The dragon's harem

Chapter 1749: One-trick Pony

The universe had shifted from one hand to another since AO left it.

First, Amaterasu took control right after he ceased to be, and she didn’t even touch the Overgod portfolio. Amaterasu had ruled with her own power and made the universe hers by the authority of her stars.

Then, after her came Cain Lisworth, who managed to defeat Amaterasu and took the Overgod’s portfolio and ruled the universe for over five thousand years, only to slowly crumble to madness.

The role of the Overgod wasn’t something a mere god could endure, even with the help and protection of the Overgod’s portfolio and authority. That only made the fact that Amaterasu ruled the universe without the overgod portfolio for millions of years even more puzzling and harrowing.

At this moment, Nyar found himself standing once again in front of her, and he was surrounded by Gojo and Arad, who didn’t look like they were here for anything peaceful. If she wanted to kill him, she would’ve already blown this entire place up, so the fact she kept him alive meant she wanted Arad and Gojo to do it.

The lioness wanted to let the cubs handle the hunt, and Nyar didn’t like that one bit.

“Amaterasu, you don’t want those two dead, do you?” Arad still held Nyar by the arm, so Nyar held him back as well. “I can easily kill them both. You know they aren’t fast enough to survive.” He must make her join the battle, so she won’t be able to go all out around Arad and Gojo, and that would also allow him to use them as shields.

Nyar was right; neither Arad nor Gojo could move anywhere near the speed of light. They were outclassed in everything from speed to power and durability. The only merit those two could provide now is that Arad was able to force him out of the universe; besides that, they are useless as everyone else.

Amaterasu smiled, and her lips curled. “Are you sure about that?” She already knew of Nyar’s plan and wasn’t going to fall for it. She knew that he wouldn’t kill them both, because if he did, then she wouldn’t have a problem dropping a billion black holes on his head.

She started floating upward, and without warning. Nyar was already out of the universe; she had achieved her primary goal of securing the universe for now. All she had to do was the optional objective of killing Nyar’s avatar, which shouldn’t be a problem if she is careful.

Twenty archons appeared around her, seven of them began massaging her body from shoulders to feet, and the rest worked to prepare an array based on her instructions. This avatar won’t get away.

Out of nowhere, Arad punched Nyar in the face, sending a shockwave through the fabric of space. Nyar’s head rolled back, and he immediately retaliated, throwing a hand right back at Arad’s chest.

That Attack never reached its mark, because Arad wasn’t alone. Gojo was right there, slowing time with magic and tearing it apart to slow Nyar and accelerate Arad.

Arad also twisted space and formed it to his will. So, with the two of them working together to manipulate space and time, Nyar found himself eating punches from both sides without being fast enough to resist.

A fist to the face, and a kick to the back, and when Nyar tried to attack, Arad and Gojo would switch places, and tear his arms off. They were above, below, in the past and future, dancing around him in a storm of attacks deadly enough to tear his horrid skin off.

He could only be glad that they didn’t call their mother to help in. Getting ganged on by the two brother was already a pain, so it would’ve turned into a disaster if their mother joined the beatdown as well.

Since he couldn’t face them under the distorted fabric of reality, Nyar decided to run away and create some distance between them. Not in the literal sense because distances were getting torn apart, but he had to make sure Arad and Gojo’s will upon space and time didn’t reach him.

It was hard to imagine, but the concept itself was simple. If there were two points, A and B, and the distance between them was one meter, then to get from A to B, you have to move one meter. But if there was a wall between A and B, then you’d have to move around the obstacle to get from A to B.

Arad constantly twisted space, so the distance between A and B changed constantly, and Nyar had to create obstacles with his own space control to make sure that the distance stayed at its maximum length.

Nyar Teleported away, but the moment he appeared, the two were still standing around him. He teleported several more times, and they were keeping up. The scenery around them shifted hundreds of times, yet they never got a meter away from each other.

It looked like a staring contest, but in this one, they had to punch each other to the death, and the first to get distracted or blink would die first.

^Arad is using Vorvadoss’s space magic to teleport himself and Gojo after me and keep up, while Gojo is using time magic to match our speeds and level the playing field. With the amount of mana he is ripping apart, he might just be spitting on Yog’s face, and she is encouraging him to abuse her mana. I guess she hates me more than she cares about her sense of shame.^

When running away proved useless, Nyar decided to just fight. Those two can’t perform better than a whole squad of gods. What he faced in the labyrinth had to be worse, and Yog isn’t even able to weaken him here.

Granted, neither Arad nor Gojo was weakened here, but still, that didn’t change what he meant. Here, he can use his full arsenal, and that is better.

But that is where he was wrong.

