The dragon's harem

Chapter 2167: A Stable Star

After half an hour, the star was finally stable. What Eris and Isdis had made was a star that was two times the mass of the mortal world’s sun, and they wouldn’t have been able to achieve that without Merlin magic preventing them from devouring each other.

Even now, Eris could still smell Isdis’s divine magic on her soul and see what could’ve become of them both. Like two stars dancing around each other, the bigger one would’ve consumed the smaller one.

Eris could’ve fully devoured Isdis and absorbed her portfolio, which would be the worst-case scenario. But there was one where Isdis would survive, and that was if Eris stopped at the last moment. Eris could have absorbed just the portfolio and turned Isdis into an archon instead of a divine, basically leaving her crippled.

Were that how powerful archons like Mathilde were born? Was she a goddess of feet, kicking, or something similar in the past? No one knows, and Eris wasn’t going to ask. All she cared about now was that both she and Isdis survived, yes, even though Isdis behind her looked more like a roasted chicken than a living being.

Isdis gasped behind Eris as if trying to breathe, but nothing came to her lungs as they were in the empty void. Her crispy and charred skin fell off, and from the bloodied flesh and bones, a new coat of skin started forming at a horrifying speed. Right now, she was feeling the worst, and this might be her most hated moment in her life.

As a goddess, she was far better aware of the state of her own body than any mortal could hope to feel, and it sure didn’t feel nice. Her skin wasn’t just burned; the heat cooked her all the way down to the bones, where her marrow had melted. Even her cells had already burst from the radiation, and even her soul was pretty much cracked just from the pain.

She had thought that Gamond’s [Instant Wax] spell hurt, but this... it was much worse, and she would rather get waxed a thousand times every second than feel the pain burning one of her fingers now.

Isdis was basically now a cooked piece of meat and had to regenerate from that while feeling everything. But if that was it, she would’ve been much happier. She was also out of energy, exhausted mentally, and unable to breathe. As a goddess, she didn’t need air, food, or water, but since she had lived as a human for so long, she was still not used to not breathing all the time.

Hungry, in pain, thirsty, dizzy, delusional, exhausted, sleepy, foggy, itchy, and worst of all, bordering on the edge of madness. But even with all of that, she was strangely calm, collected, and under control.

She puked all of her organs out, literally, and started growing new ones as her eyes fell out and were replaced. She lacked both the divine magic and stamina, yet was still forced to live due to her existence as a divine being. Only when her body was fully replaced did she feel a bit better, falling limp on the titanic hand of Merlin.

Merlin’s titanic, abominable hand was as big as a massive island, and when Isdis hit the cold skin, she finally gasped for air as Merlin had created a layer of air above her palm. Merlin’s barriers didn’t just create air; they also prevented radiation from hitting them, weakened the sun’s light so a human could stare at it without getting blinded, reduced the temperature, and even gave the air a pleasant minty scent.

Of course, that wasn’t for Eris and Isdis’s comfort. Those barriers were made by Merlin to protect her own Abominable body from the star’s deadly powers. She was, in fact, so angry at those two for pulling such a thing that if she could, she would throw them into the sun to burn a bit more and learn a lesson.

When Isdis hit the ground, she fell on her knees, and her face kissed the ground as her entire body started twitching as if she were having a seizure. Luckily, that was just her divine body rewiring itself. She was perfectly fine and conscious.

Eris, on the other hand, was doing much better, but she still suffered a lot as well. Having overused her divine power and portfolio, she had turned into a formless mass of boiling purple plasma, flashing in and out of existence like a dying lamp.

The only thing holding Eris together was her own will, and that will smiled. Unlike Isdis, who was a human before and had her human emotions, Eris had been a vampire before and was a divine goddess for a while now. The pain, the exhaustion, the dread, and the endless agony. All of those feelings couldn’t even shake her.

Like Arad, Eris could be better described as a creature, a thing, a nightmare. Her power, endurance, and will made a mockery of all that is alive and sane.

She had to stay awake and keep the roaring star tame. If she stopped for even a fraction of a second, Isdis and Merlin would be ripped apart atom by atom just from the star’s heat, magnetic field, and gravity. Just like Arad, a star had its presence, and it filtered anything that dared to get close.

That had also made the difference in raw power between Eris and Merlin clear, as even while barely existing, Eris was still holding back most of the star’s power, keeping Merlin safe. She had blocked more than 90% of the star’s harmful emotions, and Merlin’s barriers only had to deal with the remaining 10% that slipped past Eris’s will.

Eris herself is made from plasma, so she will be fine, albeit a bit roughened up. But to think that even with Isdis’s help, she could only make a star this big. Of course, she can still force herself to make one that is bigger, or even multiple ones, but they would immediately collapse just like how it was when she fought Arad.

This was the biggest, stable star she could create. Now, looking at the star with burning, plasma eyes, Eris growled. If she were to force this star to collapse now, she would make a neutron star, but not a Black Hole or Gravastar. To create those things, she needs a much bigger star, or even more divine power, to crush it even harder.

”I still got a long way to go...” As her body slowly formed from the plasma, she gently descended into Merlin’s hand to land beside Isdis. Her toes and feet formed first so she could stand without melting through Merlin’s abominable flesh, and then it was her legs, torso, arms, and her head was the last one to form.

Even in her state, she was still thinking about how to make this sun stronger, what she did wrong, and what she lacked. This mentality was exactly what made her a creature; even in the face of pain, failure, and most importantly, an imminent ass-whopping from Merlin, she was awfully calm and unfazed.

Isdis looked up, saw Eris’s face, and could immediately realize the vast difference in power between them. Even though she had helped create this star, Isdis herself was far, far weaker than Eris. She couldn’t even match one of her fingers in terms of divine magic, and would struggle to even stand in her presence. The reason she understood that was that even now, while extremely weakened, Eris had almost four times Isdis’s divine magic at full power.

”If that sun burst, it might’ve damaged Arad. If it had burst, you two would have been hurt, or even died. If it burst, Arad’s inner world would be destroyed. If it had burst, everything would’ve ended badly.” Merlin’s voice boomed. ”I hope you two are ready.”