The dragon's harem

The dragon stared back at Arad's burning red eyes and roared. A silver stake emerged right from his mouth, piercing Arad's heart. Without wasting a second, the dragon immediately followed with a full-power lightning breath, putting all his remaining energy to ensure he evaporated Arad's whole body.

"Hahahahaha! That silver stake had been prepared for a hundred years to slay Akasha. I don't know how you did it, but you have her powers, which also means her weakness. Go back to Yog and regret your deeds in hell…GUH!" His face twisted as he stopped laughing. Arad's body appeared after the lightning cleared, he was standing unharmed with the stake still wedged in his heart.

Arad slowly reached up and pulled the stake out, putting it in his pocket to sell later, silver is expensive. "Sorry, but I seem to have two hearts now." He lifted his arms. Accursed black flame roared from his left arm while divine lightning thundered from his right arm.

Arad's body started growing larger and larger until he looked like a titan holding the heavens above the dragon's head, glaring down at him with a smile.

****

Echidna gasped, "Those curses! When did…no, he painted my nails." Arad was using her curses and she could tell how he did it, she didn't teach him a thing. But she quickly realized that Arad's skills with curses were already high, his human body was the only thing holding him back.

"That's my weather magic!" Mesharra cried, terrified and amazed. It took her ten years of study and even more battle experience to use that magic well, and Arad had now pulled it out of nowhere.

"He was watching and learning." Echidna growled, "Now that I'm thinking about it, how could he read a book once and learn everything in it? His learning speed is abnormal."

Plum who was in the mountain had also noticed that Arad was the one who protected everyone earlier with plant magic, and he had now made himself bigger with size magic. She did use it a lot before him, but size magic is supposed to be something that only fairies can cast, Humans replicated it through spells, but those were extremely hard to learn. "Is he some kind of ancient deity?"

Mary looked up, "But…" She could see Arad towering over the clouds, his muscular body glowing with magic as if it was sculpted from marble. Yog had asked her to worship Arad, and now he was looking more and more like a god, a being far above mortals and one that they could only look up to. "He looks…so…beautiful."

Arad clenched his fists together, mixing the cursed black flame and the divine lightning into a single black-and-white crackle of magic, "Yog isn't stupid enough to curse hell with me."

Arad swung his fists down and crushed the dragon down like a bear crushing a tiny bird, splattering him all over the sea floor. The massive waves exploding back were stopped by a massive wall of trees that Arad forced to grow from the seaweed on the shore.

"I do not have the right to tell the people of this world how to live their lives…but this was for the murder of the pirates, the fish, the fishermen, the soldiers, the injured, the scared, the destroyed homes and lives…" Arad's voice boomed across the sky, everyone in the kingdom behind him could hear his words.

"Justice and righteous deeds are arbitrary, even if your actions were justified, you died today for killing my daughter Ann. How am I going to face her father now?"

Arad slowly shrunk back to his normal size and landed on the shore before Mary and the others. "Time to clean everything up. That dragon caused us enough trouble."

****

The dragon opened his eyes standing alone in a massive marble hallway. He looked down, finding himself in his humanoid form wearing a white robe.

The marble hallway was decorated with golden sculptures of great wizards and magicians, paintings of many of them lined the walls with their names and dates of birth and death marked down to the second.

"Where am I?" He mumbled, trying to shift into his draconic form, but he couldn't.

At that moment, he heard a door open behind him. He had just looked back and there shouldn't be any door behind him. "Who's there?" He looked back and saw a steel maid looking at him. "You can't use magic here, and you can't shift either, you won't fit inside."

"Who are you?"

"Number 998528728976548523, a steel assistant of Yog. You're dead, and she'll see you soon for your counting."

"The counting? So I was killed." He looked down with a sad face, "I'll probably end up in hell now, is that right?" He looked at the maid.

"I don't know. It's not my job to know. My job is to walk out of that door, tell you that you're dead, and await your counting, and that's over for me." Her eyes turned off and her body disappeared.

The counting assistants of Yog, one is made for each living being, their entire existence reason is to tell that person that they are dead. After which the assistant gets disabled and recycled into another assistant.

Mortal life seems short but appears limitless when compared to the counting assistants. Number 998528728976548523 only lived for those few seconds.

The dragon smiled, "So this is so no one asks Yog to allow them to live longer and do better…Once your life is over, it's over. Whether you go to heaven or hell, it's already over, and now it's the time you hear of the result of your life."

As he mumbled, the door behind where Number 998528728976548523 stood appeared, and a voice called. "Enter."

When he walked into the room he could see her, Yog sitting crosslegged on her large wooden desk, staring at him with an amused face. "Sit." She waved her hand and a wooden chair appeared for him.

