The dragon's harem

Chapter 1944: A Clash of Pricolici

Poppy’s fight with Arad was far harder than it looked, and even deadlier. One wrong move and that flesh golem would be torn apart and turned into minced meat.

If not for Cain supporting and hiding the location of her true body from Arad, her fragile life would’ve already been snuffed out like an old candle in a storm.

While they both are a pricolici, their bases was different. While she is a human pricolici, he is a draconic one, and a void dragon at that.

It has just been a few seconds since they started fighting, but it felt like years. Cain said that she needed to stall Arad for a while before getting defeated and captured, but that was easier said than done.

^How the hell would I stall him for longer? He is just toying with me like a cat playing with a mouse. The only reason I am still alive is that he is certain that killing me would only lead to me respawning in another body.^

Poppy smiled from ear to ear.

^Then I’ll just make him regret thinking that!^

Seeing the large smile, Arad immediately knew that something was off, and he immediately lifted his hands to go on the defensive. He was never in the habit of underestimating people just because they were weaker than him. Dalla had taught him a painful lesson, and he would never forget that pain.

”Then! Let’s dance!” Poppy screamed as she clapped her hands with a crazed face, and the muscles on her arms wriggled like worms beneath her skin. In the next moment, her arms turned into long muscle tentacles, almost fifty of them on each arm, and they all violently swung in every direction like whips.

”Damn it!” Arad growled as he dodged five of them, quickly noticing that they ended up sharp bone blades, and that the speed at the tip was already tens of times faster than sound. This felt more like something Nyar would pull, but luckily, it wasn’t as fast or deadly.

The sixth tentacle grazed Arad’s arm, and he was surprised to find out just how sharp those bone blades were. They even managed to draw his blood, and almost immediately, Arad knew that getting wounded by them was a bad thing.

Two things: the tentacles were poisonous, and second, they were a medium for Poppy’s flesh magic. A second after his arm was scratched, it turned bright red, and all of the muscles on it tore apart. Arad immediately regenerated his arm, but dodging fifty tentacles like that while making sure the buildings on each side of the street aren’t harmed was impossible.

Soon, he got scratched by the tentacles even more, and his body was rapidly falling apart due to Poppy’s flesh magic. He tried to resist it, but that was extremely difficult because, unlike Poppy, he didn’t have the extensive biological knowledge. She must’ve dissected hundreds of people to study their bodies and anatomy to be able to get this skilled with flesh magic.

But, Arad wasn’t a human, but a void dragon and a pricolici at that. How did she manage to fully understand how his body works?

”Did you kill a void dragon before?!” Arad growled at her with a smile. He was finally getting excited a bit. At first, he was disappointed to find out that Poppy, albeit being the only other pricolici, wasn’t as strong as he expected. But now, she was slowly showing him a whole other level of knowledge and power.

”So what if I did?!” She yelled back with a crazed smile as she flew toward him with a kick. Arad dodged, but a tentacle slashed his leg and caused it to explode into a mess of minced meat.

”Heh?!” Arad glared at her with burning purple eyes and a wide grin as his leg regenerated, and he grabbed her by the hair with his toes, quickly slamming her to the ground. ”I’m also a pricolici! My body isn’t like that of other void dragons!”

With one of her tentacles, Poppy cut her own hair and jumped with an open mouth. Her maw looked like that of a shark and grew even larger as she bit Arad’s private parts and tore them away with her as she flew at blinding speed.

Unlike before, Arad didn’t even flinch this time. He was too excited to care about his pain, and his things quickly regenerated anyway as he stood there and stared back at Poppy, who munched what she bit and swallowed it.

”Tastes better than I expected.” She shivered, and all of the veins on her body bulged and flashed red. ”Listen... how is it that your blood gives more power than the blood of a god?”

