The dragon's harem - Chapter 1604: Dysfunctional Team
Chapter 1604: Dysfunctional Team
To get out of this world, Arad and Gojo must act like sealed monsters. They must find agents in the outside world and get them to do their bidding. Here, they had no power, but if their agents could slowly empower them, one day they would be able to get out.
Gojo got Lucy outside, and he could contact her through his dreams. His goal would be to have her find his missing jewel and use the power stored there to free him.
One dream was enough to get his plan out.
Lucy, as a goddess, has now started to act upon Gojo’s will. She weaponized her believers and the entire Arctic Kingdom to hunt for Gojo’s lost jewel, to get the lost power of their king, and pull him out of the eternal prison of everlasting entropy.
Arad could’ve had Gojo deliver his word out, but he didn’t. He had more ways of connecting to the real world than his brother.
Arad closed his eyes, trying to think. Does he have a connection that strong with anyone? His wives, even Kali, the connection between them was natural. But not all of them.
Plum was sitting at the base of her real body, watching the endless green fields and the other plant fairies going about their lives. She was already a powerful spirit queen with her own thriving small kingdom, all built upon Arad’s magic and power, her roots deep within his space magic and void.
Then, she could feel it. An itch deep within her chest, a primal urge. Her soil is drying up, her world is dying. Arad was gone.
Plum froze in her place, her face somber. But then, a grin stretched her lips from ear to ear. Her very origin was gone, far away, calling back to her from the depths of a lost world.
If the soil around her root had dried up, then she must dig deeper, extend her roots to the depth of the universe. She must find Arad; she must find her fertile soil.
As her roots touched the roots of the world tree across the fabric of space, she could feel them resisting her presence, pushing back against her will.
Plum stood, waving her hand. “Prepare for war.” She spoke, and all of the fairies stopped moving and stared at her, confused and shocked.
“Arad is gone, sealed away in a lost world. I shall stretch my roots to every world until I find him. Search and destroy, cut all of the World Tree roots that get in my way.”
Plum took a step forward, gazing upon everyone with a sad, passive face as her eyes sparkled dark green with many emotions. “I shall find him, no matter the cost.”
The first of Arad’s agents, Plum, the everlasting tree of the void, had started her search.
Right on the outskirts of Alina, Agnar was with his party fighting a giant lightning tiger. He was taking the front line, supported by Yuwaku and Ignis, when something strange happened.
Yuwaku froze for a second, and she stopped moving. Her body rippled, her eyes flashed, and for a second, she looked like a fleeting ghost. With Arad, the source of her beauty gone, her very being was on the brink of coming undone. A Nymph cannot exist without her origin, and so, she was about to die.
But then, something strange happened. She wasn’t just born from his beauty, but from Zephyr’s splendor as well. For a moment, she managed to uphold her existence, and that was enough for a shift to happen.
She was Arad’s image left on the real world, his Nymph, his beauty and power. Just like how Blue Ice was the agent of Cania, Stillness, Yuwaku became the agent of Arad, the void dragon lost in nothing.
The control of his stomach, magic, and all the power he left in the world shifted to her, and her soul burst with power, drawn right from what Arad left.
The lightning tiger noticed Yuwaku’s strange situation. It jumped at her with malice, kill the weak, the distracted one first. But then, the tiger realized the gravity of his mistake when Arad’s harrowing aura started rushing out from Yuwaku.
He had looked at her, and what he saw was nothing, pure darkness, an endless void, one so deep that it blinded him. The tiger’s body was ripped apart and sucked into Yuwaku’s body, which had now turned into a massive whirlpool of nebulous shadows and darkness.
If you stare into the void, the void stares back at you. For a moment there, the darkness swallowed all of Alina and Arad’s castle, only to fade away like mist.
Yuwaku walked out of the darkness, looking a bit older and taller.
Yuwaku looked at her left hand and frowned.
“Father’s beautiful arm. It was hurt and desecrated by a vile beast.” She then smiled. “But he won, the beast is no more, and his arm was restored to its former glory.”
The terrified Agnar slowly approached her with careful steps. “Yu…Yuwaku, what’s going on?”
She looked at him with a smile. “Father, he was sealed in a faraway world. In his absence, I, the living incarnation of his beauty, shall inherit his mark on the world.”
Yuwaku closed her eyes for a second, sensing the extent of the power she had.
“I’m merely a shadow of his brilliance. I cannot even control a fragment of his power, but I at least hold it safe. I can open and close his stomach gates, and even will things into the void. But that’s the limit.”
She could feel Arad’s whole body, his heartbeat, his breath, and the condition of his body that was the source of her beauty.
“Father wants me to find a way to free him. I can feel it.” She looked at Agnar and Ignis, “We must head to the Arctic Kingdom.”
The sun above flashed purple, and the clouds shuddered. The people of the world had once before seen the harrowing power of their new second sun, and they were about to see it once more.
As the purple sun blazed, all of the vampires around the world could feel their blood boil, a dark will washing over them from the depths of their marrow. A disgruntled growl, a boiling rage, and everlasting murderous will.