He took a seat.

"Vulnious Faljon Rovanhiim, son of Galinia Plion Drona and Rudilion Faljon Rovanhiim. You've lived for five thousand six hundred and fifty-four years, six months, four days, nine hours, forty-three minutes, and seven seconds if I counted from the moment your egg cracked."

"That's indeed me, albeit I can't be sure of my age, you know better than me." He looked at her with a smile, hiding a deep fear for what was to come.

"How shall we do this?" Yog looked at him, "We can get it quick, or have a long chat. You pick, we've got all the time we want."

"Let's get it done with, I doubt I can bear to wait." He shook his head and she smiled. "We'll then, albeit you have almost twenty times more good deeds than bad, a lot of innocent people were harmed in your endeavor to do good, so most of them bear a right to what you have."

She waved her hands, "After most of them took their rightful share from you, now you're left with no good deeds. Those who didn't get to take anything from you would instead give their bad deeds as a way to take their share. You're left with almost ten times more bad deeds than you started with, and no good deeds to speak of, you're going to hell."

"Not a surprise, I knew this would happen." He shook his head, "But I can't deny I feel a bit sad and betrayed."

"Now that's done, for the extras." Yog smiled, "You're dead and will never get out of my afterlife. So I'll answer some questions for you. Anything whether it was about the present, future, or past."

"First, if you didn't lose all your deeds you would've ended up in rank 10 heaven, a good one. Your wife would also end up in rank 10 heaven so you two could've been together. The person that killed was Arad Orion, and you could've never beaten him." She giggled, "I always surprise people with strange facts about their lives, some things that even they didn't know. Get ready to hear yours."

"Is there a need for this?" He looked at her with a confused face.

"Of course, especially for you." She pulled out a large book and started telling him about everything that happened in his life, from the smallest thing like where he put his dishes to who stole money from him. She had a full record of his life and told him everything about it. That session alone took over two hundred years as she lectured him about his whole life.

"Do all…people go through this?" This lecture in itself felt like torture.

"We have infinite time here so yes. But now for the last little bits." She smiled, "Your wife is dead. She was here right before you."

He froze in place, "Impossible! Who killed her?!"

"That little girl Ann, you might've not…." She explained in detail how his wife died and he sighed, "Damn it…I should've known from the start."

"Anyway," Yog waved her hands, "Your wife is now in heaven, while you're going to hell. Quite sad, right?"

"Indeed…just tell her that I'm sorry."

"AH!" Yog smiled, "One last thing, I'm sorry too. That last fight you had with Arad... I scripted it all. I needed you to kill Ann and some people in the kingdom; That eagle keeps messing things up, but at least... Ah! About Arad.. he also needed someone to test his magic on."

Hearing those words, he froze in place, "Wait? What did you just say?"

"I planned it. How you went to drown Arad, how your wife died, how you got killed and lost all of your good deeds, I planned it from the start, far long before you were an egg." She burst laughing as he stared at her with a terrified and devastated face.

"You…planned everything…all those deaths, all of that suffering, all…"

"Yep, and it was fun." She looked at him with an evil grin, "But…as much as I love seeing people suffer, I'm quite pragmatic and only follow plans for the greater good, just like how you were thinking when blasting everything."

She stood, "So…one last thing, I told your wife that you would end up in hell earlier so she begged me to give you some of her good deeds, or all of them so you two can swap places. The latter sounded interesting, but I've decided to split her good deeds." She looked at him, "She's waiting in the fifth heaven, you'll be heading there to her."

"What?" He almost didn't understand a word of what she was saying. "But…since I used you and all…I can't leave you hanging…so…it's my heaven, I'll do what I want."

She waved one finger, "I teleported her to the tenth heaven, you'll go to her there as well."

A door opened and he stood like a dead man, his scrambled brain failing to keep up.

"One last thing. Everyone only thinks of themselves when they come here. No one wants to go to hell, I've seen people wanting to sacrifice their parents and children only so they can avoid hell." She smiled, "But your wife was ready to throw herself into hell to save you. Go kiss her claws and carry her over your back."

As he left for his wife, Yog looked down at a massive ledger that appeared before her and crossed his name. "He's done…" She looked at the floor, seeing a direct feed of everyone cleaning on the beach, Arad had just found out about the beggar who tried to loot Ann's body.

"Should I help…nah…let him and her sort it out." Yog ignored them and went back to her work.

****

Arad sat on his chair inside a large tent as Mesharra and Mary dragged the beggar inside and threw her on the floor. "Here she is. We were healing the wounded when she appeared and started looting Ann's body."

"I said we should just kill her." Echidna was standing in the corner, watching with a smug face.

Arad glared at the woman for a second. Mesharra and Mary could tell at a glance that the woman had made him angrier than anything they had ever seen.

