27 A Proposal and A Gain

It'd been an hour since the horrible occurrence that was thwarted by the appearance of Lailah and Exedra, and Lisa had yet to really recover from her shock.

"Why..did you guys come back?" Lisa asked sheepishly.

As soon as they heard the question Exedra stared at his wife in amusement as she scratched her cheek in slight embarrassment.

"Ah… Well I was coming back to buy those other four books I saw. I thought I could be satisfied with what I had but I just couldn't help it."

As she listened to the reason why she was saved, Lisa smiled in amusement at the words of the young girl in front of her.

Who knew she'd be saved by her favorite customer's love of reading.

"Tell you what, since you saved me you're welcome to take any book like you like for free. "

"How could I do that Lisa? I'd be more than happy to pay for them." Lailah refused.

"It's fine. I'll honestly be closing up the store soon anyway."

"Eh?! Why??"

"Well.."

Lisa began to explain that the men from earlier had been extorting money from her for several months.

Normally, she could've handled them on her own but they belonged to the Snow Scale clan, one of the four dragon clans that were led by a dragon lord.

After she refused to spend a night with the young master of the clan he sent those thugs to harass her every week having her cough up more and more gold to prevent her shop from being destroyed.

While he could've taken her by force, Jeddah is a sick bastard who enjoys breaking women mentally before he takes them to bed.

When he heard she was a single mother, he immediately concocted the plan to have her offer herself up on a silver platter.

Given that she did not come from a clan and was a lesser dragon, she naturally had no real power to fight.

Now that those goons had been killed, it naturally wouldn't take them very long to come for her and investigate.

"W-why didn't you tell me you were going through all of this?" Lailah was incredibly distraught.

"It's not your burden to carry my lady. How could I trouble you with something like this?" The kindness in Lisa's voice only made Lailah feel worse.

She was afraid she was going to lose a dear friend and be powerless to stop it.

Lailhah turned to her husband for a solution and saw that despite him telling her he was okay, he still showed signs of having that same severe headache. 

'No... he's already done so much, I can't ask him to help me with this too!'

Determined to come up with a solution on her own, Lailah's brain began to work overtime. 

Unfortunately, she did not have the power to protect Lisa herself, but she knew someone who did. 

She glanced back and forth between Lisa and Exedra before an insane idea bursted into her head. 

"Why don't the two of you get married?" 

"..."

"..."

"...What? Do you guys not understand?"

"Of course I don't understand!" Lisa cried. 

"You were the one who told me you were worried about being thrown away, but now you're throwing me away..." Exedra was feeling a flurry of complex emotions inside. 

Lailah hurriedly patted her husband's cheek reassuringly. "I'm not throwing you away, my love. I simply want you to take Lisa as one of your wives."

Now, Exedra really didn't understand what was going on. 

Did Lailah have a cuck fetish and he not know about it?

They had just taken steps to solidify their relationship, yet now she was trying to thrust him into a new one!

"W-Wait a minute! What are you saying?!" Lisa yelled with a red face. 

"Well Exedra is a prince so if you married him, then Jeddah wouldn't be able to touch you and Mira. I-It doesn't have to be a real marriage but as long as you two are married on paper then..."

She didn't finish her explanation but she had sufficiently gotten her point across. 

Truth be told, Exedra didn't really want any more wives. 

Two days ago, he was being beaten in the middle of the street without anyone in the world to care for him, yet now he had two beautiful wives and a very loving mother. 

Did he need anything more than that?

He was already beyond grateful for his new life, so much so that if it stayed like this for all eternity, he would not complain.

And yet as he prepared to tell Lailah that he was uncomfortable with this, dark voices began to play in the back of his mind. 

'We can take from him.'

'Just like he took from us!'

'That bastard should be the one to experience loss!'

Before, the dragon knew it, his mouth had opened to say the words he least expected to say. 

"I'll do it. I wish to take you as my bride, Lisa."

"Yay!"

"Ehhh?!" 

The two women had two very different reactions that caused them both to stare at eachother momentarily.

"Husband... would you mind giving Lisa and I a moment alone?"

Exedra looked back and forth between the two momentarily before nodding and walking deeper into the bookshop.

Once he'd left, Lailah and Lisa stared at each other for a moment before Lisa broke the silence.

"Why are you so okay with this?.."

"Hm? What do you mean?" Lailah tilted her head curiously.

" I mean you just offered your husband to me on a silver platter... I don't think most women would be okay with something like that."

"Well.. I'm probably okay with this only because it's you." Lailah replied honestly.

"If it were another woman, I would probably not do anything and let you deal with this on your own but you are my friend, Lisa. I want you to be safe and happy no matter what." She replied with a smile.

