The dragon's harem

Betty groaned as Eris healed her and pulled the nail off her side. "Couldn't you dodge the other three?" She pulled another nail.

Even with a light dragon's blood, Betty was in the end a halfling. She didn't have any scales nor wore armor to protect herself. The best she could do to protect herself was a spell of the barrier magic family, the one called [Caster's Armor]. The spell covers the caster's body with a thin barrier of condensed magic that acts as armor, but it's an active spell that consumes a lot of mana to keep active.

Betty usually keeps [Caster's Armor] active during her fights, but deactivates it as soon as the battle ends to start recuperating her mana for the next fight. She thought the fight ended when Eris, Aella, and Merida were taken down, she didn't expect Mira to be waiting for an opening to strike.

Mira wasn't intending to kill Betty so she had no bloodlust, and her gentle smile and human nature made her seem less and less of a threat, and Betty forgot about her.

But even without her protective [Caster's Armor], Betty's trained body should've been able to stop a blade's stab and take some hits, she wasn't strange to such damage due to the extensive training she went through. But in the end, Mira was still a step ahead.

Mira had seen how powerful the monsters that came after Arad were and had wanted a weapon that could be of use. The concept of a nail gun didn't exist in their world, and she was only trying to mimic a gun with nails and gunpowder.

After several revisions and tests, she finally made something strong enough to punch through steel armor, and even make Arad feel a sting when hit at point blank. But it was large, clunky, hard to reload, unpractical and heavy.

It was then that two people came to mind, Jack's mind to help make the design smaller, a tool more suitable for discrete killing. And to fix the size problem, Selica's potent spit came into play as a replacement for gunpowder.

The three managed to get the nail gun into a small enough size to be able to strap into Mira's wrist, and they even managed to increase the load from one shot to four shots, mimicking the design of Jack's artificial arm cannon, which looked like a revolver.

Jack refused to use the nail guns as they were too loud, and he would much rather the only loud thing he uses is the sure kill cannon. But Mira needed all the power she could have, loud enough so Arad could hear it and come.

In the entrance test, Mira didn't bring her nail guns as she expected them to be inspected for safety, but now at school, she's fully armed all the time. Nail guns strapped beneath her wrist and above it hidden by her long sleeves, and the same for her ankles, strapping two on each leg. That means she had at least eight shots on each limb, which only needed nail reloading as they held enough of Selica's spit to fire eight shots each.

She held the spare nails and spit in a magic bag on her wrist in case she ran out, but she also had a second back tucked beneath her clothes right below her chest. That was a piece of advice from Merlin to always keep a spare for spare parts. She had even cast a spell on her to hide the second magic bag.

But, Betty could see straight through people's clothes and flesh if she wanted and the only reason she didn't see how loaded with weapons Mira was, was because she wasn't going around looking at people naked. She only does it when about to fight someone to see if they are hiding any weapons, and she never intends to fight the human Mira.

"I'm quite small as you see. The first nail hit my liver. I can't accelerate that much, and even if I did, the nail would fly out of me, ripping a massive wound." She replied, turning toward Arad. "Not many things can withstand going near the speed of light, let alone reaching it. My clothes burn immediately, so I store them with magic before accelerating and wearing illusion as clothes, that's the first flash you see. And after I stop, I switch the illusion with real clothes."

"So a nail won't withstand that speed and melt." He looked at Mira, "Your attack was more effective than I thought. Nailed her in place." And Mira giggled.

Betty giggled, "Was that supposed to be a joke? You're bad at them."

"I never learned."

"You don't learn jokes, you get them from life." Betty stood as Eris had just finished healing her. "I really hoped to get pierced by something else first."

Arad tilted his head, confused. But Aella grabbed Betty by the neck, "I'll snap it off."

"That was a joke, chill out. Isdis, cool her off! Wait, she isn't here." Betty gasped.

"You know of Isdis?" Arad glared at her.

"Of course I do. Who doesn't know the man who married the ruris princess?" Betty stared at them, "You're collecting them left and right."

"I'm not collecting anything, besides wealth." Arad sighed.

"A princess is a wealth, but, I admit that Isdis was pretty cold before you met her, and I'm not talking about her magic." Aella let go of Betty.

"The spell-blade princess traveling with a platoon of knights slaying evil, bandits, and monsters all across the kingdom. She was infamous for singing for head dead enemies as they buried them." Betty giggled, "There was this village that was overtaken by bandits. Isdis and her knights raided and killed all the bandits, and then burned the corpses in a pit as Isdis played her Biwa and sang on them. The villagers were horrified."

"Burning the corpses is a good practice, it prevents diseases from spreading." Eris nodded with a smile, "I would've done the same, but I don't know about singing, I'm bad at it."

"Bad at singing?" Betty looked at her.

Eris turned toward her and started…

What do you say?

A purple butterfly?

Dancing around the hay?

Be aware

It is near

Calling from the shadows.

Your vision will get narrow

"Stop!" Betty stopped her, "That wasn't released, it fucking escaped."

"I know." Eris sighed, "I tried to practice with Isdis before but never got better, and now it's biting me when we start singing in the church. Lydia has been shocked at how bad I'm at singing."

"No, that was good enough for me. You can practice more to do better, but don't feel down if you can't." Arad looked at Eris with a smile.

As Arad and Eris talked, Betty turned toward Mira. "But girl, you're loaded. Carrying all those weapons to school." She finally decided to see what was up with Mira and realized the sheer number of firearms hiding beneath her clothes. "Aren't they heavy?"

"No." Mira shook her head, and then gasped, "Wait? You can see them?!"

"Don't worry, I left the underwear on." Betty smiled, "But who cast that wimpy illusion spell on your second Magic bag? A 7-

tier spell won't deceive my eyes."

"A 7-tier is strong enough." Merida jumped into the conversation.

"This mana color and wavelength, it's Merlin, isn't she?" Betty smiled. "That little girl has always been like this." She then looked at Arad.

"Arad, I've heard Merlin almost caused a disaster in Alina, she created a labyrinth."

Arad nodded, "A ten-layered one."

"As I expected, she still hasn't come to terms with her magic yet." She sighed.

"What terms?"

"She's a high human, you can tell that from the white hair. That boy Jack is one as well." Betty stared at the girls. "High humans can have one of two traits, a massive talent for magic, or an immense fate and intellect."

"Jack is the hero so he has the immense fate and intellect." Arad looked at Betty, "Merlin has a talent for magic."

"Merlin can cast 9-tier spells and has even mastered a lot of them. But the thing she was known for was her original spell that created labyrinths." Betty stared at them, "She had first manifested that spell after graduating from this university, but sadly that was in her house and her entire family ended up getting killed by the labyrinth's monsters before she took back control. After that, she went to the magic tower to learn how to control the spell and ended up getting tutored by Lilia, the tower's archmage. Yet, her spell ended up going out of control again and all of her classmates there died to the monsters there."

"She never told me that." Arad mumbled.

"She then ran out of the tower and started neglecting her magic and focused on creating magic trinkets. Last I heard, she was creating a heater." Betty sighed, "She's wasting her talent."

"I was caught in that Labyrinth, but I managed to dig myself out." Arad nodded, "But I agree, most people would've died there."

"As a powerful void dragon, you should be able to help her train her labyrinth magic. When you back, make sure she understands that. Even if it means dragging her out." Betty stared at him. "The spell could go berserk with any small trigger, and you know that would be a disaster."