The dragon's harem

Chapter 1726: Power Ranking In The Arctic Lands

Arad looked at his torn arm with a smile and immediately healed it with a rush of divine magic. It wasn’t as good, as powerful, or as quick as his blood regeneration, but it worked just fine.

If Haru wasn’t a bottleneck, Arad would’ve pulled even more power from Eris and gone on to blast the ruined city himself. Eris had so much power that her mere presence here would be enough to melt all of the ice and snow in the entire Arctic Lands, and tear a chunk of the black sea as large as the mortal world, then burn it.

She did swing the entire mortal world with her gravity when she ascended after all. Being here and fighting like this made him think and become aware of the extent of world-ending horrors he had in his castle. Only now could he understand why the maids become stressed like hell when he or one of his wives gets angry or annoyed about something.

As he was thinking, the monsters charged at him, thinking it was an opening, only to face a wild rampage. Arad wasn’t distracted; he was still keeping an eye on all of them. The only reason he stopped attacking for a few seconds was to allow Haru back in the cave a moment of respite.

And as expected, it was a massacre, and the Ice Brood Mother didn’t last long.

Arad had finished off the last of the Ice Brood Mother mates. The titanic snake was the last to die, impaled by Arad’s spear and burned with a divine cleaver. That thing just refused to die, and kept wriggling around and fighting back with just as much violence and tenacity as Arad was displaying.

Even Arad himself was surprised; the snake had swallowed a [Purple Sun Wrath] whole, and even tanked seven divine cleavers before finally dying. To be honest, all of the Ice Brood Mother’s mates were powerful creatures who far surpassed the limits of mundane monsters and were on the verge of turning into horrors that could live for thousands of years.

Arad could easily imagine one of those monsters spawning in the mortal world, growing stronger, then wiping out an entire nation before anyone could come in and put an end to the chaos. A-rank adventurers won’t be able to deal with them, and even the S-rankers might fail unless they come in with a solid plan.

Arad wasn’t trying to boast now that he killed them all on his own, but he was genuinely thinking of the horrors that at one time lived in his brother’s nation. Yeah, if the Ice Brood Mother didn’t subdue and chain them down, they might’ve gone out, grown even stronger, then turned into disasters that the world didn’t deserve to face.

She might’ve been an evil monster, but her existence was essential to the Arctic Lands ecosystem to exist and thrive. The briders didn’t spread that far away from their forest, so people could easily evade them. And unlike normal monsters, they didn’t migrate and instead chose to stay in one place as long as food was available.

Killing the Ice Brood Mother in the mortal world might’ve been a mistake, because now, without her fishing and catching the strongest monsters in the area in her net… “But does that matter? Gojo can just kill any power monster that dares stick its neck out.”

Arad turned aside and looked toward where Gojo and the Ice Brood Mother were fighting, and quickly realized something. In this world that Yog created, the two of them were just as much monsters as any wild creature here. In fact, Arad and Gojo, both of them, were on the same power level as the Ice Brood Mother now.

The hierarchy here was clear.

Animals: They are the weakest of them all, the regular bugs, bears, and rabbits that live in the Arctic Lands.

Stray beasts: Like the monster bison Arad killed and the fat shark. They are solitary creatures that wander the lands.

Herd Monsters: Like the Yetis Arad and Gojo found in the cavern deep into the mountain, the Qallupilluits, and even the regular briders.

Herd Leaders: Like the Yetis’ chieftain and the Qallupilluits’ Queen, those are on the same level as the Ice Brood Mother’s mates.

Disasters: Like the Ice Brood Mother, and this is the level where both Arad and Gojo were at.

Ancient Horrors: This is where the Kraken and the Blizzard monster were.

Arad was glad that he and his brother could contend with the monsters around here, but he was still worried. What if another monster as powerful as the Ice Brood Mother showed up? He couldn’t help but think that.

But now, he had other things to worry about; his fight was now over, and he could go help his brother… is what he would’ve immediately done, but sadly, he couldn’t. Far back in the cave, Haru was already on her knees, on the verge of crying blood. He had put her through a meat grinder, and she had already pushed herself to the limit.

So even if Arad himself could still fight, the source of his power couldn’t. Between him and Eris now, Haru was the bottleneck.

He could feel the earthquakes of the titanic fight from here. Shockwaves, lightning, thunder, flames, ice, and countless ghastly roars of something terrific. The Ice Brood Mother was in pain, and that was a good thing. It meant his brother was winning.

Arad knew that his brother was having a hard fight. He had to go and help, but how would he do that? Without Eris’s divine magic, he’ll be too slow to jump in.

If he jumped in, it could end in two ways. He’ll be a burden on his brother and get him killed, or die, but allow his brother a chance at winning.

What will he do? It would’ve been a tough question if Arad didn’t already have his answer. His older brother was a dragon as well, and one he sees as stronger than him on top of that.

If he doesn’t ask for help, then Arad would just sit and watch.

He looked at the corpses around him and then started walking. Hundreds of briders crawled away in the distance, and none of them dared approach. He had just killed all of the powerful mates after all, they won’t dare anger him and will wait until their mother comes.

He found a large fallen tree and sat on its trunk, looking around at the crawling briders as he called Eris. “How is Haru doing?”

Eris sighed, then replied. “Imagine if she were sleeping soundly, then you woke her up by shoving your arm, elbow deep up her ass. That is how she is feeling now, broken. Next time you fight, use just half as much power as you did in this fight.”

Arad froze for a second. “Oh… sorry about that. I’ll make it up to her. But… why didn’t she just stop letting me pull more divine magic out of her?”

Eris remained silent for a second as she consulted Haru, and then replied. “She says that you’ll die if she did that while you were in the middle of a fight and needed that much energy. For making up to her, she said she’ll be taking the lead tonight.”

Arad smiled. “Fine by me.”