Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1493  Burning Mana

The reason was simple. Dwarven artillery was designed to fire at walls, not at the sky. Angling bombards upward with enough precision to concentrate fire on the apex of a dome hundreds of meters above the ground was a logistical impossibility. The shells would scatter. The rolling cadence that made their bombardment effective relied on hitting the same zone repeatedly, and that zone needed to be a flat face, not a curved point at the top of the world.

Perhaps the best alternative was a mage. In theory, a single mage with enough firepower could bypass the artillery entirely and strike the apex directly.

In theory.

Because that mage would need to fly. Not levitate for a few seconds or ride a summoned creature, but sustain true, stable flight at altitude long enough to deliver repeated strikes.

That mage would need firepower comparable to an entire dwarven artillery brigade. The barrier didnʼt care if the force came from a cannon or a spell. It measured pressure, and anything less than siege-class output wouldnʼt leave a mark.

That mage would need mana reserves deep enough to generate that kind of power more than once, because the first strike was almost certainly not going to be enough.

And even if someone met all three conditions, there was one more problem.

The barrier was one-way.

Those inside could shoot out.

Any mage hovering above the dome was a stationary target for every archer, every battlemage, and every ballista in the city below. Thousands of projectiles, fired upward through a barrier that offered the defenders perfect protection, while the attacker had none.

Flight. Firepower. Mana. And the durability to survive a city shooting at you while you worked.

Four conditions that had never existed in a single person.

Quinlan pulled up his status window.

—

[Name: Quinlan Elysiar] [Race: Primordial] [Level: 46 ➣ 50. XP: 5,336,790 / 38,302,248] [Health Points: 3056 ➣ 3225] [Mana Points: 3713 ➣ 3881] [Vitality: 204 ➣ 215 ] [Strength: 145 ➣ 156] [Agility: 153 ➣ 164] [Magic: 248 ➣ 259]

—

Four levels, all gained in the Ravenshade conflict before his trial.

Heʼd distributed his 20 free stat points evenly across the four attributes, five each. Now, he had nearly 3,900 mana.

He was going to need every drop.

Quinlan flooded his body with lightning.

The current raced through his muscles, his tendons, his bones. Every fiber clenched and fired simultaneously. The acceleration was instantaneous. One moment, he was hovering above the dome. Next, he was falling toward it at a speed that turned the air into a screaming cone of compressed force.

Below, through the translucent shell, he saw them react.

Heads tilted upward. Arms pointed. Officers screamed orders. Within moments, the wallʼs defenders pivoted from their outward-facing positions and angled toward the sky.

The first volley came before he reached the barrier.

Arrows. Hundreds of them. They punched through the dome from the inside and streaked upward in a rising curtain of steel and fletching. Behind them, bolts of fire and compressed mana arced from the battlemages, each one trailing light as it climbed.

Quinlan didnʼt stop.

Synchra reacted before he gave the order, wrapping him in a rotating shell of red flames that incinerated the first wave. Shafts turned to ash before they reached his armor. The mage fire hit harder. A bolt of concentrated force struck his left shoulder and detonated against his chest plate. A lance of compressed air caught him in the ribs. The armor held, but the blunt force rattled his skeleton.

He pulled his right fist back.

The gauntlet crackled with concentrated electricity, the metal glowing white at the knuckles. The barrier rushed up to meet him.

He punched.

The impact was visible from the ground.

A shockwave erupted outward from the apex in a perfect ring. The barrier screamed. The lattice at the contact point buckled inward, fractures racing outward from his fist in jagged lines.

For one heartbeat, the barrier held.

Then it redistributed.

Mana surged toward the impact point from every direction, flooding through the lattice. The fractures sealed. The cracks mended. The buckled section pushed back outward, shoving his fist away with a force that sent a jolt up his entire arm.

He was launched backward.

Quinlan tumbled through the air, caught himself with wind, and stabilized above the dome. His right arm hung heavy. Pain radiated from his knuckles to his shoulder.

Then he checked his mana.

[Mana: 1,404 / 3,881] His stomach dropped.

Over two thousand five hundred points. Gone. The lightning acceleration, the compression into his fist, the single punch. It had burned through more than half his total reserves in seconds, and his regeneration hadnʼt even made a dent.

Below, a cheer went up from the walls.

The defenders had watched the Primordial Villain hit their barrier with everything he had, and he failed.

However, the cheering didnʼt last long. The commanders stationed on the wall were screaming at their soldiers to fire again. The next volley was already climbing toward him.

Quinlan didnʼt stay to take it.

He shot upward. Lightning surged through his legs and spine, launching him toward the clouds in a single violent burst. The volley passed beneath him, projectiles arcing through empty air. He climbed until Whisperfield shrank to the size of a coin, until the barrier was a faint golden shimmer, until the dwarven engines looked like scattered toys.

He stopped.

The air was thin and cold. His breath came out as vapor that crystallized and fell away. His right arm throbbed from knuckle to shoulder, and every muscle in his body ached from the lightning acceleration and the blunt damage he took from the barrage of projectiles hitting him. His cells had been forced to fire at a rate they were never designed for. The human body, even a Primordial one, had limits.

Heʼd found one.

[Mana: 1,404... 1,418... 1,436...]

The regeneration ticked upward. Slow but steady.

Quinlan looked down.

From this height, the city was an anthill. The barrier shimmered over it. The dwarven bombardment continued in tiny flashes of gold against the shellʼs front face. The defenders had returned to their outward positions, dealing with the real siege.

They thought it was over.

While waiting for his mana to regenerate, Quinlan replayed the attempt in his head.

The acceleration. The approach. The punch. Heʼd driven his fist into the apex with every scrap of lightning he could compress into his gauntlet, and the barrier had eaten it. Cracked, buckled, and healed in less than a heartbeat.

He knew why.

It just wasnʼt enough.