The dragon's harem

The sand got blasted away, and the two monsters clashed. Arad was still on the defensive and didn’t throw a single attack. All he could do now was block Nina’s deadly claws and bites in the hope of reducing the damage and impact caused by them.

Of course, keeping a monster like her restrained wasn’t easy; it was an exhausting and deadly quest. Even Arad was starting to feel its weight after a minute of constant carnage. Would the fight have changed if he could have attacked, probably. But now he must make sure she perceives him as a safe ally, someone she could relax and drop her guard around.

Soon, Arad seemed to be winning. Nina’s attacks started to grow more hesitant, confused by how he was both surviving and not attacking back. The strategy was simple: let her rampage until she calms down. And it was working, even Nina told him that her body is slowly growing more reasonable.

Eventually, Nina stopped moving and stared at him for a whole five seconds. Arad could feel that something about her eyes looked off; she was thinking, which was a lot for a barbarian. Almost immediately after, her body started shifting, and she turned back into her human form.

Arad won, and he too shifted to greet her. But he stopped; something about her face scared him. Instead of a happy smile or an exhausted face, what looked at him was an emotionless, aloof face. He felt cold sweat down his back, as if he had forgotten something important. And when he realised what he had forgotten, it was already too late.

Nina lifted her hand to the sky and kept looking at him with cold indifference.

Far, far away, past Arad’s castle, Alina’s large gates, the bustling streets, the guild’s old wooden door, and the drunk adventurers there cheering and having the time of their lives. Behind an old wooden desk, the axe on the wall rattled.

All of the guild’s receptionists immediately turned and stared at the axe, their faces pale and terrified. The adventurers the same, most of them dropped their mugs, their mouth open in horror.

Suddenly, the axe flew away and shattered the ceiling as it raced through the sky like a red meteor. Everyone in the guild screamed and rushed out, looking in the direction the axe flew. Someone or something was going to have a really harrowing day.

Standing in front of Arad, the axe landed in Nina’s hand with smoke still gushing out of its lustrous steel and red blades. A double-edged battleaxe that reeked with the stench of blood, Nina’s blood axe.

Now that he is an adult, Arad could see past the axe’s simple enchantment and fully understand its power. In the hands of a powerful fighter, the axe is a deadly weapon that can both cleave enemies in half and shatter their blood. One hit would cause the veins to rupture, and the target would bleed a lot until they die.

But that was when it was in the hands of a fighter, a skilled fighter. Not a murderous barbarian. The axe’s blood enchantment was both simple and deep, reminding him of a certain nipple knife.

Double-edged battle axes were stupid; one edge was enough, and the other was better being a spike. The axe’s design itself looked stupid, only if the looker didn’t have Arad’s eyes. What Arad could see was that each of the edges had a similar, but different, blood enchantment.

One of the sides can shatter blood, the other absorbs it. Even if the axe wielder bled a lot, as long as they kept killing enemies with the blade that absorbs blood, they would keep replenishing their blood.

Both edges also grew sharper the more blood was spilled around the axe. Of course, there was a limit to how useful mundane sharpness was, but it also seemed that bleeding enhanced the enchantment’s power as well, feeding into an endless loop.

There was also another factor; the shaft itself also had an enchantment. The stronger the wielder’s blood, the more powerful the axe itself grew as well. This made Arad certain that this weapon was built for a vampire to use, not a human.

No wonder the bastard fought barehanded… This axe was built for Vlad to use, and somehow it ended up in Nina’s possession.

Arad could imagine Nina wielding this axe and facing a whole army alone. With each kill, and with each drop of blood spilled, her power would grow, her rage and frenzy would reach a new level, and no matter how injured, stabbed, or how many arrows stuck to her body, she would never bleed to death.

The only saving grace was that the axe is not in the hands of a vampire. But… Arad could argue the opposite, who says that a tarrasque’s blood is weaker than that of a vampire? He bets Nina’s tarrasque blood might be stronger than Vlad’s blood. Even when she didn’t have much tarrasque blood, she could still move slightly in his presence, which only speaks to her power and density of the tarrasque’s blood.

That woman was now standing in front of Arad with the axe in her hand, pointed at the sky. He could see the axe pulse like a heart; the tarrasque’s blood is fueling it with power.

That’s right, the thing Arad forgot was that the more he fed Nina, the stronger she got. That was phase one. Who says that trying to calm her down won’t get her stronger as well? The calmer she got, the more reason started to seep into her mind, the more her loss and barbaric battle style took shape into something deadly.

Now, she has enough mind to summon her axe instead of blindly swinging at him. She had become an even deadlier threat, and Arad wasn’t happy about it. Things are going to get really painful for him.

^Yeah, since the first time I’ve seen you, you were a unique and deadly threat.^ Arad took a stance. He won’t use weapons; weapons are used to deal damage, and he can’t do that.

“Nina…can’t you do something about your body? That axe is dangerous, I mean really dangerous.” He called Nina’s mind, and he almost got an instant reply. The more sentient the body got, the easier it was for her to influence its decision, but all she could do now was watch and try to calm herself down.

^Try to survive for at least a minute or two…^ Her voice rang back in his head, and he growled.

“I’ll survive, but it’ll be a painful one.” And at that moment, he barely managed to dodge a swing of the axe by leaning back. But at the same time, Nina grabbed him by the belt and jumped on top of him, turning the axe down like a shovel, and pushed it down at his neck.

****

Back at Alina, Abel was the first one to reach the guild after the axe almost destroyed it. He looked inside and saw the shattered ceiling and the missing axe. He shivered. Nina had once broken his legs in a fight, and from that day, he was afraid of her, like everyone else in the guild.

He had heard that Arad was going to fight Nina from his sister and knew that she had to be fighting Arad now. He quickly turned back and left with a somber face, “I wish you luck, dear friend.”