Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1335  A Quiet Punch

"[Fist of Annihilation]!"

The impact didn't explode. It crushed.

The barrier dented inward as if struck by two falling stars, light warping around the points of contact.

In front of Orianna, the sky bloomed.

A massive spectral blossom unfolded above the barrier, layered petals made of razor-edged mana spiraling outward before slamming down as one. Roots of light speared into the surface, spreading fractures like veins beneath glass.

From the flanks, blades sang.

Ayame cut once. Clean. Perfect. A line carved so precisely that the barrier didn't react at first.

Then the light along the cut split apart.

Vex followed with her strike, sliding into the barrier, matching up with Ayame's cut and widening it with surgical precision.

Black Fang was the only one who paused for a mere millisecond, letting the others strike first. This allowed her to see the pattern of the barrier, to see its most pronounced weakness.

Her purple eyes snapped all over the place, looking for her prey with brutal calm despite knowing she was in grave danger.

'There.'

Once the Venomborne Terror located what she was looking for, she swung.

It passed through resistance that had already been compromised. The cut went deeper, truer. The barrier screamed as the line spread faster than it could heal.

And then Quinlan dropped.

Straight down, head first.

The dwarven volley screamed upward in the form of thousands of glowing projectiles that tore through the sky, exploding right toward his allies.

Quinlan extended both arms downward.

Not to block, but to seize.

The wind shrieked as it reversed. With invisible force wrapped around every woman at once, he yanked them backward as soon as their strikes landed. Quinlan's teeth clenched. Veins stood out along his neck and forearms from the sheer effort his battle against gravity demanded. His teeth ground together as he grunted, "Ghh…" But he didn't give up.

With a final pull, he hauled them up, higher, faster, ripping them clear of the kill zone.

The shells passed through where they had been an instant earlier.

Just now, the ladies' efforts became clear.

The barrier convulsed.

Light surged, collapsed, surged again. Cracks raced across its entire surface this time, not contained, not localized. The spell strained to hold together under pressure it had never been designed to take.

Quinlan had set his allies up in a way that the whole barrier would be struck at once. But the dwarves were different; they concentrated their attacks together, attacking only from one angle.

They did this because the settlement was too wide; encircling it would've thinned their siege weaponry too far.

But now… The ladies' strikes had a resounding effect, building on top of what the dwarven artillery had already achieved.

Then the dwarven volley struck.

The impact slammed into the almost broken shell.

The barrier bowed inward, but it did not fall.

However, it came terrifyingly close.

'A border town, set up to be the first bastion of defense against the invading dwarven military. This barrier is truly something else…' Quinlan thought inwardly.

The barrier was still there.

Quinlan rolled his shoulders once.

His right fist drew back.

Muscle gathered along his arm in dense layers, not swelling wildly but tightening as if every fiber had been braided together and pulled taut by invisible hands. The skin along his forearm stretched smooth, veins pressing up beneath it like cords pinned from wrist to elbow. His shoulder locked into place with a dull, internal pressure. The joints settled as bone and sinew aligned for impact.

This was not mortal exertion.

His primordial constitution answered the call for action in full.

Heat spread outward from his spine, heavy and absolute. His back broadened by a fraction as stabilizing muscle engaged across his shoulders and down his ribs, locking his frame into something closer to a weapon mount than a human body. Breath drew deep into his lungs and stayed there, ribs resisting the urge to move, core braced so tightly it felt as if his organs had been packed in stone.

The air around his fist began to resist him.

Not from magic yet, but from pressure. From mass. From the simple fact that the space he occupied was being forced to acknowledge him.

Quinlan's fingers curled slowly, each joint sealing into place with control. His knuckles aligned. His wrist stopped shaking in the air entirely. What little sway remained in his body vanished, replaced by stillness so complete it looked unnatural for the mortal eye.

Both the watching elves and dwarves knew that this bodily constitution, this control over oneself, should not be possible.

But Quinlan was a living anomaly for a good reason.

Only now did power, true power, begin to gather.

"[Elemental Stance: Tide]," Quinlan called under his breath. His Harbinger of Aeons class allowed him to switch between four stances, each boosting different aspects of combat. Tide boosted Magic.

Something changed.

The air around him no longer moved as scattered currents. It began to circulate, drawn inward. Pressure built, not outward, not violent, but contained. Focused.

Wind wrapped his arm first, tight and spiraled, compressing space around his fist. Water followed, drawn from the moisture in the air, forming a dense, unseen mass that clung to his knuckles and forearm, heavy and cold. Earth answered next. However, this was not a stone pulled from the ground, but weight, gravity, density, the sense of mass that made every movement deliberate. Fire came last. This was not the wildly flaring kind of flame, but layered through the rest using Quinlan's established mastery over the four elements, which required him to have the ability to balance them perfectly, ensuring not one overpowered the other.

In this manner, heat threaded between elements akin to his veins through his muscles.

Four forces. One motion.

For a heartbeat, he remembered Zhenwu.

The stance drills. The corrections. A staff tapping his wrist when his balance was off by a fraction. The voice that had told him power was meaningless if it scattered before impact.

Quinlan exhaled.

Then he punched.

The strike did not explode.

There was no expanding wave, no burst that swallowed the sky. His fist simply crossed the space between him and the barrier, driven by everything he had pulled together.

When it hit, the barrier shattered.

The structure failed; the spell unraveled along the lines his allies had carved, fractures racing outward in every direction at once.

A sound rolled across the battlefield. It was deep… and short. Final.

The barrier broke into a billion useless motes of light, dissolving long before they could touch the ground.

Below, dwarves were shaken to their very core.

Some dropped tools. Others staggered back from their cannons and fell to their backs, while some merely stood with their hands raised without realizing it.

"What in the forge was that?!" someone shouted.

"That was one punch!"

"This can't be real!" An elf with her bow drawn cried. Despite this development greatly favoring her nation, she was on the brink of tears from the sheer terror that assaulted her brain.

"How much power must he have compressed into a single strike?! I can't even begin to calculate it!" A dwarf with glasses screamed while scribbling lines on his notepad, but soon, it all became nonsense as math failed the man.

The dwarven general stood still.

Then he laughed, low and rough inside his helm.

"I'll be damned… I suppose King Ragnar will be happy to hear that the rumors don't seem to be exaggerating…" he muttered. Then he lifted his arm to his old heart, which had not felt true excitement in a long time, having experienced all this life had to offer, he thought.

But in this moment, his heart was beating with wild rhythm, excited by what he was seeing. Then he squinted his eyes as he added, "Maybe those rumors don't even do him justice…"

Above the defenseless town, Quinlan turned.

With his back to the ground, he looked at the women clustered above him, high in the air. Quinlan clenched his fist once, then opened it again.

The wind answered.

Currents reached out and locked onto familiar shapes high in the sky. One by one, his grip reformed around his allies, and once again pulled them toward him, now directly leading them to the defenseless settlement.

As he stared into their expressions, all showing their pride, their joy, their excitement from what they'd just achieved, Quinlan grinned.

"Ladies."

His expression deepened, matched by that of his girls. "Show no mercy."

The air dropped.

Together, they descended.