The dragon's harem

Chapter 2026: A Contest of Fates

Miani jumped at Arad, dragging a thin red string between her fingers. He saw it and immediately knew that it was bad news. The threads looked nothing like he had ever seen before, and it was ringing all the bad alarm bells in his head.

With a single swift step, Arad dodged the swing of her thread, and she looked at him with a smile. ”You dodged it? So, this can even hurt you?” She immediately spun around and swung the thread at his neck, only for him to dodge it again with ease.

^Doma, that thread feels strange.^ Arad called, and Doma replied in an instant. ^{You’re right, that’s a thread of fate, her own fate. She is basically comparing the worth of her existence to yours, and if she is worth more, the thread would easily cut you, if not, she’ll risk her fate snapping.}^

As Arad slipped behind Miani, he clapped his hands and blasted her away with the shockwave. ^So, what if her fate snaps?^

^{I’m a special case, so I can exist as a Fateless being. She isn’t. If her fate snaps, then it is the end for her and everything that relied on her existence. If possible, even if not for her sake, her fate shouldn’t be allowed to snap. Think of her mother, the children she had raised so far, the impact that the spider sect had under her lead for the past centuries, all of that would be erased.}^

Miani bounced off the arena’s wall and swung the thread once more at Arad, fully believing that she could cut him with it. But what she couldn’t have expected or fathomed was that her fate was in no way comparable to the fate of the overgod, the one who created fate itself.

The moment her fate would touch Arad’s skin, the entire universe, the Fates, and the fabric of reality itself would shun her entire existence into oblivion. While she only needed to focus on winning, Arad had to think about how to save her from her own power.

”You keep running away, is our secret art that dangerous to you?” She called at him with a smug smile, and, Arad who landed away, returned the grin. ”Well, comparing your fate to mine, you’ll be the one to die, and I promised that no one would die here.”

She paled a bit and started sweating. ”You know how my power works... just... who are you?”

Arad rushed toward her, and with a smile, he swung a fist at her face. She dodged and tried to cut his elbow with her fate, only for Arad to grab the red thread with his palm and pull on it, throwing Miani back like a doll.

”What... you can touch it?” She growled, unable to believe that someone beside her could grab the threads of fate without being cut by them.

Arad, who still looked at her with a smile, shrugged. ”Well, I didn’t touch it.” He indeed didn’t, as if he did, her father would’ve snapped. He had coated his palm with a layer of void and got Doma’s help, which allowed him to interact with the thread of fate without directly touching it.

Arad shook his arms, and they turned black as his void engulfed them, and Miani smiled. ”Finally, you’re showing up your cultivation. Let’s see just what kind of strange techniques you’re a master of.”

Arad took a stance. ”I do cultivate, yes, but not the kind of cultivation you understand.” Arad, as a void dragon, consumes souls to grow older rapidly, which is a form of cultivation unique to magic dragons. That does accelerate their aging, thus shortening their lifespan, but since Arad is an immortal vampire, he doesn’t need to worry about that part.

”Well, every art is different in some way.” As she took a stance, she had no idea this was going to be the worst day of her entire life, the scariest, the longest, and most arduous fight she had ever gone through.

The first thing Miani started to notice was the size, the sheer difference of scale between them. Even while standing straight, her face barely reached Arad’s groin, as she was merely 1.8 meters tall{5’11’’} compared to Arad’s 3.65m {12 foot} giant body. To him, even though she was tall by normal standards, she looked like a halfling compared to him.

Then there was the physical strength, and she had seen him suplexing Pig God Gor, which made it clear to her that he was several hundred times stronger than her, as she could barely throw a man twice her weight. She was indeed far weaker physically than other cultivators, but that was due to the constant damage of her poison.

That only left her with three weapons to deal with him. Her poison, threads, or fate, none of which seemed to be that effective against him. Her threads can’t tie him, her poison cannot harm him, and her fate was just grabbed by him.

