Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1989: The Villain’s Gratitude

Quinlan turned toward the balcony, still hovering above the bridge. Marielle almost wished he hadn’t heard her; the red light behind his visor settled on her face, and her fingers tightened painfully around Andre’s sleeve.

"Answer already...!" She stomped, but her outlash had none of her prior ferocity.

Quinlan grinned beneath his helmet, and [Synchra] reshaped its sealed faceplate to match. Black metal drew into sharp cheek ridges while a crimson line curved across his mouth, widening into a cruel smile edged with pointed metal teeth.

Every inch of his skin remained covered, yet Marielle could see his vicious delight in the face the armour made for him.

A low chuckle reached her through the helmet, and she recoiled.

"Why, you ask?"

She’d imagined a rich fool ashamed of his weakness beneath that armour, whose women and equipment had carried him far beyond his ability. Someone who needed a proper adventurer to keep him alive.

The man watching her now was enjoying every moment of her fear.

"Because neither of you will tell anyone."

Marielle stopped breathing. Beside her, Andre pulled his sleeve from her grip so he could step in front of her, raising his sword with his good arm.

"Stay behind me."

She caught the back of his clothes and pulled herself upright behind him, desperate to keep him close. That sword hadn’t saved him from one of the queen’s children. His ruined arm hung uselessly at his side, and terror swallowed the last of her relief at being rescued.

"We... we wouldn’t..."

The promise wouldn’t come out. She had threatened to report them, sneered at their levels, ordered his shielder to stay behind and die. Now that burning grin was aimed at her, and she couldn’t find a single reason he would let her leave.

Below the balcony, a spider hauled itself over the terrace’s edge behind Kaelira. Quinlan curled his fingers, closing the rock around its forebody before it could strike her.

*KRRUNCH!*

Its abdomen burst under the pressure, spraying black fluid down the wall. The trapped head kept shrieking, so he squeezed again, slowly enough for Marielle to hear its shell splitting before its mouth collapsed.

She flinched into Andre’s back. Quinlan was still looking at her.

"Please..."

He heard her despite the fighting. Watching her hide behind the husband he could crush just as easily filled him with vicious satisfaction. She’d been so eager to spend Aurora’s life to save her own, and now she was begging him to be kind.

Even after Quinlan let the mangled spider drop into the swarm, Marielle couldn’t find another word. All she could do was bury her face against Andre’s shoulder, shaking too badly to lift her staff while the man above them waited.

"I do owe you my thanks, though," Quinlan continued.

Marielle lifted her head at his thanks, struggling to understand him through the pounding in her ears. "What...?"

"I thought leaving Iskaris might make me feel a level-one nobody again next to the fighters here. A second transmigration of sorts. But thanks to you two, I know I’m not starting from the bottom this time."

"Iskaris?" Andre repeated.

Marielle’s grip tightened. "That continent? You’re claiming you came from the lost continent?!"

On the cavern’s right wall, the queen tore a dead spawn off her foreleg and flung it toward Black Fang at the foot of the bridge. The assassin slipped beneath the tumbling body.

Along the terrace’s right arm came Kitsara, fresh from the balcony steps. Her white hair and tails drowned in demonic darkness as the foxkin joined Ayame beneath the queen.

"[Demon Fox’s Domain]."

Foxkin silhouettes spread across the surviving webs, their weight drawing the strands taut beneath the queen’s feet.

"False flesh..." The queen’s fangs clicked together as the web trembled beneath the copies. "I feel you crawling. All of you."

"Then count them fast, darling."

Kitsara’s lower voice came from beneath the queen. Another copy spoke from her back.

"Take your time."

The queen’s sweeping leg burst the nearest copy into darkness. When the figure reformed astride the limb, she ground it against the cavern wall, tearing a furrow through the rock while another copy landed beside her eyes.

"Get... off!"

"But you wanted to eat us. Or are foxies too much for your tummy? Am I not invited to the fun?"

The copy’s dagger scraped across the plates above an eye without penetrating. The queen snapped her head sideways and crushed it between her face and the wall, then drove her foreleg down toward the real foxkin on the terrace.

"Kitsara, stop messing around." Ayame caught her arm and pulled her clear.

"Oopsie. I had it under control."

The hook smashed through the terrace where Kitsara had stood. Its outer edge broke away beneath their feet, and Quinlan thrust a support up from the wall to catch the slab before it could carry both women into the swarm.

"Little meat!" the queen shrieked, dragging her hook through the broken paving toward them.

A copy caught the rim of her eye while she reached, driving its dagger beneath the plate from the side. Blood jetted over its hand, and the queen’s scream shook dust from the ceiling.

