The dragon's harem

[HOWL!]

[MAHARAJA!]

Kageru’s entire body flashed with magic, and his bestial, half-human, half-wolf form disappeared in the blink of an eye as he took on a more human-looking shape. He was tall, over two meters in height, had long black hair, golden eyes, and a muscular build that was as dense as Alcott was.

He wasn’t just any random Archdevil, but a Rakshasa who had once trained personally under Maharaja. Granted, he wasn’t the only one training in her hunting ground, but he was one of the very few who gained her blessing and permission to call upon her power.

"I know... it’s too disrespectful to fight you without going all out. That explains why you didn’t kill me outright. It’ll be a stain on your name to finish someone off who didn’t go all out." Kageru stared at the shadowy figure of the Emperor of Nothing, and Agnar was already sweating inside.

Kageru is an Archdevil, and one that hails from the ninth layer of hell on top of it all. He was powerful enough to threaten the entire mortal world. Devils’ power ranking was simple enough that almost everyone understood it. The higher a devil’s rank, the stronger they are; the older they are, the stronger they are; and the lower the level of hell they come from, the stronger they are.

"Yuwaku, give me that." Agnar whispered, and she flinched. "I don’t have it on me. Reach inside my void and pull it out." She replied, and Agnar sighed. With one hand, he reached into her hair, and his hand slipped inside an endless dark void similar to Arad’s stomach. From that void, he pulled a blunderbuss.

As the Emperor of Nothing extended his arm forward, Kageru could easily see the blunderbuss muzzle pointing toward him, so he smiled. "Empress of Nothing, you use guns?"

Without saying a single word, Agnar pulled the trigger and fired. Yuwaku’s void moved instantly as Agnar trained her, and the void swallowed the bullet, teleporting it directly to Kageru’s face. He had learned this trick from Altair.

Kageru’s face twisted in surprise as his powerful eyes easily spotted the bullet appearing in front of his face. He immediately understood that it was some kind of teleportation magic used to deliver bullets at near-instantaneous speed, but what drew his attention was something else. The bullet was round in a strange way and much fatter than regular bullets.

^Explosives?^

But in the next fraction of a second, the bullet flashed blindly with light, and Kageru’s vision washed white as the entire hill was ripped apart and evaporated, sending him flying back at horrifying speed. The entire region shook, and the devils in the nearby city could see the massive mushroom cloud growing.

That wasn’t a regular bullet, but a Mira Bomb compressed with size magic. Custom-made on Agnar’s order. They were directional, so their explosion took the form of a cone instead of a massive blast, and their output power was greatly reduced so Agnar himself wouldn’t get caught in the destruction. He even got Kali to bless them one by one when he found her running away from the maids.

Agnar smiled as he pulled a second blunderbuss and pointed it toward the tigress Kita. BANG! He blasted her too without a second hesitation, detonating a second nuke right after the first one.

But a second later, Kageru flew out of the ashes, carrying Kita, as he had saved her at the last second. "Unleash immediately; you won’t survive without it." He growled and threw her back as he rushed toward the shadowy figure of the Emperor of nothing.

Agnar pointed both guns at him, and Yuwaku immediately teleported two bullets out of her void into the barrels for an instant loading, and when Agnar pulled the trigger, the entire terrain changed once more.

[ROAR!]

[MAHARAJA!]

Kita unleashed her powers as well, taking on a more humanoid shape that made her look like a beast-woman, an orange-haired tigress with black stripes over her whole body. She glared at the shadowy figure of the Emperor of Nothing for a fraction of a second, and immediately moved to attack.

"Blast her away!" Kita shouted, and the two monsters immediately jumped in.

Cerberus healed its eyes and stood up, enraged and boiling from the inside out with pure heat and hellish fire. When its three titanic maws opened, a torrent of flames exploded forward with enough force to evaporate the entire hill in the blink of an eye.

The Coagulated Gasp flew into the ashes with Kita by its side, found the body of the Emperor of Nothing being flung back, and immediately attacked. Kita swung her claws at his neck, and the Coagulated Gasp swung its arms at the torso.

Yuwaku was about to block them both with her void, but at that moment, Kageru burst from underground with his claws flying right into her back. Using the smokescreen of the two nukes, he hid underground and waited for a chance to attack. And as if to add more salt to the injury, Cerberus rushed and breathed a torrent of fire concentrated into a tight beam right at the Emperor of nothing, aiming for a finishing blow.

