CRACK! The coffin burst open, and Arad walked out, his back cracking. “That was tight,”
Thud! Eris grabbed the edge, sat up, and stared at him, “Which one?”
“Both.” He replied, “Get it?”
“I don’t know if jokes suit you, but I get that one,” Eris smiled, “So, it’s my turn now?”
“Of course, I promised.” Arad nodded, “So, what do you want?”
Eris was about to speak but then stopped, “Now that I thought about it, I can’t decide,”
“Spoiled for choices?”
“What else could it be? I’m trying something fun that I won’t regret.” Eris scratched her.
“Take your time thinking,” Arad looked up, “The night isn’t running away,”
Eris nodded, “You’re right. Let’s start with some water. Do you have some?”
Arad pulled a jug of ice-cold water from his stomach, “I should have pulled it before,” He quickly gave it to Eris.
Eris grabbed the water jug and chugged down half the water in it. Arad had never seen any of the girls drink that much water. If he excluded that one time he saw Amber drinking beer. He can swear she might chug a whole barrel.
“Ha!” Eris put the jug down and sat on the bed, stretching her arms, “Nothing better than blood other than water. It feels like it’s cleaning my throat.”
Arad directly drank from his stomach as he usually does for food. It worked like an inventory where he could eat. Without even taking the things out.
He took a moment to think how useful his stomach would have been if he hadn’t already overpowered its usefulness with his vampiric regeneration. While other people need to manually drink a potion after getting hit, he can spawn it inside his stomach.
Jack had suggested that Arad use a potion with other effects since he doesn’t need healing. Use things like potions of speed, invisibility, and other buffs.
After a brief test, Arad realized the painful truth of his existence. His all-mighty dragon body quickly neutralizes any foreign effect, no matter what it is. Simple alchemy won’t cut it, and weak magic effects get burned in the blink of an eye.
That only left him with mana and stamina potions. The latter was abundant, but the first was in short supply for Arad’s uses.
When Arad started to fight with his rumbling and draconic form, abusing his breaths and gravity magic he started to feel the limitation of his mana and stamina. It’s nice to have a fuck everything in that general direction extinction beam, but being able to only blast it once a day didn’t sit well with him.
Arad looked at his hand. The reabsorbing mana that was suggested by Doma is nice, but it only works with spells that he can cast and has enough brain power left to think about absorbing the mana. It’s useless if he needs to put all of his concentration into a massive spell.
“What are you thinking about?” Eris asked as she saw Arad zoning out.
“Void expansion. I was thinking about asking Doma to figure a way to fill it with the vampire spawns.” He smiled, “That would be effective,”
Eris gasped, “What came into you now? Your void expansion is already a hellscape, and you want to make it more deadly?”
“Deadly for humans, true. But a motivated dragon can escape my four-kilometer radios in about twelve seconds. I need to think about fighting them.” Arad’s enemies are only humans, but monsters that can’t be stopped with normal means. “And…”
Arad remembered a short mock fight that he had with Alcott. Short story, the moment Arad activated his void expansion, Alcott diced him so badly that he was forced into his draconic body.
“Alcott was able to beat you before you could even move, but that’s a dragon slayer we’re talking about. He could smell that you were about to cast a massive spell and took you down in the split second of activation.” Eris tapped Arad’s chest, “There is always lag when using magic. It’s easier and faster for you to try working around it rather than eliminating it.”
Arad nodded as he sat on the bed, “That’s why I will fill the void with spawns.”
Eris sat beside him, putting one leg on the other while reaching to his flesh with her hand. “Right now, you have other things to fill.” She smiled, “But I’m still sore. So we can put that on hold for now.”
Arad looked at her, “Then what did you want to do?”
Eris let go of his flesh and leaned back on her arms, “Nothing sexual to be honest. I just wanted you to test a few things for me,” With her fist, she tapped his chest. “I heard vampire lords can change their appearance and shapeshift into bats or mist, brainwash people with their gaze, and grant power to their spawn through blood. What can you do?”
Arad closed his eyes, his body turning into a black mass in the blink of an eye. A tiny hamster fell between Eris’s breasts, nesting there. “I’m a druid and can shift into small animals. I can do it with blood magic, but that limits me to vermins and makes my blood magic noticeable.” The hamster said, his two large teeth grinding against each other.
CLACK! The hamster shifted once again, turning into a massive one-foot-long black spider.
“You’re right. You’re oozing with blood magic now. You will only fool common folks.” Eris could feel it as clear as the day.
The spider jumped away from between her boobs and landed on the ground, shifting back to Arad. “Let me try that blood shifting,” Arad closed his eyes, trying to change the shape of his body. A faint black mist reeking of blood covered his body as it tried to morph.
Eris backed away, sensing his blood magic flowing in a weird pattern. “What are you doing?” She gasped.
“Trying… to make it work!” Arad growled as he tried to control the magic, but failed. BOOM! The spell went out of control, exploding and sending him rolling back in his normal form.
“Nop, can’t do it,” Arad sighed, lying on the ground like a dead fish.
“What a shame. With it, we could have used you to bypass a lot of encounters.” Eris looked at him with a sad face.
“But, we can still use it,” Arad said with a smile as his body started to morph, taking the form of a blond woman with red eyes. Eris recognized her as one of the spawns.
“Doma can make it happen. I just woke her up, and she kicked me in the face.” Arad said, standing up and staring at his body. “My…my…voice…” His voice slowly shifted to match the woman’s, and Eris started clapping.
“Way to go!”
“[Don’t count on it too much. I don’t have that much control over his blood magic. This is already annoying to control. I probably won’t be able to keep it if he starts to move violently.]” Doma said, and Arad burst back to his original body.
“What about the wyrmwolf part? What can it do now?” Eris asked.
“It’s better to keep it unused until I pair it with the Orion Constellation.” He replied, closing his eyes and sensing the wolf inside.
“Orion, the hunter’s constellation. It’s a strange coincidence that it’s your family name.” Eris approached Arad, “Was your family named after it?”
“Mom says void dragons use constellations as family names. We should expect other void dragons with surnames of the other constellations.” Arad replied, approaching Eris. .
“I see,” She moved to the side, tapping the bed with her hand. “Lay down. I rested a bit,”
Arad lay on the bed, relaxing as Eris approached him with a smug grin on her face. “Where should I start?” She ran her hand from his stomach to his neck.
“You shift gears quickly, but that’s up to you.” Arad replied, opening his eyes, “And, Aella seems to have feared I might get angry about some things she likes to do. I won’t, so don’t worry.”
Eris looked at Arad, “Aella? She’s an elf after all. Going for feet or hands isn’t uncommon. You could say it’s to them like butt and breasts for humans.” She approached his neck, biting it.
“You go for blood, just don’t drink too much, or you might die,” Arad sighed, remembering what happened earlier.
Eris extended her hand toward his flesh, gently grasping it. She stopped drinking Arad’s blood and looked down as her hand started rubbing it rapidly. “Say, which one she used?”
Eris shifted from rubbing him with her hand to her feet, and then back to her hands, “I can provide a change,”
“Ask her, not me,” Arad replied, wrapping his hand around Eris’s waist and pulling her up, “Didn’t you want to drink my blood?”
“One sip at a time,” She approached his neck and licked the blood trailing down from the wound.
Arad remained still, but this time, keeping an eye on her let her start dying again. “Do whatever you want,”