Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1368  Offended

Its agitation worsened as it spoke. The skin along its neck split further, pulling away from the bone. Gray ichor seeped where muscle should have been. Mana leaked erratically from its frame.

"We paid for this conquest with our minions, and now the spoils are gone! You stole from us. From the Covenant. From Elvardia."

Quinlan shrugged, dismissing the fervent accusations with his body language alone.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I was fighting inside Greyhaven, facing mighty enemies. There was an archmage of the wind element who didn't go down easily, and he wasn't alone."

The lich's jaw creaked as it ground tighter.

Quinlan went on, unhurried. "If slave quarters were destroyed during that chaos, it's possible they got caught in the crossfire. Or maybe they weren't destroyed by me at all. Elvardian cannon fire did a lot of structural damage once the barrier fell."

The undead hissed, a wet, broken sound tearing from its throat. Mana spiked around it, unstable and ugly.

The dwarven commander's eyes narrowed.

Quinlan met both their glares without flinching. His expression remained neutral, bordering on bored.

All of the frothing monster's accusations were true, down to the letter.

He had robbed them blind.

Elves. Dwarves. Beastkin. Humans. He transferred many of them from Greyhaven to Miri Town.

Quinlan did it for multiple reasons. First, his forces would become stronger, his town gaining a lot of extremely useful members. He never wanted Miri Town to become a human supremacist settlement.

The new additions would allow him to test many theories and ideas of governance in the hopes that the races could do more than grudging cooperation when their safety or futures were threatened.

Second, Elvardia would not swell its numbers by conscripting freed slaves into service, either as combatants or supports, and, third, the Covenant of Eternity would not get fresh bodies to swell its ranks.

Lastly, ignoring the gains and losses of his actions, he simply did not wish to see people suffer through the horrors that would await them should the undead get their hands on them.

Quinlan had no intention of letting them grow stronger.

And yet, despite all his crimes against his newest allies…

They had nothing.

No witnesses. No traces that pointed clearly at him. He had made sure of that. His girls had been deployed wide, watching angles, watching streets, warning him whenever anyone drew close. Furthermore, every slave house had been destroyed with controlled force. Enough to erase evidence, but not enough to leave behind the kind of devastation only he could produce.

No signature. No pattern. Just rubble that could be blamed on bombs, spells, or the chaos of siege warfare.

The lich knew it.

That was the worst part.

Its clawed hand trembled at its side, rage leaking from it in waves. But it did not strike. That was when Quinlan's expression turned hostile, offended, and infuriated.

The air around him tightened, pressure building in a way that made nearby soldiers shift their footing without understanding why. Mana crawled along the seams of his armor, restrained only by intent.

He took a single step toward the lich.

"I put my life on the line on this day. So did my stalwart allies. So did the women I love with all my heart." His gaze swept the plaza once, taking in the sight of those who stood behind him, before locking back onto the lich. "We tore the city open. We broke its backbone. You're standing in a victory where almost no allied lives were lost because of our involvement."

"No lives?!" the undead rasped. "Maybe we didn't lose many lives, but we certainly lost many dead!"

"The dead can be raised again easily by us necromancers, no?"

Quinlan lifted one hand.

The motion was small, almost careless.

"[Awaken]."

The world answered his call.

Shadows folded inward, then split apart as figures stepped free of the air itself. One by one, his defeated and slain elite souls took form behind him. The destroyed armor was whole again. Broken weapons intact, as if new. Eyes lit with familiar, obedient light. They stood in silence, aligned without being told, as solid as they had been before their fall.

The plaza shifted.

Several mages took an instinctive step back. A few soldiers swallowed with their grips tightening on hammers that suddenly felt small.

The lich froze.

Its skull tilted, jaw parting a fraction. The haze around it thickened, then pulled tight.

No circles. No preparation. No delay.

One word.

It understood what it was seeing, and that understanding cut deep.

Condescension. An extreme amount of it. The lich knew that Quinlan knew. He was merely flexing his supremacy as a necromancer.

Their kind spent years below ground. Careful stitching, careful infusion, careful calibration so a construct would not tear itself apart the moment it stood.

Quinlan had bypassed all of it.

Not even a chant.

Not even a gesture worth calling one.

Quinlan then ignored the frothing creature and turned his head.

His eyes snapped to the dwarven commander with heat flashing through them.

"After going out of my way to take risks I didn't have to in order to provide great first impressions to my new allies, I hoped to work along with them for a long time, forming strong ties. I'm being treated like a common thief because a Corpse Animator is unhappy with his accounting."

"Tell me," Quinlan said, each word pressed flat and hard. "Does Elvardia agree with this sentiment? Am I being accused of thievery?"

The commander did not answer right away.

He studied Quinlan in silence, eyes moving from his clenched fists to the figures standing behind him. Several heartbeats passed.

Then the dwarf exhaled through his nose.

"Elvardia has made no such accusation. Wars are messy business. Sieges even more so. Losses happen. Assets disappear. That is the nature of conquest."

The lich went rigid.

The gray haze around its skull dimmed, pulling inward as its posture stiffened. Whatever fury had been boiling there cooled into something colder and sharper.

Quinlan felt it and nearly smiled.

Instead, he inclined his head once.

"I understand. You have a long day ahead of you securing Greyhaven. I won't get in your way. Instead, I ask that you make a call to your fellow commanders. See if there's another siege that could use our help."

"Won't get in my way, he says… Bah!" The dwarf grumbled something barely audible under his breath, already reaching for the communication artifact at his belt. A low glow flared as he activated it, barking short, clipped words into the rune-bound device.

Moments later, Quinlan and his group were airborne, cutting through the sky in a sharp arc of motion. The city shrank beneath them with Greyhaven's broken walls and rising fortifications blurring into the distance.

Wind roared past his armor.

Quinlan summoned his system interface. The familiar glow bloomed before his eyes, numbers ticking upward at a pace that made his lips curve.

Level 50.

Soon.

So incredibly soon.

He could already taste it.

The Primordial Villain closed the window and glanced back, taking in the tight formation behind him. Armor gleamed in the light. Cloaks snapped in the wind. Every one of them held steady in the air, eyes fixed on him, waiting.

Quinlan did not waste time.

"We're not stopping this momentum until I hit level fifty! After that, I'm taking you with me. It's about damn time I introduced you to my mothers and conducted my talk with Lilyanna."

For a breath, no one spoke.

Then, shoulders straightened. Hands clenched around weapons from barely held restraint. Several of them exchanged quick looks, smiling excitedly at one another.

With his soul realm, they could follow him beyond the threshold.

Beyond the world.

To the primordial dimension.

A place none of them had ever been allowed to step into. A place where the first of their kind still existed. The roots of their bloodlines. The origin of everything they were.

The progenitors.

They will be the first mortals of Thalorind to visit the primordials in their private dimension!

It was such an extreme privilege that it was hard to put into words what the girls felt in this moment.

But one thing was certain.

That promise settled into the group like a spark dropped into dry kindling. They were incredibly eager.

Quinlan caught it all from the corner of his eye and let a short grin show.

Then he faced forward.

Mana surged through his frame, pressure snapping outward as he pushed harder. The air screamed as their speed climbed, the clouds parting ahead of them as if cut open. The city behind vanished completely, replaced by distant smoke and the faint outline of another battlefield waiting to be broken.

They became a streak across the sky.

And Quinlan leaned into it.

Today was the day.

It was time to ascend.