around, and she frowned. Usually, flying around with a few hundred elves would be fine; some of them can die, and even so, packing them in a small space is possible. Even weaker angels have managed that for thousands of years. But she wasn’t a normal angel, and Arad wasn’t any normal person.

Arad was very large and very important. The fact that she had caused his tail to get shredded like that would haunt her for the rest of her life, a shame she might never be able to wash away. The problem she is facing is that despite her powerful senses and harrowing power, she lacks what the lesser angels who worked here before had, and that was experience.

She is used to fighting and navigating in a volatile space that is hundreds of times more chaotic than this one, but she has never had people with her; she can’t navigate with a kilometer-long dragon that takes a few fractions of a second to react to her directions.

A second later, Mathilde’s eyes opened wide, ”Careful! A wave from your right!” She cried, seeing a massive ripple in space rushing in like a massive wave, ripping space apart. If she hits them, she’ll turn Arad into mush.

She tried to think of a solution, but there was none. Arad might be able to dodge it if he shifted into his humanoid form and she carried him at a speed even faster than he can do, but it’ll take him more time to coordinate that than what the wave would need to reach them.

In fact, by the time she finished thinking that, the wave was already upon them.

Arad clenched his claw and suddenly swung it at the space wave. Mathilde was about to scream, but it was too late, the shattering space rang louder than any sound she had ever heard in her life, turning everything in her sight bright red.

The space rumbled, ripped apart, and cracked. Everyone on Arad’s back screamed from the impact; they weren’t hurt, but felt the shock in their innards, causing them to fall to their knees. D even vomited, feeling as if she got punched in the guts, or that she was spun around in a loop until her brain melted.

Their screams mixed into a harrowing melody, finished with Mathilde’s cry, trying to calm them down as she looked down at Arad in horror. He wasn’t hurt, but his claw was clashing with the shattered space, pushing it back.

If a human heard the harrowing sound space makes when it is being ripped apart, clawed by an inhumane monster, it would cry more chilling than a dying man, more painful than shattering metal, and not something that anyone was supposed to hear. It was like scratching a chalkboard, an ear-piercing noise enough to make Cerilla want to rip her teeth out. It made Jasmine grasp her ears so hard that she broke them.

Mathilde looked at Arad’s arm, expecting it to shatter and him to fall, fatally wounded at any second, but what she saw made her almost freeze in place. It wasn’t the space trying to break Arad apart; it was Arad breaking the space apart, ripping the fabric of space with his claws.

Everyone had remained on Arad’s back just half a second after the clash with space started; that was how long it took Arad to suck them into his stomach, but that was long enough to give them enough of a scare for their whole lives. Later, only Arad and Mathilde remained outside.

She watched in horror as Arad ripped the space apart, shattered the wave like a cannonball, and flew right through.

^Are you okay?^ Arad asked, and thank Sylph, he called her with telepathy because her ears had almost burst open.

^I’m fine, keep following the light. But...^ She looked forward with a deep frown.

^I know, there are many more waves blocking the path, I can see them.^ Arad seemed calm, a bit too calm, ”I’ll hide inside my stomach if you want. But, I’m flying straight through.”

”I’ll stay...” She sighed.

What she had just seen wasn’t a part of AO’s power; it was just Arad’s pure power as a void dragon that can manipulate space. He grabbed the fabric of space and ripped it apart like it was nothing. Even a normal great wyrm void dragon can just push and twist the fabric of space, not tear it apart.

It wasn’t just Arad being AO; he himself was a monster beyond her imagination, just like his mother. She had fought her before and lost miserably.