The dragon's harem

Chapter 997: The New Era



PS: this chapter is quite long, twice a normal one so grab a drink and put on some music.

As Arad was mixing the potion, he drew some of Mary's blood from her fingertip and mixed it. She immediately healed the small wound and kept helping him, handing him anything he asked for from the back.

Soon, it was time to add the virgin's tears. She turned around and extended her butt to him, "Slap it, as hard as you can. I'm quite delicate so I'll probably tear up just from a small tap." Arad looked at her large butt with a disappointed face. He pushed her aside and reached inside their ration bag, pulling an onion. "Come here and stop fooling around."

Arad finished mixing the ink, but now that he looked at it, he realized how skilled Doma was with her hands. Even with his alchemy skills, what he mixed still looked like mud compared to Doma's smooth, honey-like ink. "I think this should..." He looked at the mixture with a worried stare.

Echidna walked out of the bath with Mesharra, "What's up? You look worried."Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"I don't know, I'd say this is a 6/10. But I doubt I could do better." He looked at her, "Still want to do it? Or should we wait until another time when I mix something better?"

Echidna giggled, giving Mary a side eye, "Whatever you stick in me, I'd love it if you stick it again."

"Why are you looking at me?" Mary returned the stare.

"It'll work, but the quality would be the same as what I mixed. What won't drop is the pain." Arad sat on the chair. "When I put the nail polish on it'll melt through your nails and seep into your magic circuit. It'll feel like someone is plucking your nails off with a red-hot knife. The tattoos would feel like being burned with a branding metal. But what makes everything is that the pain is doubled, the body doesn't like it when foreign magic enters the magic circuit."

"Don't worry." Mesharra wrapped her arm around Echidna's neck, "Don't worry, my dear friend. I'm here to support you all the way through." She then looked at Arad, "I'll hold down for you."

"Hey! Since when we were friends? You just want to see me suffer." Echidna tried to push Mesharra's arm away but she caught her in a bear's hug. "Come on. We took a bath together." She then turned toward Arad, "Sorry about earlier, your word is law, right? I'll make sure to follow it, where would you want me to tie her down?"

"You've got an agenda against her, so if the law aligns with it, you don't care about anything else." Arad sighed.

"You hypocrite! You follow the law when it suits you!" Echidna growled as she tried to escape Mesharra's hug but failed. She far outclassed her in strength.

"I've got something that might help." Plum said as she flew out of Arad's hair, "But I won't give it for free." She looked at Echidna with a smug smile.

"Is it something that reduces pain? What do you want for it?" The only thing that scared Echidna is the pain, otherwise, she'd get stronger no matter what Arad does. With the pain that he described, there are many things she is willing to pay to reduce it a bit.

Plum waved her fingers and a black seed appeared in her hand. "Royal dryad clove, rare, expensive, and extremely powerful."

A smile crossed Echidna's face, "I used to give normal cloves to people with tooth pain, putting one in their mouth could reduce the pain a bit. Of course, it was better to just get rid of that tooth and heal it later."

Arad reached up and took the clove from Plum's hand, "So, I crush this into powder, right?" "Mix it with a bit of olive oil and turned into a dough. We'll use it like that." Plum waved her hand and Arad started preparing the clove.

"So, what do you want in exchange?" Echidna looked at Plum.

"Nothing expensive or rare. Kill the hunters and help anyone you find."

Echidna immediately understood what Plum wanted, her ask was simple. She asked her to kill any pixies or fairy hunters that she meets, and also save the fairies and pixies they've hunted. This was a long commitment, but it's not something impossible or annoying.

"If I survived this one's blade, I'll make sure to keep that promise." Echidna smiled and Mesharra sighed, fine.

Echidna approached the bed on her own, took her bathrobe out, stripped to her underwear, and laid down. Arad looked at her, "You don't need to strip."

"I'd feel more comfortable like this." She put one leg on another, resting her head on her palms as she looked at the ceiling, "They got you a soft bed and a large one at that."

"That's a double-sized bed." Arad replied as he kept working on his needles without even looking at her.

"I guess..." Echidna looked at him with a smug smile. "I wonder what did they expect."

"I bet Arthur expected I would be having sex with you four. He thinks most people are like him, sticking it anywhere they find." Arad replied, checking the needle's sharpness. It was indeed sharp.

"Really? I don't mind doing it." Echidna turned around and looked at him with a horny smile, "What do you say?"

