The dragon's harem

What is the difference between a Young Adult Dragon, an Adult Dragon, and a Mature Adult Dragon? Those three age classes can be seen as one massive class with multiple stages.

A Young Adult Dragon is a dragon that has just reached adulthood and isn’t used to using the full power of their adult body. They are also way smaller than Adult and Mature dragons, because they just gained their power and they didn’t have enough time to bulk up and grow larger.

Most dragons see the Young Adult stage as the stage where a dragon’s talent shows up. If they were gifted and talented, the extent of their power that they could use would be massive.

So a Young Adult Dragon is a dragon that is beginning to believe in themselves, their draconic mind slowly grasping the extent of their harrowing power, their consciousness sparking with creative freedom.

Like young humans, they are fond of taking risks and braving the unknown lands; they are the kind to jump from a cliff, facing death with a laugh and a heart of stupid courage.

Mature Adult Dragons are the exact opposite; they had long grown out of their reckless face and solidified their power. Their existence had already started reaching a peak that they could only break through by sheer hard work and luck.

They have seen the deepest darkness, they have stood in front of death and snorted in her face. The spark of their power was already tamed. Abandoning aggression and arrogance in preference for cold and calculated malice, they have matured but are yet to attain the wisdom of the old ones.

A clash between a Young Adult and a Mature Adult dragon would usually end in the younger one’s demise, but not without the Mature dragon suffering grave wounds.

Taking both of their stances into account, Zul stood motionless where she was, waiting for Denki to be the one to make the first move.

The cancer that ate away at Zul’s heart and fundamentum had weakened both her body and magic, and until now, she hadn’t recovered fully. To preserve her energy and to be as effective as possible, she chose to take a defensive stance and focus on counters instead of trying to match the young adult drakaina’s lightning-fast speed.

With a blinding flash, Denki turned into a lightning bolt and flashed across the whole arena, moving at a blinding speed and illuminating the entire colosseum.

Betty smiled, pointing at the arena with a laugh, “Look, Arad! She is trying to copy me!”

Zul stood still, motionless and emotionless as the shadows around danced wildly on the beats of Denki’s moves.

“What’s the matter?” Those words flew by Zul like a flash as she could only see a blinding shadow of Denki’s face run past her, leaving burned claw marks on the ground.

“Aren’t you going to make a move and just wait?”

At that moment, Denki landed behind Zul, her body already roaring with lightning. Her fist flew at Zul’s back, burning with enough power to roast her whole with a single touch.

Zul’s eyes finally moved, and with them, something boiled beneath her feet. Acid, boiling sulfuric acid, exploded from the ground behind her like a great gyzer, melting Denki’s right arm while in the blink of an eye.

Denki didn’t even have time to realise that her whole arm had disappeared when Zul turned around and grabbed her by the face, glaring down at her with cold eyes.

“Before I was plagued to death, I too killed my share of dragons to survive. Tens of young ones like you.” Zul’s words came cold, frozen, and emotionless. Out of everyone, Denki was in fact starting to like her more than anyone else due to how gentle and caring she was.

But now, when Denki was an official rival to her, she realised the horror hiding behind that gentle demeanor. Black dragons were known as the most evil among the chromatic dragons, being sadistic psychopaths that enjoy watching everyone else suffer and slowly crumble apart, like flesh melting in their acid.

Even their favorite food was humans pickled alive in acid, and their past time was causing cities and kingdoms to collapse. Starting a civil war and pitting humanoids against each other was the one thing that gave black dragons thrill, and Zul was the same.

Denki didn’t wait for Zul to melt her into nothing; she won’t die or lose that easily, not after going through all of the trouble to show her power. But sadly, there was no iron in the ground beneath her to use, and she couldn’t count on Zul holding back, so she had one choice.

Denki’s body exploded with lightning, illuminating the whole arena as she screamed, “I’ve got no elemental expansion, but know this! I don’t need one!”

Zul was holding Denki by the face, and now, Denki’s whole body burst with millions upon millions of volts and amps, several tens of lightning bolts worth all at once, enough to kill anything that touches her, and that was exactly what Zul was doing.

But Zul wasn’t fazed, as if she wasn’t hurt at all. She looked at Denki with a passive face, “Little one, pray to Tiamat, no, pray to Arad that he might save, for I won’t.”

Zul’s acid was extremely conductive, and she was using the acid covering her body as a ground wire to route all of Denki’s lightning back to the ground, effectively protecting herself.

While Zul is the first powerful black dragon that Denki faced, Denki herself wasn’t the first blue dragon that Zul faced, and she won’t be the last one. If such a jolt would kill her, Zul would’ve been erased ages ago by the dragon’s natural selection, killed in some unknown land.

Zul didn’t even flinch, but the moment she started drawing her draconic powers, she could feel a sharp pain in her chest, the scars on her heart and fundamentum still ached.

But with one powerful beat, she looked at Denki and exclaimed, a stern smile on her face.

[Elemental Expansion: Piranha]

A black tide of acid exploded from Zul’s body, flooding the whole arena. Her sulfuric acid mixed with hydrogen peroxide, turning into an angry, hot mixture that melted bones and stone like they were salt in water.

Denki immediately knew that if she didn’t act in the blink of an eye, not even her bones would remain. Zul had asked her to pray, but prayer won’t save anyone from her acid; only quick thinking and bold arrogance can.

If Zul’s acid had managed to divert Denki’s lightning, then she should be able to divert it back by exerting more power. So Denki unleashed all of her lightning at once, creating a powerful current around her that both used Zul’s acid as a conduit, magnetized it, and then pushed it away from her.

At that moment, both Zul and Denkin were standing face to face on a dry spot in the middle of the swirling lake of acid. Zul looked unbothered, but Denki was anything but fine, naked and skinless, missing her arm and bleeding from every crack as she barely remained standing.

It was but a fraction of a second, but Zul’s acid almost sent her to heaven.

Now it was a contest of endurance, would Zul’s body break first, or would Denki’s fighting will shatter from the pain before that? The silent determination of the Mature drakaina clashed with the Young one’s reckless carelessness, causing them to stand there for almost a minute, menacingly staring at each other, waiting for one of them to fall.

“You asked me to pray.” Denki was the first one to break the silence, and a terrifying smile was painted over her bloodied, skinless face.

“I cry and pray to you, grant me power and strength, so that I shall survive and serve my purpose for longer! O’mother of all evil dragons!” With Denki’s scream, a spark of divinity burst from her back, causing her to hunch back and gasp for air. Her skin rapidly healed, and her mana recovered at blinding speed, guided by Tiamat’s holy light.

Denki was still a servant of Tiamat, and she had her powers as a cleric always at the ready. She was going to use them, because this was a fight with their all on the line, to stand a chance in front of Arad.

But before Denki could use that power to fight, Zul fell on the ground on her own, already past the limit of her still broken fundamentum. Arad and Gamond were right; she shouldn’t be exerting herself while she recovered, so the fight now ended in Denki’s victory.