Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1490  So Much More

Quinlan watched from above the cloud line as dozens of bombards discharged in rolling sequence, each impact blooming white-gold against the shell. The barrier warped inward at each contact point, ripples chasing ripples, the lattice struggling to redistribute before the next round landed.

The dwarves were going all out.

Even from up here, the chanting reached him. That deep, guttural drone that vibrated through the air and settled into his bones. He'd heard it at the previous sieges, but never this loud. Never with this many voices. They were singing the funeral hymn. The one they only broke out when they meant to leave nothing standing.

Quinlan tried very hard to remain loyal to his elven lovers, who would collectively disown him if he expressed even a shred of admiration for dwarven culture.

But he had to admit.

Those shorties were damn cool sometimes.

He'd keep that thought to himself. Seraphiel had ears that could hear a compliment about dwarves from three miles away, and the lecture would last longer than the siege. Kaelira, although a bit shy, was much worse when it came to this topic. Once she was more comfortable speaking her mind to him, Quinlan knew he'd get an earful.

His gaze shifted from the artillery to the barrier, and he sighed.

Barriers.

Every settlement. Every city. Every fortress in this kingdom hid behind the same magic, and every single time, the process was the same. Wait for the dwarves to grind it down. Wait for the covenant to tunnel beneath it. Wait for the cracks to form. Then walk in and clean up.

He was getting sick of it.

'Barriers everywhere,' he thought. 'I'm starting to develop an allergy.'

A voice curled through his mind like smoke.

<My, my. Is my adorable Little Ruin pouting?>

Nyxara.

The demoness spoke from deep inside his soul realm, her tone carrying the lazy amusement of someone watching entertainment from a very comfortable seat. Knowing her, she was probably sprawled across his throne with her legs draped over the armrest, picking at her nails.

<You have no choice but to sit and wait like a good boy, unless you think you can bring down the barrier of a county capital all by yourself. Not even this Morgana girl could manage that, I bet~>

She was fishing.

Quinlan didn't bite.

<Hmm?> Nyxara pressed. <Nothing? No bravado? No 'watch me'?>

He continued evaluating.

A big city. Over a hundred thousand residents. That meant a proportionally large barrier crystal, proportionally more mages feeding it, proportionally thicker shell density. The math scaled linearly. Bigger city, stronger barrier.

But did any of that truly matter?

At least as far as the barrier itself was concerned.

A barrier was a barrier. It was mana shaped into a structure and held in place by continuous input. The crystal was a focal point. The mages were the fuel. The shell was the product. The size of the city determined how much fuel was needed, but the fundamental mechanics were identical whether the barrier protected a border town of two thousand or a county capital of a hundred thousand.

The same mana. The same structure. The same principles.

Quinlan's eyes traced the dome.

The barrier was a shell. It covered the entire city, wall to wall, curving overhead in an arc that met at an apex high above the central square. The dwarven bombardment was hammering the eastern and southern faces. Every impact forced the lattice to redistribute mana toward the stress points, pulling resources from the areas that weren't under fire to reinforce the areas that were.

The front face was thick with it. Dense. Bright where the shells struck.

Yet other parts of the dome had nothing hitting it.

<The mages inside are focused on the bombardment zones,> he mused. <This is the same tune I've seen played many times.>

<Oh?> Nyxara's voice drifted through, quieter now. Less teasing. <Go on.>

<A bigger city means a bigger dome. A bigger dome means more surface area. More surface area means the mana is spread thinner per square meter, even with more mages feeding it. The dwarves compensate for that by grinding the whole front face with sustained bombardment. Brute force over time.>

He'd asked the dwarves about this multiple times, be they Thorga, the many engineers, or the artillery crews. The latter of the two loved to talk at length about their craft, feeling extremely proud of the dwarven war machine.

The answer was always the same.

They didn't have the firepower to punch through a barrier in a single strike. Their technology could grind one down over hours, days, sometimes weeks, but a clean breach in one blow was beyond them.

If it wasn't, they would have conquered the Continent of Iskaris a long time ago.

So they brute-forced it. Sustained bombardment. Rolling cadence. Pressure over time. It worked. It always worked, eventually.

But the cost was immense expenditure of resources, as they've been preparing for this invasion for literal centuries. Furthermore, time itself was costly. If a siege lasted hours, let alone weeks, it was time spent vulnerable, time spent not advancing the war further.

He understood it all.

But Quinlan couldn't help but wonder.

Was there a way for him? Specifically for him?

The demonic tattoos along his arms flared.

Heat bloomed beneath his skin, spreading from the markings in slow, rolling waves. Then he felt her. Arms sliding around his chest from behind. Fingers lacing together over his heart. The press of a body against his back, warm and impossibly real, as if she were standing right there in the open sky with him.

Despite having Synchra wrapped around his whole body in a heavy, protective layer, it felt as though the demon's touch was ignoring all that mass.

Her lips found his ear.

<Little Ruin...>

Nyxara's whisper traveled through him like a current, low and intimate. The exact same voice she used when they were tangled together in the bed, when her breath was hot against his neck, and her nails traced lines down his spine.

<You're so much more than you seem to realize...>

A jolt of electricity surged through his body. It raced from the base of his skull down through his chest, his arms, his fingertips. Every marking on his skin lit up at once, crimson lines burning bright against the black armor, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

<You must remember what you've become,> she breathed. <What we've become.>

Her presence faded. The warmth withdrew. The arms around his chest dissolved like smoke, leaving only the memory of contact and the electric hum still singing through his veins.

Quinlan raised his hand, examining his dark gauntlet.

He already knew.

He'd known since the moment he opened his eyes after the trial.

The Abyssal Genesis Physique.

The primordial evolution that had rewritten him from the inside out. New pathways. New reserves. New capabilities that he hadn't tested properly yet.

Below him, the dwarven funeral hymn continued its relentless drone. Shells struck the barrier in blooming flashes of gold. A hundred thousand people hid behind a wall of mana and prayed to a goddess who would not take sides.

Quinlan closed his fist.

It was time to harvest the fruits of his evolution.