Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1793: Hunting a Will

Nyxara shifted in his lap.

One smooth motion, thighs pivoting, the blade transferring from her right hand to her left as she turned to face him fully, and when she settled back down her knees bracketed his hips and her eyes were level with his from inches away.

The obsidian relic hung loose in her left grip. Her right rose and pressed flat against the living metal covering his chest.

"Synchra, be a good girl and give me some room."

[Synchra] resisted for exactly one heartbeat, the Anima-grade armor humming a vibration against Nyxara’s palm that carried more jealousy than compliance.

Then the living metal receded from his chest in a slow, grudging retreat, peeling back until warm skin met warm palm and the bond beneath it pulsed in recognition.

Nyxara’s fingers spread over his heart, and her smile sharpened.

"What is she doing?!" Myrasyn yelped at the nearest person who looked like they might have answers, which happened to be Black Fang. "This woman is far too indecent!"

"She’s a demon of lust," Black Fang replied with a perfect poker face.

"S-still! She has such a big audience! Has she no shame?!"

"Shame?" Black Fang’s voice did not gain a single iota of emotion as she decreed, "She enjoys being watched."

"Eh!!" Myrasyn gasped. The innocent elven queen struggled to understand just how big of a pervert some women could be.

Isveth’s ears were twitching at a frequency that suggested mechanical failure.

Elisabeth had turned away, her neck flushed to the collar. "Demons are truly obscene creatures..." she muttered under her breath. "No wonder she likes him so much..."

Serika’s hands came down over Mimi’s eyes from behind. The little dryad squirmed instantly, batting at the fingers. "Big sis Serika I want to see!!"

"You can’t."

"Not fair!"

Alexios stood still as he took stock of what had just happened in the last few minutes.

He’d stepped through a portal into a separate dimension, met a demon on par with the elven legend, and nearly drawn steel on a being that could have erased him between breaths.

And now, the thousand-year-old King of the Vraven Kingdom was watching the aforementioned creature of terror straddle a man on a throne of living vine, acting like a maiden in love.

He exhaled through his nose and looked at the grass.

Nyxara’s palm pressed a fraction deeper against Quinlan’s heart. "Hold me tightly."

"Is that necessary?" Quinlan asked, suspecting foul play.

"Absolutely."

Just the word, plain and unadorned, and the ancient gaze behind it had stopped performing.

"Alright. I’m ready." His arms wrapped around her waist, and Nyxara closed her eyes.

"Let’s begin then, my beloved Ruin."

Every demonic sigil, every winding pink line from her collarbones to her hips, blazed at once.

The light that poured off her was heavy and old, older than the relic in her grip by eons, and it carried a resonance that made the roots of the soul realm’s tree curl tighter into the soil.

Her touch burned with presence rather than heat, reaching past skin and bone to press against a depth that had no physical location but answered to her all the same.

In her left, the blade began to hum.

It was a thin, miserable sound, nothing like the furious hunger that had torn through his veins in the arena. This was the noise of a broken will recognizing what had shattered it.

Through the bond Quinlan felt Nyxara reach, but the direction wasn’t the same as last time.

Back then, the blade invaded him, and she appeared to squash the bug who dared attack her tired lover.

Now, she was pushing outward through the hand that held the blade, using his heart as the anchor and the relic as the door, forcing her way into the broken space inside the obsidian where the fragments of its will had retreated after she shattered them.

Her hand curled tighter against his chest, pulling at skin, and the markings on her body flared brighter.

Quinlan watched her face from inches away while she worked, and a quiet recognition turned over inside him.

The shameless seductress who threw tantrums in his lap and begged for attention had given way to a woman pouring everything she had into a task because he needed it done, her focus absolute, her power vast yet careful entirely for his sake.

The way her lip caught between her teeth when she reached deeper, the small unconscious lean of her body into his as though proximity was a resource she couldn’t afford to waste.

’...You really are a good woman, aren’t you?’

A smile touched his mouth, warm and unhurried, and he pulled her fully against him, one arm tight around her waist, the other bracing the back of her head until his brow rested against hers.

The channel widened. His will joined hers, flowing through the bond and into the relic together, and the inside of the blade resolved around them the way a dark room does when you adjust to the dimness.

It was a cramped, dead space, lightless and old, and everything in it reeked of starvation.

And in that space, something flinched.

The fragments scattered.

They bolted in every direction at once, shards of a will that had devoured mortals for sport now fleeing like insects from a lifted stone, and every single one of them ran from Nyxara.

She didn’t give chase in the traditional sense. There was no tag being played today.

Instead, she expanded, flooding outward through the relic’s inner space in a slow, patient tide, closing off the corners they fled toward one by one, and the fragments recoiled from each sealed exit and scrambled toward the only direction she hadn’t claimed.

Toward him.

Quinlan was already there.

Instinct answered before conscious thought did, and his will closed around them like a fist around a handful of sand. The fragments thrashed against the grip, screeching in frequencies that had no sound, clawing at the walls of his intent with the desperation of a mind that understood it had been herded.

Nyxara pressed in from every other side, patient and immense.

And just like that, the fragments went still.

Between the two of them, pinned inside the relic with nowhere left to run, the broken shards of the blade’s consciousness shuddered and began to cohere.

Pieces finding pieces, edges grinding together, a will reassembling itself just enough to think, just enough to know where it was and who held it.

’...That’s it?’

What reassembled was pathetic. A thin, trembling presence with the memory of hunger but none of the teeth.

Nyxara’s grip tightened around it, and the chase was over.

They opened their eyes at the same time.

Nyxara was already looking at him, hazy and half-lidded, drunk on what they’d just shared.

She had reached into the deepest part of his existence and felt his will move alongside hers.

Her breath came shallow against his lips, her fingers still curled against his chest, and the flush across her demonic markings pulsed in slow, heavy waves that made the air between them feel thick.

"Loving you," she whispered, raw and stripped past every layer of performance and ancient composure she wore, "is a stronger high than anything this world has ever produced."

Quinlan’s mouth curved, and he answered her in a language older than words.

He kissed her.

Nyxara melted into him instantly, her fingers sliding from his chest to the back of his neck, pulling him deeper.

"Mmmm~" The sounds she made against his mouth were shameless and entirely, devastatingly her.

The bond between them blazed wide open, and through it Nyxara released what they’d caught, pushing the reassembled consciousness down through the connection, through his vessel, through the palm still pressed between them, and into the blade resting in her other grip.

The relic shuddered.

The obsidian edge lost its black. Color bled out of the metal in a slow, exhausted drain until the blade hung grey and dull in Nyxara’s grip, and a faint, wretched pulse of awareness throbbed inside it like a heartbeat that didn’t want to exist.

Behind them, Myrasyn achieved a shade of pink that rivaled Nyxara’s markings, and Isveth’s ears had stopped twitching entirely in what appeared to be a full system shutdown.

Nyxara pulled back.

"Pah..." The sound was wet and shameless, lingering far longer than any kiss in front of an audience had a right to.

She then looked at the grey blade in her grip, and ordered,

"Speak."

The word carried the weight of the bond behind it, Quinlan’s vessel as the anchor and Nyxara’s will as the leash, and the grey blade pulsed once, twice, and then a voice emerged from the metal.