The dragon's harem

As the battle heated between Merlin and Lilia, it had quickly turned into a clash of the fundamentals of magic, surpassing what any regular wizard, even the accomplished ones could fathom. It was on a whole other level that even Betty would find it stupidly complicated to follow.

Any spells that would take more than an insignificant fraction of a second to cast were useless, and the two could only exchange pure blasts of compressed mana in the form of slashes, blasts, and piercing spears. Merlin would swing her hand, conjure hundreds of tiny, needle-sized mana projectiles, and shoot them forward at nearly the speed of light, only for Lilia to have predicted that move, and while dodging the assault of Baal and Eris, cast a spell right back at Merlin’s face.

It was nearly hard to believe that Baal, who casually spars with Arad, and Eris who is a violence freak are getting their asses handed to them by this... four-foot, slender, built like a spider monkey, crazed goddess. Whoever trained her in hand-to-hand combat surely didn’t know the difference between hand and feet, because Merlin had never seen a foot right hook in her life.

The one who got the most pathetic beatdown was Baal, as his huge body now looked like nothing more than a tree that Lilia was swinging on to beat Eris, and he wasn’t even able to land a single clean hit on her. He looked as if he was trying to box an annoying mosquito, and he was failing miserably.

Arad has been training with Baal for a while and was quite proud of his archon’s martial skills and talent, but to see him getting humiliated like that by the goddess of magic, who is supposed to be a caster, was eye-opening. Lilia didn’t move like a two-legged creature at all, but like one that moved on all four. She was as dexterous with her feet as her hands, and could even twist her body in some horrifying angles that shouldn’t even be possible.

As Baal swung with all of his might and gravity at Lilia, she dodged his fist and caught his arm with both hands as if it were a thick branch, digging her nails into his flesh so she wouldn’t fall. He swung his other fist at her, and so did Eris, who jumped in to attack her, but just using her legs, Lilia blocked and deflected all of their attacks, slapped Eris on the face with her foot, and grabbed Baal’s wrist with her toes and twisted it backward.

"Who taught her to move like that?" Arad asked, and Yog, inside his head, took a second to reply, as she was playing poker with the ten avatars of Nyar. {While you can directly cast spells as an advanced wizard, you would usually need somatic and verbal requirements, and Lilia had taken that to the extreme.}

Lilia had mastered her feet as well as she mastered her hands, and could even mimic the voices of all living beings and even speak three different words simultaneously. While that didn’t translate directly into physical martial talent, it allowed her to run on her hands as easily as her legs, punch with them, swing around like a monkey, and even wield weapons.

Usually in a fight, a fighter would expect a little bit of rationality from their opponent. If you are in a kickboxing match, you won’t expect your opponent to stand on their hands and punch you in the face with their foot, and when you try to counter, they’ll kick your thigh with the hand that they were standing on.

At this moment, Eris and Baal were getting burned by that, unable to adjust to Lilia’s bizarre fighting style, and inside his head, Yog described Lilia’s martial style as a chimp who mastered all martial arts in the world and then added physical enchantment magic on top.

"Baal! You change your shape; do it. Being big against her is a detriment. Also, Eris, stop trying to treat her like a humanoid and fight as if she is a wild beast." Arad shouted at them, and his advice was easier said than done. Baal would’ve already changed to a smaller body, but Lilia was making it harder for him to do that as she would always damage his halo, and whenever Eris tried to think of Lilia as a monster, Lilia would fight like a human.

They just couldn’t think fast enough to keep up with her, and Lilia still looked like she was holding back against them while still casting spells and clashing with Merlin. The waves of mana that collided above were just horrifying, and Arad knew that this fight was quickly turning in Lilia’s favor.

Arad really wanted to jump and help them, but this was Merlin’s fight, and unless she summons him, he won’t interfere. Merlin herself seemed to understand that, and that is why she didn’t summon him. Knowing how Arad operates, Merlin was almost certain that his clash with Lilia would immediately shatter this space; if someone could throw hands with her, it was him.

Eris also seemed to appreciate the chance to fight someone more technical than Arad in hand-to-hand combat, and she was already improving at blinding speed. She had already put most of her star divine powers back and started focusing on her vampiric and elvish grace and martial prowess, moving like a beast herself and using her long and sharp claws as weapons.

It was then that Merlin finished setting her biggest spell yet, and the fight started nearing its end. Merlin’s eyes burned as bright as lightning as she grew four more pairs of arms, a large mouth on her stomach, and a third eye on her forehead.

Everything faded to black as her entire body froze up, the eye on her forehead started panicking, and the six arms she grew started spazzing out as both of her mouths mumbled in a language that even Yog didn’t know.

Eris and Baal stopped fighting, and even Lilia stared at her in shock; this wasn’t a spell that she knew of, and she knew of all magic. Merlin was channelling cursed mana, regular mana, divine mana from Eris, Arad’s own eldritch mana, and mixing all of that up into one titanic spell that was too alien to be understood by anyone other than her.

{That sounds like demon possession!} Yog screamed in Arad’s mind, but in the next second, she was splattered on the ground as Arad had vanished, and all she could see was pure darkness around; not even she could see through it.

"This is my husband, so get out of him!" Merlin’s scream shook the entire place as both Lilia and Yog realized that they weren’t in darkness, but drowning in black blood, AO’s black blood, and a second later, as Merlin pulled everything into her body, what emerged was something that Yog could only explain as an impossible singularity.

Learning from Doma, Merlin had separated her body and soul, and then possessed Arad’s body the same way Doma could, but she didn’t stop at that. She went all the way, drawing as much power as she could and planting her soul directly between Arad’s souls, drawing power from all of them, and even bathing in AO’s eldritch magic.

What stood there in front of them was a demonically beautiful woman with long black hair, dark, empty eyes, a pale and ashy body that looked like a corpse, and six arms, ten black wings, and endless tattoos covering it. In each one of the arms, she carried a different weapon, and just seeing them made Lilia’s blood dry.

A golden spear that was Kali, a great hammer that was Isabelle, a burning plasma spear that was Eris, a raging black hole that was Baal, a lamp with Zephyr inside, and a [Ho-white Nova], which Lilia and Yog immediately recognized as Kossuth and wondered what in the nine hells she was doing here?

But that wasn’t the end of it, the woman’s body was engulfed in a glowing aura, which was Luminous, the shadow her body cast was Linda, and she wore a ring that was Doma, her entire body was reinforced by fungus from the inside, and before the two could even notice more details, that horrific thing was already rushing at them at the speed of light.

Merlin was a chimera, and her strongest art wasn’t spellcasting, but grafting other creatures onto her own body. Usually, that would require surgery and a lot of time, but here in a labyrinth that she rules, with a vast knowledge of possessing magic from Doma and enough willing participants who won’t mind her playing with their bodies a bit..., she merged them all into herself.

"How in the hells did you figure that out!?" Doma shouted at her as she mixed with Lilia’s body to block that blinding attack. "That’s forbidden knowledge; no one should know if even its possibility!"

Of course, Merlin wasn’t going to explain herself.

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