As the light of the exploding [Ho-white Nova] faded away, Arad was staring down at the charred crust of the universe in his draconic form, admiring the ungodly level of sheer destruction and annihilation he could conjure.

But that moment of victory didn’t last long, since from the ashes and still raining debris, a purple drakaina almost as big as he was flew out behind him, with eyes radiant with divine fire and claws ready to tear his flesh apart.

Eris is a purple drakaina, and her entire domain is the boiling and searing plasma. The heat from Arad’s [Ho-white Nova] might’ve been ungodly, but it still wasn’t as hot as the core of her own star. To her, it felt like getting splashed with a bucket of slightly searing water, nothing more.

She swung her talon at Arad’s back, and her claws flashed bright with heat and purple plasma. She wanted to cut Arad’s wings off, to make it harder for him to stay afloat. She knew that tearing his wings wouldn’t immediately drop him, but it would put a heavy load on his magic.

Eris’s claws were far hotter than any regular plasma cutter could ever hope to be, and they were easily able to slash through thick plates of reinforced steel and magical barriers. Yet, the moment they touched Arad’s obsidian scales, they flashed blindly.

Arad’s entire body, including his scales and wings, was coated in a thin layer of insulating void, and for heat to cross that gap, it needed a lot of power. Arad’s wings refused to be easily cut, and he immediately turned around and smacked Eris’s arm aside with a smile.

She growled and swung the other talon at his face, but he deflected the attack and hit her with his own to the guts, causing her body to bend and contort in pain. He punched her, didn’t even use his claws, yet the hit felt as painful as having her guts torn out.

She knew that Arad was strong, she knew that this fight won’t be easy, yet... she still seemed to have underestimated the extent of his power. In their entire relationship, she had never once felt the burn of his power like this, and it made her understand just how much he was holding back around her and the other wives.

If they all banded together to take him down, they were certain to end up with a massacre.

She grunted, flapped her wings back, and unleashed a wave of searing heat to push Arad back, and then followed with another tackle, this time being careful not to get knocked out like before. She had to defend her head and make sure to slow down if he tried to block her, as he did before.

But, unlike before, Arad didn’t take her head on this time. He pretended to be about to punch her just like before, but at the last moment, he teleported behind her, making his punch smack her in the back of the head, pinning her to the ground with a single powerful impact.

"You’re strong and fast. But I have more tricks than you." Arad lifted his other arm and swung a fist down at Eris’s head. "You have to be more flexible!"

Eris growled as she forced her body to shift back into a humanoid form before Arad’s punch could crush her skull, and then, she found herself barely able to dodge the attack and fly toward his head. "Flexible, you say... I certainly can take up some nasty poses." Her fist burned with plasma as she swung it at his head, and in a burst of darkness, Arad also shifted back into his humanoid form.

With one palm, he slapped her punch aside and looked at her with a smile as he threw a kick. "I’m talking about your head, not your body."

She giggled, flew over his leg, and then grabbed him by the neck. "I think I’m pretty smart... don’t you think so?"

Arad blocked her kick, got thrown back, and landed gracefully on the ground. Looking at her with a mocking face, he grinned. "Being smart doesn’t mean you’re clever or flexible."

As Eris landed a fair distance away, she sighed and stared at him with a tired face. "Again, with the complicated words, what do you think yourself? Is this Isdis’s influence?"

"A smart person never gets into a fight, a clever one avoids it, and a flexible one makes the best of what he has to survive." Arad shrugged and took a step forward. "I’m not smart since I decided to fight a divine goddess, and I’m not clever since I could’ve easily used my power over you as a Blood Lord to make you submit. But I’m flexible enough to find ways to survive."

She laughed, "You’re right, to think you can defeat a divine goddess as a mere mortal. You have to be either stupid, dumb, or a fool."

Arad looked at her with a straight face and smiled, his eyes burning with a raging purple flame. "No, I am an arrogant dragon."

Seeing his face, she became aware of one thing. Arad was indeed a dragon, a powerful, arrogant, and oppressive one. Just standing face to face with him, and even as a divine goddess, she still felt threatened and in danger. Every fibre in her being told her that she was the prey, and that he was the predator.

In the next moment, the two clashed once more. Eris was the one to attack first, putting the majority of her gravity into a single punch, and threw it at Arad’s face. The pull of that punch made dodging it almost impossible, and yet, she expected Arad to be able to teleport out of the way.

That was the reason she didn’t use all of her power, to catch him when he appears again, and her plan worked. Arad teleported out of the way, and the moment he appeared, her foot was already flying toward his face at blinding speed.

Yet, Arad still kept his wide smile and took Eris’s foot straight to the face. His head was almost torn off his neck, and his entire body flexed backward, prompting Eris to follow with a second attack. But before she could crush him to the ground, a pair of muscular arms wrapped around her torso, and she heard a terrifying whisper in her ear.

"You didn’t forget about this, did you?" A second Arad was behind her, and before she could even react, two more appeared at her sides. At this moment, Eris found herself surrounded.

"Four at once? You won’t gang up on a girl, would you?" She giggled with a worried smile, and Arad’s four incarnations all looked at her with the same terrifying grin. His fists flew at her face, and she barely managed to get away after getting clubbed a few times.

"Honestly! This is cheating!" She growled at him, but the incarnations weren’t letting up. "Cheating? They are me, and I’m them. You know that better than anyone else."

Up above, Focalor, Zephyr’s father, smiled. "He is both weaker and slower than her, so he chose to rely on numbers and his teleportation to get around her. Besides, each of those incarnations is a bit weaker than his whole."

"That isn’t all." Kossuth smiled as flames burned around, "He got something nasty hidden there."

"Yeah... that one reeks." Zaleria growled and then glared at Amaterasu. "Reeks like you."

Amaterasu giggled, "Reek? I am pretty sure I smell sweet." She looked at the fight below. "But, you’re right. It will reek for little Eris."

Focalor waved his hand. "I’ve seen enough, I’m heading home."

Amaterasu looked at him. "Where are you going, brat?"

"Back to my home, didn’t you hear me?" He stared at her, and she kept looking at him.

"Fine, I came here just to see how his soul looked, and to find if he is someone I can entrust with Zephyr." He rubbed the back of his head. "He isn’t bad, but he isn’t good either. Seeing his soul in a fight is unfair for him, so I’ll come back again."

In a burst of wind, Focalor disappeared, and everyone else was left watching the fight as Eris and Arad clashed across the surface of the universe.

Landing back at his palace, Focalor looked at the golden walls, the flowing winefalls, the glittering golden chandeliers, and the countless wind djinns running around. This place was what he calls home, what his thousand queens call home, the endless blue sky that he dominated, and today, it was a merry day.

Taking a deep breath, he shouted. "Bring me the wine, the meat, the women, and the gold! Fire up the palace’s hearth and open the heaven gate to the lesser winds! Today, we celebrate a spark of hope!"

Everyone froze, stared at him, and panicked. It has been ages since he declared a celebration like this. Just what could’ve happened?

One of the servants approached him with a worried face. She didn’t know what it could be, but hoped it wasn’t another war with the earth djinns. "My sultan, what’s the occasion?"

He smiled, grabbed the djinn, and pulled her closer to him. "You’re the first to approach me with such an important question, I decided, from today you’re one of the queens." He then swung his arm.

"Princess Zephyr had found a man to whore around with. I saw him, and he has potential! A few more pushes and we could be marrying her off!"

The entire palace erupted into frenzy.