Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 896: Soul Battle

Then...

Silence.

Stillness.

Quinlan collapsed.

No dramatic fall, no war cry, no scream. His body simply shut off, as though something inside had been switched down to zero. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled like a marionette with cut strings, slamming into the blackened earth.

”QUIN!” Serika’s voice was the first to break.

”Lord Quinlan!” Rongtai bellowed, already lunging forward with a monk’s impossible agility.

”So damned greedy! Don’t you dare die on me like this!” Feng cried, racing down the slope of the crater.

They all converged on him at once, with Serika tenderly propping his head up on her sensual thighs, Rongtai scanning his pulse with qi coiling at his fingertips, and Feng furiously working a diagnostic technique with trembling hands—a diagnostic technique she hadn’t even learned yet.

He wasn’t bleeding.

He wasn’t bruised.

But his soul... his aura... was gone.

Like a black hole had swallowed it, or maybe sealed it within.

His breathing was faint, shallow. There, then not, then there again.

”He’s not just unconscious, isn’t he? His spirit is... somewhere else...” Feng whispered in horror. ”It got dragged inward... locked away.”

”Was it those things?” Serika asked, looking back at the crater’s epicenter, voice tense with an equal mixture of fury and fear. ”Did they... hijack him?!”

”I can’t say for certain,” Rongtai replied, eyes narrowed as golden light swirled around his fingers, probing. ”But I sense no corruption. No damage. Only containment. He’s... fighting something. Internally.”

The air around Quinlan began to thrum with power.

A pressure was building deep inside his core. The four Sovereign shards within him reacted to the two intrusions like ancient beasts awakened from slumber. Fire surged, water rippled, earth quaked, wind howled—contained storms, all orbiting the foreign presences now lodged in his soul.

It was like watching a cocoon tremble before a metamorphosis.

”He’ll wake up,” Serika said, her voice steadying as she pressed a firm hand to his chest, over where she could feel the elemental pulses strongest. ”He has to.”

But in her eyes, there was something more than confidence.

There was fear. Fear of what he might be when he did.

...

Darkness.

An endless, crushing, suffocating void.

No stars. No form. No self.

And then... pain.

A searing, rending, primordial pain that tore at the edges of his being. Not his body—he had no body here. This was deeper. This was his soul.

Two forces had invaded it.

One was wild, thrumming with shifting elements—fire that scorched his essence, water that drowned his thoughts, earth that crushed his resolve, and wind that scattered his memories. It twisted around itself like a storm lost in madness, unstable and tainted, seeking to rewrite him in its image. ṜÀꞐỘꞖÈś

But the other was worse. Far worse.

It whispered. Not in words, but in decomposition, in unmaking.

A crawling, cloying rot that promised freedom—freedom from everything. From meaning. From self. From love. From pain.

It didn’t attack him. It invited him. A soft seduction of surrender.

Quinlan’s soul flickered, on the brink of collapse.

Until a spark lit in the dark.

Hundreds of memories flashed before him, each related to a girl he cherished more than he could describe with words.

The first one was a laugh.

A blade catching the sun, its wielder smirking like the war was already won.

Ayame. His first. His Blade.

The samurai who cleaved their enemies like they were made of paper. Her katana, an extension of her will. Her dedication was just as sharp as her blade.

She had never faltered. Never doubted. Whether drenched in blood or curled into him at night, Ayame always remained, smiling that smug smile that said, ”Of course we’ll win.”

The memory flared, and the Fire Element inside him screamed, tainted and twisted, trying to melt him from within.

Quinlan roared back, eyes blazing in the void.

A burning fist formed, slamming through a tendril of corrupted flame. It hissed and recoiled.

”Not yet,” he snarled.

”I haven’t even kissed her goodbye.”

Then... talons. Shadows. A windless silence shattered by screams.

Blossom. His Ghost. His savage shadow.

Descending from the void with her claws tearing flesh into bloody chunks.

Devotion incarnate.

Adoration woven into every breath. Her world was him.

Blossom’s whole world revolved around Quinlan now.

Could he allow her world to be shattered?

”NO!”

Chains of his very soul lashed out, binding the corrupted Wind force that tried to slice him into pieces. It screamed like a banshee, but his will surged hotter.

His soul pulsed—expanding. Growing.

Then a heartbeat later, a tender whisper entered his ears as a maternal touch brushed back his hair...

Lucille.

One moment: gentle, warm, her hands smoothing his worries away.

The next: covered in gore, laughter bubbling from her throat as she cleaved monsters in two.

She raged for him.

Her axe drank blood in his name.

A burst of Corrupted Earth Qi rose, trying to crush his expanding soul with weightless gravity. But Quinlan stood tall.

He held up his hand. His will manifested as a war axe—an echo of hers—split the darkness in half with a bellow.

”You think I’ll die before kissing that precious woman one more time?!”

Aurora.

Potion vials clinking. Cheeks red. ”D-Daddy—I mean, Quinlan, I... ugh! Damn Rosie always ruins my fun!”

So powerful. So brilliant. So awkward and adorable all at once.

The alchemist. The enchanter. The pampered plump princess... who still wanted to be his.

A shard of corrupted Light pierced his soul.

It sought his memories, trying to dim the brightness of her love, dull the shine of her faith in his very person.

He clenched his jaw.

And with a thought, his will ignited a barrier, engraved with Aurora’s essence, bathed in the same translucent blue glow her shields had. Light versus false light. Hers prevailed.

”You don’t get to erase her memory!”

Jasmine.

Quiet strength behind uncertain eyes.

She hadn’t stepped into her own light yet. Her father’s shadow still loomed, shackling her wings.

He wanted to be the one who set her free. To see her bloom.

Could he die before seeing her reborn? Before watching her unleash the class she’d received?

The corrupted seeds surged again, tendrils snapping like serpents.

Quinlan’s answer?

A black lotus bloomed from his soul, its petals jagged and glimmering.

Then came Seraphiel.

That cheeky grin... the elven goddess in human skin, who could heal with a kiss and kill with a glare. Her class? Divine. Her body? Unreal. Her existence? Precious beyond words.

She healed. She killed. She teased.

She was his.

But a new force surged inside—a seed of corruption, trying to twist beauty into despair.

”Her grin is so beautiful when she fights beside me. I refuse to let her be sad!” Quinlan roared with overwhelming fury.

He summoned a radiant arrow, glowing with her elven light, and launched it into the black storm.

It exploded with Seraphiel’s divine power purging the taint.

Kitsara. His chaos. His temptation. His sorceress of shadows and storms.

Unhinged, unpredictable, uncontainable.

She laughed in the face of death, but cried quietly for her brother.

He was wounded. She was hurting.

And Quinlan?

He wanted to help her. To heal her. To make her laugh again.