The blood of the vampires had vanished, and the queen had taken the throne, a divine being with enough harrowing dominion to shroud the sky. Sol, the goddess of the purple sun, and Los, the goddess of bloody murder, were the same being.
The vampire didn’t know what exactly had happened for the blood lord to disappear, but they felt one thing: their queen, Eris, was pissed off to the marrow, and anyone who dared show his face in front of her would probably get ripped apart and thrown into the sun.
The rage Eris felt was strange even for her. She used to be calm, collected, and calculating, but now, she could feel it: Arad’s boiling blood running through her veins.
She felt Arad bleed when he got bitten by the shark. She could feel his weak human blood, his will, rage, and confusion. Unlike many of Arad’s wives, she was reborn through him and given a new life, transformed into the powerful vampire she is through his blood.
It didn’t take her long to understand what happened. Arad was sealed in a faraway world, and his blood authority was inherited by her, but that wasn’t the whole story. She could sense his blood and emotions, all of the hormones that coursed through Arad’s blood; Eris could taste them in her own.
“Eris, what’s going on?” Zia asked, and she was probably the only one who could speak with Eris now without getting killed on the spot.
“We need to help Arad. If we don’t, he’ll be lost forever.” She stood, “No, he is already sealed away, and we must free him.”
Eris then smiled.
“Lucy, she seems to have a plan. Let’s go.”
***
Hours later in Gojo’s kingdom, they met up.
Lucy was sitting on Gojo’s chair, resting her clawed bare feet on the table with a smug smile on her face, her shark-like teeth reflecting the pale light in the ceiling. Liliana was beside her, doing the same, relaxed on her chair with her feet on the table, only she was wearing boots. It was clear who Lucy was learning from, and she wasn’t learning anything good.
But who was going to check her out? No one dared speak against her now that she had become a full goddess able to eat anything and anyone at will.
One of Lucy’s shrine maidens tried to get her to behave, only to end up polishing her toenails right then and there.
Gug was standing beside the door, leaning on the wall with her eyes closed. She hated complicated talks, so she would just do whatever everyone else decided.
On the other side of the table, the people there weren’t much better than Lucy and Liliana in terms of their manners.
The first one was Plum. She didn’t sit on a chair, but on the table. She sat there with her legs and arms crossed, cursing Yggdrasil beneath her breath as her mind wandered away, watching her roots trying to seep into the fabric of space, looking for the world Arad was locked in. Around her, she had a cheering team of fairies wearing skimpy clothes made of leaves.
The cheering team, singing and dancing, was loud and distracting, but who was going to stop them? They were probably the only thing keeping Plum’s morale a bit up, and if she were to snap, she could blast the entire kingdom into the sky with a burst of trees.
In fact, Plum already almost killed Liliana when she tried to get the cheering team to stop singing. How did she do that? Liliana was sitting on a wooden chair, and one spike would be enough to skewer her. The only thing that saved Liliana was Eris, who somewhat made Plum unable to murder her.
As surprising as it was, the bloodthirsty vampire goddess of murder was the sanest one in the room. Sitting there with Zia at her side, reading what little papers Lucy had prepared.
Everyone was inclined to think it was a virtue of Eris herself, but only Lucy and Zia knew the violent rage Eris had to vent hours earlier for losing her husband. All the servants in the room were glad that Eris was keeping Plum in check, but the one they should thank was Zia; if not for her sacrifice and endurance, they would’ve all died for merely breathing in the same room as Eris.
To quell Eris’s murderous rage and calm it down, she had to kill and murder someone. The one who took it all was Zia, dying over a hundred times, all horrible deaths, until Eris’s murder portfolio was once again under control.
The last person there was the strangest of them all. A woman so beautiful that even the women in the room couldn’t stop staring at her pale face, radiant purple eyes, and long, silky hair. The mere sight of a single finger of hers was enough to turn them on, and hearing her voice would only drive them to madness.
To keep their sanity around Yuwaku the Nymph, Lucy had to protect them with her own divine power. Just outside the room, one of the maids locked eyes with Yuwaku for but a second, and that was enough to drop her to the ground, blinded and in a constant state of euphoria. She couldn’t stop gasping, “She looked at me!”
What made the situation even worse was that Yuwaku wasn’t alone. She had a rude-looking brat sitting on her right, and a red wyrmling sleeping on her lap.
Doma would’ve been here as well, but sadly, she has to keep Tina safe. No one knew what she felt when Arad faded away, but what everyone knew was that she was watching, glaring at them, ever present. No one could see or directly sense her, but they knew she was looking. Especially Lucy and Eris, they could feel Doma’s gaze upon them.
She might not be present, but she sure had her own plans to find Arad.
Lucy jumped on the table and stood in the middle, causing Plum to bounce.
“If everyone is ready, we should get our plans going.” She looked at them. “We’ll work together. So I hope you all cooperate.”
They had two main plans. Lucy and Liliana came up with the first plan to find Gojo’s lost jewel, while Plum wanted to find which world Arad is locked in.
This meeting was to make sure they all worked together to achieve those two goals, all while being guided by the whispers of Arad and Gojo they are getting.
