Chapter 1546: Arad’s Massive World
"Yes!" Gaia looked up, "A moon." She then waved her hand and sent a call to Lunara. She would have the demon lord go around Arad’s stomach with some angels to find a massive rock and bring it into orbit, so that the moon could help Rilyeh and her oceans.
And why settle for just one moon? Why not make it two and add an asteroid belt over everything to make the night sky look beautiful? She didn’t have this much fun in millions of years.
The vampires who lived inside Arad’s small world looked outside their homes and churches with terrified faces. From what they knew, nothing could reach this world and damage it unless Arad was taken down, but just a few minutes ago, this world shook and trembled.
Only then did one of Mira’s angels fly in to inform them that Arad is expanding the small world into a full one and that the spirits are already working on it. Everyone has to stay inside their homes and must not leave the boundary.
One of the castle’s maids, Lexi. The same one who was with Aella just a few days ago on their trip to her village. At that time, she had seen Aella’s power and though that was insane, a mere elf fighting a powerful archdevil was something that no mortal could even imagine.
But now, poor Lexi was watching something even scarier. She was here just to pick a sack of potatoes, but got stuck.
In the sky, Lunara flew across the starlight sky, pushing a massive, moon-like asteroid into orbit with the help of a few hundred angels. The mountains on the horizon were moving like a train, with smoke and fire erupting from some. Even the sun in the sky seemed to flash and grow smaller.
Lexi had once caught Lunara in the castle’s pantry munching on carrots and had to kick her out, but she had never expected to see such power from her. She expected her to be at best as strong as a powerful adventurer.
Then, a roar came out of nowhere, throwing her to the ground. "What!" She cried, quickly standing back up and looking out of the window into the sky. Her eyes opened wide as she saw a swarm of dragons flying down from the sky. There were hundreds of them, all too massive, big enough to dwarf the whole city and stand equal to the mountains getting born across the horizon.
Those dragons all rushed down, then spread across the entire world, braving the infernal hellscape of the land that was still getting molded by Gaia and the other spirits.
Those were the drakainas Arad defeated in the Chromatic kingdom; all of them were rushing in to claim their share of the lands, laughing as they would get a cut before the metallic dragons.
Lexi could see one of the drakainas, a red one, landing on a nearby mountain, then pouring a fountain of gold from beneath her wings. They were building their lairs here and transferring their hoards. Just that one drakaina had enough gold coins to down the entire city in them and kill everyone.
The scale of everything was just too unfathomable for her to grasp it whole. Mountains were moving, the clouds burned, and a swarm of kingdom-destroying dragons just rained from the sky. Just looking outside was enough to make Lexi’s head hurt, which was probably due to the lack of oxygen as Zephyr was still filling the world.
She looked to her side, at the sack of potatoes she was supposed to drag back to the castle. That thing was too heavy for her to lift; she was planning on dragging it back. But now, she doesn’t know how to feel about not being able to move it.
"I gotta move." She sighed and took a step back, about to drag the sack of potatoes back to the pantry and find a place to wait. There is no need for her to remain standing in the hallway like a fool. What could we do? The Emperor and his wives were kneading dough.
She turned around, but immediately hit something massive and solid. Her nose almost cracked, and she fell back on her butt, "Damn it, who’s the fool standing in the middle of the hallway?" She rubbed her nose, tears wetting her eyes.
She rubbed her eyes, cleared the tears, and looked in front of her, finding Arad standing there, looking at her with a worried face. She froze; it was the Emperor who stood in the way.
"I came looking for you." Aella looked at her with a smile from behind Arad, "But you just called him a fool. Did no one teach you that you can’t just turn around and run without looking?"
Lexi was already too stunned and terrified to speak. Bumping into the Emperor was one thing, but calling him a fool was a whole other can of worms.
"I’m kind of a fool." Arad shrugged, "I totally forgot that I should’ve warned everyone here about this." He turned toward the window and looked at the writhing world, "I’m sure this all came at a sudden for the spirits, and I’m even more certain that everyone living here was terrified by it."
Aella sighed, "That’s somewhat right." Arad was right, but wrong at the same time. While he was at the wrong, they shouldn’t be shocked by such a change, especially since what just happened with Eris. "But they shouldn’t be so shocked by it."
"I think they should." Arad leaned on the window, "Living inside my stomach, thinking it’s some kind of magical pocket dimension can make sense, especially since everyone had seen wizards pull things out of nowhere before. But this..." He pointed at the sky where Lunara was just putting the second moon in orbit, followed by the angels pushing thousands of tiny asteroids with their wings to create a ring around the planet.
Arad then pointed at the moving mountains on the horizon, the boiling sea, and the shifting fog consuming vast chunks of land like a ravenous tide.
"This is far more than what a human can endure."
Aella walked past Arad and Lexi, grabbed the sack of potatoes, and lifted it with ease. "They’ll get used to it." She then jumped onto Arad’s shoulder and sat on it, then handed the sack of potatoes to him and reached down, pulling the still shocked and terrified Lexi up to sit on Arad’s other shoulder.
Lexi finally came to her senses and cried, "What...what are you doing?!"
Aella looked at her with a smile, "You’re a wizard, Lexi. We’re going back to the castle."
"Arad, how about we make a detour and take a stroll across this world?" She looked outside, "You can teleport out from anywhere, so I say we go check things out before we leave."