Back in the mortal world, Mira’s hammer came crashing down one last time, sending a ringing sound throughout the world, followed by a blinding light. On her anvil rested a red-hot blade of silver glass, hot enough to partially melt the divine anvil gifted to her by Mora.

The entire shop was illuminated crimson, and the five maids who were there with them were almost about to cry. This was far above their paygrade. One of them, just last year, was shoveling manure in a cattle farm, and today, she was here holding a jug of water to a demigoddess forging a godslaying weapon, with another goddess bugging her out.

Lucy approached and looked at the glowing sword with a sweaty face and a worried grin. “Are you sure this is the right way?” Mira asked, and the little girl shrugged. “Hell, if I knew.”

Both of them were new to this. Mira might be an apprentice, but Lucy was absolutely clueless about what makes a god-crafted weapon special. All that Lucy could go with was her feelings, and she was certain that food made with love doesn’t taste any better than other food. All of this didn’t make sense to her, but for some reason, Yog said it would work.

It was all about details. When food is made with love, the cook pays more attention to details, which results in the food tasting better. Here, they lacked the understanding of those details.

She reached down and grabbed the burning, red-hot sword with her hand, melting her skin, and screamed in agony. This was just the blade; they didn’t make a hilt, nor a scabbard, but they don’t have time. She could sense that Gojo returned, and she had to get him a weapon as soon as possible.

She lifted the sword up, still crying in pain, and looked at it. “This isn’t going to be fun.” She turned the blade in her hand and brought it down at her shoulder. Sweat rolled down her face and neck, and she stabbed herself from the shoulders down to her hips, and fell to the ground screaming and writhing in pain as the sword cooled in her divine blood.

After the blade turned silver, she slowly pulled it with a pained groan and then looked at it one last time. “A space-tearing blade made from Yog’s mana, by greed’s hands, and cooled in gluttony’s living blood. Still unfinished, but I shall name you the Alpha, since I hope you’ll be the first of many.” She then brought the sword to her mouth and swallowed it whole.

As the sword reached her stomach, it flew to Gojo’s stomach, then emerged in his palm. He had made this blade to escape Limbo, but it seems fighting Nyar is going to be its stress test. Since the sword itself has the power to cut through space, it allowed Gojo to still use his magic to manipulate time without compromises, which was essential in keeping the balance between them in this fight.

Nyar indeed found dealing with those two hard and tricky. Arad could throw a punch from the front, only for his attack to come from the back, a second into the past, and the telegraphing move would be in the future as well.

Since Arad and Gojo kept ripping and mending the fabric of time and space, those two concepts didn’t make sense anymore and were all mixed together. The only reason Nyar could keep up was that in the fraction of a second where time and space worked, they made sense.

But as strong and hard to deal with as this duo was, they had a glaring weakness, and it was Arad himself. Compared to Gojo’s grasp on both time and space, and the vast ocean of spells he could use, Arad was lackluster, a punch and kick merchant with no flair or tricks; he didn’t even hold a weapon.

Amaterasu didn’t seem interested in the fight and kept floating away, probably waiting for Arad and Gojo to exhaust Nyar and kill him there. If she joined the fight, he might find a way to escape by using those two as shields, so she wasn’t going to let him do it. Nyar knew that he would need to deal with her at some point, but for now, he had to take Arad down first.

The shift was clear, and Nyar started ignoring Gojo and focusing on Arad, showering him with a flood of tentacles, mental attacks, and an endless sea of eldritch magic. If Arad doesn’t get anything going on for him, he’ll end up knocked down or killed, which would only result in Gojo getting killed a second after.

But as much as Nyar wanted Arad to be a one-trick pony, Arad himself was the whole stable. At one moment, there was only one; in the next, four incarnations of Arad surrounded Nyar, all of them glaring down at him with angry faces.

What was scarier, they weren’t unarmed. One carried a golden spear, and with one glance, Nyar knew that it was none other than Kali, she had turned back into AO’s weapon of mass destruction.

Another incarnation carried a hammer, a sledgehammer that seemed unsuitable for combat, but Nyar wasn’t fooled; that was Isabelle, Creation herself.

The third one carried a simple, mundane-looking butter knife that barely fit in his massive hands, and looked like an insult to this fight. Nyar couldn’t tell what that weapon was, but he knew for a fact that Arad wouldn’t pull anything weak here. That was the exploding nipple knife. Arad didn’t know if Nyar had any, but he’ll use it anyway.

The last one was what made Nyar frown, because that incarnation carried a morning star, just the chain and ball. The ball at the end was a purple sun, compressed and oozing with plasma and gravity, and the chain itself belonged to hell, and it was the body of Damnation that Nyar was forced to spit out earlier.