The dragon's harem

Chapter 1450: How Vorvadoss’s Magic Worked

“How are you feeling?” Mathilde asked, and Arad didn’t reply for a second. “I’m mostly fine, but that feels like. Painful, like I’m punching something too hard.” His arms and bones were almost shattered from each impact. Even with all of his power, ripping the fabric of space was just too hard. Like a human punching stone, eventually, they’ll break the small and thin ones, but not without breaking their bones first.

The fact that Arad could even do that and retain his arms in a functional shape was beyond anything Mathilde had expected, and it explained why his punches and slaps had hurt her so much before. It wasn’t just Dalla’s technique, but his raw power far surpassed most.

Arad clawed his way through the volatile space, remembering the time when he pulled Zephyr out of the cube and had to endure the collapse of space and time inside it. At that time, the fabric of space slashed his flesh like a hot knife through butter, but now that he is older, that wasn’t the case anymore.

He can endure several hits and even fight back, resisting the deadly flood of cosmic energy as he uses his own body as a barricade to force the threads of space to submit and rip apart. He was a spider, and he won’t get stuck in a net.

The sky had turned black, and the world was filled with bright red threads dangling from the heavens, each an anchor for space itself. Arad saw those threads snap as Yggdrasil’s branches pulled on them, causing a cascade of deadly whips. Some of the threads were small and insignificant, while some had enough power to jolt him back to the mortal world as a corpse with a single tap.

He was like a man running through a rain of snapping high-voltage wire, each having enough weight and physical impact to shatter his bones, without even accounting for the electric shock.

“Run!” Mathilde growled. She can see the threads as well, but she had also noticed that the ones Arad shattered weren’t the large ones, but the smaller and less powerful threads. He can’t endure a hit from the heavy threads.

“You say run?” Arad smiled, “I’m flying, damn it!” But that was a good thing, because he could move in three dimensions instead of just two, giving him the possibility of dodging all of the threads.

The threads of course painted the world in three dimensions, the ones going from up to down, from right to left, and from the front to the back.

All of the threads were under massive tension and could snap at any moment, causing them to whip around at blinding speed, moving the very space of the world with them.

The fact that Arad was able to endure a hit from them at all was mind-boggling to Mathilde, but seeing him dodge and deflect them while flying at top speed was another thing. Even if he lacked the true power of his former self, or even the knowledge that comes with it, Arad was still a being that was just built differently, very strangely at that.

While all other void dragons might be able to replicate what he is doing with a bit of guts and will power, they will never attempt it as they’ll lack the key element that Arad has, the two key elements, to be exact. The sharpened werewolf senses and reaction speed, and the vampire blood regeneration that helps him endure the damage.

Mathilde did her best to guide Arad through the path with the least amount of snapping threads, but it was all but useless. Due to the random and chaotic nature of the thread snapping everywhere, Arad was often forced to fly off-course to avoid direct hits to his torso or head.

“Try to follow the light!” Mathilde growled, holding as tightly as she could to his scales.

“If I lose my head, we’ll get ripped to pieces before I can grow it back.” Arad dodged a few threads, and his eyes started to burn with a faint green flame. It didn’t take Mathilde a second to notice that it was Vorvadoss’s Eldritch magic.

She had never seen it being cast up close, but now, she finally understood why Vorvadoss’s magic was so damn hard to deal with. The cursed abomination didn’t cast anything close to teleportation or space magic; he violated the very concept of space. Arad was just doing the same, which she would’ve usually protested against, but he was AO, the being who made the universe, and he has the right to do with it what he wills.

Besides, the space around them was already too long gone, hopeless, and couldn’t be saved or fixed.

Arad’s claw reached forward and grabbed one of the thickest threads of space, while his other claw swung down, blazing with the green eldritch flames. The thread snapped, and Arad was yanked forward like a stone on a slingshot, ripped alongside space in one violent jerk.

This is how Vorvadoss’s Space magic worked. He grabs whatever space thread that links to where he wants to go, and cuts it. The thread that is being held under immense pressure constricts and pulls him away in that direction.

Mathilde had never felt fear before, but finding herself flung alongside Arad through the fabric of space with the help of the thread made her shake and drop to her knees. No wonder no defensive magic could prevent Vorvadoss from teleporting wherever he wanted; he was using the very fabric of space as a highway.

As Arad flew away, countless threads brushed against him, leaving scars and gaping wounds that his blood magic failed to heal. But in seconds, he appeared right outside the shattering space and rolled on a massive branch like a deer falling from a cliff.

As he came to a halt, Mathilde was thrown away and fell to the ground, immediately coming to her feet and looking around. The space around them was safe, for now.

“Arad! Are you alive?!” She cried, looking at the bloodied Arad behind her. His massive draconic body looked like a mess of blood and wounds, like he was hit with a hundred thousand blades at once, and most of his wounds didn’t seem to be healing.

Arad didn’t move for a while, and then stirred, pushing on the ground with his claws and lifted his head up, looking at her with his one left eye. “I’m fine, I’ll heal in a few hours. Space wounds are nasty; they refuse to heal normally, as if they don’t exist.”

The last time Arad suffered such heavy wounds was when he pulled Zephyr out of the cube and got hit with the collapsing space and time. Thankfully, he is older now, a big boy, and won’t cry about it.

The first thing Arad focused on healing was his lost eye, and he then shifted back to his humanoid body, which was easier to manage and consumed less energy to maintain.

He needed some rest.