Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1650 Duel

A meter above the moss, Quinlan's eyes opened a fraction wider inside the trance.

Retainer.

The word sat wrong on his tongue. The Flower Queen was on one knee on his moss with her head bowed toward him, and Quinlan filed the offer for handling in a moment because the woman three meters behind Orianna had just uncrossed her arms.

"I want a duel."

Raika's voice carried across the courtyard without preamble, and on the moss, eleven groaning women found a reason to lift their heads.

The Brutalizer's boots were planted wide and her eyes were locked on the man hovering above the courtyard, and whatever patience she had until now was spent.

Quinlan's mouth tilted.

"...I did promise you one some time ago, didn't I?"

A sigh through his nose.

"Fine."

The trance eased but did not break. The crimson script at his throat dimmed a shade, [Soul Reaper] slowing in its orbit, and his legs unfolded from the cross as his body descended until his boots found the ground. The rite held behind his ribs like a banked fire, giving his girls a moment of small respite - it still hurt like a bitch, just not as bad as before.

Quinlan rolled both shoulders once, lifted his right hand palm-up, and water answered him. A broad dome rose around the two of them in a smooth rush that sealed at the apex and walled the courtyard off. The light inside went blue-white, and the sounds of the women became muffled shapes behind the shimmer.

Raika's mouth split into a grin that had nothing friendly in it and everything alive.

"Finally," she said.

Quinlan settled his weight low with his hands open at his sides.

Raika closed fast.

The first exchange covered three meters in a burst that would have killed a man with lesser stats. Her leading fist carried the full weight of a Brutalizer's Strength behind it, and Quinlan shifted an inch to catch the blow past his ribs on a deflection that numbed his forearm to the elbow. He countered with a knee to her midsection that she batted aside with the flat of her gauntlet.

They separated a half-step and met again harder.

Raika caught his ribs, his shoulder, the inside of his guard with a headbutt that split the skin above his left eye and sent warm blood down the side of his face. He answered with a hook that snapped her head sideways and an elbow to her sternum that drove the air from her lungs.

"Haha!" She grinned through the blood on her teeth.

He grinned back. "Let's do this Raika style."

"You're on!"

Both of them understood what that entailed.

They planted.

Two pairs of boots dug into the ground a meter apart and neither of them moved backward from that point on. Raika's fist crashed into Quinlan's ribs and his forearm hammered the side of her neck in the same breath, and neither gave ground. Her next blow caught his cheekbone and split it open. His caught her temple and cut a line above her ear. Blood ran down both their faces and neither wiped it away.

This was Raika's game. Stand, trade, outlast. No footwork, no evasion, no technique beyond where to aim the next punch and how hard to drive it home. The Brutalizer was in her element.

Her fists found his ribs, the hollow of his throat, the soft place beneath his sternum where the shirt offered nothing. Each blow carried everything her class could push through a fist and she felt them land true, felt skin and muscle give under her knuckles, felt the air leave him. Any lesser man would have been on the ground three exchanges ago.

Quinlan did not go down. The Primordial Villain class fed him twenty-five percent on top of every physical stat he owned, plus an even bigger boost to his Vitality, and [Synchra]'s fifty-point Vitality bonus was active, even if she was in comfy suit mode, not protective armor mode. He bled freely from the cut above his eye, the split at his cheekbone, the place on his lip where her gauntlet had caught him. None of it slowed him because his body would not stop.

He gave it all back. His knuckles found her face, her shoulder, the flat of her stomach. Each hit jolted through the Brutalizer's body and she took every one of them standing, because stepping back was not in her vocabulary, and the wet moss beneath their boots turned red with what they were both leaking.

But the math was running, and Raika could feel it in her bones. Her blows were connecting and Quinlan was still upright. His were connecting and her knees were giving a fraction more after each exchange, her guard taking a fraction longer to reset. The erosion was slow and honest and undeniable.

And then came the cruel realization, her brain refused to let her live in denial. She was losing in a fistfight against a mage who didn't cast a single spell.

"Grr!" came the growl from her throat and Raika put everything into the next exchange. A straight right to his chest, a left hook to his ribs, an uppercut aimed at lifting him off the ground. All three connected clean. Quinlan took them on the front of his body without moving his feet, and the sound that left his chest was animal and real.

Then he hit her back.

A single punch, the full weight of a Primordial's stats through his fist into the center of her chest. The Brutalizer's boots left the ground for the first time in the fight.

Raika hit the ground on her back.

Quinlan dropped onto her, pinning both wrists to the moss above her head with one hand while the other settled flat against her throat. His blood was on her face. Hers was on his knuckles. The dome's blue-white light painted them both the same color.

She stared up at him.

Her chest was heaving and the grin was gone. In its place was raw frustration she did not show anyone, because showing it meant admitting the gap was real. That Nyxara had been right.