The dragon's harem

After half an hour of tirelessly attacking the mountain's rocky side, Arad had made no progress at all. The stone seemed to be the most durable thing he had ever seen; even his full power breath might not be able to pierce it. And… He didn't want to cause a massive explosion and potentially harm his wives. It's not like they can move the mountain into a safe place for him to go all out on it.

This had told Arad two things, one is that brute force won't get him anywhere, and that he must have missed something. How could he get past a stone wall that's at least several kilometers wide if he can't even damage it? The dead heart should be at the center of the mountain, so Arad can't circle around it or dig his way through the ground; that thing is encased in the stone.

Shi inside his head laughed her guts out, calling him weak and daring him to swing his claws harder. Defeated by a rock, she called him.

Doma, on the other hand, was struggling to weave a curse that would erode the stones and cause them to crumble. But they were infused with so much magic that such a powerful curse might take her decades to make.

Mom, on the other hand, suggested that he try to erase the stone with his void, which seemed equally impossible as clawing on the thing. For a moment, Arad even considered swallowing the whole mountain with his expansion, but gave up on it. Putting such a volatile mass of magic and storm inside his stomach won't be pleasant, and it will throw their plan to save Zephyr into the mud.

For a moment, Arad thought that the stone's godly hardness was related to the last dangerous barrier. The one that would make Hati mad. Shutting their path to the heart like this should make her mad…right… but Arad wasn't sure. And yes, he was wrong. This wasn't the last of the barriers.

Arad had spent another half an hour trying to break it without any result before something clicked in his mind. He looked at the stones with a sharp glare, sighed, "Can I just pass? The overgod said I could have the dead heart."

He waited for a moment for an answer or for some mysterious door to open, but the only thing he heard was Doma giggling inside his head, barely able to stop herself from laughing.

^Listen! If a god created it, then it's not strange to expect it to have some sentience.^ But his growls fell on a deaf ear as she was rolling on the floor, laughing. {Fine… fine… why don't you just walk inside then? If it's made by a god, then it's sure smart enough to allow you passage.}

^My claws would have fazed through it if that was the case. It's not like it's made out of nothing… wait.^

Arad froze for a second, and then he disappeared without a trace.

Merlin, who was sitting on the mountain peak, suddenly felt his aura disappear and appear in the heart of the mountain. She smiled, "He found a way inside." She looked at the cube and patted it. Wait for a bit longer, we're almost there.

The wind around the cube shimmered and slowly flew around. For a moment, Merlin imagined Zephyr yawning and waving at them with a bored face and saying, "Whatever, take your time."

She lifted the cube, waved her fingers through the faint wind, and tried to study it. The more she inspected Zephyr's winds.

The longer she looked, the stranger they seemed. First, unlike normal wind or wind magic, hers was somewhat unstable. At times shimmering with a weak divine spark, and sometimes looking cursed.

Looking at the box, Merlin could swear that if she showed it to several wind mages, some of them would say a cursed devil was sealed inside, some would say a divine being, and others might just say it's something to do with wind magic.

She tried to look into Zephyr's history before, but all she came up with was her role as the wind spirit queen and not much else. That little bit that was known of her past before becoming a wind spirit queen was that she was old and powerful even before.

That was strange… and Merlin looked into many old scrolls and ancient tomes; only left with almost no information at all. Well, besides the fact that she wreaked havoc in hell when she saved Eris from it. And no normal being could make hell suffer like that. Merlin knew well that hell wasn't that simple a thing.

Hell was more than a dangerous place. It was alive and sentient.

Merlin frowned. Zephyr can't be a normal spirit queen, but why did someone of her power decide to serve Aella's family? It can't be just because she was bored.

Inside the mountain, Arad appeared in his human form, standing alone in the vast and empty darkness. A faint smile covered his face, "Who would've thought…" He chuckled and took a step forward. Getting through the stone was easy; all he needed to do was to void step past it. He had expected the heart to be encased in stone like a fossil, but he was wrong.

The large empty space around him was silent, vast, and strangely eerie. As Arad walked, he could feel cold sweat slowly rushing down his back. He knew well that he wasn't alone inside; He was standing with the dead heart of the overgod, in a lock room that he couldn't escape.

Yes, Arad just realised that while he was able to void step inside, he isn't able to do the same and leave. He can void step as much as he wants inside the dark room, but not outside.

The large room looked massive, several hundred meters wide and tall. He could walk in his draconic form, but a human form was more convenient if he was looking for a small heart. Hati said that it should look just like a normal human heart.

Arad reached into his stomach, pulled the corpse of a long-dead bandit, a man in his late thirties, and ripped the heart out, looked at it for a few seconds, then nodded. He stored the corpse and carried the heart around as if shopping; now he has to find something similar.

It didn't take him long to find it. A menacing heart floating alone in the darkness. And the moment Arad saw it, he smiled. A terrified expression quickly covered his face. "I see why Hati would be angry."