Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1612  Lure into the Abyss

Quinlan's posture shifted.

The playfulness drained out of him, the irritation at being treated like a child folding away into cold focus. His eyes held the vampire's gaze through the helm's visor.

"Lure into the abyss," he repeated. "Are you saying you're responsible for my summoning?"

The ancient features didn't move.

For a long moment, the Archduke simply watched him with those burning red eyes, and the silence stretched.

"Summoning." The word left the desiccated throat like a musing, dry and unhurried. "I suppose one could frame it as such. Though I did not know someone would answer my call. Certainly not this soon."

Quinlan caught it immediately.

The phrasing. Not your summoning. Not summoning you. The vampire spoke as if he'd cast a net into dark water and been surprised by what swam into it.

"You didn't summon me specifically."

"A correct assumption."

"Then what did you do?"

The Archduke's skeletal fingers tapped once against the armrest.

"I placed relics where fate might guide them. I spoke words to a merchant and I vanished before he could give chase."

"This creature left the tomb?!"

The shriek came from one of the elders. They had been slowly gathering their bearings and standing back up, only for this new shock to hit them.

"Impossible! We have guarded this tomb for epochs!"

"Every entrance was constantly watched!"

"Our mothers watched before us! Their mothers before them!"

The Archduke did not look at them.

His red gaze remained fixed on Quinlan, and when he continued speaking it was as if the women had not made a sound.

"Perhaps this will give you the answer you're looking for, Primordial," he said before quoting, "The bearer I sought eludes the threads of time; mine eyes see no longer the destined soul. By the will of the Weave, I place these relics where hands unbidden may claim. Let the currents of fate mend what I could not."

Quinlan's core blazed.

The four basic elements inside him flared as if recognizing their own origin, fire, water, earth, and wind surging through his channels, making his armor's crimson veins burn bright. Isveth's head snapped toward him. "What's going on, villain?!"

He remembered.

The auction house in the capital city of the human kingdom, Valorian.

Princess Felicity fidgeting beside him, anxious about finding the proper present for her father's 1000th birthday, guarded by Stormlord himself.

Sylvaris staring right at her daughter from the podium with an iron collar around her neck as she was sold to the Greenvale twins.

The Scarlet Lilies sitting right behind him and Jasmine, Lilith's cold gaze tracking him because he dared bring two elven sex slaves with him to the auction - and because Seraphiel kept messing with her.

That was where he'd heard those words. The auctioneer reading them aloud while four crystalline vials sat in an obsidian chest, each one containing an element in its purest form. Fire that swirled like a caged inferno. Water that ebbed and flowed like tides. Earth that cracked and reformed. Wind that pressed against glass as if seeking freedom.

His body had known before his mind caught up. Every instinct screaming that he had to possess them.

These items were what allowed him to evolve from a mere Elemental Sovereign to the Avatar of the Elements.

"You're behind the Elemental Genesis Elixirs."

"Yes."

Quinlan exhaled slowly. "Why sell them? You don't look strapped for cash."

The Archduke's head tilted, visibly confused.

"Are you slow in the head, Primordial? I just told you. The bearer I sought had eluded me. I had no other choice."

A sharp exhale came from next to Quinlan.

Isveth had pressed her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking once. A sound escaped through her fingers, high and strangled. Unmistakably a giggle.

Quinlan's eyes narrowed. A vein pulsed at his temple.

"Maybe if you didn't speak in riddles, this would be easier, vampire."

"Riddles?" The vampire's brow creased, the desiccated skin folding into unfamiliar lines. "Ah. Perhaps spoken language has shifted since I last held proper conversation. The merchant looked confused as well, but I assumed that was because I had handed him items of great fortune." A pause. "Now I suspect it is simply the newer generations being overly crude and rude."

In his soul, Nyxara was howling with laughter.

The Primordial Succubus had her head thrown back, breathless and uncontrollable.

<A boomer vampire!!>

<Nyxara.>

<Y-yes, my adorable Ruin?>

<I'm really dissatisfied with your contributions recently.>

<Are you calling me useless?!> She whined, theatrical and wounded. <Sorry, sorry~ I had an inkling where this was going and didn't want to spoil the surprise. I would have advised you not to enter the lair of an Archduke Vampire otherwise.>

<You say that like he's a really big deal. What level is he?>

<Now that's something I really can't answer.> Her voice dropped into a sly purr. <But you could ask him yourself. Though he might respond with big words your 'slow head' struggles to understand... Should this extremely useful and dedicated and beautiful demoness interpret for you~?>

Before Quinlan could respond, the Archduke's voice cut through.

"I see my words have not landed." The creature watched Quinlan's silence with the patience of the ancient. "To speak plainly: I sold the elixirs to lure a primordial."

"I understood that!" Quinlan grumbled. "I was gathering my thoughts."

"I see."

Nyxara's giggling faded into the depths of his soul, and the chamber's weight pressed back down.

Quinlan's mind turned.

This creature was old beyond reckoning. The pressure rolling off him felt like facing his mothers, that same weight of accumulated existence pressing down on everything in the chamber. But age didn't mean original. The vampire primordials had spawned their bloodline across epochs, and this shriveled relic could be any generation removed from the source.

Thalorind was a really old world, after all.

And Quinlan had an inkling that he wasn't a direct descendant because he knew from firsthand experience that almost no other primordial could have digested those elixirs. The lure this vampire used wouldn't have worked properly on almost any other primordial.

Quinlan showcased an extremely high affinity for the elements even among the primordials. According to his mothers, no other primordial could've digested the elixirs and turned them into proper manipulation powers.

At best other primordials would've acquired it as an expensive decoration or, if they were the experimenting kind like Thindlebrim, they would've used it instead of consuming it.

But how would the vampire find the holders of his elixirs if that was the case?

The corpse on the throne didn't seem to know that, hence why Quinlan believed that he wasn't old enough to have had proper insight into how the primordials and their powers actually functioned.

"What made you think a primordial would be lured by elemental elixirs?"

"I did not know if it would work. I did not even believe primordials remained. Hence the phrasing. A lure cast into the abyss, with no expectation that anything still swam in those depths."

"And if the elixirs reached one," Quinlan pressed, "how would you know? Me coming to this random tomb was pure luck on your end."

"It's not random-"

An elder began, and the vampire finally addressed the elves.

"Silence."

The elder's mouth snapped shut as if someone had sewn it closed, and she crumpled back to the marble with a strangled whimper.

"You are correct," the Archduke continued, as if nothing had happened. "I would not have known. I assumed it would take millions of years, if fortune smiled on me at all. My intention was to wait a few thousand years, then venture out and observe whether any person had appeared in the world wielding unnatural elemental abilities."

'So my hunch was right. Also… "not even a blink's worth of time," huh?'

Quinlan suddenly remembered what the vampire had said. Those elixirs reached him about six months ago.

This old bastard called half a year not even a blink of time. A few thousand years of waiting was nothing to him. Millions of years was an inconvenience to something from a deeper epoch.

"..." Quinlan let his arms hang loose at his sides. "Well. You lured one quick. Why do you need a primordial?"