Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1987: Blazing Marks

"I am looking!" Serika leaned farther out, green eyes bright with anticipation.

"We need to run and sacrifice the shielder!" Marielle issued her command, eyeing Aurora. "Hold them as long as you can!"

By now, no one was even paying attention to her screeching as all of Quinlan’s women grinned from ear to ear, the bottomless hunger for XP written all over their faces.

"Finally." Iris cracked her neck, stepping forward.

"Let’s do this, girls!" Lucille giggled, unholstering her axe and hammer.

"Blossom wants to help Master turn a bad girl into a good one!!"

Quinlan’s own grin spread behind his visor. "What a generous hostess you are."

The queen’s clicking faltered as he raised his hand toward her nest.

"From the bottom of my heart, thank you."

With that, Quinlan cut the ledges holding the remaining captives free of the cavern walls and drew them toward the balcony. Sera severed the trailing silk as each arrived, while the web bridges caught beneath them stretched until their anchors ripped loose.

Spiders tumbled into the depths, shrieking and catching at one another. Quinlan crushed those clinging beneath the moving ledges against the wall below the balcony, keeping the mess well away from his family.

The gaps they left filled at once. Webbing lashed between the broken bridge ends, and fresh bodies scurried across it before the strands had stopped swinging.

The impacts of spiders crushed against the wall below jolted through Marielle’s boots. Her strongest fire spell had achieved nothing against their queen, and Black was making room to fight the creature by opening the hillside.

Her fingers tightened around her staff. She couldn’t find the incantation, the casting pause, any part of this she understood well enough to measure.

Still hovering in front of the balcony, Quinlan glanced back at her.

"You asked about my level."

"What?"

"Sixty-five."

Marielle shook her head at him. She and Andre were approaching a hundred, yet the queen had driven them into a room to wait for death. How could a man so far below them in level have crushed her foreleg and torn the gallery apart beneath her?

"You’re lying."

"Is that so?"

"You’re lying!" Marielle screamed in frantic disbelief, her knees buckling. "YOU’RE LYING!"

"Up!" the queen rasped, stabbing her good foreleg toward the balcony. "Up there!"

At her cry, the brood changed direction, climbing through the ruined gallery below the balcony and up the wall toward Aurora’s shield.

To meet them, Quinlan pushed rock out from that wall until a broad fighting terrace ran beneath the balcony and along both sides of the cavern. Leaving the central hollow open, he shaped steps from the balcony down to the terrace’s centre.

"That’s much better," Kaelira said, taking the steps to meet the first creatures hauling themselves onto the terrace.

"[Runeweaver’s Armory]."

Runes blazed across the smith’s armour as she caught a hooked leg on her raised forearm. Keeping the hook clear of her head, Kaelira drove her other fist into the joint with the earth power of her mark behind it. Shell crumpled beneath the blow.

The spider pitched forward, shrieking, and Iris came down the steps beside her.

"Move over."

As Kaelira shoved the broken limb aside, Iris drove her sword through the exposed mouth. The red-eyed swordswoman stepped into the creature even as its flailing legs tore a red line across her shoulder.

"Oh, fuck you."

With her mark flaring down her back, Iris wrenched the blade upward through its head and kicked the collapsing body off the terrace into the spiders below.

While Kaelira held the foot of the steps to keep the captives safe, Iris advanced on her left. The next monster to climb onto the terrace met her bloodied sword.

Above them, Blossom’s mark blazed beneath her armour. Lightning crawled down her arms into the claws forming over her fists, and she disappeared from the balcony as a giant spider pulled itself onto the terrace to Kaelira’s right.

"[Null Rend]!"

Both gauntlets sank beneath the giant’s eyes as the dogkin reappeared against its face. Current burst through the joints of its legs, making the creature rear with a screech and expose its underside.

"Lucille! Blossom got one! Their defenses aren’t high."

"Good job. Now repeat it a thousand times."

"Okay!!"

"Baby, into the fray, please~" Lucille purred.

Happy to oblige, Quinlan lowered his lovely berserker on a slab of rock, setting her beside Blossom’s victim on the terrace. Lucille’s mark blazed as she smashed its lower shell inward with her hammer, opening the way for her magma-coated axe.

The belly opened from end to end. Its entrails spilled over the axe haft, hissing against the molten coating while Blossom kicked free of its face.

Lucille laughed and drove her hammer into its mouth, knocking the dying creature backward onto the spiders below.

Above them, Andre tried to lift his injured arm as the corpse fell, remembering the blow that had ruined it. Lucille had broken through the same armoured shell with her hammer, then gutted it while praising the dogkin.

