Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1986: Bad Girl

The spider monster shuddered in the ruined gallery, her hooked foreleg still trapped in the stone Quinlan held around it. When she tried to wrench the hook away from his chest, he tightened his fingers.

Chitin cracked inside the rock, and dark fluid squirted through the fracture onto his gauntlet.

*SKRIIIIEEEEE!*

The queen’s shriek struck the gallery walls hard enough to make Marielle clap a hand over her ear.

The harder the queen pulled, the more she widened her own wound, and Quinlan enjoyed every wet crunch. She’d been so eager to put that thing through him a moment ago.

"Leaving already?"

Fear drove her backward into the arch. Her swollen abdomen scraped against the masonry while her trapped limb stretched between them, its exposed flesh coming apart under the strain.

The queen raised her head to shriek into the passages behind her, the piercing, sustained call setting the webs trembling along the gallery.

*KRRRIIIEEEEEEEEE!*

An answering cry rose from somewhere far below, followed by others through the walls. Soon they overlapped so thickly that Andre could no longer tell which direction they were coming from.

"She’s calling them," he gasped. "Her minions..."

*KRRRIIIEEE! KRRRIIIEEE!*

The queen repeated the summons, pulling frantically against Quinlan’s grip. He could feel the vibrations through the stone around her leg as something began moving in the depths.

From behind Quinlan’s shoulder, Marielle stared at the huge body that had filled the gallery and driven them into a corner. The monster had reached in to choose which of them it would eat first.

Now it was trying to get away from a Grade One nobody.

The queen lowered her head toward Quinlan again, stopping well beyond the reach of his free hand. Crimson light from his visor shone across the saliva stretched between her fangs.

Between the rattling mouthparts, the wet slit opened in an attempt at speech. A shift of Quinlan’s fingers against the stone holding her leg broke it into a rasp.

"Wh-what..."

Even with her leg torn open, the terrified creature kept drawing back, dragging on the trapped limb in her desperation to escape. Quinlan made no attempt to hide his pleasure as he watched fear drive her to hurt herself further.

Her clustered eyes stayed fixed on the red glow beneath his helmet as she forced the rest through her trembling mouth.

"What... are you...? Human...? No..."

"Just a humble adventurer," Quinlan replied as he released the crushed limb, letting her stumble back.

He drove his will through the surrounding stone. "I’m quite curious about you as well. So be a good girl and sit."

The queen thrust her head forward, snapping her fangs shut in front of his helmet.

"I... am queen!"

Fury drove her good foreleg into the gallery wall. The hook tore through a supporting block, sending broken masonry crashing against Aurora’s shield as the monster forced herself higher over him.

"You sit! In silk! I eat you... slowly!"

Andre drew his wife behind his good shoulder as the masonry fell. Her strongest fire spell hadn’t left a wound on that face, yet here the creature was, ripping apart stonework his sword wouldn’t have scratched.

Black stood beneath her open fangs, apparently waiting for her to finish her tantrum.

"We’ll work on that," he mused.

Once back through the doorway with his family, Quinlan pushed the feeding chamber’s ceiling higher into the hillside. The floor rose beneath them at his will, carrying everyone above the gallery.

"No spell casting?! Again?!" Marielle grabbed Andre as the paving rose under her boots. "How is he-"

The giant spider that had crushed Andre’s shield tried to climb after them, only for Quinlan to trap it between the rising floor’s outer edge and the gallery ceiling. Its shell crumpled while its legs battered Aurora’s barrier.

Its mouth kept working through the first impact, so he pushed again.

*KRRUNCH!*

Black pulp jetted out between the stones. One severed leg struck the queen across her eyes, and she recoiled with a furious hiss while Quinlan opened the neighbouring feeding rooms below them.

"Sera, could you cut them free?"

"Working on it! Kaelira, there’s another behind that one!"

Quinlan brought the neighbouring captives up to them on broad slabs of their rooms’ floors. As Sera cut the anchoring webs, Kaelira caught each cocoon and laid it beside the unconscious Celia.

