Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1476  News

High above the chaos of Miri Town, the noise fell away.

Wind tugged at their clothes. The sun was warm. Below them, the town sprawled in its beautiful mess of tents and timber and shouting dwarves, but up here, none of it reached them.

Jasmine's arms were locked around his neck.

She squeezed. Hard. Her face buried into his chest plate, and a sound left her that was half laugh, half squeal, muffled against his armor. Her body pressed flush against him, feet dangling over nothing, and she didn't care. She rubbed her cheek against his chest like a cat marking territory, nuzzling into the gap between his collar and jaw where the armor gave way to skin.

"You're back!" she breathed. "You're back, you're back, you're back!!!"

Her fingers curled into the fabric at his shoulders. She pulled herself higher, squeezed tighter, and buried her nose against his neck.

Quinlan grinned. "Wasn't it just three hours for you?"

Jasmine pulled back.

She looked up at him with blue eyes that held zero patience for that question. Her hands stayed locked behind his neck, her body still pressed against his, and the warmth in her expression turned pointed.

"Maybe for me… But not for you. Isn't that right? For all I know, you underwent a trial lasting decades. You could've changed drastically!"

Her gaze moved across his face. Searching. Cataloguing. Making sure every feature she remembered was still where she'd left it.

Then her eyes locked onto his.

"I mean, just look at your new eyes. What's up with that? Where did the shifting elements go?"

"I kinda conquered a slutty succubus in bed, made her scream in utter ecstasy, and she just submitted… Right now she's kinda ingrained into my very existence, having chosen me as her Harbinger of Ruin..."

Jasmine stared at him.

"Quin. What the fuck."

Her voice was flat. Her expression was flatter. The warmth that had been radiating off her moments ago dropped by several degrees, and the arms around his neck, while still holding on, communicated a very different energy than before.

Cold girlfriend mode. Activated.

Quinlan's grin faded. His expression shifted, and when he spoke again, the humor was gone. "Yes, I know. I'm sorry, Jasmine. Your opinion wasn't asked, and I slept with a wo-"

A finger pressed against his lips.

Her eyes held his without wavering, and the cold had melted into something else entirely. She looked at him the way a woman looked at a man when she needed one answer and one answer only.

"Do you still love me?"

Quinlan paused.

Then he smiled.

"I do."

Zero hesitation.

Jasmine's face transformed.

The tension left her jaw. Her eyes softened. The corners of her mouth curved upward into something so pure and radiant that it made the sunlight behind her look like it was trying too hard.

"Then I forgive you," she said.

Quinlan looked at that smile and felt, with complete sincerity, like the luckiest bastard on the continent.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead while his hand cradled the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair, and he held the kiss for a long moment.

Then he pulled back with a grin.

"I have demonic tattoos underneath the armor, too. I'll show you later tonight."

Jasmine's cheeks colored. Her eyes dropped to his chest, then snapped back up. The blush spread to her ears.

"...I'll examine them very carefully," she murmured.

A beat passed.

"And where's this demonic woman?" Jasmine asked, straightening her spine and smoothing her hair. "Or did she turn into the tattoos?"

"Kinda. You'll have to ask her for the specifics. She's inside my soul realm, currently teaching Mimi how to do her nails and stuff."

Jasmine blinked.

"What."

"Yeah... I know."

Her mouth opened. Closed. She visibly decided that this rabbit hole could wait.

"Okay!" Jasmine clapped her hands together, kissed him wholeheartedly, and just like that, the warmth was back at full force. Her eyes sparkled. Her smile stretched wide. "I won't hound you. For now." She pointed downward with all the enthusiasm of a woman who had spent way too many sleepless hours wrangling an entire town into shape and was extremely proud of the results. "Instead, let me show you our Miri Town!"

Jasmine pulled him downward.

Well, tried to.

She tugged at his hand with both of hers, feet dangling in open air, leveraging her entire body weight against an arm that didn't budge. It was rather cute, considering she had no business flying in the skies in the first place.

Quinlan obliged. He let his woman dictate the direction with a perpetual grin on his face.

Jasmine lacked the killer instinct. She had no innate desire to shed the blood of her enemies, no thrill at the sound of clashing steel, no hunger for the battlefield. In a harem full of women who could end lives with a flick of their wrists, she was the odd one out.

And yet her hold on Quinlan was immense.

Because Jasmine was bloodthirsty. Just not in the way the others were.

She didn't crave conquest. She craved growth. Margins. Efficiency. The satisfaction of a ledger that balanced perfectly, of a supply chain that moved without friction, of a deal struck so cleanly that both parties walked away convinced they'd won while she pocketed the real profit.

The Tyrant of Commerce.

She hadn't earned that name by being gentle with her competitors.

Where Ayame drew her katana, Jasmine drew her pen. Where Vex hexed her enemies into submission, Jasmine buried hers under contracts so ironclad they wept at the clauses. The bloodlust was the same. The arena was different.

And now Quinlan had pulled her out of that arena entirely and dropped her into one she'd never trained for. Governor. Administrator of an entire settlement. A role she had no formal qualifications for, no education in governance, no experience managing anything larger than a merchant operation.

Yet she was thriving.

One look at Miri Town made that obvious. The infrastructure wasn't perfect, and the chaos was real. But beneath the noise and the construction dust and the shouting dwarves and screeching elves, there was a system. Supply lines existed. Work crews had assignments. Housing priority lists were being followed. Disputes were being resolved before they turned violent.

That was Jasmine.

She had taken the same instincts that made her a terror in the marketplace and applied them to city-building, and the results spoke louder than any qualification ever could. She was treating Miri Town like the most ambitious deal of her life, and every new block of housing, every functioning well, every fed citizen was a line item in the black.

The pride on her face as she looked down at the sprawl below them was unmistakable. Her eyes moved across the rooftops and construction sites, and market stalls with the warm, possessive satisfaction of a woman watching her greatest work take shape in real time.

Quinlan watched her watch her town.

'I made the right call,' he thought.

They descended together, her hand in his, wind peeling away as the noise of Miri Town rose to meet them. She landed first. He landed beside her. Her fingers stayed intertwined with his; she didn't let go.

She had no intention of letting go.