The dragon's harem

Chapter 2103: A Thermal Exchange

As Arad talked with the now former leader of his battalion as he took over, he was also watching the fight between Isdis and Eris escalate rapidly. Inside the world of his stomach, the people could see a new star flickering in the night sky, flashing in and out of existence. Many of them thought it was just Arad making another [Ho-white Nova], and none knew it was in fact two of their queens fighting.

Isdis flew back, her entire body engulfed by burning plasma as she glared right back at Eris who blasted her away. It has been a while since two of Arad’s wives fought, and it seems that she can’t solve this peacefully. Eris was determined to beat her up, and so, she had to respond.

[Frozen World] As Isdis’s eyes flashed, the entire world around her halted, and she ran across it like a ghost. This time, she wasn’t going to overcharge or do anything stupid; she would just reach Eris, stab her, and end the fight.

Isdis’s body left countless after images upon the frozen world, and when she reached Eris and swung her ice sword at her back, Eris smiled and moved out of the way, running with a flash of fire burning in her purple eyes. Even if Isdis could cool and freeze the world, Eris herself was too hot to be frozen.

Isdis chased her for a second, but before she could catch her, a radiant purple sun emerged above their heads and breathed a wave of heat down, thawing the frozen world and putting an end to Isdis’s power.

Isdis rolled on the ground as the heat wave hit, and she could feel the burning fire of the star above about to sear her skin. If she doesn’t absorb it all, then she would get cooked like a piece of meat inside an oven.

Her skin froze, and the thin air around them crystallized. This wasn’t a fight, but a tug of war. Eris is generating heat, and Isdis had to absorb and redirect it away if she wanted to survive long enough to win. With a flick of her fingers, she fired away a massive ball of fire into the empty space as her heat tank was almost full, and then kept absorbing the star’s heat as she charged at Eris.

With a simple swing of her arm, Isdis threw a fist at Eris’s face, but her attack was easily deflected aside. ”So, to avoid burning, you’re redirecting the heat away?”

That was exactly what Isdis was doing. Before the heat of Eris’s sun could burn her, she would absorb and release it in a burst into space. That was an extreme strategy, and it only worked because Eris was only using the heat of her sun, not the gravity, not the radiation, and nothing else.

Isdis was fully aware that she was only able to fight back because Eris is allowing her, and even if she was angry at the start of the fight, she had quickly calmed down after rationalising the situation. They aren’t supposed to fight, Arad’s wives; they were too close for those random bursts of wrathful emotions to separate them.

Eris was trying to help in her own way, so Isdis decided to relax a bit and comply. Let’s see where this fight would take her.

As she landed on her feet, she looked at Eris with a smile. ”Aren’t you holding back a lot for someone who wanted me to think that I’m strong?”

Eris smiled and shrugged. ”Strong doesn’t mean stronger than me. I’ll show you that you are strong, but if you think you can stand over me, you’re dreaming.” She then looked at her with a mocking face. ”I have never liked the royals and nobility to begin with. I refused to bow to you fools, and that’s how I ended up in the criminals’ city of Rita.”

Isdis sighed, ”Yeah, you never kneel to your queen.” She shook her head in dejection, ”No wonder you ended up there.”

”Shouldn’t you royals be bowing to me now? I’m a divine goddess, not a mere mortal anymore.” Eris started walking forward, and so did Isdis. One had blazing plasma burning behind her back, and the other was freezing everything around in a deadly blizzard of ice and snow.

The closer the two got, the stronger the wind blew around them, and when they were mere meters away from each other, an entire tornado was roaring above their heads, generated by the extreme flow of the wind thanks to the huge difference in temperature.

When they were so close that their chests almost touched, the two glared at each other. The strongest royalty vs the strongest criminal, and it wasn’t a fight that just started; it had been brewing for decades.

Isdis could remember the wanted lists, the posters, and the two faces in there. Both Eris and her mother were wanted murders with massive bounties on their heads. She had managed to bury those old records, but she could never forget them.

The bounty on Eris’s mother’s head was 900 gold coins, and Eris herself had 450 gold coins, as she was better at hiding her tracks.