"Why did you try to loot her? She's only a child." Arad growled.

"Need things to sell, can't buy food without money. The little girl looked far away from everyone so I thought I could loot her and dart away before anyone caught me…didn't know they were keeping a close eye on her corpse." The woman replied and Arad sighed.

"Food?" Arad sighed, "I don't buy it, your eyes look lively enough." He could see blood flowing inside her veins and muscles, no matter how he looked, she didn't seem starved.

"Please believe me, I didn't eat anything for over a week!" Her pleas fell on a deaf ear, Arad wasn't going to believe just her words.

"I'll give you one last chance. I already confirmed you aren't starving, but if you can prove my eyes wrong, I'll spare your life." He knows she's lying, "It'll show on your body if you're starved, do you mind taking off your robe?"

"You want me to strip?" She gasped.

"That's how you'll prove you're starving. One week is enough to leave a dent in any human." He sighed, "But even that alone isn't an excuse for looting the body of a child."

The woman sighed and took her robe off. She didn't want to die, and most of all, wanted to prove that she wasn't lying. That robe was all she got so she stood naked before him, and that was all it took for Arad to know that he was wrong.

Her body was indeed blessed with good muscles, but that's all she got. He could already see her spine from the front and her hips were concaved enough that he could fill them with water.

"Sorry…you can wear your robe again." Arad sighed, his eyes were wrong. No, what he saw was right, his interpretation of it was wrong. Seeing blood flow and muscles wasn't enough, he must focus deeper into the thin blood vessels of the skin and organs to see them in the future.

"Did you believe me now?" She looked at him, "What's now."

"I told you, even if you were starving, I can forgive your life, but I can't allow you to go unpunished. That little girl was entrusted to me by her father. I killed the dragon who killed her, and you desecrated her corpse." He lifted his hand, "Pick one. Turn around and give me your butt, one slap and you won't be able to walk straight or sit down for a week. Or I'll give you to the local guards to throw you in jail for…" He looked at Mesharra.

"I talked with them, looting dead people who aren't bandits is considered a great crime. She'll be stoned in the plaza and then thrown in jail for at least twenty years while working in the coal mines. The money she made will be used to pay for her needs in prison, and the rest should be given to the victim's family or donated to charity in the victim's name."

"I'll take the slap…" The woman didn't even hesitate. She turned around and extended her butt toward Arad, "How bad could it be?"

Arad looked at her for a second, "You might want to take on the flesh, without any clothes…" He feared the clothes would get stuck to her skin and make healing her a complex matter, which might lead her to have a scar.

"You just want to see my butt." She sighed, lifting her robe up.

"There are enough forests outside, why would I care to look at yours?" Arad lifted his palm and swung it down at her butt. The slap could be heard from the other side of the city and was followed by the woman's agonized cry.

As she rolled on the ground, Mary healed her immediately. Everyone was shocked to see that Arad's slap had ripped the skin off her body. Those were Dalla's slaps, extremely painful but non-lethal unless the target dies of a heart attack.

"Give her some new clothes and get her dressed. I'm taking her back to bury Ann beside her father's grave." With his power now he could afford to fly over the sea. He'll just make a quick trip back and return.

"You're taking her with you?" Echidna looked at him, "Won't she just slow you down?"

"I'll have her apologize to them after we bury Ann."

"But they are already dead…just bury Ann. That woman already got punished." Echidna couldn't understand what he was trying to do.

"Even the dead have rights, her father has the right to face those who violated the sanctity of his daughter's dead body. She'll apologize to him and Ann, we'll keep going after that."

Mary brought the woman, who was named Altair Aquila a fresh batch of warm clothes as she'll be flying over the sea with Arad. No matter how much Altair tried, she couldn't wear pants or panties without screaming in pain so she ended up with just a robe and a large coat for the time being.

Arad carried her and Ann's body. Flew over the sea and returned to where they buried Ann's father, he buried Ann beside her father and had Altair apologize to both of them.

After returning, Arad told her to leave, but she didn't have any place to go, and she still had six days of pain before her butt stops hurting, she couldn't even sit or walk normally now. Mary told Arad that Ann asked her to give the woman some slack so he decided to at least help a bit.

"Teach her how to wash clothes and have her help you cook. She's coming with us." Arad decided to give her a job for the time being, but when he leaves for his world, she must go find another place to work. Albeit that with her past, no one in this kingdom would employ her.

Albeit how it seemed, Altair was thrilled about her new job. All she had to do was wash their clothes, cook food, and follow orders and she'll get a roof over her head, a stable income, and a chance to get close to Mesharra…an inquisitor like her might be able to get her some loophole in the law after Arad is gone.