Lucille was already stepping toward the next giant when Andre looked up at it climbing the wall.

And Marielle knew that smile. The same woman had worn it while thanking Celia for a bowl of soup.

"Their equipment," she told Andre. "Did you see the axe? It has to be-"

Serika jumped from the balcony after the falling corpse, passing Lucille on her way down.

Wind from her Bloodfather mark curved the brawler’s descent toward the cavern’s right wall. With solar fire swelling around her fist, she plunged into the mass climbing toward the terrace there.

"[Solar Eruption]!"

The moment Serika’s fist burst through the foremost spider’s underside, solar fire detonated inside it. Its ruptured body hurtled down the wall amid a rolling sheet of flame and broken shell that stripped the other spiders from the rock.

Burning bodies rained into the swarm below, setting silk alight wherever they struck. The creatures behind them kept climbing through the flames, driving their hooks into the dead to reach the upper ledges.

Marielle’s explanation died in her mouth. She had seen the bare fist go in.

Serika twisted through the recoil to land on the terrace’s right arm, beneath the queen. Before the laughing brawler could turn, the monster swept her injured foreleg down the wall toward her back.

"[Heavenscar Blade]!"

Ayame came sprinting along the terrace’s right arm, having followed Lucille down from the balcony. Her katana met the descending limb at its damaged joint, shearing straight through, and the water following her blade ripped the severed length away before it could reach Serika.

"You’re welcome~"

"Thanks~!"

"They..." Andre whispered in full disbelief. "They’re having fun..."

*KRRRIIIAAAAA!*

The queen’s scream drowned out their laughter as she clutched the bleeding stump against her body. Below her, the petite samurai flicked the black fluid from her blade and looked up with a smile.

"I don’t know, husband. She doesn’t seem that bad of a girl to me."

"True. Compared to you, she’s a saint." Quinlan was in agreement.

"Hahhh?!?!" The delicate samurai seemed to have some problems with his statement. "Say that again, I dare you!"

"In this situation... Where others would beg the Goddess for mercy..." Andre felt his head spin. "They’re joking... Bantering..."

Every kill poured warmth into Quinlan’s chest, feeding the Reservoir his women were drawing from through their marks. Their hunger delighted him, and he opened himself to it, enjoying how readily they spent what he gave them.

"Quin!" Serika called, driving her heel into a spider trying to crawl onto the terrace beside her. "Did you see the XP from those?! This quest fucking rocks!"

More notifications joined those from the spiders he’d crushed as Quinlan glanced toward the redhead, laughing beneath his helmet.

"I’m not looking because all my blood will rush into a certain place."

"Cruel man! Let Quinlan Junior have some fun!" Kitsara called from the balcony above them.

"I’ll check right before our victory celebration."

"Ohh~ Deal~"

"Focus!" Ayame scoffed, still recovering from his terrible statement. Even as she scolded them, the Skysplitter swept her katana through the climbing brood. Water followed her blade across the wall, ripping spiders from their footholds and throwing them into the packed ranks behind.

"Nice going. You’re getting a good girl brownie point from me!" Serika sprang through the opening Ayame had cleared. With another explosive punch against the wall, the brawler blasted spiders off the terrace ahead before they could spread out again.

"Fuck you too!" Ayame shouted after the tanned beauty.

"Sorry, I’m loyal to my husband. Ask the foxkin."

*Stomp!* *Stomp!* *Stomp!*

Ayame wasn’t having the best of days.

As Serika advanced along the terrace’s right arm, the disgruntled samurai followed through the wreckage. Near the steps, a fresh stream of spiders climbed toward Lucille over the remains of a web bridge.

Quinlan widened the terrace beneath her to give her room to swing both weapons.

"Oh, thank you, baby!"

Lucille met the first with her hammer, driving its head back into those behind it. Her axe tore through their exposed undersides while Blossom blinked along the wall above, striking at the giants trying to climb over the pile.

With a burst of lightning from her claws, the dogkin sent another convulsing monster toppling toward Lucille. Blossom was already vanishing through the grasping legs, calling out to the berserker as she reappeared farther along the stream.

Watching them advance filled Quinlan with immense satisfaction. Every opening his women carved revealed more prey, and they were eager to reach all of it.

Below the terrace, the cavern floor vanished beneath the swarm still pouring from the lower tunnels. Quinlan grew a broad stone bridge from the foot of the balcony steps, sloping down through the open hollow toward the floor.

Kaelira stood beside its upper end, with Iris fighting to her left and Lucille to her right. Quinlan hovered over the descending bridge and called.

"[Awaken]."

"WHAT IS THAT?!" Marielle screamed hysterically.

It was time to go all out.