"You know I'm married, don't you? Keep dreaming. I know you just want to get too close to me so I can get Doma to teach you curses, and possibly take you back to my world, where your sins here might be nullified." Arad finally looked at her, "You aren't as easy to read as her." He pointed at Mary with his thumb, "But you aren't that good at hiding your intentions."

"Hey! What do you mean by that!" Mary gasped with a red face.

"Exactly what you're thinking. No woman would stick so close to me and be rubbing her chest on my arm, pretending to be just sitting at my side." Arad sighed. "I've never seen people act like you three."

Echidna giggled, "I mean, even I saw past her innocent smile." She looked at the embarrassed Mary. "But is she as well?" Her eyes shifted toward Mesharra.

"No." Mesharra replied. She was another sort of twisted.

"And Plum! She's been talking about..." Mary tried to speak, but Plum immediately stopped her. "Unlike you four, I told him straight. I've never seen someone with such a clean mana before besides the goddess. I couldn't take the thought out of my mind, how sweet will his mana taste." She looked at Arad, "I asked him if I could suck him off a bit and I got half

rejected."

"Last time a fairy sucked my mana a nymph got born and things got complicated. I'd rather not repeat that here." Arad stood.

"Since I have no responsibilities or sins here I decided to go with him to his world. That's why I asked Echidna to help the fairies." She looked at them with a tired face. "He's smart and made me agree to blindly obey him here and I agreed. How do you think he knew about the royal and nobles ploy?"

Plum had been using her plant magic to spy on everyone in the city, whispering rumors and what she saw into Arad's ears as she hid inside his hair.

Plum flew down and grew into a human's size. She grabbed the crushed royal clove and mixed

it with a bit of oil, turning it into a somewhat hard bulb akin to a small potato. She

approached Echidna, "Time to start, are you ready?" she asked.

"Echidna opened her mouth. Let him carve."

Plum blinked twice, looking at her, "Think again." She said with a grin.

The clove paste is extremely strong but slowly loses its effectiveness over time. Echidna's body must absorb it quickly so they can get the most out of its effective time.

"Turn around. It'll sting a bit at first before you get numb."

After Plum pushed the clove past as deep as she could, Arad came and started working on Echidna's nails and tattoos. Even with her whole body numb, Echidna still struggled with the pain that radiated up to her head from her fingertips.

Arad pained all of Echidna's nails black, turning them into output points for magic. He then went to tattoo several magic circles on her body. From what he could see, her body could only withstand four magic circles.

The magic circles would be stronger the closer they are to the heart, and activate faster the closer they are to her nails, so the best place to tattoo them is the exact middle point between Echidna's fingertips and heart.

The middle of her upper arms, right above the biceps and triceps. The spell on Echidna's left arm was a transformer that made her curses stronger by pulling outside mana, transforming it into curses, and using it to make the curses stronger. It sounds complicated, but it's simple, pull mana, turn into cursed mana, put into the spells.

The spell on her right arm was a reducer, a magic circle that slows down her curses which makes them easier to manipulate and control. Perfect to use when precision is more important than speed, and since most curses are slow, Echidna could use it almost all the

time.

The other two spells were set right around the upper part of her thighs, circulating all around her legs and passing right beneath her infragluteal fold.

While the two first tattoos went fine, the effect of the clove had started fading and Arad's inexperience had started showing its weakness. He lacked the precision and gentle touch of Doma. While inscribing the spell on her left thigh he had made a mistake, striking a mana vein at the wrong angle, causing Echidna to cry in pain as if he had stabbed her with a knife. The spell he was writing on her left thigh was curse curse-specific one called earthbound. Once a day, Echidna could step on the ground and turn a ten-meter circle into her binding ground, while fighting inside her mana would regenerate twice as fast. She could also change

its modifiers with an equal percentage.

10 meter +100% mana regeneration.

10*10 meter{100 meter}= {100/10}=+10% mana regeneration.

Echidna really wanted to use it in her hut so she held onto the bed, trying her best to stay still

so Arad could keep working. Of course, the more she moved, the more likely he was to make

another mistake.

When Arad got to working on her other leg, the numbing effect of the clove had completely stopped working. Echidna looked at Plum with teary eyes, but she only had one clove. The spell left to write on her right thigh was also one that she wanted.

Arad had already informed Echidna that this spell was the most painful of them all because it was testing the limits of his current abilities.