For a moment, she even thought of playing her woman card to try and create an opening, but from what she heard and saw, this won’t work on him and would most likely end up with his foot crushing her face to the ground.

After considering all of her options carefully, she charged forward. The clash that ensued was unlike anything that anyone could’ve have seen or anticipated. Miani’s thread of fate grew longer and brighter, yet Arad’s massive black arms consumed its brilliant light like a hungry void, not letting a single flash of radiance out.

”I have never seen a technique that could deflect fate itself.” Miani growled with a grin, and Arad slapped her fate thread aside. ”Well, since you manifested fate into a physical string that flows in space, all I need to do is make sure it doesn’t get to touch me.”

He slowly lifted his arms by his sides, flexing them. ”I’m not directly blocking the thread, but preventing anything from reaching my arms, even the air can’t touch them.”

”So, it is a barrier?” She jumped back, and threw her regular threads at him.

”Indeed. If I created a barrier that prevented you as a whole from going into a building, that would also in practice prevent that thread of fate from coming in with you.” Arad replied as his arms moved through the air, cutting all of Miani’s threads like they were regular spider threads.

”Isn’t telling me how your power works a bad thing?” She rushed through her own threads and swung her six arms at Arad’s neck, aiming to touch him first before cutting him with her fate, but he still managed to dodge her attack even from an awkward angle. His massive body seemed to levitate back for a moment, then spin around like a ball before landing silently on the ground.

”What?” She growled and glared at him. ”You are that big, how can you move like that? It doesn’t make sense, especially since I’m certain you didn’t use any strange power right now.”

Arad chuckled with a smile, ”Well, you just berated me for explaining how my power works, so how about I leave in the dark about this one?” He then flexed his back and cracked his neck. ”Besides, if you’re buying time, you’ll regret it.”

”Your poison, it doesn’t work on me.” As he spoke, her face twisted into a frown before turning back into a smile. ”Really? I bet you’re bluffing.”

Every thread that she used, and even the arena’s air, everything was already saturated with her poison, and so, Arad had been injecting it through his skin and lungs ever since the fight started. She had used enough poison to kill ten elephants, yet, he was still unfazed, which was indeed weird.

Arad is a massive dragon; his size alone makes the dose needed to poison him massive. Miani would need enough poison for a thousand elephants at least to have a chance against him, but even then, she’ll have to deal with his monstrous immune system. If even Claug’s plague and the Abyss’s deadly toxins couldn’t harm him, Miani’s poison had no chance against Arad’s alien biology.

It wasn’t that poison didn’t work on him; it was just that the scale of it was impossibly massive, and Miani was in no shape or form anywhere near that level.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Arad disappeared from her vision. Since the fight had lasted a bit too long, he decided to raise his speed a bit and see how Miani would fare against something faster than her.

As Arad moved and ran around the entire arena, his massive body touched and tore through her threads, which she used as an expansion of her senses, allowing her to still track his movements, yet it all felt like a flash to her. While her senses followed him, her body was too slow to react, and she was frozen to Arad, who swung an open palm at her lower half, giving her the worst, most painful, and agonizing slap she took in her entire life.

She screamed as her entire body was sent flying with Arad’s massive palm burned into her butt, and Gor, who watched from the seats, cringed. ”Off, that hurts like hell.”

As she hit the arena’s wall, Arad looked at his palm with a smile, and then threw a glance at her, who was rolling on the ground, wailing in pain. He then looked at her. ”Come on, stop pretending.”

Miani’s cries turned into a laugh, and she stood. ”Well, you can tell?”

”I got a maid that can’t feel pain.” He rested his fists on his hips, ”You’re the same, right?”

”A side effect of my poison.” She looked at her butt as her skin healed. ”I can’t feel pain, so those attacks won’t work on me. Got anything else?”

Arad’s eyes turned red, and his arms cracked, ”If pain doesn’t work, how about fear?”