"Found it," Kitsara decreed from beside Ayame, her next copies climbing toward the wound.

Shaking loose the copies, the queen hurled herself off the right wall toward Quinlan over the hollow. A pillar rose from the cavern floor at his command to meet her descending abdomen.

*KRRRAK!*

The pillar broke beneath her weight, leaving Quinlan staring into her open fangs through a shower of stone. A blast of his own wind carried him clear of her jaws, but her hook caught his raised forearm before he could escape her reach.

Pain rang through his arm as the blow hurled him sideways, the hook carving a groove through Synchra’s black plating.

"You’re a tough one," he muttered.

Quinlan caught her extended limb in a rising fist of rock and drove a second pillar into her exposed underside. Her shell cracked this time, spilling dark fluid as he slammed her against a broad ledge above the lower tunnel mouths.

With the queen clinging to a ledge directly across the cavern from the balcony, Quinlan flew after her, leaving his family to continue the fighting along the terrace behind him.

"Above! Ch-children, above him!"

The surviving webs overhead sagged as the queen’s brood rushed across them. Spiders dropped toward Quinlan in a writhing mass, their falling bodies blotting out the cavern roof.

Quinlan sent branching columns of water surging upward to swallow the descending ranks. By spreading the current along the webs, he swept up more bodies and tore the strands down with their occupants.

Screeches rang through the hollow. Quinlan watched the tangled limbs claw through his water, then began freezing the columns from the outside inward.

When one forced its screaming head through the hardening surface, Quinlan turned the column holding it toward the queen and hurled it through the air.

Her remaining foreleg smashed the missile apart before it reached her face. The next followed through the spray, and she caught it between her fangs, crushing the frozen body into fragments.

"Come down!" she shrieked through the falling ice. "Come here!"

By sending another missile straight at her eyes, Quinlan drew her foreleg up to meet it, opening a gap for the frozen body he curved beneath the limb into her mouth.

The impact broke one fang at the root. Her scream sprayed blood and pieces of her own child over the ledge while Quinlan drove the remaining missiles into the brood climbing on either side of her.

Frozen bodies burst against the walls, shredding the packed swarm with jagged chunks of ice and shell.

Through the wreckage, the queen lunged again. Quinlan drove lightning into her broken mouth, holding the current until her legs convulsed against the ledge, but her hook kept reaching for him through the pain.

There it was, the pleasure he’d been missing while reading notices and waiting for strangers to decide whether he was qualified to pick their fucking weeds.

Quinlan swept himself beyond the hook with another gust. His forearm still ached from the last blow, and he laughed as the queen dragged herself upright, burning saliva dripping between her fangs.

"Are you ready to be a good girl now?"

"Not... your pet!"

Her hook stabbed toward his face, and Quinlan closed the ledge’s stone around it. As she strained against the restraint, he flooded it with magma, filling the gaps around her foreleg until molten rock welled between its plates.

*SKRIIIIIAAAAA!*

Ripping herself loose left glowing fragments clinging to the queen’s limb. Before she could shake them off, a blast of Quinlan’s wind drove the molten coating into the joint, splitting the shell until cooked flesh bulged through the crack.

"H-hurts!"

Each blow of her leg against the ledge scraped away magma and strips of her own flesh. For every glob she dislodged, Quinlan sent another jet of molten rock into the exposed joint until she dragged the limb against her chest to shelter it.

"Aww. I even need to teach you how to shake paws?"

The queen’s eyes shifted past him to the balcony. Bracing her surviving legs against the wall, she spat a broad sheet of venom toward the rescued captives.

"[Dreamveil]!" Aurora planted her staff, thickening the barrier over the balcony.

Quinlan swept a wall of water across the venom’s path. The lower edge escaped beneath his current and struck the terrace, eating through its lip in a boiling cascade that sent Iris leaping back beside Kaelira.

Across the hollow, the queen lunged through the spray at Quinlan, thrusting her burned foreleg toward his visor. He blocked the hook with a slab of rock, but she drove her whole weight behind it, forcing him backward through the air while blood poured from the split joint.

Marielle looked from him to Aurora, whose shield was hissing beneath the venom. At the back of the balcony, Seraphiel finished closing the last captive’s wounds and rose.

"[Divine Arsenal]."

A bow of light formed in the elf’s hands. Through a gap Aurora opened above the barrier, Sera sent an arrow into a spider descending toward the shelter, punching it off its strand.

Marielle moved behind Sera, drawing breath for an incantation as she raised her staff and aimed its tip at the elf’s back.

"Black! Let us live or your healer is dead!"