Primordial Villain With A Slave Harem - Chapter 1536 Dejected Girls

Chapter 1536  Dejected Girls

Quinlan watched the Covenant’s undead crash against Dawn Breaker’s holy radiance and dismissed that entire corner of the battlefield in under ten seconds.

The dead gave no experience points when slain, the three undead lords leading them were threats he had no reason to provoke, and the whole lot of them were technically his allies… strained as that relationship was.

As for Dawn Breaker herself – he’d spent enough time around Velara to know what Arch Priestesses thought of necromancers. Elisabeth Valorian was a holy warrior who’d just taunted three undead lords without breaking stride, the type who swung first and asked theological questions never. Being technically allied with the Covenant she was incinerating didn’t improve his odds.

‘Hard pass.’

That left the rest of the field. Ravenshade versus Elvardia, human armies grinding against elves and dwarves across miles of open ground, and the picture there was ugly.

He could feel the dying.

Every soldier who fell on the field below was a soul departing, a body emptying, and the sheer volume of it pressed against Quinlan’s awareness like standing too close to a bonfire. Hundreds every few seconds.

The scale of death on this field was unlike anything he’d experienced in his whole life.

His connection to the necrotic arts turned the carnage below into a sensory flood, death stacking on death in waves that pulsed through him with every heartbeat.

However, because he had no hand in their slaying, he could not claim them. They would return to the Goddess’s awaiting hands.

His soul army stirred inside him.

[Necromantic Tier Ascension — Tier III]

[Requirement for Rank Up: Possess 1,000 Elite Souls of Rank 5.]

[Progress: 413/1000 → 702 / 1,000]

Seven hundred Elite Souls were inside his Soul Reaper’s Eternal Damnation dimension now, though the new ‘recruits’ were still in the freshly built city with their loved ones.

But distance was not an issue.

Those inside the saber wanted out.

‘Not yet.’

He watched a Ravenshade flanking column punch through an elven archer line on an exposed hilltop. Soldiers poured through the gap and the killing started in earnest, close-quarters and ugly, the kind of fighting where levels mattered less than luck and positioning.

‘They’re losing,’ he thought. Then, frowning behind his helmet: ‘And why are they out there?’

Whisperfield was right behind them, a fortified city with walls and chokepoints that would have nullified Ravenshade’s numbers. Why dig trenches in open ground when that was a few kilometers north?

He said it out loud. “Why didn’t they break through my ice and entrench inside Whisperfield? It’s a fortified city with walls and chokepoints. That’s a better position than a ridgeline.”

Seraphiel answered first, her elven eyes still fixed on the Elvardian lines. “Dwarves don’t trust walls they didn’t build. Even during my time in the military, dwarven commanders refused to garrison human-built fortifications unless their own engineers had inspected every stone. They’d rather dig their own trenches in mud than rely on foreign masonry.”

“And elves hate fighting from inside stone,” Kaelira added. “You put an elven battlemage inside city walls, you’ve killed half their spell repertoire. No room to maneuver, no sightlines, no access to nature magic. Our commanders would rather fight in a muddy ditch with open sky above them than a fortress with a roof.”

“Those are contributing factors no doubt, but…” Serika spoke up.

Both elven women glanced at her.

Serika’s gaze swept the field with the practiced calm of a woman who had once commanded armies and waged wars across nations. The woman once known as the Flaming Sovereign of Zhenwu wasn’t new to warfare.

“The real reason is simpler, I’d wager. To them, Whisperfield is an enemy stronghold currently under siege.” She nodded toward the ice dome still partially standing behind them. “We told the Alliance we’d handle the city. They trusted us enough to leave their northern flank open and focus south. But that trust doesn’t extend to marching their armies inside.”

The tanned Solar Fist turned to Quinlan with a grin that was equal parts fond and exasperated. “Quin, your scale of logic is far too skewed. You cleaned Whisperfield out in an afternoon and moved a hundred thousand people to a brand-new settlement like it was a mild inconvenience. No military commander on this continent would have expected that. In their heads, that city still has pockets of resistance behind every corner, traps in every alley, and a hostile population ready to turn on anyone who marches through the gates.”

She was right, he realized. They’d made the rational call with the information they had.

