The dragon's harem

Eris stared at Betty, "We need Lydia to check you later. She's a far better healer than me."

"As long as I'm not dying, I'll heal up in time." Betty smiled, tapping her side. "It was my fault for underestimating her?" She turned toward Mira.

"You say that." Arad looked at Betty, "But you would've still won if this was a real fight."

"If it was a real fight." As Betty stared at a stone, two beams of concentrated red light flashed from her eyes like lasers and sliced it to pieces. "See?"

Mira stared at the stone, it would've ended up badly if they were fighting for real.

"But, you never answered my question. Who's the first wife? Someone has to take the lead." Betty stared at Aella, Eris, and Merida.

"There isn't one, but we switch based on what we're doing." Aella looked at her. "If we're cooking or fighting something at a long-range, I take the lead as they are my specialty."

"I take the lead if we're making or fixing something." Mira added.

"They usually listen to me when we're fighting something extremely powerful, as I'm the strongest of them." Eris said, "And I have regeneration, so they don't have to worry that much about me." Out of Arad's wives, Eris was the one who could fight hand-to-hand with weapons and had high explosive power thanks to her plasma and holy magic.

"I'm the one who makes everyone's clothes, and as an experienced swordswoman, I do take the lead when we're out on quests. Especially large games that could deflect Aella's arrows, and the one that It'll be a waste if Eris burned their hide." Merida stared at her.

"I see, so there is no real leader between you?" Betty started thinking.

"Why are you even asking? You aren't joining us." Aella glared at her, and everyone nodded.

"No, I'm not. You can't stop me." She stared at them with a grin and then turned toward Arad, "Even he can't beat me now without Master's expansion. If this was a dragon's family, I'd need to beat him first, and then my first job would be killing all of you and your children. Dragons are more like lions, but instead of the lion always dominating, it's whoever is the strongest." Betty turned toward Arad, "Can you beat me? Without Master's expansion?"

Arad lifted his hand, "Wait, something doesn't feel right." He looked around.

"What is it? Trying to dodge the subject?" Betty stared at him.

"You're attuned to mana. Can't you feel it?" Arad looked down.

Betty looked down, "This mana? It's a giant toad, several of them, but those won't approach us. We're too scary for them."

"Not that." Arad pointed at the ground, "The large lump of magic behind them. I never sensed such a thing."

"What lump? I can sense as far as 10km deep." Betty said, and Arad blinked twice, "Oh…You'll sense it soon, it's coming fast. 31km, 30km, 28km…"

"We should probably leave." Mira stared at Arad, "I have a bad feeling about the Giant toads."

"Betty has a point. Monsters can sense me on you so they won't attack you, especially weak monsters like giant toads." Arad nodded, putting her in a barrier just in case.

"This barrier won't help. I don't want to get swallowed by one, they stick like hell." Mira shook her head, "We need to leave."

"But I want to see what's coming, such powerful mana is a rare thing to see." Arad looked down.

Mira pointed at Aella, "Even she hates giant toads."

CRACK! The ground beneath her feet opened up and a massive yellow toad swallowed her whole, hopping away as fast as it appeared. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Told you sooo!" Mira cried inside the toad moments before she unloaded all of her nails into the toad's insides, dropping it dead.

Mira slowly crawled out of the corpse and took a deep breath. She was spotless, Arad's barrier prevented everything from reaching, except air, which stinks to high heavens, like a rotten egg left on the side of the road in the hot summer, for a day or a week.

"ARAD!" Mira stared at him. "They stink!"

Betty nodded, "Now that's a fat toad if I ever saw one." She turned toward Arad, "Your barrier must be powerful if the only thing she's worried about is the smell." She pointed with a smile.

CRACK! As they talked like nothing happened, multiple toads burst from the soft dirt beneath them, more than fifty of them with each one being the size of a large room.

Aella, Merida, and Eris all killed the toads rushing at them with ease, "They are fleeing from something." Eris said. "They are charging blindly through our attacks."

