The dragon's harem

Chapter 934: Playing With Fire



The four demon lords looked at Arad waiting for them in the arena and Kagoro sighed, "It's like we're facing a dungeon's boss. Look at him sleeping in the middle."

"He isn't sleeping, he's waiting." Glinstone said with a pale face, "Waiting for his food to come."

"I'm not excited about this. He almost broke my sword earlier." Aronos sighed, looking at his massive black sword with a worried face. This weapon had been with him for thousands of years.

"He looks SOOOO...cute!" Lunara gasped, "Just like a massive black kitten. A vicious predator wearing a cute mask." She shivered a bit.

"You got a problem." Kagoro stared at her with a disappointed face, "But you're right. He's a vicious predator, and we must make a plan first. Unless we four work together, we're going to end up eaten by Arad like mice."

"I can help you with that." Kayden looked at them, "I'll at least give you a visual indication of progress and what works or not." He lifted his hand and shouted, "ARAD! I've changed my mind, start in your human form. But keep the other restraints."

Arad lifted his head up like a cat who just heard its food getting poured, he stared toward Kayden and nodded. Soon after he shifted back into his humanoid form and took a deep breath, "When will they come?!" He shouted, his voice booming across the whole arena. Arad knew he only had one day, and having them waste precious minutes didn't sit well with him.

"In a second! Hold on!" Kayden replied and looked at the four demons, who were scared upon hearing how loud Arad could speak, his voice had boomed like a raging titan or an abyssal thunderclap.

Kayden lifted his hand and touched his ear, "Aria, I've got Arad in a training arena made of my magic. Can you turn him into a dungeon boss?"

-No, he isn't one- Aria's reply came flat.

"I know he isn't one. Just give us a visual indication, and make him look like one. I'm sure you've been watching the training so give us something useful." Kayden said as he looked at the demon lord, "I want some motivation for them and a reason for Arad to play defensive instead of offensive."

-Got it, give me a second-

As Arad was standing in the middle of the arena, something rang above his head. When he looked up, he saw something [Arad, the Nuclear Chaos]

"What is this?" He waved his hand and it passed right through the words floating above him. At that moment, five green bars filled up above his name, each of them had [5000/5000 HP] written inside it and certain words popped before Arad's face.

[The green bars are your health; they account for everything from defensive power to dodges. When a bar runs out, you can't regenerate it. Once all bars drop to o, you die.]

Another notification popped up right after, [The longer you survive, the better the reward would be. The highest reward possible {The Demon Slayer Sword}] That meant Arad couldn't kill the demon lords but had to stall for time to get the best reward.

"Kayden! What is this!" Arad shouted.

"You'll be able to do it one day, just not today." Kayden replied and the demons had the same happen to them. Just, they only had one bar above their heads, and their bars only held 4000 each.

"Only 4000HP?" She gasped, "He has more than us!" Kagoro cried and looked back at Kayden. "This is based on your capabilities. Aria counts your HP, regeneration, defenses, and even speed, and how much stamina you have for dodges and gives you all that information into a simple number that is easy to follow. Of course, she rounded them up." Kayden sat, "This is the limit of your abilities. Remember how Arad killed all four of you earlier?"

Kayden was right, even when Kagoro had managed to get a bullet right to Arad's chest, Arad still managed to dodge a fatal blow and kill Kagoro.

Kayden looked at the four demons, and suddenly noticed that there were only three of them... Lunara was nowhere to be seen. The three demons cried, "That demon!" They growled and stared back, seeing her already facing Arad in the middle of the arena.

"Say, won't you change your mind?" Lunara said with a smile, licking her lips. "Dragons love strong women, I'm quite strong."

"Spoken like a true non-dragon woman." Arad took a step forward and glared at her eyes, "The reason we dragons look for a strong mate, is to feel safe leaving them and be assured that they can at least fend for themselves. You're strong, but a danger to my other wives, and I've got no reason to trust you."

"Yes, you trust that demi-goddess of murder?" Lunara giggled, and Arad grabbed her by the neck with one arm, lifting her up. "I've known her off before she got that. Even if she's a danger to the other wives, it's my and the other wife's responsibility to deal with that." Veins bulged on Arad's arm as he squeezed Lunara's neck harder, and his face shifted from a passive one to an angry frown, "And how do you know about her?" Lunara had never met his wives and finding that she knew about Eris rang countless alarm bells in Arad's head, having such a dangerous demon lord know of his wives was nothing but frightening.

"Come on..." Lunara growled, barely able to speak. "I'm the demon lord of slashing, right? Whoever cuts gets seen by me. I can't avert my eyes, especially from a woman who bears the power of an evil murder god."

Arad dropped Lunara down, a bit calmer, but still worried. Unknown to him, her words were a lie.

****

Mira was working on Arad's staff inside the workshop as Mora did his things arguing with his hammer about which side of it, he should hammer with. With all of her hard work, Mira had only managed to make a glass globe that seemed to resemble an egg more than a perfect sphere, which she disappointingly threw in her massive pile of shattered glass.