Arad nodded, and with one step, he was standing outside the city, where Gaia had just said that no one should stand. Lexi is a wizard, and the moment she felt how the magic in Arad’s void step worked, she almost threw up just from that. How was he even here, inside his own stomach, while still leaving a beacon outside, at the same time, being able to teleport within himself?
It wasn’t that it didn’t make sense, but the overlapping coordinates made her feel sick.
Arad held both of them tight to his shoulders with gravity magic, and then burst running forward. Aella took the warm breeze with a smile, while Lexi screamed her lungs out, barely holding the urge to jump away.
Arad’s legs hit the ground in rapid succession, like the beating of a drum. He blazed across the newly formed wastelands at a speed that no one should be able to run at. All thanks to his heavy weight and powerful muscles, and the barrier magic he used to create footing when the ground was too soft to support his movement.
"WAIT! Mountain! Mountain!!!!!!!!!" Lexi bawled her eyes out as she saw Arad running straight toward a solid black mountain of basalt and obsidian, but to her shock, he jumped at the last moment, reaching the peak with a single leap.
The moment Arad reached the peak, he kicked and used it as a stepping stone to jump even higher, piercing the clouds. Another thing had terrified Lexi even more; she could sense that, besides barrier magic to gain a footing, Arad was purely running on his physical strength alone.
She can barely jump over a bucket, and he had just leaped to the peak of a whole mountain with ease.
As Lexi was still screaming, another scream muffled her. A dragon’s roar.
From the clouds beneath them, a flying red mountain emerged, too massive to be seen at once. Arad landed on the mountain’s back, and Lexi barely managed to figure out that they were standing on the back of a flying red dragon.
The red dragon was, in fact, a drakaina. One of the drakainas that Arad beat in the Chromatic dragons’ kingdom, and she was now flying around her new lair to spread her magic.
Feeling Arad approach and land on her back, the drakaina immediately slowed down and turned her head, looking at her back.
"A... a... a great wyrm?!" Lexi could tell a dragon’s age, because that would make it easier to know if she could run away or die. But she couldn’t tell a dragon apart from a drakaina, because that won’t help her anyway; both are violent.
"Lord Arad, where are you heading?" The red drakaina asked, and Arad smiled, looking up, "To the moons."
She sighed, "Breaking my back? Fine, jump."
Arad chuckled, "No, I’m not using you as a platform. I just landed on you because you were close." Arad expanded his massive black wings and flew away, waving his hand at the drakaina.
Aella looked at the terrified Lexi with a smile, "A nice trip, right?"
"Nice? We’re gonna die!" She at least knew that she couldn’t breathe on the moon. But to her surprise, Arad rapidly accelerated forward, then teleported several times with void step, landing on the surface of the biggest of the two moons in less than two minutes.
To Lexi’s surprise, she can breathe. Of course, she could. Arad controlled this whole space. Looking back at Arad’s world, she felt both small and terrified. Seeing the whole planet from this far away was both shocking and unreal.
"ARAD!" Lunara was there, and she immediately sensed Arad. "Did you like the moon? I can’t believe I managed to push it. Is this some kind of magic you can do?"
Arad looked around, "The moon is fine, I like that there are two instead of just one. For how you could move it, it’s simple, you’re powerful, and there is no gravity here." He looked down, "The moon has gravity, but I can overwrite it with magic, so you’re right. I used magic to make it easier for you."
Lunara’s eyes sparkled, then she looked at Aella, "So? What brought you here?" She then shifted her gaze to Lexi, "You better put her down before she throws up on him."
Lunara then froze. She remembered Lexi yelling at her a few days ago. "WAIT! This isn’t about the carrots! Is it?" She jumped back.
Arad lifted an eyebrow, looked at Lexi, then shook his head, "No, I was going to tell you that you should use this large moon as a second base for the moon rabbits. Leave the smaller one empty, as we might use it as a training ground."
"Wait! This entire place?" Lunara looked around, "I can’t even fill a tenth of the real moon outside, so how could I use all of this space?"
"This world is supposed to be a safe world inside my stomach. It will be a place your demon race can retreat to in case of an emergency. I want it to be massive, expansive, and have enough space to fit everyone with extra room for more."
Lunara looked around, "I think it’s pretty massive..."
"It’s still not even a third of a full world. I need more planets and a stable anchor, a World Tree. Plum isn’t powerful enough to fill that role. So at best, I’ll reach 99% of a full world." He looked at the sky, where a flock of angels was slowly coming down.
Those were Mira’s angels who helped Lunara. "Lord Arad, greeting." They landed and knelt immediately.
"Good, you’re here. I’ve got a plan for Mira." He looked at Lexi, then back at the angels, "Eris found out a few details from Lydia, so we’ll get moving. Under Mira’s name, I want you to scribe, mark, and cut pieces of land from the world below, all around the main city, and give them to maids and their families. Just make sure each maid gets at least twice the land their family got in the real world outside."
He looked back at his world, "The land should be in the maid’s name, not their family’s name. Mira got the greed portfolio, so we’ll power her up with generosity."
"Heh?" Lexi gasped, "What are you talking about?"
The angels looked at Arad, back at the world, then at him once more, "It’ll take a few days. But what about everyone else?"
"They’ll get their share later. For now, I want to see if I can get Mira to evolve. Besides, the vampires would move there." He pointed at the small planet flying around Eris’s sun.
Right now, in Arad’s system, there is one sun and two planets. The small planet was Eris’s heaven, and it had one small moon. Arad’s main world, on the other hand, now has two moons and is much bigger and further away from the sun.