They've decided to leave it for the end since it might fail and end up wasting his ink. Once Arad starts drawing a tattoo he can't start another one until the first is completely drawn. Since Arad knows he's bound to make mistakes, he doesn't want to waste ink trying to fix them so he left it to the end so he can use what is left of the ink and give it a try. The spell is cast bifurcation, it takes the caster's casting ability and splits it into smaller parts,

allowing them to cast multiple small spells at once. But since Arad had already painted all of her nails, this would effectively allow her to cast twenty spells at once with the same power as

her previous self before Arad painted her nails. Of course, this comes at the cost of mana, pain, and exhaustion, but Echidna wanted that so badly.

Casting twenty fireballs at once, controlling twenty small monsters, or even cursing twenty different people at the same time with different weak curses to achieve something. The

potential was limitless.

"Want to keep going?" Arad looked at her with a worried stare.

"Yeah...I won't back off now." Echidna looked at him with a sweaty face.

"Hold her down," Arad said and the other three held her down. Mesharra had a large smile on

her face, "I hope you aren't ready."

"If you knew how much I hate you...but now, you don't know how much I love you. Keep me held in place, enjoy yourself to the fullest." Echidna glared at her with a large grin. She wanted to get this tattoo no matter how painful it would be, and she knew that Mesharra was the one to force her through this hurdle.

"This one would need to be linked to the same mana veins that go to all your fingers and other

tattoos. One of the reasons I left it for last. Once I start I won't stop or I'll be risking to ruin everything else." Arad was sure that Doma wouldn't have a problem, but with his skill, he'd mess up everything if he stopped.

"That means once I start, I won't stop no matter what you say or do. It'll be around a quarter

an hour of straight pain." He stared at her with glowing purple eyes.

"Do it, don't stop."

Plum jumped over Echidna and sat on her stomach, pinning her arms and torso to the bed so

she wouldn't move. Mesharra held the leg that Arad would be working on while helping Mary

hold the other leg down.

Plum created a small wooden stick for Echidna to bite on and Arad started carving. She held on

for only a minute before she broke down, begging them to stop. But even with her crying and begging, Arad kept going as he promised her.

In the end, the last tattoos took almost half an hour, twice as Arad expected thanks to the mistakes he made. The moment that Arad finished, the pain disappeared like it was an illusion and Echinda blinked with her teary eyes. The three women get away from her and she sits up,

blinking twice.

She looked at her arms and legs, and then at Arad, "The pain is gone?"

"You feel the pain since this needle would be pushing the ink into your nerves and mana veins.

Once I stopped doing that, the pain would stop." He looked at her, "How do you feel now? Are the spells working?"

She clenched her fists, sensing her curses.

Mesharra looked at Arad, "Making her suffer was fun and all, but I hope you know what you

are doing. She was already dangerous and you made her a bigger threat now." She glared at

the still-confused Echidna.

Echidna's body suddenly burst into black flames, her hair spiked up and her green eyes dripped curses like water. "Hehehehehehehe..." A deep evil laugh escaped her lips as she started clapping, cursed red lightning rumbling arcing from her nails. "Haaaaa!" Sensing the magic circulating from her nails through her whole body and into her heart tickled her insides, causing her to feel aroused, high on power, and curses.

She lifted her foot, looking at the ground with an excited face. The moment she tapped it on

the ground and activated both earthbound and bifurcation at the same time she felt an

ungodly surge of curses through her veins, to the point climaxed standing there, spilling everything on the ground.

Her eyes shifted toward Arad and Mesharra pulled her sword.

Not even in her wildest dreams she had thought such a powerup was possible. Before this, she

thought that if she served Doma as her disciple and slave for a few decades she might get a

tenth of this power with a bit of begging. But even when Arad said his skill was only a 6/10 he had achieved this. Now she can't even imagine what Doma could do. Echidna knelt down before Arad's legs, ignoring Mesharra's bloodthirsty glare. She slowly looked up at Arad in awe. She had never faced someone like him before, the power, the fear

she felt when he almost pulled his expansion in her execution, the skill with magic, the way he was able to enchant her power to this extent.

"I want more, more power. What shall I do to get it?" She started at him, thirsty for more. Not even studying curses for forty years had matched the power spike he gave her. "Depends on what you'll do from now on." Arad replied he didn't intend to make her any stronger. She's already powerful enough to balance his curses.

At that moment, Yog appeared standing above Arad's head. "Finally, I've been waiting for

this moment." Her eyes looked at Echidna. "My biggest hater, you're probably top ten of the heretics in this world."

