The dragon's harem

Chapter 1520: Claug, Lia, Matar

The air around Claug was rapidly getting saturated with poisons and toxins, which would’ve been a death sentence to anyone who wasn’t Arad or Zephyr, or Aella, or anyone who could make their own air to breathe.

Arad jumped forward, moving at blinding speed as he swung at Claug’s face with a grin. She dodged his punch and thrust her long claws at his chest, forcing him to dodge to the side.

Even though Arad wasn’t breathing the poison, he could feel it slowly gnawing at his skin and eyes, getting into his body from every side. Claug must’ve designed it like that, expecting that Arad would just not breathe it.

The longer the fight went, the more likely he was to lose. Of course, Arad wasn’t going to keep brawling with Claug for a long time and allow the poison to settle in. But, she wasn’t giving him much of a choice.

Arad didn’t expect that, but when putting her all into it, Claug had a different kind of martial power than Gamond.

Gamond was stronger and faster, but Claug was more skilled and had mastery over her own body. She accelerated and decelerated rapidly, jumped all over the place, and moved her body with so much agility and dexterity that sometimes, Arad even thought she didn’t have bones.

Arad could even believe that his father, Alcott, had managed to knock Claug down with a single slash before. In less than a few seconds, they were already a blur, flashing all around the massive stone in a storm of shockwaves.

At one point, Claug even managed to throw Arad to the ground. Arad, in all of his physical might and aggression, had found himself on the ground, flipped like an amateur fighter. He only realised that she threw him to the ground when her foot came crashing down on his face.

The massive stone they were fighting on tumbled from the impact. Claug’s foot pushed down on Arad’s face, trying to shatter his skull beneath her high-heeled shoe.

For all of her life, Claug had one problem. While she was skilled with alchemy and poisons, her talent for magic was as pathetic as they come. She couldn’t cast a firebolt. That was a huge weakness; all other green dragons could cast massive poison spells, but she couldn’t. All that Claug could do was rely on the poison generated by her body.

Due to that, she had to focus on what she does best. Her mighty body and natural poison. She has spent decades inspecting herself with crystal orbs, counting each scale, every scratch, and every curve and muscle.

Claug mastered everything, studied everything, and controlled her whole body. She was forced to, because if she didn’t find a way to get stronger, she would’ve been killed long ago, wiped by the dragons’ natural selection.

By mastering her own body, she gained control over her glands and the poison they make. Massively helping her study of alchemy and the art of poison making.

She spent centuries stalking and spying on the nobles, watching their lives like a drama show, memorizing every detail, every move, every mistake, and every nasty secret.

Claug had lived for over a thousand years; she was an ancient drakaina that saw kingdoms die and get reborn. Kings and queens poisoned and killed in secret, their art, the training of their soldiers, the closely kept secrets of almost every kingdom were known to her.

Claug, Lia, Matar, the ancient stalker of the Crypt forest of the east. The watcher from shadows, the queen in green, the mistress of plagues, and the death witch of disease.

Right now, Arad, who had only recently grown to power, had found himself facing a real drakaina, one that had been polishing her power for a time far longer than he had been alive.

Arad never breathed her poison, but it was already affecting him. It had seeped through his scales, sunk into his skin, and invaded his blood. But that wasn’t the end of Claug’s power; her poison and physical might were just the tip, the tiny end of her tail she dangles in front of people to mislead them.

With his face beneath her foot, Arad finally realised that he was wrong about Claug; he had far underestimated how stupidly powerful she was. Her title, the mistress of plagues, wasn’t associated with plagues for no reason.

What was invading his body now was neither a toxin nor a poison; it was disease. This was the reality, the power she didn’t want Lola or Tiamat to find out. Claug was the only green dragon to be born like this, to have a power over viruses and bacteria.

So while Arad and Claug were brawling, her plague spread across his whole body, the endless, tiny armies of bacteria and viruses started evolving and changing rapidly, getting used to Arad’s body in real time.

Claug didn’t need Arad to inhale a deadly dose of her poison to win; she just needed to get a single bacterium into his bloodstream, and that bacterium could reproduce, spread, and even give birth to viruses.

The plague Claug hit Arad with started rapidly progressing, and while it ravaged Arad’s body, it also released tons of poison on Claug’s command.

Arad could understand that since he was a Pricolici with extreme control and awareness of his blood. That only made the situation even scarier.

Claug’s plague had adapted to his body, to the radioactive body of an adult void dragon that is a damned Pricolici, in seconds. How long would it take this plague to adapt to Lola’s body? Or even to Tiamat’s body?

Probably not that long.

^Damn it, I’m facing the second coming of Kussuth. Now her name is Claug and she is a green drakaina instead of a red one. That one was a stay-at-home mom, and Claug is a shut-in who spies on nobles and watches their lives from the safety of her lair... I probably should start living in the basement. Wait, I’m already doing that.^

Arad’s lair was technically in the basement of his first house.

Arad pushed Claug’s foot aside and rolled away, barely evading the stomp from her other foot. At this point, their physical brawl was meaningless. The real clash was taking place inside Arad’s body, where his immune system and cursed blood were scrambling to fight off the plague.

So that posed the question, would killing Claug stop the plague? No, he won’t count on that.

”So... you control diseases?” Arad smiled, ”Hit me with a heavy one. So, should I knock you out to stop it?”

Claug froze for a second, then a large smile covered her blushing face. ”I didn’t tell you, so how did you figure it out?”

”I’m a Pricolici. I would say I’m a bit better at feeling my blood than vampires and werewolves.” He stood and sighed.

”Don’t worry. That disease, or plague, call it whatever you want, won’t kill you.” She then licked her lips, ”But, knocking me out is a wrong move. You’ll remain suffering until I wake up.”

”So... as I expected, it works without you being awake.” Arad frowned, and she laughed.

”Of course, even if I died, the plague would keep spreading and evolving until all life is erased from the world. But even then, it’ll lie dormant for as long as it needs to, until a new life appears for it to kill.”

She walked toward Arad and stopped just a few feet away from him. ”No one knows, not even the gods. I kept this a secret so I could one day kill Tiamat, even if it cost me my life.”

She looked at him with glowing green eyes, ”Once she is infected, no amount of divine magic or alchemy would save her. Slowly but surely, this plague would eat at her divine body until she was nothing but a rotten carcass.” She smiled, ”Even if she killed me, the plague would never go away.”

”You know Tiamat is Sena’s mother, right?” Arad growled, and Claug shrugged.

Claug smiled, ”I doubt Sena is against that, or am I wrong?” She wasn’t wrong; just a day ago, Sena almost fought her mother to death.

”Besides, my beef with Tiamat had existed centuries before I even knew who Sena was.”

Claug clenched her fist and punched Arad in the chest with all of her strength, sending him flying away. ”I’m certain that even Tiamat won’t survive my plague, given enough time.” She looked at him, standing back up.

”The fact that you’re still standing back up means I was never wrong about you. You’re Arad Orion, the dragon I decided to submit to.” She spread her arms apart, ”Show me who is tougher, you, my plague, or Tiamat.”

Arad suddenly disappeared, and in the next second, Claug’s face was beneath his foot, getting crushed to the ground.

If Claug’s plague was a harbinger of death, Arad had a stupidly stubborn thing in his blood, something that was far more ancient than all living beings. The blood of the Tarrasque he got from Shi, who was fighting for survival.