Read Novel Full Chapter 1590 Nonsense
Chapter 1590 Nonsense
"You have chosen this."
His bandaged hand closed around her jaw and forced her head up. The motion pulled at his stitches and fresh red bloomed through the linen at his shoulder, but the one eye that found hers was past caring about his own body.
"I will break your concentration and let the magic do its work the old-fashioned way."
Just as Aelindra needed Myrasyn alive to speak the words that would make her queen, Ragnar needed Black Fang alive to speak the words he wanted to hear. A dead woman couldn't answer questions. A collared one would answer every question he ever asked.
His fist drove into her stomach.
The impact was enough to crack ribs. Black Fang's body absorbed it the way centuries of pain had taught her to absorb everything: without movement, without sound, without a single thread of concentration leaving the war inside her channels. The venom kept its paths. The collar's pulse came and was eaten. Her breathing didn't change.
Ragnar hit her again. The same result. A woman who had boiled in her own poison for centuries and called it skincare was not going to lose focus because a dwarf hit her.
At the same time, Aelindra went for Myrasyn.
The elder sister's boot caught the younger in the chest and pinned her flat against the wall. Myrasyn's concentration fractured and the golden light in her channels flickered. The artifact pulsed. The binding magic surged into her right shoulder and she had to claw it back with [Sanctified Radiance] while her sister's heel ground into her sternum.
"Name me."
Myrasyn's response was to spit red onto Aelindra's boot.
Ragnar's fist found Black Fang's face. Her head cracked against the stone behind her and her vision whited out for a full second. But she kept every stream moving through her channels, the collar's pulses caught and dissolved.
"Where is the Primordial Villain?"
Silence.
"Where is his hideout? His allies?"
Silence.
"What are his weaknesses? His full capabilities?"
Red dripped from Black Fang's chin onto the floor between her legs. Her eyes stayed closed.
Ragnar whirled on Durnok.
"You told me the collars were perfect!" His voice filled the room and bounced off the low ceiling. "You told me no one could resist them! Why are they not working?!"
Durnok flinched. His spectacles had fogged from the heat of the cell and he cleaned them with shaking fingers before answering.
"The collars work. The runic inscription cycle is functioning exactly as designed." He swallowed. "The problem is that both subjects cast active spells before the devices were applied. The cuffs prevent new spellcasting, but pre-existing spell effects that are already woven into the channels persist. The poison and the light magic are consuming the binding before it can write."
"Then make it stronger!"
"It's not a matter of strength, Your Majesty." Durnok's voice was shrinking with every word. "Both women possess legendary-tier classes. The scope of their resistances is outside what we were able to test for. We didn't have subjects with comparable power. We couldn't have." His hands tightened on his case. "And the Primordial Villain is an even greater anomaly. There is no test subject in existence with his parameters. His rejection was not a failure of engineering. It was a category of resistance we could not have predicted or accounted for."
Ragnar seized the dwarf by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Durnok's spectacles flew off his face and shattered on the floor. The second impact came before the first finished, his wrapped hand driving into the artificer's mouth, and the third put him on the ground where he stayed, unconscious, bleeding from the nose and a split across his cheekbone.
Ragnar stood over him, breathing hard, his own wounds reopened and leaking through the linen.
The cell was quiet except for the hum of two collars and the man's ragged breathing.
"Beating your own craftsman unconscious." Myrasyn's voice floated across the cell, light and conversational. "That's the second brilliant decision you've made today-"
All of a sudden, a different sound cut through the cell. From Black Fang's side. Low and wet.
She was chuckling.
"Fear."
The word came out like poison itself.
"You ooze the stench of fear." Her purple eyes opened and found Ragnar's. "What are you so afraid of, dwarf?"
Ragnar turned toward her. Myrasyn went quiet, her bright green eyes shifting to the woman beside her.
Black Fang's chin lifted, red running from her hairline and pooling in the hollow of her collarbone.
"You fear retribution."
"Nonsense." Ragnar's voice came out hard and fast. "I just don't want loose ends."
Black Fang's chuckle deepened.
"Then you don't have to worry. He'll come for you soon enough."
Myrasyn's mouth curved into a smile as she listened to Black Fang go on.
"You worry about your petty border wars on a small portion of the Iskaris continent, which in itself is but a mere piece of the world of Thalorind…"
"But in your betrayal, you have turned the man recognized as the Primordial Villain across thousands of worlds just like Thalorind, against you."
Aelindra's voice cut in. "Your words lack logic. Worlds? There's only Thalorind, and we don't even know for certain if there are other continents out there, or how many. But I'll entertain your claim. Let me ask: so what? The man you're talking about is the kind who sneaks around and attacks from the shadows. He is no threat to a giant nation."
Black Fang spat. The mixture hit the floor and the rock hissed where it landed.
"Ignorant elf, you only know the man who was here to gain levels and resources. But now you've made this personal. You think you know fury. You think you know vengeance. Let me tell you..."
"You do not."
Ragnar's hand twitched at his side.
"Power this, fury that." He squared his shoulders. "He has a colorful class, I'll grant him that. But he's manageable. Roughly as powerful as the other continental powerhouses."
Black Fang looked at him.
Her purple eyes shifted. In the dim light of the dungeon they seemed to glow, deep and luminous and ancient.
"You wanted information on him? I'll give it to you."
The cell went still.
"Quinlan Elysiar is barely level fifty."
"NONSENSE!"
The word erupted from Ragnar so loud the walls seemed to vibrate. "He fought me! He fought Alexios! He captured Morgana! He killed dozens of my elites and cooked me alive in my own armor! No level fifty could-"
Black Fang's grin turned predatory, her head tilting.
"Quinlan Elysiar was level one ten months ago."
The silence that followed was absolute.
"He spent more than half of that time inactive. Training. Resting. Consolidating his powers." Her grin widened. "But there will be no resting now, dwarf."
"He started with the Commoner class. At the beginning, whole months were spent with mundane spears and swords, killing low-level enemies one by one. But now…"
The battlefield came back before the eyes of all those who listened.
Elements flying from broken hands, fire and wind and lightning tearing through formations, royal guards dying by the dozen, a radius of utter devastation around a single figure who would not drop dead despite his crippling injuries.
That was level fifty.
"The Primordial Villain will grind like never before. His experience gain is multiplied threefold. His spells devastate entire formations. He doesn't even need much. Just a couple levels." Her voice was quiet now. "And he'll go from 'just another continental powerhouse' to the undisputed apex of this continent."
Myrasyn's smile had faded. Her green eyes were wide, her ears perfectly still, and for the first time since Black Fang had met her the elven queen had nothing to say.
Aelindra had gone pale.
Five hundred years to reach the continental powerhouse level was extraordinary.
Black Fang hitting the peak before even being four hundred years old made her a prodigy among prodigies.
… Ten months. Starting from nothing.
Ragnar looked like a ghost wearing a dwarf's skin.
He hit her.
*Thud!*
Black Fang's head snapped sideways. When it came back, an unhinged grin sat on her lips.
"Time is ticking, dwarf. Every passing second is one second closer to your reunion."
Another hit. Red sprayed across the stone.
"And this time, the villain will be prepared. Knowledgeable." Her eyes found his. "Furious. Oh, he will be so furious. And best of all… Everything will happen on his terms."
Ragnar drew back.
"Tick."
His fist connected.
*Thud!*
"Tock."
"Better hurry, dwarf…"
*Thud!*
"The villain is coming for you…"
*Thud!*
"Tick."
*Thud!*
"Tock."
"SHUT UP!" Ragnar screamed.