The dragon's harem

Chapter 2015: Both Aren’t Enough

The Phoenix’s feathers ruffled, and radiant flame burned around its whole body. Those flashing opal eyes glared down at Arad, sending a crushing wave of pure dominance. The divine bird found it insulting for a human to be standing in its presence. You either kneel, or burn to ash.

As a pillar of scorching white light fell from the ceiling, it washed over Arad like a waterfall. At the same time, the black serpent hissed, and its nebulous eyes twisted the fabric of reality as the shadows crawled up Arad’s body, trying to crush and bring him down. Those contorting tendrils aimed for one thing: Arad’s life.

The moment those two beasts separated from Feu and Chi, their power had reached its peak, and both of them had now turned into avatars of their respective divines. The phoenix danced in the magnificence of the goddess of fire, and the serpent finally linked back to Death herself, but due to their links and the new rush of power, the beasts had taken a second too long to realize.

They were both hitting this puny human with all of their power, old and new, and with divine authority on top of it, yet he still stood still. The divine flames couldn’t burn him, and death refused to claim his soul.

The crowd screamed, all terrified as they couldn’t believe what their eyes saw. Two divine beasts appearing at the same time, yet... the hell was Arad doing there? Now they both smite him to ashes. But the flash of their attack was taking a bit too long, wasn’t it?

Arad should’ve been gone within a fraction of a second, so why is the pillar of light and darkness still raging? Why aren’t the two divine beasts fighting, and how come they are both sternly glaring at where Arad stood?

”It can’t be...” Feu growled as he barely stood up. Just a second earlier, Arad had pulled him and Chi out and thrown them to where the medics were. Chi was unconscious, but he still managed to stay awake.

”Oh, Divine Phoenix! Please stop it!” Feu shouted, ”He isn’t an enemy!” The Phoenix was his clan’s divine beast, a legendary existence that they worshipped for untold centuries and made the center of their cultivation. He didn’t want the Phoenix to kill Arad, so he hoped that he could at least sway it.

”Fue Mar...” A woman’s voice rang in his head. ”Serpent and I have laid our power on something harrowing. This man is neither a human nor mortal, but a World Eater... We cannot pull back any longer. Flee.”

In that moment, Arad’s foot emerged from the pillar of fire and shadows, and he took a step out, walking out of the devastation fully unharmed. It wasn’t a peaceful walk either, just his forcing himself out of that pillar was bright enough, loud enough, and radiated enough heat to shatter Liana’s barrier. Of course, Kali, who was beside her, immediately created a new barrier that completely blocked all destruction from escaping the arena.

The Phoenix swung its massive talons at Arad’s face the moment she saw him, but that was just too slow as Arad dodged the swing with relative ease, and with one arm, he grabbed the feathers of her left wing, and plucked them off.

The Serpent didn’t sit still either; he immediately jumped at Arad with a bite, trying to swallow him whole. But Arad was just too fast, and he grabbed the serpent by his poisonous fangs and ripped them off.

A physical fight wasn’t possible, so the divine beasts immediately switched back to their elemental powers and rained all that they could on Arad. First, it was the shadows and death from the Serpent. The nightmarish dark tendrils wrapped around Arad like mold and aimed to invade his very soul, but the moment they got inside, they were faced with three absolute monsters.

A large flying eye with countless wings that were filled with eyeballs, floating in the darkness with a ring around it that spelled. [Be Afraid] That was Baal, and beside him still a titanic shadow that defied the laws of time, far surpassing the Serpent by several orders of magnitude. That was Linda, and Arad’s shadow was sitting on her head with a large grin, flipping the Serpent off.

If the Serpent wanted to control Arad’s shadow, he had to get past Linda, and if he wanted to reap Arad’s soul, he had to get past Baal, both of which were impossible tasks. Before long, the Serpent’s power failed, and his shadow was forced out of Arad.

