Primordial Villain With A Slave Harem - Chapter 1547 Proud Man

Chapter 1547  Proud Man

Quinlan looked down at the basin from above and let himself have the moment.

His girls were scattered across the scorched floor in clusters of battered armor and bloody grins, each one standing over the remains of an officer who had outleveled them by significant margins. Kaelira was on her hands and knees while Feng pressed a healing potion to her lips. Lyra leaned against the basin wall with one arm hanging useless and Ria kneeling beside her, pouring a second vial across the exposed bone of her ribs. Blossom’s shoulder was a ruined mess of torn leather and blood, and she was wagging her tail so hard that Felicity couldn’t keep the potion-soaked cloth in place.

On the far side, Lucille and Iris stood on either side of Drekken’s corpse while Seraphiel climbed off the garrison commander’s shoulders with blood matting her blonde hair to her face. The healer elf was giggling, extremely proud of herself.

And beyond them, Serika, Vex, and Kitsara stood over the scorch mark that had been Isara Blackveil, the foxkin’s tails still going wild while Vex shook feeling back into her fingers.

Every single one of them could have died down here. Every single one of them had been outmatched on paper, outleveled in practice, and fighting veterans who had centuries of experience on them.

They’d won anyway.

‘My girls are truly amazing,’ he thought, and the warmth in his chest had nothing to do with the fire in his veins. ‘Every last one of them.’

Ayame landed beside him.

She didn’t land, exactly. She jumped, katana sheathed and blood still flecked across her cheeks from the attack that had bisected Reina Ashworth from crown to hip, and she crashed into his chest with enough force to rock him back a step. Her arms locked around his neck and her face buried itself against his shoulder, and the woman who had carved through a Level 73 assassin with ice-cold precision was trembling.

“I did it,” she breathed into the gap between his neck and his armor. “Quin, I did it.”

His arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her close.

“You sure did. It was really badass.”

She pulled back just enough for him to see her face, and the smile that broke across it was so bright and so unguarded that it didn’t belong anywhere near a battlefield. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were flushed. She looked like a girl who’d just been told the best news of her life, which, in a way, she had. She knew it wasn’t a fair duel. The fire blast, the element of surprise, the narrow window she’d exploited before Reina could recover her footing. None of it was the clean, honorable exchange a samurai dreamed of.

But she’d killed a woman more than twenty levels above her. And right now, pressed against Quinlan’s chest with his arms around her waist, that was enough to make her glow.

Then the smile froze.

Her eyes drifted sideways and the radiance drained out of her expression like someone had pulled a stopper.

Black Fang stood at the edge of the basin.

Arguably the continent’s deadliest assassin was leaning against the rock wall with her blade resting at her hip, observing the scene with the same expression she wore while watching the sun set. Beneath her feet, two Ravenshade officers lay crumpled in the dirt, throats opened so cleanly that the cuts could have been mistaken for natural seams in the skin. She hadn’t broken a sweat.

In her left hand, she held Raika by the back of her collar.

The Brutalizer was straining forward like a leashed animal, feet scraping against the dirt as she tried to claw her way toward the enemies in the distance. Her teeth were bared and a low, continuous growl vibrated through her chest.

“Let me go!” Raika snarled. “Stop holding me back!”

Black Fang’s grip didn’t shift. She didn’t even glance at her disciple. Her dark eyes stayed fixed on Ayame and Quinlan with the patient, knowing calm of an older sister who had been watching the entire time and hadn’t once considered intervening.

Beside her, Orianna stood over another officer’s body with one boot resting on the dead man’s chest. She glanced at Black Fang, then at Ayame, and the smallest smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth.

Ayame’s arms dropped from Quinlan’s neck.

“This bitch…” she muttered under her breath.

Quinlan looked between his samurai and the assassin. Black Fang had been here for the entire fight, positioned at the edge of the kill box with Orianna and Raika, and she’d let Ayame take Reina alone, watching her little sister fight a woman who could have killed her.

“A big sister watched her little sister fight and trusted her to win,” he mused. “Isn’t she nice?”

“Hmph!” Ayame pushed away from his chest and straightened her back, arms folding tight. The glow was gone, replaced by the rigid pride of a woman who had just realized her most impressive moment had an audience she hadn’t accounted for. “My mood is soured.”

Quinlan chuckled and pulled her back against him, wrapping both arms around her from behind. Ayame stiffened.

“Let go of me.”

“No.”

“Quin.”

“You were so cute three seconds ago.”

“I was not cute! I was victorious!” She squirmed against his grip with a scowl that belonged on a cat being held against its will. “Put me down! I’m not- stop hugging me!”

He let her go.

She dropped to the ground and immediately planted her feet, glaring at Black Fang with enough heat to melt through the basin wall. Black Fang’s expression didn’t change. It never did.

‘My ambitious samurai,’ Quinlan thought, catching the faintest pink at the tips of her ears that she’d kill him for noticing, ‘is far too adorable.’

Ayame kept her eyes on Black Fang as she spoke without turning.

“Are you going to…?”

“Yep.”

Quinlan drew the Soul Reaper.

The Abyssal Genesis Physique was a subtle upgrade over his Primordial Breeder Physique.

Or at least that was supposed to be the case.

However, it just kept on giving. ‘Increased potential’ was what the system had called it, and those two words were the most understated description of any ability Quinlan had ever received.

Every time he thought he’d mapped the full extent of what the Abyssal Genesis Physique could do, it revealed another synergy that shouldn’t have existed between abilities that were never designed to work together but did, because the physique treated his body, soul, and powers as a single integrated system and rewrote the rules of what that system could produce.

The latest discovery was perhaps the most beneficial.

His Primordial Villain’s necromantic powers and the Abyssal Genesis Physique had produced a synergy that changed the calculus of every battle his women fought. Girls who carried his Blessed Seed in their wombs, or those who’d consumed the pill equivalent, were now treated by the system as his slayers. He didn’t receive XP contribution from their kills, but…

He could claim their kills’ souls.

Quinlan raised the Soul Reaper above the basin and the saber pulsed with necrotic light.

“[Eternal Damnation].”

The basin answered. Souls ripped free from the scorched earth, spectral wisps torn from the bodies of every officer his girls had slain, streaming upward in ribbons of pale light and funneling into the blade one after another.

<Master.>

The telepathic voice cut through his concentration, sharp and urgent, carrying the controlled calm of someone delivering bad news on a short clock.

<I have an urgent report. She is moving.>

Quinlan’s jaw set. He sheathed the Soul Reaper and the necrotic light faded from the basin.

He’d known this was coming.

…

Queen Morgana Ravenshade flew.

Wind magic carried her above the treetops at a speed that turned the forest below into a green blur, her royal cloak streaming behind her and her hair whipping across her face. Twelve royal guards flanked her in tight formation, their mana signatures burning at full output as they pushed their movement abilities to match their queen’s pace.

She’d ordered the army to follow. Fifty thousand soldiers, the force Tharion Ravenshade sent to Greenvale that she’d linked up with to flush out the rats in the neighboring duchy. The reward for the victor was the rights to the duchy itself, though she only cared about finding the biggest point prize, Devil, also known as the Primordial Villain.