Under the noise of breaking masonry, the answering cries grew louder. Loose threads twitched across the floor as the approaching brood shook the silk stretched through the passages below.

Blossom turned her ears toward the sound.

"Master, they’re coming from everywhere!"

Aurora extended her shield across the opening while Quinlan joined the emptied slabs to the party’s floor. They now stood on a wide balcony recessed into the rock, with a solid ceiling overhead and the queen in the gallery below.

Sera and Aurora stayed with Celia and the rescued captives at the back. Marielle and Andre huddled beside them, watching through the barrier as Kaelira returned to the balcony’s front edge.

Below them, the queen stabbed her feet into the paving.

"Mine!"

The queen’s tug on a trailing strand sent one cocoon sliding toward the balcony’s edge. Kaelira caught the bundle against her chest before it could fall, while Quinlan ripped the gallery floor apart beneath the grasping monster.

*SKREEEEEE!*

Her shriek swallowed the noise of snapping webs as she plunged, catching herself with her legs braced against both walls. When Quinlan peeled those away too, the queen scrabbled backward.

"As my Pupcake will attest to, bad girls deserve to be punished." He shook his head in disappointment, then stepped off the balcony into a current of his own wind.

"S-silence..!!"

The queen hauled herself through the arch at the gallery’s far end, retreating into the cavern beyond.

Quinlan floated after her, tearing away the arch and the rock above it to open a clear view from the balcony into the nest.

The cavern floor lay far below them, sloping toward tunnel mouths at the foot of the opposite wall. Web bridges crossed the open space overhead, with egg sacs hanging beneath them and human feeding bundles packed onto ledges along both sides.

The queen climbed the wall to the balcony’s right, digging her hooks into the rock until her head rose level with Quinlan. He hovered out over the hollow, keeping himself between her and the people behind Aurora’s shield.

"Oh. Your babies are here."

Spiders poured from every opening he could see.

The first streams spread along the walls until they met, then climbed over one another as those behind kept pushing. Bridges sagged beneath the gathering weight. Far below, fallen bodies vanished beneath the brood racing across the floor.

To Marielle, staring past Quinlan into the depths, there seemed to be no end to them. Each time she thought the flow must be ending, another passage disgorged more monsters. The smaller ones crawled between the giants’ legs, and even those giants were emerging in packed ranks.

Thousands had already filled the hollow, with thousands more forcing their way in behind them. Tens of thousands were answering their queen, and the thunder of their legs drowned out Andre when he tried to speak.

At Andre’s pull, Marielle retreated from the edge without taking her eyes off the nearest bridge. Spiders were spilling over both sides, catching themselves on strands below.

Among them were the ridged shells Andre recognized all too well. One creature like that had folded his reinforced shield around his arm, barely taking a scratch from his sword in return. Now they were climbing out shoulder to shoulder, with larger ones pushing through behind them.

"Those aren’t little hatchlings," he said hoarsely. "The big ones... Marielle..."

She knew. Her [Flame Lance] had gone into one’s open mouth, and it had kept coming at him.

"They have to be high-level," she whispered. "Even her fucking minions... Let alone Grade Three, this threat might not even be Grade Five..."

Above the swarm, Marielle’s gaze found the immense body of their queen. Even her [Greater Fireball] had done nothing to that monster, who had chosen her next meal through the flames.

"A hundred and twenty," Marielle said. "She must be at least level a hundred and twenty. Maybe higher."

It was a frightened estimate, but even that number felt inadequate as another packed stream answered the queen’s clicking. Marielle had no spell that could hurt her, Andre couldn’t hold back one of her larger children, and the entire cavern was obeying her voice.

With her torn limb drawn against her chest and her brood answering from every passage, the queen began clicking at Quinlan again. Her fangs spread as the creatures beneath her climbed toward him.

"Eat... you. All of you."

Serika leaned past Ayame to look down.

"Quin... did we just find an all-you-can-eat XP buffet?"

When Marielle turned toward Serika, the redhead was grinning.

"Are you fucking insane?" Marielle demanded. "Look at them!"