Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1538  Thrumming Power

Quinlan dropped altitude and hit the Ravenshade rear lines like a natural disaster.

Lightning came first.

He stretched his hand toward a supply column and felt the Abyssal Genesis Physique pulse through his bones, a deep resonance that hummed in every cell, the conduit that bridged his body to elemental forces that predated civilization. The lightning answered, a branching cascade that split across the column in a web of white-blue fury and turned thirty soldiers and two supply wagons into charred wreckage in under a second.

He banked left and froze the next regiment mid-charge.

Ice erupted from the ground beneath their feet and climbed their legs, their torsos, their screaming mouths, a flash-freeze that locked six hundred men in crystalline tombs before the officers in the back ranks could shout a warning. The ice cracked and groaned as bodies tried to move inside it, but the cold was absolute.

He didn't slow down.

A war-mage on horseback swung his staff skyward and launched a fire bolt at Quinlan's back. Quinlan felt the heat coming, pulled the fire apart mid-flight without looking, and sent a magma fist back down the trajectory. The mage threw up a barrier. The barrier held for about half a second before the superheated rock punched through it and turned both mage and horse into a smoking crater.

The Abyssal Genesis Physique sang in his chest, a furnace-warmth that radiated outward through his limbs every time he switched elements. Basic elements to ice to lightning to magma and back again, each transition seamless, each manipulation answering his intent before the thought had fully formed. This was what Manipulation Stage meant. The deviant elements had become extensions of his body, as natural as flexing his fingers, and the battlefield below him was learning that lesson in real time.

He carved a burning line through a flanking column with a sweep of magma that melted armor and flesh indiscriminately, pivoted in the air, froze the reinforcements rushing to fill the gap, then called lightning down on the frozen mass and shattered it. The detonation sent ice shrapnel through the surrounding ranks like grapeshot.

Soldiers scattered and officers screamed orders while mages redirected their barriers inward, trying to protect their own lines from a threat they couldn't pin down because Quinlan moved faster than their eyes could track, a single figure cutting across the sky at speeds that left their targeting spells chasing afterimages.

He was pruning.

Then the first real hit came.

"[Chains of War]!"

Golden chains snapped up from below and lashed around his arms, his torso, his legs, pulling taut with a force that jerked him to a halt in midair. Quinlan looked down and found a woman in ornate plate armor with a general's insignia, both hands raised, mana pouring off her in visible waves as she anchored the binding spell.

Synchra reacted before he did.

Red flames blazed across the surface of his Anima armor, racing along the points where the golden chains made contact and eating into the binding mana like acid. The links dimmed where the fire touched them, hairline fractures spreading through the golden light as Synchra converted the spell's energy into heat.

But the chains held.

Cracked and flickering, weakened at every contact point, but still pulling at his arms with the stubborn grip of a caster who was pouring serious mana into the binding. This woman was strong enough that even Synchra's interference only degraded her spell rather than destroying it.

"[Skypiercer Lance]!"

A concentrated beam of condensed wind magic punched through the space where his chest had been a heartbeat ago. He twisted, but the chains dragging at his arms turned a clean dodge into a partial one and the lance grazed his shoulder hard enough to crack the black armor plating.

"[Hundred Falling Stars]!"

A second general, this one an older man with a scarred face and a staff that glowed with stored mana, launched a volley of arcane projectiles that filled the sky around Quinlan in a constellation of killing light.

He dodged most of them, despite the chain binding him. Deflected three with wind manipulation. Took two square in the back because Synchra was busy eating through the chains and couldn't fully shield him at the same time.

The hits rattled his bones and forced a grunt through his teeth.

Quinlan rolled his shoulder where the [Skypiercer Lance] had cracked his plating and looked down at the old man.

"A Hundred Falling Stars, you say?"

He raised both arms above his head.

The chains fought him every centimeter. The woman's mana flared below as she felt the resistance shift, felt him pushing against her binding instead of trying to break it, and her eyes snapped upward to the space above his outstretched hands where magma was gathering in a roiling mass that grew and grew.

She understood instantly.

"[Chains of War: Reinforce]!"

Fresh mana surged through the golden links, flooding the fractures Synchra had burned into them and pushing new life into the binding. The chains brightened, tightened, and Quinlan's arms slowed as the reinforced spell hauled against his shoulders with twice the original force. Above him, the magma formation wavered, chunks of molten rock losing cohesion at the edges as his concentration split between holding a hundred meteors in the air and fighting the woman trying to drag his arms back down.

The mass split, shaped itself, and separated into blazing chunks of molten rock that hung suspended against the smoke-stained sky like a second constellation, each one the size of a carriage, trailing fire and superheated gas. But they wobbled. The formation was unsteady, his arms shaking against the chains, and she was pouring everything she had into keeping them there.

'Ice.'

Quinlan formed thin layers of condensed frost directly beneath the chains and above his armor, sliding the ice into the gap between binding and body. The chains were gripping ice now instead of him, and he could feel the woman's confusion ripple through the mana link as her spell's grip shifted to a surface she couldn't account for.

He expanded the ice outward.

Synchra burned from beneath, her flames coexisting with the ice rather than fighting it. His arms pushed against the loosening grip with raw physical strength that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with a body forged in the primordial realm.

The chain woman bared her teeth as the feedback hit her, the golden chains cracking along every frozen contact point as three forces worked against her simultaneously. She held for one second. Two.

The chains shattered.

Golden fragments scattered across the sky and Quinlan's arms locked into position overhead. The magma formation stabilized instantly, a hundred burning meteors snapping into perfect stillness above the Primordial Villain's outstretched hands.

The old general with the scarred face and the glowing staff stared up at the formation. His volley of arcane stars had been impressive. This dwarfed it. The sheer volume of mana required to hold that much liquefied rock in suspension, shape it, and keep it from falling under its own weight should have been beyond any single caster on this field.

"Hargrieve! Defend yourself, now!" she screamed at the old man, already trying to re-form her chains. "He's going to drop them on you!"

General Hargrieve didn't move.

His staff arm lowered to his side as his scarred face tilted upward, the light from a hundred magma meteors reflected in his old eyes.

"What magnificent power you wield, young man…" he whispered. "O' greatest mage of this era, I accept my fate as your eternal soldier."

"HARGRIEVE! NO!"

Quinlan dropped his arms.