Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1572  Reunited

The fighting died in waves, the way a fire dies when the fuel runs out. The scattered skirmishes between Quinlan's soul army and the Fujimori elite forces stuttered and slowed as the weight of what had gathered on the main field reached the outlying engagements, and one by one, fighters disengaged and pulled back toward their respective sides.

The Fujimori forces withdrew toward Kaede and Elder Chizuru in disciplined columns, their blades still drawn, their eyes still forward. On the opposite end, the soul soldiers fell back toward Quinlan's position in a tide of spectral light, and the women who had been fighting alongside them came with them.

Ayame landed first.

She took one look at Quinlan's condition, at the blood running from beneath his helmet and the stone-and-ice hands hanging at his sides and the puppet queen bleeding beside him, and her expression didn't change.

She turned her back to him and faced the field.

"Sylvaris, Aurora, Kitsara, focus on the defensive perimeter. We can't be flanked on a fight of this level. Everyone else, close formation."

The rest of his girls fell in around her, and the field settled into a silence that was worse than the noise.

Scar was already at his side, looking up at Quinlan.

"Master, I've failed my task."

Quinlan kept his eyes on Alexios as he replied.

"You held an Adamantite team led by a Level 74 fighter at bay for a long time. You've done well."

"…" Scar didn't know if she felt justified in accepting those words.

"Return to your rank. Lead my army to victory, Scar."

Scar held his gaze for a moment, then nodded once and jumped back toward her army without another word.

Then Blossom reached him.

She didn't speak. The dogkin's nose had caught the scent before she'd crossed half the distance, and her blue gaze was already scanning the ground when she arrived. She found the first arm ten meters to his left, half-buried in scorched earth. The second was further out, near the edge of a crater where the lightning had boiled the floodwater.

She picked them up one at a time.

The limbs were cold. Waterlogged and scorched in turns, the flesh discolored where electricity had traveled through tissue that was no longer connected to anything alive. The fingers on the left hand were curled inward and locked there. The right arm had a blackened ring around the bicep where the severance had cauterized itself.

Blossom cradled them against her chest, blonde hair falling across her face as she whimpered with a heavy heart. Seeing her beloved Master hurt like this pained the dogkin more than if she herself had suffered those wounds.

Much more.

She opened her storage ring and placed them inside with the care of a woman handling something far too precious and looked up at Quinlan with an expression that was too bright.

"Hubby."

Vex's voice came from his right. She was bleeding from a gash above her temple and her white ponytail was matted with dirt and someone else's blood, and her red pentagram stare was locked on his stone-and-ice hands with an intensity that bordered on fury.

"Are you okay?"

"Never been better, wifey."

"..." The tattoos along her arms pulsed once, not finding his humor funny in this moment. Her gaze stayed on the prosthetics, on the cracks where lightning still flickered between stone plates, and her voice dropped low enough that only he could hear it. "You know you can always tap into it, right? But you never do… I don't like it."

The curse she'd carved into her own channels. A Hexwitch who spent her life inflicting curses on everyone she fought, and the most devastating one she'd ever cast was on herself - a bridge between her mana, her vitality, and Quinlan's reserves. If he pulled on it, her reserves became his. He could transmit injuries to her, drain her health, or if he bottomed out on mana, he could take hers freely.

But aside from the mana part, he never made use of the curse she gave him as a sign of her love and devotion.

It left her feeling torn. Vex wanted to be the woman who bleeds for the man she loved more than anything, but Quinlan had never outright refused the idea, perhaps not to hurt Vex's feelings, but he'd made it clear with his actions how he felt about having her bleed in his stead.

He'd take on all the pain in the world if he could, so that his women were in perfect health.

Quinlan didn't respond immediately.

His red gaze stayed fixed on Alexios while the silence stretched for two heartbeats.

"I know."

Vex exhaled and did not push further.

Then Felicity stepped forward.

The youngest princess of the Vraven Kingdom stood at Quinlan's flank and looked across the ruined field at the puppet her mother had become. Morgana's head hung at the wrong angle. Blood dripped from her chin in a steady rhythm. Her expression held nothing.

Felicity's purple hair was dusty and her cheeks muddy, making it clear she'd face planted somewhere in the battle, possibly pushed from behind by someone to help her dodge a projectile before it was too late.

She looked at the woman with a quiet expression that was old for her age. She didn't cry nor look at Quinlan with accusation or resentment.

She just watched her mother bleed and breathe in shallow rattles, and her small shoulders carried the weight of a girl who had already made her choice and wasn't going to unmake it now.

From the opposite side, a voice cut through the silence.

"Felicity?!"

Elisabeth the Dawn Breaker had been staring at the three Undead Lords since her arrival.

But now, her gaze had swept across Quinlan's formation as the two sides settled momentarily.

Then she found her little sister standing beside the Primordial Villain, and the composure cracked.

"Felicity!" The name came out sharp enough to turn heads on both sides of the field. "What are you- get over here! Now!"

Felicity turned to face her older sister across the divide. The two princesses of Vraven looked at each other, one in cracked golden armor with divine light bleeding from every joint, the other in dusty armor and dirt on her cheeks.

Felicity planted both feet and crossed her arms.

"No!"

"This is not a discussion! Move! You're on the side of undead monsters and the man recognized as the sole true Necromancer!"

Archlich Vozen's fury flared.

"The sole Necromancer?!" Necromantic energy erupted from the archlich's frame in a wave that cracked the ground beneath him. "You insolent wretch! We have walked this world for millennia before that boy ever drew breath! The Covenant of Eternity has commanded legions of the dead since before your kingdom was DIRT!"

The Drowned King's barnacle-crusted armor groaned as he stepped forward. "We are the lords of death, the original masters!"

He was still ranting when Felicity shouted over him.

"I said no!"

The stomp that accompanied the second refusal sent a small puff of dust up from the scorched earth.

Elisabeth stared. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. She looked at Morgana, then at Felicity, then at Quinlan, then back at Felicity, and the sequence of revelations playing across her face would have been comical if the situation weren't so catastrophic.

Her little sister had defected. Her mother was a puppet. And she had missed all of it because she'd been underground killing liches.