Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1573  Continental Face-Off

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

"Father," Elisabeth began without looking away from Felicity. Her voice had gone flat in the way that voices go flat when the alternative is screaming. "Why is Felicity standing over there?"

Alexios did not answer.

Felicity did it for him.

"Where do I even begin?" She held up her hand and started counting on her fingers. "Mother is a raving lunatic, a mad bitch who cares more about her elements than her own children. The kingdom is rotten from the inside out. The three nations have been slaughtering each other for ages over scraps of territory that don't even matter. Instead of treating elves and beastkin like people we could actually work with, we enslave them and call it diplomacy." A fifth finger went up. "And you want to know the main reason why I'm standing over here instead of over there?"

"Because he's a good man." Her voice softened for a moment before the fire came back. "But we've had plenty of good men, haven't we? Father is a good man. He wants what's best for his people. He's given nine hundred years of his life to this kingdom, and I love him for it."

She swallowed.

"But Father is just a man. A very strong, very stubborn man sitting on a very old throne, doing the same things that every king before him did." Her purple gaze swept across both sides of the field. "Quinlan is not a man but a primordial force of nature. He is the only person on this entire continent who can actually break the cycle and bring about something real, not just another century of border wars and slave markets and three nations pretending the other two don't deserve to exist."

She pointed at Quinlan without looking at him.

"He's the only shot this continent has at true prosperity, and I refuse to stand on the side that's trying to kill him."

Her voice carried across the quiet field.

"You're standing on the side of the old world, Father. You too, Elisabeth." Her chin lifted. "Even the Goddess herself has started to like him. What does that tell you?"

Elisabeth went wide-eyed.

"The Goddess?! You have lost your mind. You need to come home immediately and be properly re-educated, because this…" She gestured at the entirety of Quinlan's formation, the undead, the puppet queen, the soul army. "…this is not something a princess of Vraven stands beside!"

"Well, this princess of Vraven does! And she'd much rather give up her princess status than her beliefs!"

Alexios spoke.

"Elisabeth." One word. Low and final. "Focus."

The Dawn Breaker's mouth closed. The divine radiance pulsing through her armor flared once, and the effort it took her to swallow the rest of what she wanted to say was visible in every line of her body. She turned back toward the Undead Lords and the fury rolling off her had nowhere to go.

Alexios looked at his youngest daughter.

Felicity looked back.

The battlefield, the blood, the formations and the armies and the dead, all of it fell away for a moment that belonged only to a father and the child he had raised. His expression was not anger or betrayal. Rather, it was something far more complicated than any of those things, something that lived in the space between a man who loved his daughter and a king who was bound by ancestral duties and weights.

Felicity's expression matched his. She loved her father. She did not regret where she stood, and she would not move from this spot. Both of those things were true at the same time and neither one made the other easier.

Neither spoke.

Golden light pulsed around the king's frame as the kingdom's healers poured mana into the wounds Myrasyn's spells had carved through his armor. The king stood still with his focus fixed on one point.

Quinlan.

On the other side, Seraphiel landed behind the Primordial Villain and her Dawnbringer radiance flared before her boots touched the earth. She took one look at the blood pouring from beneath his helmet and the state of his prosthetic hands and the way [Synchra]'s crimson plating was cracked in three places, and the cheeky smile that usually lived on her face was nowhere to be found.

"Hold still, Quin..."

Her hands came up and golden light bloomed between her palms, warm and steady, flooding across Quinlan's frame in a wave that sank through the gaps in his armor and found the damage beneath.

Quinlan's stare stayed on Alexios. The Warrior King's stayed on him.

Two men standing in pools of their own blood while healers repaired the damage they'd done to each other, and both of them understood the same arithmetic.

Every second of healing they allowed the other was a mistake. And both men were convinced they could bear the pain longer than the man across the divide.

Alexios had millennia of war carved into his body. He had fought with broken bones, ruptured organs, blades lodged in joints that ground against bone with every step. Pain was a companion he'd outlived a hundred times over, and the wounds Myrasyn had given him were serious but not unfamiliar. He could fight through worse. He had fought through worse.

Quinlan had stone hands, burst channels, and a body that was running on stubbornness and Primordial stats. His arms were gone. His focus was split between two bodies he had to control. Every breath tasted like copper and ozone.

He'd had worse days.

The healing was still working. Seraphiel's light knitting tissue, sealing vessels, pulling him back from the edge one degree at a time. On the opposite side, Alexios's healers doing the same.

Neither man wanted to be the one who flinched first.

Neither man was willing to let the other finish.

Alexios raised his golden longsword and leveled it at Quinlan. The healers behind him scrambled back.

"Enough."

The word carried and the healers on both sides froze. His grey stare was locked on the Primordial Villain and nine centuries of patience had run their course.

"Kill them all. For the glory of Vraven!"

[Soul Reaper] came up, the pitch-black saber trailing ghostly pale flames, and Quinlan pointed it across the divide at the man who had ruled this continent longer than most nations had existed.

"Let's end this once and for all, old friend."

Myrasyn looked at Felicity and her green gaze sparkled.

"Very well spoken, young lady."

Light gathered at the tip of Myrasyn's staff. Across the divide, Alexios's golden longsword blazed. Elisabeth's divine radiance surged. Lilith's spellblade erupted in white fire. Stormlord's warhammer bled lightning so dense the air turned to static. The Undead Lords' necromantic pressure bent the smoke. Aelindra's twin blades glowed white. The soul army raised their weapons. The Aegis Vanguard locked formation.

Every fighter on the field drew mana at the same time, and the pressure made the ground groan.

From behind Quinlan, King Ragnar's voice rumbled through the noise.

"Aye. Couldn't have said it better myself."

*CLANG!*

Quinlan's vision went white as the world lurched.

The last thing he heard was…

"QUINLAN!!!"