But the analysis only sharpened the picture. The Elvardian Alliance was holding open ground against a larger force because they’d had no better option besides retreating and giving up their momentum, and the lines were buckling. If they collapsed, Ravenshade’s army would roll north through everything in its path, and his girls would be standing in the way of a force that had just crushed the – arguably – strongest military coalition on the continent.

Quinlan turned to them.

Felicity’s face was pale, lips pressed together as she watched her countrymen die. But most of his girls were watching with perfect detachment. Even Ayame, once a stalwart samurai of extreme honor, had long since given up on being anything dumb like a champion of humanity.

She was now focused solely on the people who personally mattered to her – and her own growth of power, of course.

But what he could see was eagerness.

They’d spent more than a month training and pushing their bodies and magic to the limit in the primordial realm. They wanted in on this fight.

Quinlan knew what he had to say, and he hated it.

“You girls won’t be engaging.”

Silence.

“Aurora, conjure barriers around our position. Sylvaris, please summon your moonlit constructs too, as many as you can sustain. If anything gets through, the constructs buy time.”

Both women nodded. They understood.

“Blossom, Ria. Set up around the perimeter.”

Blossom’s ears flattened, but she inclined her head. So did Ria.

“Everyone else stays behind the line.”

Ayame was the first to break. “Quin.” Her voice was quiet, and the fact that it was quiet instead of sharp said more than the words. “We trained for this. Every day in the primordial realm. Every technique, every spell, every duel I endured was for moments like this.”

“We can fight,” Lucille agreed. Her hands were steady at her sides but her eyes weren’t. “You know we can fight.”

“Quin…” Seraphiel murmured, and the softness in her voice was worse than any argument. “With your portal…”

He looked at their faces and saw what he’d been afraid of seeing. They were hurt. Every one of them had poured everything they had into getting strong enough to stand beside him, and the look in their eyes said the same thing without any of them needing to voice it.

‘He thinks we’re not enough.’

“It’s not about strength,” Quinlan said. His voice came out the way it always did when he was being honest with them: warm and without any of the edge he used on everyone else. “You’re all strong. I know that better than anyone, and I’m incredibly proud of you. But this field is miles wide, there are many threats out there above Level 70, and a single area spell from a panicking mage can kill someone just as dead as a named enemy.”

“Girls… Quin’s right,” Serika muttered through gritted teeth. “On a battlefield this chaotic, it’s not just enemy combatants we have to worry about. One of those dwarven cannons clips us from behind while we’re engaged on a front line, and we suffer losses that have nothing to do with how strong we are.”

Nobody argued with that. Serika had commanded armies. She’d seen what happened when the wrong attack hit the wrong people at the wrong time, and the quiet fury in her voice said she was speaking from memory.

His fiery redhead turned to Quinlan then, and the grin she gave him was a complicated thing. A little sad, a little proud, and carrying the faintest edge of excitement underneath both.

“You’ll be going in yourself, won’t you?”

“I’m the only one who can get in and out when I need to,” Quinlan said. “I’ll at least try helping our allies out.”

His girls looked beyond dejected. But Quinlan couldn’t do anything about that. The sad truth was that, despite their incredible effort and unbelievable rate of growth, this was not a fight he was willing to let them join. Quinlan would much rather have his lovers be mad or even sad than to lose them.

He looked at Black Fang.

The Venomborne Terror met his gaze with flat eyes that gave away nothing.

“Will you stay with them for me?”

Three seconds of silence. Then she inclined her head once, a fractional nod that communicated acceptance and absolutely nothing else.

‘She was already planning her route through the southern flank but killed the plan in her head and filed it away to help me. This woman can be surprisingly accommodating…’

He was making progress with her, that much was certain. A couple of months ago Black Fang would have simply ignored his request and did what she wanted.

Vex’s voice came over his shoulder. “If you dare die, I’ll resurrect you myself only to stab you a thousand times!”

The grin spread behind his helmet. “That’s my girl.”

The Hexwitch’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“In the penis and balls! With tiny needles! One by one! Without taking any out!”

“… I’ll return alive.”

 “Good.” She nodded with a seriousness that told Quinlan there were no jokes told here.

“That said, there’s something you all should do…” Quinlan spoke up.

By the time he finished, no dejection was visible in the eyes of his lovers.

He stepped off the edge, and the wind took him.