The dragon's harem

While Dalla did her best, trying to teach an all-powerful angel how to slap. And while Merida kept an eye on them while sitting beside the sleeping Grace, Arad had his own plan.

From what he saw until this point, he started to feel that he was on the edge of understanding something fundamental about the universe. It was this strange feeling, tickling at the back of his head, screaming that he had missed something.

First, ever since he became an adult dragon, he has gained a lot of powers, but ignoring anything related to raw power, like his size, magic, and damage. What interested him more was the souls.

Each living being had at least one soul, and having both the body and soul linked together is what people call "Living."

The soul acts as a backup most of the time for the body's memories and ego, keeping a copy of its essence safe, away from the threat of physical and mortal reach. The reason for that was simple: death wasn't the end.

Everyone knows this by now, but it was quite the thing to think about. The goal of all life is death, and that is a literal thing. The moment anything "Alive" is born, the clock starts ticking, indicating that death is already approaching. Arad could even say that getting born is the first sign of death.

So, what happens when someone dies? Simple, the soul and body separate. The temporary mortal flesh decays and rots away, while the soul has to suffer one of four fates. Five if some bullshit took place, which Arad seemed to find often.

The first two are what all people know well, hell or heaven. When a mortal dies, they are judged by death. The first is whether the mortal has a god or not. If they have a god, they'll either go to hell or heaven, based on their deeds. If they don't, they'll either go to hell or the underworld, where they'll wait in line to reincarnate.

Of course, if they are bad, hell awaits. Sometimes, their god can vouch for them against death's rule, and even get them to heaven or the underworld before she throws them into the infernal hells.

Hell is the place of suffering, heaven depends on which god the mortal believed in, and the underworld is one long waiting line, at the end of which you'll lose all of your memories and sense of self to get reborn as a new person.

So, who was death? How much power does she have? Based on Lala, the succubus nun, death is an emotionless, taciturn maid. She is the one snatching every soul in the entire universe, and her power far exceeds most gods. For example, she was here many times during Arad's trip, and no one could notice her.

She harvested the souls of every monster he killed, and he could never sense her. She harvested Dendron's soul twice and shoved her into the tree to get reborn. Once, when Arad killed her, and once when Mathilde evaporated her with a kick. So death is probably just as harrowing, if not more than someone like Amaterasu. She could be standing right behind Arad, holding her blade without him having a clue.

So, what triggered Arad's current contemplation? Many things, starting with Dendron. When she died, death snatched her soul and shoved it into the World Tree, because that was Dendron's heaven. So Dendron was reborn in her heaven, and that just happened to be the same place that she was in before.

So, death indeed isn't the end, as long as he can find where the soul ends. For Tina, she doesn't have any god she prays to, but she could try Eris or Mira. The problem was that Mira and Eris aren't full goddesses and don't have a heaven.

How about Kali? Well, her heaven is probably the second-to-last place any human wants to end up in; it's full of demons, violence, and blood. It's a place that demons would like, not humans.

So we have hell, heaven, and the underworld. The fourth option is destruction, where the soul gets damaged too much and is destroyed, leaving nothing behind. This is the true end, the true loss that no one will return from, when they are fully eliminated.

Sadly, the fourth is what Tina would most likely suffer because of her cracked soul. That soul would crumble, and she would be no more. This is the thing Arad is trying to prevent, not just death, but her complete destruction.

The last and fifth option is getting turned into an abomination, like what happened with Alexander, probably the worst ending of them all, since it'll only make them suffer longer before getting turned into nothing, without deserving any of the pain.

Death lives in the eternal kingdom of shadows and succubus in her own layer in the abyss. Funnily enough, Ereshkigal, the goddess of undeath who rules the underworld, is also located in the abyss.

Sena had also told Arad a strange secret, it seemed that Ereshkigal is the Asmodeus twin's mother. Their father is Lucifer, the first divine.

To save Tina, he must make sure she avoids the destruction ending and get at least one of the three common ones. That is heaven, hell, or the underworld.

For hell, he can just pull her out himself, for the underworld, going there shouldn't be a problem, snatching her is another matter, and he'll have to find some people to help him, like Kali. Getting her out of heaven would be the easier result to deal with.

So, how could Arad fix Tina's soul to begin with? He indeed set his eyes on the angel's ability to control their souls and project bodies. If only he could somehow get Tina's soul to become stronger.

How to make a soul stronger? The answer was simple: absorb more divine essence and compress it.

The first idea that came to his mind was giving her a divine portfolio so she could start absorbing divine energy from believers, but that would shatter her soul immediately, like throwing a massive boulder on a human's head and asking the now crushed corpse to start working out.

Arad looked back at the world, "This thing had been cultivating its power for a long time. You'd think she'd know a thing or two about accumulating divine power."