"What do you want? I'm speaking with him, not you." Echidna growled at her. While still high on her new power, she felt like she could defeat even Yog.

"I came to set a new rule." She looked at Echidna, "If you want more power, worship him,

pray to him, he is your master, your lord, your everything. Revere ground he walks on, do that and you'll find peace beneath his shadow."

Yog's eyes shifted back toward Mary, "The same to you. From this day, he is your god. I'll still grant you my power, but I want you to devote your everything to serve him." "What!" Mary gasped, terrified and confused. "What do you mean? What have I done to

deserve..."

"You've done nothing wrong, but have done everything right." Yog looked at her, "It saddens

me to lose such a devoted follower, but this is an experiment."

Arad reached up and grabbed Yog by the leg, trying to pull her way but he couldn't, she was

unmoveable.

"Come, kneel beneath him." She glared at Mary, and she slowly moved, prostrating herself beside Echidna.

"To you two, I'm a goddess. But I want you to see him above me, over my status." She extended her arms.

"What are you doing?" Arad growled at her. "Calm down, this would help you understand

divine magic better. Be obedient and play along, your wives will thank you later for it." Yog's gaze quickly shifted back toward Echidna and Mary.

"I'm your goddess, and he's over me. A being over your god, make sure to drill that into your

minds." She giggled.

Mesharra interpreted her. "Really an over god being with you a god standing on his head. Is this some kind of joke?"

Yog glared at her, "My little Mesharra, there is only one being that I'd let above me, and he

isn't here." She then looked at Arad, "Step on their heads, right foot over Mary, left foot over Echidna." "I'm not doing that." Arad swung a fist at Yog by his punch flew right through her body.

"It's a ritual, do it. Do it sitting on a chair." She flicked her finger and a black obsidian throne appeared out of nowhere.

"What is this?" He asked but she shook her head, "Don't ask too many questions, that's the only thing I've got stored."

Arad sat on the chair, putting his feet over Echidna and Mary.

Yog waved her hands to Mesharra, "Come here. Kneel at his right side leaning on your sword.

You're smart, can you guess what you must do?" She then looked at Arad, "Grab her from the back of her neck."

After thinking a bit, Mesharra looked at Yog, "Judging by him being over the law...I'm his

sword of justice?"

Yog giggled, "Indeed, you're nothing more than a tool, a weapon in his hand to use. A paladin

in service of a higher divine order."

She then shifted her gaze to Plum who was sitting on the bed. "You're free to do what you like.

Sit there, or go home, I don't care."

Plum shifted back to her small form and flew beneath Arad's left palm, "Then I'll sit here. I do

like him so I'll keep watching over the world and reporting back to him."

"A free spirit as expected, even without me telling you, you'll find your right path." Yog giggled, waving her arms and several magic circles started spinning around Arad. The ground started shaking and the whole city came out to the street, thinking an earthquake

was striking. "Today a new age starts! A new beginning, a new fate, and a new era. The four of

you, dedicate your bodies and souls to serving him. You've got the honor to be the first, so make the best of it."

She glared down at them, "A vampire has taken hold of the city of Rasin to the west, and a werewolf had been born in the city beside it, Glinstore. Dragons are spread afterward, and I've made sure they are properly aligned from the weakest to the strongest. Gamond would send

her minions to try and stop your lord, but what will you four do?"

"To those who stand before my god, only divine punishment awaits." Mary said with a

whisper.

"I'll curse them to the bloody hell." Echidna growled with an evil smile.

"The blade of justice awaits their necks. I'll kill them, or die trying." Mesharra stood ready for

action.

"I don't know, we'll figure it out." Plum shook her head, rubbing it on Arad's palm.

"Good, good." Yog giggled, fading away like a ghost. "Then reach my tower and defeat Gamond."

She disappeared.

Arad stood up and so did the girls. He sighed, "That was weird, and went to drink some water."

The girls were just as weirded out as him, the sole goddess of their world kept coming and leaving as if she was on some kind of plan. None of them doubted that she did something to them and Arad, but they had no idea what was going on in her mind.

As Arad was coming back to sit on the black throne he found that it disappeared so he sat on a

wooden chair. As he was drinking, Mary knelt before him and started praying.

"What are you doing?" He stared at her.

"Evening prayers." She whispered.

"Yog's statue is over there." He pointed but she shook her head, "Now I pray to you."

He sighed in exhaustion.