In a flash, Betty cut five toads down and landed on their corpses, holding a strange blade in her hand made of light. "Hmm…Weak they are…indeed." She looked at Arad and conjured a second blade. "Use this, it is sharp." She said, even though the light blade was round like a tube.

Arad had carried Mira and jumped away when he saw Betty's light blade flying toward him. "How am I supposed to use that? Oh…wait…I have three limbs." Arad extended his draconic tail and caught the light blade, swinging it at the toads around.

The light blade sliced through the toads like butter, it felt even sharper than Arad's other swords, except the dragon slayer when facing dragons. "How, it's round?" Arad stared at the glowing blade.

"Don't stare at it. It'll hurt your eyes." Betty said as she landed beside him and looked at his tail. "You can use that as an arm?"

"It's extremely dexterous." He replied with a smile.

"That's a light blade. I created them to fight as I can't carry matter when moving at the speed of light." Betty explained and Arad looked at the blade with an even more interested gaze.

"Take it." Arad returned the blade to Betty and closed his eyes.

"Arad! The toads are coming!" Mira cried, not really scared.

Betty cut the toads with ease, protecting him as he stood motionless.

"What are you doing?" She asked with a worried face.

"I'm almost there." Arad replied to her, and his tail wiggled, a large black saber emerging from the tip. It was almost two meters long, forty centimeters wide, and had no thickness at all.

"It's connected directly to my stomach. I call it a void saber." Arad swings it at the toad, cutting and swallowing them at the same time. "This is better than covering a weapon and trying not to destroy it. I can just use my tail." Arad smiled, cutting the monsters left and right.

"Arad! They are still coming, what's happening underground?" Aella asked as the toads' numbers kept increasing.

"They do mate in the winter, but it's still a bit too early, and most of them aren't even grown." Betty noted.

Arad looked down, "They are indeed fleeing from that massive mana source. It might be a bigger monster."

As Arad looked underground through his mana sense, he noticed something. A second large mana source approaches the first one. He did recognize the second one, he had seen it before, albeit it was far too faint then.

"The black drakaina of this area is coming to hunt that thing. She's digging around 15km deep. They are going to clash underground." As if Arad had started commenting on the fight, the ground beneath them shook.

"The drakaina started immediately with a powerful tail slam that collapsed the cavern they were in, she's now trying to drown the monster in her acid breath." He looked at the ground with a smile as his tail tore through the toads.

"Arad. The earthquakes could destroy the city; I'll go deal with that, you stop those two from wreaking havoc." Betty said, looking at him.

"Wait, I want to watch them fight. I never had the chance to watch a normal dragon fight up close." He said with a sad face.

"There are several kilometers of dirt and stone between you and them. You aren't close at all. Now go stop them, I know you can do it if you're this carefree when they are clashing." Betty disappeared as soon as she said that.

Arad sighed and stared at the ground. "Eris, take Mira and fly away. I'll go down and stop them; We don't want the university collapsing, do we?"

Eris took Aella and the girls retreated away from the toads as Arad expanded his wings, fully shifting into his half-dragon form.

CLACK! The girls saw him dig through the ground like a mole, disappearing in a second.

****

BAM! The black drakaina charged through the half-destroyed cavern, pushing the melting stone sinking in her acid aside, and smacked the multi-headed monster with her head but it didn't budge that much. What she faced was a rare monster, a drake hydra.

Drakes are a part of the draconic family but aren't true dragons, they lack wings and the distinguishing intellect of dragon kind. But… those monsters are far too powerful due to their horrid resemblance to the chromatic goddess.

The Drake hydra is a massive reptilian monster with multiple heads that can range from two to nine heads. Each one of its heads is able to spew a different elemental energy. They are massive, bulky, violent, and avaricious.

The black drakaina was indeed massive, but still smaller than the hydra, and what was worse is that, unlike her kind, she looked far too thin for her age, the visible bones on her massive head made her look more like a skeleton than a healthy drakaina.