Dragon King's Harem Chapter 587. Roots and Dragon I
Dragon King's Harem Chapter 587. Roots and Dragon I
Seranaya still hung from Elowen’s root, but Sela kept trying to reach her. Every time she got close, Elowen’s roots forced her back. Sela slammed stone walls up, crushed vines down, broke thorns with earth spikes, but Elowen’s true form was too large now. Too connected to the entire hall.
“She’s feeding from below!” Sela shouted. “The root network goes under the throne!”
Royal throne.
Dwarven authority.
Durharn’s blood.
The palace itself.
This wasn’t just a giant nymph body. It was a ritual body now.
Gross.
I landed hard beside Sela and Marissa, wings curling around them briefly as a shield when Elowen fired thorn-spears across the hall.
The spears slammed into my wing membrane.
Pain flashed.
Sharp.
Hot.
I gritted my teeth.
Evelina saw it immediately. “Argod!”
“Still attached!” I shouted back.
“Not funny!”
“It is a little funny!”
“It is not!”
Romance during battle was basically arguing while trying not to die.
Elowen raised her arms toward the ceiling hole.
The sunlight above dimmed.
Not from clouds.
From roots.
She was spreading upward, punching through the palace roof, trying to connect to the mountain soil outside. If she reached enough ground, enough city roots, enough underground water…
[Warning: Enemy Attempting Territorial Root Expansion]
[Projected Result: Palace Collapse]
[Secondary Result: City-Wide Poison Spread]
I clicked my tongue.
Elowen unleashed another ultimate skills.
Thousands of thorn petals exploded from her body, spinning like blades.
The hall became a blender.
Seraphel’s fire wall rose on one side. Fairy wind swirled on the other. Evelina’s barriers layered over the evacuation path. Al’s shadows wrapped around the petals to slow them. Sela raised stone slabs. Marissa’s vines dragged wounded people behind cover.
I used my barrier and my wings to shield the gap.
The petals hit us like knives.
Nightmare flashed in my hands, cutting dozens apart, fire burning the rest, but some still got through. A thorn scratched my cheek. Another tore across my shoulder. One stuck into my coat near my ribs before burning away.
Elowen laughed from above, enormous and monstrous, her face blooming from the central trunk like a wicked goddess carved in poison wood.
“Struggling, Dragon King?”
“Yes,” I admitted, panting once.
That made her smile.
Then I smiled back. “With collateral damage.”
Her smile faded.
Seraphel landed beside me, ember wings folding halfway. Her outfit was torn at the side, hair loose now, cheek smudged with ash, and somehow she looked even more royal.
“If I release more flame, the roof falls,” she said.
The Fairy Queen floated down on my other side, breathing hard. “If I summon my full wind, the civilians will be crushed.”
Evelina ran up behind us, barrier light shaking around her hands. “And I can’t protect everyone from all directions anymore.”
Marissa wiped blood from her lip. “Her poison output is increasing.”
Sela’s gaze stayed locked on Seranaya. “And she’s still draining her.”
Al adjusted his monocle with two fingers. His sleeve was torn. His expression remained offended, like the battle had personally ruined his aesthetic.
“In conclusion,” he said, “this is inconvenient.”
I exhaled.
Yeah.
Understatement of the century.
Elowen’s roots smashed down again. We scattered. I cut one. Seraphel burned another. Fairy Queen redirected a third. Sela trapped the fourth. Evelina blocked falling stone. Marissa neutralized poison droplets midair. Al bound the smaller root-limbs trying to stab us from behind.
We were winning moments.
Because Elowen’s true form wasn’t just something to cut.
It had a core.
A center.
Something feeding all this regeneration, poison, authority corruption, and root expansion. Find that, destroy that, and the entire giant murder tree collapses.
Miss it?
We could chop wood until sunset while she kept turning the palace into salad.
Another explosion ripped through the ceiling, widening the hole. Sunlight poured down brighter now, illuminating the wreck of the wedding hall. The throne was split. Durharn was gone. Seranaya hung half-conscious, eyes flickering weakly, whispering something no one could hear.
For one second, my gaze met hers.
She looked terrified.
Maybe she finally understood what it meant to be used.
I tightened my grip on Nightmare. “We need to find the core,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
I looked up at Elowen’s enormous body, at the glowing veins pulsing through her bark, at the stolen gold-green light moving from Seranaya into the central trunk.
“The body is just armor,” I said. “The core is somewhere inside the root network.”
Marissa’s eyes narrowed. “Poison core should be near the heartwood.”
Sela added, “But the authority pulse is coming from the throne.”
Al looked toward Seranaya. “And the daughter is the conduit.”
Evelina’s face tightened. “So we cut the drain first?”
I nodded. “Then expose the core.”
Seraphel lifted her flame spear.
“And if she expands into the city?”
I spread my wings again. “Then we stop being polite. We’ll go all out.”
Al sighed. “A shame. I was enjoying our restraint era.”
I grinned despite the blood on my cheek. “Me too.”
Then Elowen roared and the entire ruined hall shook again.
The core.
Find the core.
Before the palace became a grave.
I lifted Nightmare and forced myself to stop looking at Elowen’s giant ugly murder-tree face. That was the trap. Big monster, big screams, big dramatic villain posture. But the face wasn’t the source. The arms weren’t the source. The roots weren’t even the source. They were weapons. Extensions. Her tantrum with bark texture.
The real center was lower.
Under the throne.
Through Seranaya.
Inside the stolen authority line.
I narrowed my eyes.
[Observation Activated]
The ruined hall changed in my vision. The smoke dulled. The chaos thinned. Lines of mana burned brighter. Green poison, brown-gold earth, red fire, blue antidote, black shadow. Elowen’s entire network looked like a cursed tree drawn in glowing veins, but three lines pulsed stronger than the others. One from Seranaya’s chest to Elowen’s torso. One from Durharn’s ruined throne into the root network. And one deep below the platform, where the Dwarven royal authority had been anchored for generations.
There.
“Let’s drain her,” I said.