"Tsh..."

Kageru heard that click, and the arm he used to stab the Emperor of Nothing was slashed as a tiny foot kicked him in the face, sending him flying back. A pale and beautiful hand came out of the Emperor of Nothing’s hood and grabbed Kita by the face, pushing her back as the black cloak burst into flames.

Blood snatched the Coagulated Gasp, and Cerberus’s flames got absorbed by something that was still hidden within the cloak.

"What?" Kageru gasped as he landed on his feet and glared back, seeing Agnar land in front of him with a drawn sword. "A brat?" His arm immediately regenerated. In the back, he could see Yuwaku pushing Kita back, a little girl with beige hair swinging the Coagulated gasp down, and... a red wyrmling sucking Cerberus’s flames.

"Who are you?" As Kageru growled, Agnar looked at him with a passive face, and immediately swung his sword up, unleashing a titanic wave of void magic that towered over Kageru’s figure. But with a single powerful swing of his claws, Kageru split the wave in half.

"Brat! You have no manners at all! I asked you a damned question!" Kageru looked more confused than anything else. "The Empress of Nothing... you are her? No, that can’t be. Is she that Nymph that flew out? She can’t be the wyrmling or that vampire."

Agnar sighed. He had learned one thing from Merlin, and it was to never negotiate with a devil. She warned him directly, making it clear that he isn’t smart enough to out-manipulate a devil, so even starting a conversation with them can be deadly.

"Roar..." Agnar said quietly, and Kageru’s eyes opened wide. "Maharaja." Agnar’s body exploded with magic as he grew a black tail and jaguar ears; his eyes burned with a disturbing golden glow, and his blade changed shape into a single-edged saber.

Then, Agnar disappeared from Kageru’s vision and appeared right in front of him, swinging his sword with a flash of black lightning. Kageru could reach in time, but the lightning still burned his claws when he blocked the attack, and he was sent flying back as Agnar kept the pressure up with several consecutive slashes.

Back with Kita, who was being pushed back by Yuwaku, growled. "A Nymph?" You’d expect a beautiful Nymph to be gentle, relaxed, happy, and overall positive... but Yuwaku was Arad and Zephyr’s daughter, and if she had inherited anything from them, it was their aggression.

Yuwaku’s fingers started digging into Kita’s face as her nails grew into long black claws, and she clenched her other fist, punching Kita in the stomach several times at full force, aiming to crush her organs.

Kita clenched her abs and took the hits as she extended her claws and tried to cut Yuwaku down, only to realize that the Nymph’s beautiful skin was as hard as steel, boasting microscopic draconic scales.

"Let go of me!" Kita growled, but Yuwaku didn’t even bother to speak and kept pummeling her with a passive smile.

On the other side, both Theresa and the Coagulated Gasp had turned into mist and were swirling around each other, fighting in that gaseous form and forming a massive whirlwind of red and white clouds. It wasn’t clear if any of them was winning.

Then, there was Ignis, who had swallowed Cerberus’s entire breath to the point that her stomach inflated and popped her shirt open. And instantly, she threw up all of that flame right back at Cerberus, sending him flying black with his own flames.

"GAHH! That hurts..." Ignis growled as she struggled to button her shirt back up while listening to her stomach growl angrily. When she trained with Tiamat, she was taught how to swallow flames to empower herself, or to reflect them back, as she did now. But she had clear limits. Like now, if she didn’t spit Cerberus’s flames out right away, she would’ve exploded and died.

Cerberus hit the ground and stood right back up, glaring at Ignis with rage in its eyes. Such a tiny little creature dares... But what it saw... wasn’t small at all. A titanic purple eye several times its size; a horrific black body that extended all the way to the horizon; a titanic eldritch horror glaring right back at it from behind Ignis with starving eyes.

Cerberus knew that if it hurt or killed this little girl, that black horror would crawl out of hell itself to devour it. Throwing its heads around and looking around, Cerberus was horrified to find Arad’s smells on them all. It was the first to realize that they weren’t the true Emperor of Nothing, but if they were to hurt them, the real deal would show up.

"AWOOOOOOO!" Cerberus howled to warn Kageru.