”You know... I spent four months tracking you before. I thought that hunting your head would’ve helped me win the throne.” Isdis growled at Eris’s face, and Eris just smiled. ”I too tried to kill you more than once, poison, assassins, and even by hand... I failed each time to get rid of you, knight princess.”

Isdis was unmistakably the weakest, so she made the first move. A sneaky, uppercut right to the chin with all of her might. The meteor might be lost in space, but thanks to Arad’s will over his stomach, it also had an atmosphere equal to that of the mortal world. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have dropped Isdis here.

As Isdis’s hit Eris’s chin, the air around them froze into crystals, and the plasma behind Eris’s back cooled for a second. Then without wasting any time, she froze it and brought her fist right back at Eris’s face with a roar.

The punch was so hard that it sent Eris’s standing body right to the ground with a small shockwave, and when the goddess hit the ground and bounced up, she grabbed Isdis by the knee and punched her right in the gut, causing her to gasp for air.

It was the royal martial self defence art against the honed street brawling experience Eris got, a war of the refined and jagged, and it didn’t take Isdis a second to respond by twisting her body, and bringing her elbow down toward Eris’s face.

Eris caught Isdis’s elbow with her palm, and from her hand, she unleashed a wave of raging plasma. As the purple flames exploded, Isdis froze them on the spot and shifted her weight to club Eris right on the chest, but she got tackled to the ground, and before she could get up, Eris was sitting on her chest, pinning both of her arms between her knees.

Eris lifted her fist, kissed it, and swung down at Isdis’s face like a divine meteor coming down with vengeance. Isdis saw the fist coming, and she barely managed to dodge it by slightly moving her head to the side. The entire meteor shook from the impact, and Isdis knew that if she got hit, her skull would’ve popped like a walnut.

”You dodged that?” Eris kissed her other fist and then swung down even faster than before. Over and over, Isdis kept dodging the barrage of bunches until one finally smacked her right in the nose, drilling her skull into the ground.

But instead of panicking, she was honestly surprised. She expected her head to explode, but she held up well against such a hit, and she knew Eris didn’t make that specific punch weaker since the meteor they were on still shook violently.

She took a second punch to the face, but now she was already moving to free herself from Eris’s grasp. She lifted both of her legs up, wrapped them around Eris’s torso, and threw her back with all of her might.

Eris rolled on the ground, and immediately stood up with a smile on her face. ”You were such a soft and nice chair, why throw me away?”

Isdis barely managed to stand up with a stream of blood gushing out of her nose and mouth, and she gave Eris a tired, pained glare. ”Don’t sit on me, especially when you’re naked.”

Eris looked down at herself, and she was indeed naked. She didn’t bring any clothes with her to train her in the void, because they would’ve inevitably gotten burned away, and just like Merlin, she needed more skin to release more magic more easily when pushing her limits. It was the same concept as athletes needing to wear fewer clothes so they can sweat and cool off.

Isdis was also naked, but she had her armor blow away when she unleashed her heat in the Arctic Lands, and the rest of what she wore got destroyed in the clash with Eris’s magic here.

Isdis reached toward her face, filled her palm with the gushing blood, and gave it a look. ”Would this even work?”

She put both hands together, mixed the blood, and then produced a long, sharp rapier of her own, frozen blood.

”Can you control this one?” Isdis pointed the sword toward Eris, and Eris smiled. ”I could if I put a bit of effort into it.” She then produced her own blood weapon, a long, sharp spear. As she pointed it toward Isdis, she smiled. ”I’ll make this clear: any mortal or demi-god would’ve died long ago, burning by the sun above our heads.”

She smiled, ”Remember that fool Jordan? The one that Mira now has his divine power? As you are now, you could’ve bullied him the same way a general can bully a soldier, and you would have even given Karon a run for his money.”

Isdis sighed, ”If you’re trying to help, at least understand the main problem. I know I’m not weak...” She took a stance and got ready, ”What I’m worried about is that no matter how strong I get, my power would never be enough to fight beside Arad.”

Then, the two clashed again.