But the Phoenix’s power still held, its flames flew into Arad’s soul, and they were faced with another set of obstacles, or... just one, tiny, cute-looking problem. That problem’s name was Nar, the Great Fire Spirit.

”Huh?” Nar, who was busy training Amber stopped, looked up at the radiant white flames, and frowned. ”Who do you think you are, bird!?” She lifted one hand, and the Phoenix felt like a like chicken getting grabbed by the neck.

The Phoenix immediately knew the difference in power between her and Nar, so she tried to pull out of Arad, but Nar wasn’t going to let her escape so easily. She reached with her flames, grabbed the Phoenix by the soul, and pulled her into Arad’s inner world.

Arad, only Arad and the Serpent remained, so their clash quickly turned physical, while inside, Nar approached the Phoenix.

The Phoenix, as a bird, was massive, standing at over thirty meters tall, and Nar was just a foot tall, a little over 0.3 meters. But the moment Phoenix saw her, she immediately knew that whatever power she had sensed before was just the radiating heat, not the flames themselves.

Even this form in front of her, this one-foot-tall humanoid form, it wasn’t Nar’s true shape, not even close. ”Want to compare our flames?” Nar said with a smile as she pointed a hand forward, and her red nails flashed with fire.

”Wait! I’m not here to fight! Listen...” The Phoenix gasped, but Nar cut her immediately with a growl. ”Arm yourself, bird!”

A blinding flash burst from Nar’s palm, and a tide of raging flames exploded toward the Phoenix at a terrifying speed. The ground evaporated, the air itself combusted, and the very concept of what fire is flipped on its head.

The Phoenix flapped her wings to fly back, but she was too slow, and Nar’s engulfing flames reached her first, charring her wings. ”Impossible! I’m immune to fire!”

”You’re immune to fire, not my fire.” Nar flew at her like a lightning bolt and smacked her down with a large fist of crimson flames. ”I don’t care if you’re made of flames or divine inferno, I’ll burn you anyway. Humans are made of flesh, and last I checked, you can very well kill a human if you hit them with a slab of meat hard enough.”

Nar grabbed the Phoenix by the beak and swung her around like a toy before throwing her into the air and unleashing a towering spire of exploding flames at her.

The Phoenix flapped her wings, stabilized herself, and unleashed several jets of flame from underneath her wings to fly several times faster than sound, and she circled around Nar, avoiding the spire and aiming for a single decisive blow.

”You can’t just break the laws of the world! I’m immune to flames, so what kind of sorcery are you using, tiny fire human?” The Phoenix roared, and Nar smiled.

”You can emit flames, and I control it. Immunity only takes you as far as your authority ends.” She flew after the Phoenix with ease, using her own flames. ”A Phoenix like you can emit enough heat to vaporize steel, which is around 3,000 degrees. That is also where your immunity ends.”

Nar landed on the Phoenix’s back, and with one swing of her arm, charred her back to ash. ”I control the very flames, as long as I have energy and pure air, I can crank up the heat as much as I want.”

The Phoenix roared in pain as her back burned, and Nar laughed maniacally, ”Four thousand, five thousand, six thousand! Let’s see just how far you’ll survive, bird of flames!”

The Phoenix finally managed to shake Nar off from her back by turning into pure flames and flying away, yet she was still injured and burned down to the bones. ”Just, what are you?!”

”Me? I’m the Spirit Queen of Fire, Nar! The Flames of Oblivion!” Then, with a large grin on her face, Nar came crashing down at the Phoenix and, with a single swing, blasted her back to the ground with an explosion powerful enough to burn a whole continent.

The fight ended up before the crowd could even notice what happened, and when they all looked, Arad was already walking toward the red gate, leaving behind the violated divine beasts. The serpent was tied into several knots and bleeding, while the Phoenix was just... a massive, perfectly roasted, rotisserie chicken.

As Arad walked into the red gate and went past Feu, the Phoenix burst into ash, and the serpent melted into shadow as they both died, returning to their masters Feu and Chi.