The dragon's harem - Chapter 1603: Dream Link
Chapter 1603: Dream Link
Arad’s arm burst out of the water, and he grabbed the jagged stones with a bloodied hand. Using all of his power, he pulled his head out of the water and gasped for air.
Gojo saw Arad and rushed to help him out. But the moment he started pulling, he noticed that Arad was as heavy as a boulder.
“I’ll pull myself out. Just get the spear.” Arad growled and pulled himself out, dragging the large tuna out of the water with his legs. He had stabbed it from one gill to the other and used the spear as a shaft to hold, using his knees as hooks. How he managed to swim to the surface was a mystery to Gojo.
The moment Gojo saw the tuna, he waved his hand and conjured chains of stone. He then threw those chains and wrapped them around the spear to use and pull the tuna out. As expected, he wasn’t strong enough to drag it out of the water, but his holding it gave Arad a chance to get out of the water.
Arad then grabbed the chain from Gojo and dragged the tuna fully out of the water, and finally fell on his back, exhausted. He gasped for air, his chest rising and falling rapidly with each heartbeat. He had pushed his fragile human body beyond its limit, and now all of his muscles and bones were on the brink of tearing apart.
Gojo rushed to check on him. Luckily, Arad wasn’t injured. “Honestly, what are those girls feeding you?”
Arad giggled. “Milk, the freshest milk.”
Gojo clenched a fist and punched him on the chest. “Why do I get it!”
Gojo then stood and conjured a sharp stone knife. “I’ll carve and cook us some meat. You rest.”
After cutting the tuna open and cooking the meat on magical fire, Arad and Gojo finally had a decent meal. Neither of them minded eating raw meat, but from everything they learned about humans, those people can’t digest raw meat and can die of parasites.
After the meal, Gojo had recovered a bit of his magic, so he started trying to heal Arad once more with wild magic. Each spell he cast ended up a failure.
He summoned a butterfly that exploded into sparks, he made himself invisible, became immune to all poisons and curses for an hour, and even caused a sun to appear in the night sky above for half a minute. Some of the spells were as harrowing as great magic, but none of them solved the problem of Arad’s injured arm.
Then, when Gojo tried the last spell, he ended up turning Arad into a fat, black, chunky rat.
That was the last drop of mana Gojo had, and his head was already hurting. To recover, he must sleep. Arad would sadly have to sleep with his painful, torn arm.
After half a minute, the black rat puffed with smoke as Arad turned back to his human form. To everyone’s surprise, Arad’s arm wasn’t injured anymore.
Arad looked at his arm with a shocked face, and even Gojo didn’t seem to have anything to say.
“What? Did it heal me?” He shook his arm, and it was as good as new. But Arad could suddenly feel all of his body hurting a bit.
“Wait, does anywhere else hurt?” Gojo asked, and Arad nodded.
“Yeah, my whole body. Muscle pain, and I’m sure some of my bones are hurting as well.” Arad massaged his shoulder and sat down. “I feel like I just got smacked in the chest with a slamander queen tail.”
“Did that happen when you were a wyrmling?” Gojo chuckled. “But, I can probably guess what happened. The spell turned you into a rat, but then had to turn you back into a human. The damage done to your health was also replicated, but I doubt it had any parameters to copy wounds. So the damage was spread across your whole body.”
The spell didn’t heal him, but it was far easier for his body to recover in this situation. It even allows him to use his arm once more.
“So it does work like that? I’m sure normal transformation magic doesn’t.” Arad sat down and started stretching his arms.
“It doesn’t; transformation magic has more versions than you could ever count.”
There are transformation magics that are based on illusion, and out of those, there are those that affect the caster and those that affect other people’s perception. Then there are biological spells that change the body physically, and out of those, there are many methods used to force that change into reality.
The spell Arad got hit with transformed his body physically, but instead of saving his full image before the transformation, it only saved the data about his stats, like health.
In reality, wild magic had been the true secret behind Gojo’s rapid and supreme magical capabilities. Each new spell that he came across provided him with a new insight into the true heights of magic and its applications.
Arad fell on his back and sighed. “It hurt a bit, but this is far better.” He yawned and closed his eyes. “I’m tired, so I’ll sleep first. You should rest as well.”
Full and tired, Arad quickly fell asleep, and Gojo followed right after. The two of them had been awake for what felt like two days straight and were reaching their limit. As they drifted to the dreamland, the darkness around them stirred, and Arad once again opened his eyes. Hours have passed, yet the sky remains dark and filled with stars.
Arad sat up, looked around, and saw Gojo sitting at the island’s edge, watching the waves.
“Something out there?”
Gojo heard Arad and slowly turned around. “In fact, yes. Did you dream of anything?”
Arad shook his head. “No, I fell asleep and woke up right away.”
Gojo smiled. “It should’ve been the safe for me. But I got interrupted by an annoying brat. I could speak with Lucy.”
Arad’s eyes opened. “Wait, how?”
“We’re indeed in a world ruled by a primordial concept, Entropy. She rules over all wild magic, and since Lucy is a goddess that can use wild magic, she managed to connect to me.” Gojo stood. “But the connection needs to be too deep in the first place. I got my wild magic spark from her, so we’re on the same boat.”
He lifted four fingers. “So, we have four things to consider now.”
Arad looked at Gojo, noticing that his calm expression was forced. Whatever he was about to share was troubling.
“Entropy wants to lock us here for all eternity, and she isn’t willing to let us out.” That was the first problem. This wasn’t any random world, but a prison.
“Everything is fine. Your stomach still works fine outside, so everyone is alive and well, it’s just that they can’t get in and out without Eris’s help.” Gojo shook his head. “Even my stomach is fine. Lucy took control of it. But that means our power is outside this world; we have no hope of getting it back here.”
No matter what Arad and Gojo try to do, it is impossible to get their power back inside this prison.
“We’re also immortal here. Even if our bodies were to be cut to pieces, we’ll remain alive and heal with time. It might take years, but we can heal back to full health even if we were burned to ash.”
Arad’s wounded arm would’ve never bled him to death. He could’ve just sat around and waited for it to heal at a normal human rate. That might take months or years, but it’ll heal nonetheless.
“Lastly, there is nothing here but an endless sea that blocks mana and is filled with countless horrors; the world is also ever changing, so it can’t be mapped.”
Arad frowned. They are facing a divine being as powerful as Kali, locked inside a world without their power, cursed to suffer for all eternity, and the world is even hostile and ever-changing.
“So? What should we do?”
It was then that Gojo smiled genuinely.
“Well, we’re going to teach Entropy that she made a huge mistake by locking us up.” He giggled.
“Well, it’s time for us to become the sealed horrors whispering evil.” He pointed at his groin. “I’m still missing one, so I asked Lucy to look for it. She’ll be my agent in the outside world. You, too, must think. I’m sure you have one or two people who are connected to you by something stronger than the power of Entropy.”
