The dragon's harem

Standing barefoot on the ground, Arad could better sense the magic surging across the dungeon and the faint vibrations emitted by its faint moves. Arad touched the wall with his fingertips, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath, remembering the spell Selina cast to trap the spider.

Send your mana to a single point, bind it to the stone and dirt, and then part it out.

Lucia blinked, feeling something strange. Arad wasn't traditionally casting magic. Something seemed far too wrong for him to be a wizard. He wasn't conversing with mana, but ordering it around, a fundamental difference as the strands of mana refuse to take direct orders from humanoid and must be led around to create spells.

[Mold Earth]

CRACK! A hole appeared in the wall where Arad was touching, but it slowly started filling back. "A basic spell like this won't work here." Arad sighed, looking at the ceiling. "I need something stronger, bigger, and faster."

His eyes quickly shifted toward Lucia, "You know earth magic, don't you?"

"I do…but I don't have the capacity to dig us out of a ten-kilometer depth. I'll run out of mana halfway, and we'll get buried alive." She replied, taking a step back.

"Who said you're casting it? Teach me the magic, and I'll dig us out." Arad lifted a finger and pointed at the ceiling. "I can do it."

*****

Aella opened her eyes, finding herself standing alone in a room full to the brim with cow-sized demon spiders. The monsters had already surrounded her and were ready to attack. She slowly looked around with a passive face. "I see, where is Arad? Where is my husband?" She asked, glaring at the spiders with glowing green eyes.

The moment one of the spiders was about to move, its head got blown off with an arrow. Aella had already pulled her bow and fired in the blink of an eye. "Answer my question. If you can't, then die."

The tone of her magic shifted rapidly, from the usual gentle and fresh breeze into a cold and painful sharp gust of wind. The spiders started running around Aella, getting ready to lung.

Thud! One of the spiders lept toward Aella, opening its fangs for a bite.

TAP! Aella caught the spider by the head with one hand, her nails digging into the monster's eyes. "You're quite big, where did all your strength go?" She clenched her fist, crushing the spider's head.

"I might not be able to erase air like Arad. But I can prevent it from moving, if you get too close, you'll suffocate." She said, pulling her bowstring as she started firing left and right.

Spiders breathe with both lungs and tracheae, those two can't function if the air itself refuses to move.

The spiders started running around her and spitting poison and webs, trying to take her down without getting close. Even so, their attempts easily failed as Aella kept sniping them one after another.

But, the spiders were awaiting something. Soon, a massive demon spider emerged from the ground, and what they waited for, was a large one of their kind that won't die with a single arrow.

"I see an A-rank monster, Demon Black Widow Spider." Aella said, pulling something out of her pocket.

CRACKLE! The spiders saw Aella standing in her place, pulling the string of her bow with a blue arrow of fire crackling in it, a piece of paper burned in her fingertips.

[Torch]

She released the fire arrow and the large spider almost gasped, seeing the arrow flying toward it. The arrow exploded into a storm of flames, fueled by the air she controlled that rapidly engulfed the whole room, cooking all the spiders alive.

All that Aella needed was a simple spark for her oxygen-rich wind to fuel a massive explosion, and she wasn't going to miss the chance to use such a technique. Even Zephyr was known to create tornados of fire by sucking the fire out of the forest and damaging houses.

"Wind buffs fire, that's common knowledge. But I doubt you spiders ever thought of that." Aella walked among the charred ground, heading deeper into the dungeon in search of Arad.

Rapid fire, the ability to control air, and buff fire spells to a massive degree. But even with that, Aella still wasn't even going at half of her full power.

****

"Where am I?" Selica gasped, barely managing to stand on her own. She gently patted her robe, dusting it off, and then looked around. "This magic, a dungeon." She immediately realised.

She put her hands together, and took a deep breath, parting them to reveal a massive wand made of wood and rings of steel that she had stored in her storage magic.

Without wasting any time, spiders started showing up left and right.

"Bad spiders." She said with a passive, emotionless face as her eyes faintly gleamed blue and mana circulated through her body.

Thud! A spider rushed toward her, jumping toward her at an insane speed. KA-BOOM! Just as fast, Selina blasted the spider into bits with a [Fire Bolt].

The flames at the tip of Selina's staff quickly changed color from deep red to blue then to white, third-tier refinement. The flames were so hot they looked white.

A spider ran toward her back, but she blocked it with a barrier made of several small triangles, then blasted it with a red lightning bolt [Lightning]

More spiders started showing up and Selina looked at them. "You're like cockroaches, I kill ten, and a hundred shows up." She lifted her staff up and closed her eyes, conjuring a massive magic circle above her head.

[Marionette Dance]

Countless strings of magic burst from the circle and flew toward the weak spiders and the still-intact corpses, causing them to start moving again.

"This isn't necromancy, I'm using magic to directly control them instead of binding a soul to the body." She said with a passive face. "That also allows me to do this."

The magic circle above her head shifted into a red color and her spiders started spitting fire bolts. "I can cast magic through them as well."

A massive spider war started as Selina stood in the back, issuing orders to her spiders and fighting like she was playing a board game.

Thud! A spider managed to bust through her defenses, rushing to her back with a bite.

STAB! Selina pulled a dagger from her pocket and stabbed the spider in the face. "I left the opening, but it's true that I can only fight through the spiders while [Marionette Dance] is active, I can't move from beneath the magic circle."

She looked at the spiders fighting. At this rate, she'll run out of mana before killing all of them. Selina looked around, trying to find a way to end the fight before she ran out. Her eyes stopped at the ceiling, she could drop that on the spiders and then flee to recover her mana.

She slowly pointed her staff at the ceiling. To cast a spell, she'll need to cancel [Marionette Dance].

As [Marionette Dance] dance stops before she casts a spell, that's like giving a signal to the spiders to attack her.

"Let's see who's the fastest." She canceled [Marionette Dance]