As she approached the forge to keep trying, she noticed an itch on her forearm. Upon looking, she found a tiny cut, a single blood droplet dripped from the wound and splashed on the hard ground. "I should really wear gloves when working with glass." She sighed and the wound healed almost immediately thanks to her divine magic.

Isdis was fighting Isbert in the snow just like yesterday, and she managed to block a massive explosion of ice shards by conjuring a wall of thick snow. She seems to have gotten a bit used to the cold and is slowly trying to get a hang of her ice magic.

But, when she looked forth toward Isbert, she noticed her standing there, silently watching. "What's up! Are you done attacking?"

"Are you okay?" Isbert replied with a passive face, slowly pointing at Isdis's side. When Isdis looked down, she noticed a cut on her side, bleeding and painting the snow beneath her feet red. "Shit! I got hit!" she gasped and waved her hand over the wound, freezing it to stop the

bleeding.

^The cold is numbing me to the point I can't feel it when I get wounded now? Yeah, that's right, she's raising the cold each second. I must keep a close watch on my body now that I can't rely on pain to notice injuries.^ Isdis stood with a determined face, ^If I don't keep a leveled head, I'll bleed to death without feeling it.^

Isbert tilted her head with a confused stare, "Are you sure that's enough?"

"Yeah, not ideal, but this is a battle." Isdis pointed her sword at Isbert, "I'll fight with what I've got." She was worried about getting a scar, but Eris and Lydia are quite good at getting rid of them so it's not a real problem.

Back at the university, Lydia and Eris were skipping a day at school. Inside their dorm room, Eris who only wore her underwear lid on her stomach on the bed, groaned. "Lydia... It getting worse..." She cried.

Lydia who was sitting standing beside her desk and working on mixing some herbs looked at her, "There is nothing I can do about it. I'm not an expert in such a thing either," She sighed, looking at the tiny translucent scales showing through Eris's whole body.

"I suspect that as your draconic blood got stronger, you're now growing some scales." Lydia replied as she sighed, "I can't do anything about natural growth. You have to endure it." Right now, Eris was suffering from a severe full-body itch as her scales slowly grew alongside an exhausting cold fever that knocked almost all the energy from her body. She was like a baby growing his teeth and falling ill.

Eris reached down with her hand to scratch her left ankle which suddenly grew itchier than before, her long and sharp nails weren't tender on her currently delicate skin, leaving countless scratches and gash wounds. Her long and sharp black nails were tough enough to cut through stone and steel when heated up with her plasma, they were sharper than most weapons and far deadlier.

"Eris!" Lydia yelled at her, "If you don't stop scratching, I'll have to tie you down to the bed. You're making your condition worse!" Lydia was getting irritated with how many times she had to heal Eris's skin after she scratched it. If those wounds were to be left, her scales might

not grow right.

As Lydia looked at Eris's ankle, approaching to heal it, she suddenly tensed up, blood rushing to her head and arms as her sword flew to her hand from the corner of the room. With one downward swing, Lydia slashed Eris's foot off with a [Divine Smite] and Eris cried,

pulling her leg up in pain as she glared back, "Lydia! Why!" It was painful, more than all of her itching, but what stunned her more was that Lydia attacked her." Eris's foot regenerated almost instantly, but she wasn't going to let Lydia go without getting a proper explanation. "Lydia!" Eris growled at her once more, but Lydia was locked on, her eyes glaring at Eris's foot with a menacing rage mixed with fear.

Eris fell silent for a second, Lydia did attack her out of nowhere, but the two of them had lived together and known each other for a long enough time to build enough trust for her to wait. Lydia must have a reason, and Eris immediately figured it out as she looked at her own foot. "That is Merida's magic." Eris gasped as she noticed demonic magic seeping from one of the gashes on her severed foot. It was extremely faint, and she could only see it as hazily as the shift in air when it's heated up. She probably wouldn't have noticed it if Lydia wasn't acting like she was in a real battle.

Eris was certain, the only reason she was able to detect that demonic magic was how powerful she got as a demi-goddess, which made her even more stunned that Lydia saw it first. Lydia quickly rushed toward Eris's foot, lifted it up, and burned it with divine magic, "That's no ordinary demon, we're drawn to the gaze of an evil being." She rushed toward the wardrobe and pulled Eris's clothes.

"Don't go through my stuff!" Eris gasped.

"This is not the time." She threw some clothes and a robe to Eris, "Wear those, we need to get

you inside one of Amaterasu's churches and build a sanctuary to protect you." Lydia rushed toward Eris and forced her to stand, "I don't care how painful the itch her, we must move,

quick."

"Why! Explain," Eris growled, but she started wearing her clothes.

"You're a demi-goddess and are extremely weakened now that you're growing scales and evolving. That demon magic must've belonged to a demon lord, and the last thing we want is a demon possessing you." Lydia rushed to her desk and packed a few things, "I'll look through the church's scripts and scrolls to find out what demon lord that magic belongs to."

****

Back on the battlefield, Arad had just dodged Lunara's sword and punched her in the guts so hard that he sent her flying back with -54 points getting cut from her health bar. ^The hell is up with that woman?^ She only got hit thanks to her mind wandering away for a second, her thoughts focusing on the paladin that immediately shut off her gaze.