The dragon's harem

The fight between Nina and Arad kept escalating over and over again, seemingly without an end in sight. Merlin watched from her room with everyone, having been there for more than an entire hour, but just when she was about to call the fight off to prevent Nina from starving a bit too much, Gaia appeared in the room, having spawned from the dirt in a flower pot that Merlin kept at the window.

The dirt rose, flew into the air, and shifted as it took the shape of a woman. The entire room quaked, and everyone looked at the spirit queen as she appeared and slowly landed on Merlin’s head with a gentle tap.

"Gaia? What’s going on?" Merlin asked, and Gaia looked at the screen. "My fairies have managed to locate where Loci’s child is about to emerge. It’s not that deep underground, but it’s right behind the mountain. When it separates, Loci’s body will shrink, and the entire capital could fall by about two meters."

"That would destroy everything. Can’t we do something about it with magic?" Merlin asked, and it was Betty who replied with a smile. "Of course, we can just lift Loci up at the same rate her body is shrinking to maintain the surface level. There would be a lot of shaking, but it should be fine."

"Got it, go stop them. We have to get to work immediately." The moment Merlin finished talking, Betty started moving at max speed, and the entire world around her changed.

Everyone looked frozen, and she jumped down from Merlin’s head. The massage oil that covered her body was left standing on its own where she was, and she landed on the ground, stretched, and then moaned as she felt all of her bones getting stressed under the load of her sheer speed.

She was going 99.9999% of the speed of light, just a fraction below the point where she would need to fully turn into light. To the side, Linda’s eyes moved as she looked at Betty. "Seeing you move like this is always strange."

Betty looked at her, smiled, and went to pick up her clothes. "Well, I’ve got enough time on my hands." She turned toward the screen, where both Arad and Nina were rushing at each other, about to punch each other at the same time. "There is no reason to hurry."

She walked around the room, searched for her clothes, and picked her underwear. A tiny white pair with a strawberry pattern. She gave them a look, sniffed them to make sure they were the clean ones, as all of her pairs look the same, and then wore them.

Luminous didn’t move from the bed, as she didn’t want to get rid of her massage oil. "You’ve mastered your speed to this point; all that remains is for you to turn into a true dragon."

Betty sat on the bed’s edge, picked up her leggings, and slowly put one leg in, making sure her toes were in their place. "That’s one process we can’t rush, though. I gotta let my body transform at its own pace. The stronger my base is, the higher my draconic ceiling will be."

"What will you need all of that power for?" Luminous asked, and to Betty, that felt like a stupid question.

Betty smiled, and her opal teeth looked as sharp as those of dragons. Her glass-like eyes reflected and refracted light as her hair stood up, her nails grew longer, and so did her toenails as her entire body vibrated.

"So that if Nyar shows his ugly face again, I’ll rip him tentacle by tentacle and feed him to the pigs." Out of all of Arad’s wives, even counting Kali, Betty was the only one seriously considering killing Nyar on her own, even though she understood well how powerful and broken he was.

Luminous smiled. "Do what you like. You’re old enough to understand your own limits. But I’ll at least warn you. Nyar isn’t someone that sheer speed and damage can take down. He defies the very laws that we operate by."

It was true that Nyar’s true body exists outside time, space, death, life, and the causality of reality. So trying to destroy him while not being a being of the same scale was just impossible, the same way a drawing cannot kill a man.

When Luminous explained it like that, Betty smiled again. "Then I’ll show him a drawing so ugly that it’ll give him a brain hemorrhage and send him to the grave." She put her bra on, and then the whole robe before petting her shoes... only to stop.

"Wait... I’m not going to walk around..." She sat back on the bed, took her shoes off, and then took the leggings off as well. "I don’t need those." She wiggled her toes a bit, extended her sharp, glass-like claws, and then smiled. "I’m going; I’ll be back in a bit."

99.9999%

99.99999999999%

100%

Betty jumped out of the window, and due to her sheer speed, she could step on the air and run down the tower without needing to use the stairs. At first, running at the speed of light would’ve forced her to turn into pure light and destroy anything she touched, but now, after mastering her magic, she could even carry small things with her without destroying them.

But now, she could even further.

She landed on the ground, and the entire world around her started to lose its colors, turning into a blur of twisted reality. She was already moving at the ceiling speed set by the universe’s laws, but she still itched for more speed.

She could feel the universe itself trying to slow her down, but she refused to bow to anyone’s rules. She didn’t care who created those rules, or who was trying to break or maintain them. She knew one thing, and it was that if she wanted to protect Arad, she needed to be free from all shackles.

"Speed limits? Who decided that?" She took a step forward, and her toes didn’t even dig into the ground. They just floated an atom above the damp grass.

"First Release: Time Stop." The moment her magic started, the entire world was left behind as she accelerated instantly.

200%

She was alone in a still world, rushing as if she didn’t have any time to waste. She crossed the empty hills, jumped through Merlin’s magic portal to reach Arad’s inner world, found it slow, so she came out, climbed all 100 floors of Merlin’s tower, walked out of the door into the capital, and went to look for Arad’s incarnation that was going around the capital.

She moved through all of the streets one by one, searching for him, since using a scrying spell would be a bit too slow for her liking. Finally, she found him. A Nymph clad in a black hood was walking down the alleyways.

She smiled, but then looked around, seeing several thugs following the Nymph. Arad could easily beat them, but now that she saw them, she had to mess with them a bit.

She walked toward all fifteen of the thugs, took their belts off, tied their shoes together, and even pulled the underwear of some of them over their heads. There were two women among the thugs, so she stripped them off and hanged them from the clotheslines above by the hands.

She then finally approached Arad and looked at his frozen and beautiful face. "How come you’re more beautiful than all of us? At least let us win in something." She then used size magic to make herself smaller, crawled up the cloak, and into Arad’s mouth.

She then noticed that all of the droll would ruin her clothes, so she climbed back out, fully stripped, and then climbed back into his mouth and slipped down his throat, quickly landing into the endless void of his stomach.

She landed naked in the void, looked around for a while until she saw Arad’s inner world in the distance thanks to Eris’s blinding purple star, and then turned into light to fly directly into it.

Betty landed in the middle of nowhere, a large, endless rocky desert without a single plant. "Well, this is a bit annoying." She was about to start moving, but then remembered that she was naked, so she put her clothes back on, taking her time before finally moving again.

She climbed a mountain, found where the north was, and then made a direct dash toward the ocean where Arad and Nina were fighting. As she ran on the water, she could finally see the large ice island that Arad made, and the two still hadn’t punched each other yet.

She walked in the ice, approached the two, and looked at them. "Well, aren’t you two a bit slow?" She climbed over Arad’s back, then made sure she was positioned right between them, blocking the fist of each of them with one foot.

BAAM! Everything exploded, and both Arad and Nina found their attacks blocked with Betty between them, having caught both fists with her feet.

"Hold it there! Merlin said to stop the fight. Nina would get a bit too hungry, and Gaia said she found where Loci’s child would come." As she spoke, the massage oil that was left floating above Merlin’s head fell, and everything seemed normal.