Arad smiled. ”You drank her blood, right. That was Eris’s blood that I gave to them, those mother and daughter.” He took a step forward. ”Just so you know, I turned Eris into a powerful vampire she is my spawn, and I even got the daughter of Akame as well.”

Poppy licked her lips. ”Akame? Hel, the goddess of the undeath?” She smiled, ”How did you even manage to get them?” She then cracked her neck. ”Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll slowly eat you, and get them.”

Her legs expanded, her arms grew longer, and her body became taller. Using her flesh magic, she extended all of her limbs to turn into something akin to a nightmarish horror. Long red limbs, tentacles for arms, blood everywhere, obsidian skin, wearing a red dress, and having a face with a shark-like maw.

She looked at Arad, her red eyes shifting back to blue as her ginger hair burned like flames. ”If you think I’m easy to take down, you’re mistaken.”

Arad giggled. ”Well, I’m also just as scary.” He grew an extra pair of arms, two pairs of eyes, multiple horns, two pairs of wings, and two tails. Fur engulfed everything from below his waist until he looked like he was wearing furry pants, and his arms grew slightly longer as they ended in sharp draconic claws.

”Let’s see who’ll eat the other.” He smiled as his forked tongue extended out of his mouth, hissing like that of a snake. In the middle of the capital, two Pricolici were about to fight. One was a demonic, flesh-controlling horror, and the other was a vampiric Wyrmwolf of terrifying nature.

Poppy’s tentacles exploded everywhere, and Arad pulled four swords as he jumped at her and started slashing them all. To avoid getting hurt, he must avoid getting hit, but Poppy wasn’t making it easy at all. Ever since she grew bigger, the tentacles increased by fourfold, and now he had to deal with more than two hundred of them swinging everywhere at hypersonic speed.

Due to that huge number and the confined space, Arad did end up getting hit by a few of them.

Then, Poppy changed the nature of her tentacles; instead of blades, she made them have mouths and fangs to bite Arad and consume his flesh and blood. Each time she got a bite, she grew just a bit stronger, allowing her to better deal with Arad.

As the two clashed, the amount of destruction and violence that was brought down upon the city’s streets was truly appalling, so horrifying that if a mortal human saw them fight, they would just fall and die from fear.

But even as the fight grew harsher and harsher, the damage was still just confined to the streets. Poppy knew that the moment everyone in the houses dies, Arad won’t have a reason to hold back and would rip her guts open. She can’t have her hostages die, so while still threatening their lives, she clearly avoids hurting them.

Arad wasn’t stupid either; he knew that she was avoiding the people, so he silently sent a few of his vampires to rescue and get everyone to safety. The evacuation would take two minutes if he is willing to risk Poppy finding out, but it would take his vampires five minutes if they are to hide well and take everyone away without Poppy spotting them.

He chose the five minutes, since he didn’t know how Poppy would react to him trying to snatch her safety net. But just as he started, he noticed that Poppy was actively looking and keeping tabs on all the people around; she must’ve guessed that he would try to save them.

The fight had now shifted from actually trying to kill or restrain each other to trying to subvert and manage their actions. Poppy wanted to make sure Arad never got a chance to save those people and get them to safety, and Arad wanted to sneak them out from under her nose.

With each clash and with each chunk of the street being destroyed, the battle grew fiercer. Poppy ate more of Arad’s flesh and blood, growing stronger, and he was getting more excited and turned on, bringing more power out with each wound.

Right now, Poppy knew that she was gambling with each move. Each time she is making the bet that going faster is better, the more she ate, the stronger she got, and the more dangerous Arad became. Eventually, she will be the one to lose.

Should she pull out her elemental expansion? Can she resist Arad with it? Most likely not, because he has one and would dominate hers. She had seen him using it earlier when the wizards were fighting, and just what she saw was enough to convince her that an expansion clash is a death sentence.

[Poppy, I have located both Yog and His mother. Clash with him with your expansion, and I’ll then release a bit of abominable magic to bait those two out. When they appear, summon me.]