The dragon's harem

Chapter 1921: Nine Tails Aren’t Enough

”So, this is the great jungle of the Beastlands; it’s a forest bigger than any forest I’ve ever seen. Look, trees here are at least fifty meters tall.” Mira pointed, and Arad, who walked beside her, nodded. ”The monsters are also massive.”

She turned toward him with a curious gaze. ”The logs you brought me earlier were all ten meters long or shorter... did you cut them? I noticed they were a bit weird.”

”I mean... You told me not to bother with anything longer than that, and since all of the trees here are bigger, I just cut them down to size.” He smiled. ”You didn’t notice?”

”I didn’t process them directly; they went to the sawmill first to get processed into planks before coming to me.” She touched one of the trees. ”But with timber this large, the bridge plan could work better.”

Hiss!

She looked up and saw a massive snake at least thirty meters long, and with a head large enough to swallow a whole bull, glaring at her.

”Huh, a nope rope.” She said with a smile, and the titanic snake instantly lunged at her with a bite. The snake was fast, but not enough. Even though its head was just a few meters away from Mira, its entire body was torn and swallowed by Arad before its attack could land.

”They aren’t that smart. Usually, monsters won’t dare approach when I’m around.” Arad stood by her side and pointed at the bushes. ”Like that, Death Jaw.”

Behind several trees, a massive T-rex stood as still as a long, not even looking toward Arad and Mira. The dinosaur held its breath, didn’t move, and wanted nothing to do with Arad.

”The moment we teleported here, he froze in place. He is too scared to move a muscle while I’m around.” Arad smiled. ”That Death Jaw is smarter than that snake. He knows that you’re my wife and mate, so he is trying his best not to look threatening and trigger me.”

The poor T-rex didn’t just feel Arad’s power; he had seen it before. He had seen Arad tear the Tallneck, which Merida fought, and he didn’t want the same to happen to him. Arad’s small humanoid form won’t deceive him; he knows for a fact that Arad was a titanic dragon.

Arad waved his hand, stared at the T-rex, and made him know he could leave. The T-rex didn’t waste a second and fled, running as fast as he could without ever looking back.

”So, that is a Death Jaw... They are like big lizards with a massive head.” Mira looked at the running T-rex, and Arad smiled. ”Or a wingless dragon with tiny arms.”

”Might be true...”

The two walked through the forest, taking in the view, which was nothing but tall grass, a ton of bugs, and more trees than they could ever need. The small predators and prey animals all avoided them like the plague; not a single tiger or a deer dared stay anywhere near them.

”ARAD!” At that moment, Astrid emerged from the bushes and looked at them. ”There you are... did the teleportation magic fail?”

”No, I just brought Mira here first so she can see the trees.” Arad replied, and Mira took a few hops toward Astrid. ”You came here immediately after you finished digging the river. I didn’t even get to see you.”

Astrid looked away and scratched her chin. ”Well, Frida and I need to prepare for our crowning here just as you’re preparing for yours in the capital... But, mother also had a plan that we wanted to talk with you about.”

”With Lady Hati?” Mira lifted and eyebrow and Astrid shook her head. ”Not, with Frida and I. Mother is dead set on it, and we wanted to know if we should really go through the trouble to change her mind.”

Mira looked at her for a second, and then threw a glace at Arad. ”Why do I feel like Isdis should handle this?”

”Probably because she should. I’ll call her if we need to.” Arad replied as they walked back to Hati’s house. Arad didn’t teleport that far away, from their perspective. The slowest of them, Mira, could still run from where they were to Hati’s house in ten minutes, while it would take a normal person months to cross the dense and deadly forest. The distance itself was around ten kilometres or six miles.

Back at Hati’s house, they found Frida having already prepared a bath for them, a large feast, and a massive stack of papers to deal with. When Arad looked at it all, he found out that it was all about the future trade deals between the Beastlands and the empire, exclusive deals, and a few shady things under the rug, like supplying Hati with a few barrels of elvish wine in secret.

As Arad held the papers in one hand, he teleported them to his incarnation that stayed in the private quarter, and showed them to Isdis, who sighed and sent them to her desk with one of the maids. She had spent the entire day looking at papers, and if she doesn’t stop, she’ll get nightmares about them.

As the night started, Arad sat in the living room with Mira, Frida, and Astrid. The twins looked at him and were about to start explaining what their mother wanted. The first thing she told them was that while Astrid and Frida were twins, that wasn’t necessarily true.

The person they call Hati is, in fact, two people. Hati and Skoll, twin sisters sharing the same body. They were two souls in a single vessel, and by souls, Astrid is Hati’s daughter, and Frida is Skoll’s daughter.

That was both good and bad. The good part was that the sisters can live independently, as they should; each of them has her own body. But the bad part was that because of that, they could never inherit their mother’s eternal throne.

Hati and all of her daughters were Fenrirs, some weak, some strong, but all pure-blooded. The key metric of power between them was the number of tails they could manifest, with the maximum being nine tails. Astrid and Frida had only manifested up to three tails each, but their mother was certain that they would eventually unlock all nines when they grew, a thing their sisters can’t do.

So, where is the problem? Eventually, both Astrid and Frida would reach the peak of strength for a Fenrir like their mother. Why can’t they inherit her throne?

It was simple because their mother was still several magnitudes stronger than they would be at their peak. The tails are multiplicative, not additive in power, so three tails are twice as strong as two tails, not 50% stronger.

Arad didn’t understand where the sisters were going by that, but when they fully explained, he quickly realized that Hati was eternal; she’ll never step down from the throne.

Hati and Skoll are twins living in the same body, and both of them are nine-tails... So in total, they are an eighteen-tailed Fenrir, a creature that shouldn’t even exist. Even if Astrid and Frida reached their peak, combined their power, they would only be as powerful as ten tails, nowhere near their mother.

Astrid and Frida having separate bodies made them weaker compared to their mothers, who shared the same vessel. That was huge since the plan was to first marry the two of them to Arad, and then merge the Beastlands into the empire when Hati retires. However, now that plan won’t work.