The dragon's harem

Chapter 1751: Eldritch Magic

As Gojo worked on breaking through Nyar’s reality, the abomination in question was busy dealing with a horror just as undying. Nyar couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of Arad, no matter how much he thought or tried.

Even without his full power and mind, AO was still a problem, a huge wall in front of Nyar’s plans that he couldn’t overcome. Due to Gojo’s time magic, Nyar and Arad’s speeds had become somewhat relative, with Nyar still retaining the edge. But even then, Arad still dominated due to having four incarnations.

Nyar could’ve pushed Arad further and destroyed all of his incarnations, but that would be bad for the long term. AO created everything, knew everything, and mastered everything. In fact, Nyar knew what no one else besides Yog knew. AO wasn’t even a being, a him or anything, but was one existence of energy, a dark and foggy void boiling with primal power.

Due to AO’s nature, anything the universe comes up with is already a thing he created. So, if Nyar destroys Arad’s incarnations, he could very well come up with a way to make more, which was bad.

The limit was Arad himself, as there are endless things that are impossible for him to learn due to his biology, personality, or outright beliefs. Those limits would only be lifted once he regains his full power and mental prowess.

Today, Nyar was faced with a difficult decision. Would he push harder and win, risking that Arad might gain some insight? That was extremely possible, because like everyone else, Arad won’t learn unless he is thrown against a wall, stressed, and tested. If you tried to teach Arad how to swim, he might not take an interest, but if you dropped him in the middle of the ocean, he’ll swim.

Nyar could already notice that Arad started swinging his chain the same way he moved his tentacles, which was baffling and terrifying. Arad controlled the chain with the purple star’s gravity, turning the weapon into an extension of his limbs.

The spear was an instant destruction, the sledgehammer almost gave infinite regeneration, the morning star was a pain, and even the elusive knife was a hurdle. But what topped them all was Arad himself, moving like an ancient horror.

So, what was the difference between horrors and the normal people’s movement? Horrors like the abominations had alien anatomy, countless joints that shouldn’t exist, which allowed them to move in strange and surprising ways. Arad had an anatomy similar to humans in his humanoid form, but that didn’t mean he had to obey it.

If a move required Arad to dislocate his arm, he would do it as easily as he breathed. He had four clones helping him gang on Nyar, and was even bold enough to rip his head and spine off and regenerate from them if he was ever caught.

In fact, Nyar was terrified when he saw Arad’s arms extend to hundreds of meters as if they were made of rubber, which was the power of Core, the first elf. How did it work? Nyar had no idea, as Arad’s body wasn’t made of plant matter like Core.

In reality, Arad’s arms weren’t extending; the space they occupied stretched, and so they could hit things far away that they shouldn’t. If Nyar were a hundred meters away, and Arad threw a punch, Arad could shrink the space between them so his punch would land.

Gojo rarely attacked directly, and he focused more on supporting Arad than on direct conflict. He blasted the tentacles away with magic, slowed time to balance speed differences, twisted space with his Alpha blade, and studied Nyar’s moves and set distractions.

Studying Nyar’s eldritch magic was hard, painful, and unfruitful. When Gojo tried to control it, it threw all of his magic abilities into chaos. It was like a human trying to control electricity with their bodies, only to find out it is painful and messes with their nervous system. It was as if he lacked something, an organ that could process it safely.

But how could Arad use it?

Unlike anyone else in the universe, Arad could manipulate eldritch magic with ease. Yog could do it, Cain, as well, and even Sena, but none of them reached the level of flexibility and potential Arad had for one reason. They weren’t him, and he was the Arad Orion, the first overgod, an abomination in a class of his own.

Very few gods knew of AO’s existence, and the majority of them made one mistake. They thought AO was a resident of the universe, a being of their own. But that is where they were wrong, AO existed before the universe, he made it, and he was an abomination himself, if abominations are all the monsters coming from outer space.

Arad’s destruction spear pierced Nyar’s body, and his hand slapped him across the face with enough force to shatter all of his nearby tentacles. This wasn’t the first time Arad faced Nyar, and he had learned from all of his previous encounters.

Nyar had a distinct physical fighting style that used hundreds of tentacles as limbs with a terrifying range. What looked like a messy storm of violently moving tentacles was in fact a careful and intricate art, and Nyar consciously moved, controlled, and calculated the movement of each of his tentacles.

So, in short, Arad was facing a martial master with over a million arms, stronger than gods, faster than anything he ever faced, and with too many joints that predicting movements was useless.

So how could Arad fight that thing? Simple, stay close so Nyar can’t summon that many tentacles, and always cleave them at the base with the destruction spear.

But what made Nyar scared and always reminded him that he was facing AO himself was the mental battle in which he used his eldritch magic of [Condemnation of Doubt], because the moment he used it on Arad, the true fight started.

All of Nyar’s senses, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness flipped upside down. Arad didn’t just learn Vorvadoss’s spatial eldritch magic, but he had learned every eldritch magic he had faced until now. And [Rapture] immediately clashed with Nyar’s [Condemnation of Doubt].

And that wasn’t where it ended, because while still using Damnation’s power through the morning star, Arad was using a version of that eldritch magic himself to tear at Nyar’s mind.

Nyar pushed Arad back and growled, looking down with blood seeping from beneath his hood. “You just don’t want to die.”

“You cannot kill me.” Arad took a step forward, and the spear in his hand burned golden. “I AM A DRAGON.” As a mere human, death could threaten Arad, but as a dragon, he could do so much more that killing him is no longer a simple matter.

As long as Arad remained a dragon, he could access his pricolici powers, Kali and Eris’s divine magic, and all of the spells he could cast as a dragon. Compared to how fragile and mortal he felt as a human in Limbo, returning to his dragon form made it clear to him that he was a cut above everyone else.

And it was then that the light of victory showed up. What if Arad just learns Nyar’s eldritch magic? Can he surprise him with it? It is quite similar to [Rapture], but more intricate.