Chapter 1576: Arad Vs Linda I
A purple sun rose over a paradise, radiant and prideful over an army of angels.
The shadows danced, shaking to the tunes of the radiant heaven.
On a speck of dust in the middle of nothing, two dragons glared at each other.
The fight didn’t start. That moment never came.
In the mortal world, a black egg vibrated, shrinking slowly beneath the cool shadows of the dense forest. When the egg shattered, Arad appeared in its place. A newborn with a whole world awaiting him. A vestige of his mother spoke inside his head, drawing his attention, locking his senses forward.
Because he didn’t need to see the woman emerging from his shadow behind his back.
The woman was tall, beautiful, and with black and white hair, glaring at him with bored, red, glowing eyes. Her sharp black nails were a foot long, ready to swing down at Arad’s neck.
Time was unfair. And time dragons were merciless. Linda didn’t even need to affect Arad with her magic to win. All she needed was to teleport herself to the past, to the moment he was born. She snatches him from here, raises him in her care, and makes him grow into her personal house.
Her mother suggested taking Arad as a mate, but that was foolish. No one will live as long as she, no one can move with time alongside her, and no one is powerful enough to defeat her. The only ones who can defeat her are other time dragons, and sadly, most are her siblings.
Linda was destined to remain alone, a curse of her own power. Even going to the shadow realm proved fruitless; only her shadow could ever stand alongside her.
Her claws moved, racing toward Arad’s neck. She’ll knock him out and then fly with him to the fortress above.
It was then that she felt a hand on her shoulder. She slowly turned and looked back, finding Violet there. "That’s my baby there."
Violet spoke with a smile. But Arad didn’t seem to hear her. It was as if Violet and Linda weren’t there behind his back.
Linda frowned, "I see... so this is why you beat me like that when I tried to leave the world."
Linda could’ve left the world and lived in the empty void of Arad’s mother; she even tried to do just that before. But Arad’s mother was strangely aggressive and didn’t just beat her, she pummeled her over and over and over before throwing her broken body back to the Metallic Queen.
It was only now that she understood why Arad’s mother attacked her on sight. Because she was going to attack the newborn Arad eventually, and here she was.
Beneath the purple sun, Linda coughed a mouthful of blood as a hole emerged on her chest. She fell to her knees, blood streaming from her mouth and nose.
Arad’s mother had aimed for her right lung, carefully avoiding the heart. Linda growled, knowing well that Arad’s mother could’ve just killed her.
Arad looked at her from afar, "What is happening with you?"
Linda lifted her head, and her wound quickly healed. She could do that by either accelerating or reversing time. "Let’s just say, I flew a bit too close to the sun."
She stood, her clothes mended themselves as well. "Let’s fight here and now."
In the next second, her claws were already an inch away from Arad’s neck. Arad’s mother won’t let her defeat him in the past, so she has to do it the hard way and defeat him in the present.
How annoying, she could’ve raised him to be her perfect house, without all of the other pesky wives and the wasted time and space inside his stomach.
But to her surprise, Arad wasn’t hopeless. She had slowed time to reach Arad and cut him down with her claws, but he seems to be able to do the same.
Arad was already able to slow time with magic, but here inside his stomach, he was able to exert pressure on Linda to make it harder for her. So the combination allowed him to stand his ground for a moment and dodge her first attack.
Arad’s fist flew right at her, burning with gravity magic. It connected, hitting with a deafening blast.
When the shockwave ended, Arad found himself standing alone, with his fist in the air. Linda was nowhere to be seen.
She emerged from his shadow, standing behind him with a smile. "Did you really think merely slowing time could stop me?"
Linda lifted her hands with a smile, "Your world, I shall stop its time!"
At that moment, Arad’s world froze in time; nothing moved.
Linda approached Arad, keeping her eyes peeled in case Kali or Arad’s mother tried to interfere, but none of them seemed to care now.
The way time dragons stop and slow time was fundamentally different from how wizards did it with magic.
The first difference was that the time stop spell didn’t actually stop time; it slowed it so much that it looked stopped. One second became a billion years, an effective eternity.
But time dragons latched onto the very fabric of time and forced it to stop. And it was especially easy when inside a small and incomplete world like Arad’s stomach.
Fighting Arad inside his stomach gave him a lot of advantage; it allowed him to try to suppress Linda’s power. But what he didn’t know was that his world was far smaller than the mortal world, which was inside his mother’s stomach.
Fighting Linda outside, where his mother can suppress her, would’ve been a much wiser decision.
Linda extended her claws, looked at Arad’s frozen face, then swung at him. Strangely, her claws didn’t fully cut into his bones, so she started swinging over and over, hitting him over ten times before releasing time and allowing it to move.
Arad’s body flew away at blinding speed, shattering into pieces on a massive boulder.
At that time, Linda could sense someone fuming at her. Baal, the fallen Archon, was ready to swoop down and tear her apart. But he didn’t move.
Arad’s body turned into a puddle of blood and reformed rapidly. He looked at her with a passive face, "You stopped time without magic."
"Of course, I’m a time drakaina. Are you ready to give up?" She looked at him with a smile, licking her red lips.
Arad smiled, standing in place and looking at her with a menacing grin, "I see, time dragons can control the threads of time the same way void dragons can control the threads of space."
Both tug on each other; the fabric of space and time was entwined upon itself.
Arad jumped forward, swinging his fist at Linda’s face. Just like the first time, she froze time, forcing Arad’s whole inner world to a halt. She had many more tricks hidden, but this one trick should be enough to keep Arad at bay.
She approached his frozen body, reached forward with her hand, and touched his face. "You don’t seem to understand, it’s useless."
She swung her claws once more at his chest, but at that moment, something strange happened. Her arm was moving through space, in her frozen time. As her arm touched the fabric of space, Arad’s fist ripped from its place and teleported right into the middle of her chest.
Arad’s arm didn’t move; it just changed its location independently of time. Linda puked a mouthful of blood and quickly kicked Arad away, resulting in his other arm teleporting right into her left thigh, tearing her whole leg off as Arad’s arm was thicker than her waist.
As time flew away, Arad crashed into another boulder with his face dented in the shape of Linda’s foot. Both of his arms were missing, just as he planned.
This was the same trick he used while fighting Nyar alongside his mother, but instead of moving Nyar, he was moving himself. The fabric of space around him acts like a spider web.
Arad had memorized the shape of Linda’s body to guess the location of her torso based on where her arms were. He then set it so that when her hands touch a specific thread of space, his arms would teleport right to where her torso should be.
Arad might not be able to move in the stopped time, but he knows Linda is moving and that she is moving through the fabric of space that he controls.
"I see, this should be fun." Linda stood, ripped Arad’s arm from her chest, and threw it away. As all of her wounds healed, she looked at him with a smile, "You’re the first dragon to ever get something inside me."
The fight was just starting.