Lisa was unbelievably touched, but she still felt this was something undeserved. 

Just as she was about to voice her refusal, Lailah said something that threw her brain off track.

"Who knows? Maybe you'll end up falling in love with him as well."

"W-where did you get that idea?!"

"Well it's not like it would be particularly hard to do. All you would have to do is observe him long enough and I'm sure that you would be smitten!"

He's a very good man. It's easy for women to fall for him but he himself doesn't really seem to realize it." She said with a shrug.

Lailah walked up to Lisa and gently took her hand.

"If you're worried about being disloyal to me, don't. You and Bekka are the only women on this planet I wouldn't mind sharing my husband with."

Lisa said nothing and continued to think.

To be honest, she hadn't been able to get Exedra out of her mind since he'd shown up and saved her earlier.

No, perhaps it was even before then.

He was decisive, calm, and overwhelmingly powerful, despite only being a baby among their kind.

Her natural instincts were screaming out to her that he'd make the perfect mate.

Every action he took served to stoke her desire even more, despite the initial fear she had of him.

'What if I truly do fall in love with him...?'

Would Lailah not resent her for that?

What would his other wife think?

Would she truly be welcome in the castle as a lesser dragon?

Would he accept her daughter as well?

She had a lot to think about.

-

Exedra walked to the back of the store where more of the books were kept.

He wasn't particularly looking for anything, he was more interested in distracting himself from his massive headache that he'd had since earlier.

'I can't believe I killed them...' 

He didn't really feel bad about what he'd done, but he was surprised by the ease at which he'd done it. 

His body almost felt like it was moving on it's own, and he had even controlled his flames perfectly so as to not blow Lisa's store apart.

He was even awarded with his first level up from the system for killing those three men.

Just as he was about to check his new status, his eyes landed on something he'd been overwhelmingly curious about. 

Spell books.

Spell books aren't rare per say, the problem is the most useful ones are exceedingly difficult to understand.

If you're studying a high level spell, even if you possess the corresponding element, you could take weeks to learn to execute it properly.

And If you don't have the same affinity as the spell you're studying, you should be prepared to spend a few months minimum trying to learn it.

Witches are the only exception to this rule.

They learn spells as easily as reading a simple recipe and can even teach others and drastically cut down their learning time.

Although the fee they charge is beyond extortionate.

As a result, most beings try to come up with their own spells, which produced crude results at best.

As he browsed through the spell books Lisa had for sale, Exedra realized she had quite a fair amount of offensive and defensive spells.

Though considering there was a dungeon nearby, it wasn't really all that surprising.

Exedra picked up a spell book called umbral chains and sat down on the ground to read.

Umbral chains was a dark affinity spell that manipulates the shadows around the user to create chains that can be used to attack or restrain.

One of Exedra's favorite super heroes from earth used chains as a weapon, so that factored into his decision quite a bit.

He wasn't expecting to finish this entire spell book, but he figured this would be the best way to kill some time while the girls were talking.

As Exedra opened up the book to the first page, he got a rather surprising message from the system.

< Spell book detected.

< Would you like to learn this spell?

The dragon stared at the screen in front of him for a solid minute before he finally realized this wasn't a joke.

'Isn't this too much of a cheat?' he thought amusedly. 

'Yes.'

Almost instantly, he felt a small headache invade his mind.

Though when compared to the one he'd had before, this was nothing worth mentioning.

After about a minute, the headache faded and he had a new notification.

< Host's unique mana has altered the spell's properties.

< Spell : Umbral Chain, has evolved into Chaos Spell : Abyssal Chains.

'Evolved?'

He didn't realize spells could evolve too, but guessed it must have been something unique to himself and his system.

The dragon closed his eyes to process the information he'd just learned, and let out an impressed whistle when he realized this spell was incomparable to it's predecessor.

For starters, even if he'd mastered umbral chains and had a large mana pool, the number of chains he could summon would only be a measly twenty.

His evolved spell on the other hand…

Not only did the number of chains not have a limit, but they were bigger, stronger, and allowed him to sap an enemy's strength and add it to his own, or give it to someone else.

Permanently.

The downside? The mana cost is unbelievable. Even with his current plentiful mana pool for his age, he could only cast that spell and hold it for around twenty to thirty seconds.

Depending on the strength of the target of course.

Any longer than that, his mana would run dry and he would pass out.

Even with that massive drawback, he still found this to be a monumental gain and was really quite happy.

The dragon turned to look at the rows and rows of books stacked on the shelves and his lips broke out into a charming, toothy smile.