The dragon's harem
Chapter 2043: The Black Statue
Eris flew back at full speed, and her eyes flashed purple as she tried her best to follow the movements of each of Arad’s incarnations. She was trying her best, but the coordination between those four was far above anything that a party of people could hope to achieve. It was as if they shared the same mind, and that was precisely the truth. Those four bodies were all controlled by a single, insidious, and cunning intellect.
One attacked to distract her, one cast magic, and two did their best to keep her pinned down with ranged attacks. Even if the only thing that Arad has that could hurt her was his black hole sword, his punches still hurt like hell.
And then, there was one last thing she had to worry about, and it was Vorvadoss’s space magic. One touch, and Arad could basically teleport her anywhere that he wanted, and the last thing she wanted now was a change in their environment.
Usually, a god’s preferred fighting ground should be their heaven, where they are the most powerful, but Eris could clearly imagine Arad mowing down her angels like weeds. Dealing with Arad required a lot of patience, planning, and daunting power, all of which she lacked at the moment.
Eris didn’t have a single superweapon that could take him down with a single hit, and her main plan had long since failed, leaving her impatient to see this fight over. She knew that being reckless would eventually bite her in the ass, but she had no other choice now.
Running backward at several times the speed of sound, she smiled. "Fine, want me to try something new? Then buckle up." With a single leap, she flew toward one of Arad’s incarnations with a large grin on her face and swung a fist.
[Divine Smite]
As her fist hit the incarnation, a blinding flash exploded, and the incarnation was incinerated down to the atomic level. Eris is now a divine being, and she still could use paladin smites.
If paladins were so powerful with their divine magic, what would happen if a god used that same power and scaled it to their level? Eris didn’t know what would happen at first, but now, she is certain.
The power multiplies several times over, the cost drops to an all-time low, and she can pull a far greater flood of divine power. While Lydia could only pull the Sun’s worth of divine magic, Eris now can pull both her entire divine magic and several folds more of Amaterasu’s divine magic at once.
She stared at Arad’s incarnations with a smile, "Remember that divine cleaver that Lydia used to cut Nyar in half? I can pull ten times that power with a simple smite. Can you take a direct hit and survive?"
Arad’s incarnations, the remaining three, looked at her with smiles as the fourth incarnation regenerated. "I certainly can’t take that head on, but are you sure? Pulling on Amaterasu’s divine magic?"
He lifted his hand. "Let’s see, who of us can pull more divine magic?"
In the sky, Kali growled, holding her chest. "Guh... really? He has this much will over my power?" She giggled, and her body turned into a blinding flash of golden divine magic. Amaterasu was already as pale as snow, and when she saw that, she got an inkling that Arad might already be aware of his power as AO.
The golden flash of divine magic flew down like a lightning bolt and landed in the hand of one of Arad’s incarnations as the other three disappeared.
Standing there, he held the spear of absolute destruction in one hand and leaned on it with a smile.
"Hey! Pulling Kali into this is cheating! I used Amaterasu’s power, but I didn’t drag her personally into the fight!" She cried, and Arad looked at the spear in his hand. "You might be right." He threw the spear back, and it turned back into Kali.
"Fine, I won’t use the spear, even though I can." He then grew two more pairs of arms. "So, it is only the power I can pull through my body?"
Eris took a deep breath, then assessed the divine power Arad had just pulled from Kali, and it was a lot, a terrifying amount. But what made dealing with it troubling is that the more destruction he would cause with it, the more power he would be able to pull.
With one fist pointing to the ground, and one at the sky, one to the left, and another to the right, one toward Eris, and one extended back, Arad smiled. "I just wonder, what shape would my elemental expansion take if I channeled Kali’s destruction through it?"
Hearing that, Eris paled and veins bulged across her entire body. She didn’t waste a single breath and flew at him as fast as she could. She must defeat him before he can pull that off... she had no clue what would exactly show up, but judging by how ridiculous Arad’s talent is, this would only cause her more problems.
As if time itself slowed down, Eris silently watched as Arad’s endless void burst out of his back, and instead of expanding evenly into a massive sphere... it took form, growing taller and taller, until it took the shape of a beautiful woman statue as black as the void itself.
The Divine Black Statue took the form of a four-thousand-kilometre-tall Kali. The sheer size alone was mind-boggling, as it was as tall as the mortal moon was wide, and yet, it moved faster than the eye could perceive.
The Divine Black Statue took a step forward, bent down, and brought one of its arms crashing down on Eris’s head as Arad swung his fist. Eris barely managed to jump aside and accelerate with her plasma to get away from the titanic arm, but even then, the shockwave still hit her hard.
"It’s too damn big!" She shouted, glaring at Arad, who looked at her with a smile, and swung a slap. Immediately, another one of the statue’s arms moved toward Eris with a slap, mimicking Arad’s moves.
He smiled, "If Amaterasu can give you a sun, what made you think Kali can’t give me her statue?"
"Bastard! She didn’t! You made that thing out of your void! It’s black!" Eris threw a small purple sun toward him, trying to distract him and dispel the expansion.
"Fair... I had to supplement the divine magic with my void, since, unlike her, I’m not that good at controlling the destruction divine magic." Kali’s golden statue wasn’t made out of gold, but out of her divine magic. She takes her enormous pool of divine magic, forces it to take shape, and then materializes it into the statue.
Kali was one of the few gods with such precise control over their divine magic, and Arad couldn’t possibly mimic that without years of training. It was also the reason why very few gods could show up in the mortal world without killing everyone just with their presence. Amaterasu, Kali, and Mora were a few who had such mastery.
Eris flew back, doing her best to avoid the statue’s assault, and yet she was getting hit and slapped over and over, slowly chipping away at her divine magic. The attacks of this statue weren’t like physical attacks; even if they looked similar, they instead destroyed divine magic itself upon contact, making it a deadly weapon against gods, but not mere mortals.
But at that moment, Arad pulled something else that she couldn’t expect. Her foot was slashed off, and the statue pinned her to the ground with a slap. She tried to escape, but tens of shockwaves hit her back, slashes tried to cut her apart, and holes started getting blown into her flesh as if she was rained on by a shower of bullets.
"Destruction is the primal concept of damage, and it has three mediums. Slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage." Arad’s purple eyes glared at her with a disturbing glimmer of magic. "As long as you’re inside the range of my expansion, they’ll keep raining on you."