Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1534  Grand War

They watched the war eat itself alive in silence, letting the scale of it settle into their bones before anyone tried to make sense of it.

The details sharpened the longer they stared. The Elvardian Alliance had entrenched across a ridgeline, dwarven engineers having dug in with the brutal efficiency their race was known for, and from behind those earthworks the cannons roared. Quinlan recognized them instantly. The same siege weapons that had been aimed at Whisperfieldʼs walls hours ago had been hauled here and repositioned, their massive barrels now pointed south across open ground, and the devastation they caused was staggering. Each volley tore through packed infantry like a fist through parchment, cratering the earth, scattering soldiers in every direction. Machines built to crack rune-reinforced barriers and shatter giant walls were firing into flesh and armor instead, and the results were exactly as ugly as that math suggested.

But Ravenshadeʼs mages answered in kind. Quinlan watched a cannon volley arc toward the duchyʼs front lines and saw three separate barrier spells snap into existence, deflecting the payloads skyward or detonating them mid-flight. A human war-mage on horseback raised his staff and returned fire with a barrage of lightning that ripped across the Elvardian trenchline, forcing dwarven gunners to dive for cover. Another mage channeled a concentrated beam of fire that melted through an earthwork emplacement and turned the cannon behind it into slag.

Ravenshade had come prepared for this.

Duke Tharionʼs banners flew across the southern half of the field, dark crimson standards pushing forward in a broad front that outnumbered the Elvardian defensive line by a margin Quinlan could see even from the long distance. Ravenshade light infantry swept the flanks in fast-moving columns, their mages riding behind them on horseback to keep pace, while heavy infantry pressed the center. In a world where a Level 40 soldier could outrun a warhorse on flat ground, mounted combat was a relic of lower-level warfare. Horses were liabilities on a high-level battlefield, slower than the soldiers riding them and far easier to kill. The only exception was mages, whose investment in the Magic stat left their physical stats lagging behind their peers. A war-mage who could level a city block with a single spell might struggle to keep pace with a jogging infantryman, and so they rode, protected by the very soldiers they supported.

Ravenshadeʼs formation reflected that reality. Fast, durable infantry on the flanks. Mounted mages behind them, lobbing spells over the front line. Heavy infantry in the center, grinding forward through the Elvardian trenches by sheer numbers.

It was a bloodbath.

Behind the front lines, fresh regiments waited in reserve columns that stretched back toward the horizon. There was no question about it: the duchy had committed its main forces.

The Elvardian Alliance was holding, but only just. Their lines were thicker than what had besieged Whisperfield. Reinforcements had arrived at some point during the seven hours Quinlan had been building a city, fresh elven battalions and additional dwarven companies bolstering what had been a siege force into a proper field army. Behind the Elvardian rear lines, foxkin skirmishers darted in and out of Ravenshadeʼs backline in hit-and-run raids, Silverʼs scouts doing what foxkin did best: harassing supply lines, picking off isolated units, and vanishing before anyone could pin them down.

But even with the foxkin bleeding Ravenshadeʼs logistics, it wasnʼt enough. Ravenshade had more bodies, more mages, and the momentum of an aggressor who had chosen this fight on their own terms.

Then the Drowned King arrived.

He was terrifying. But he wasnʼt the one who made the ground shake.

Quinlan felt it through the air itself, a rhythmic, tectonic pulse, as if the earth was being struck by something vast and patient.

He looked past the Drowned Kingʼs swarm, past the eastern ridge, and saw them coming.

An army of the dead that made the Drowned Kingʼs horde look like a scouting party.

They filled the horizon. A tide of corpses stretching so wide that the flanks disappeared into haze, hundreds of thousands of undead, perhaps millions, even, moving in lockstep with a discipline that living armies envied. Rows and columns, silent except for the rasp of rusted armor and the grinding of bones, and the ground shook under the weight of them with every synchronized step.

Three figures walked at the head of the column.

The Drowned King had peeled off to join them, falling into step on the right.

Archlich Vozen on the left, gems glinting along his chain, skeletal hands clasped behind his back as he strode with the casual arrogance of the ancient dead. And in the center, walking a step ahead of both, was a lich who made the other two look like children playing at immortality.

”Gorthrax the Eternal,” Orianna spoke up. Quinlan glanced at her. ”The Consortium has files on the Covenant leadership?”

”Theyʼre treated as a rival syndicate, just as the Phantom League was. Before Kaede killed them all.”

”I see... Have you met him?”

”No one alive has. Gorthrax is the most reclusive of the Covenant lords. Millions of years old, said to be older than the Blind Grave Oracle.” Her eyes never left the figure below. ”Reports from the Consortiumʼs intelligence network suggest he hasnʼt left his lair in thousands of years.”

The words lingered for a long moment.

Thousands of years in isolation. And he was here now, walking across an open battlefield with two undead lords flanking him like attendants.

Quinlan watched the ancient lich advance at the head of his silent army and felt the scope of what he was looking at settle into place. This wasnʼt a border war. This wasnʼt a territorial dispute that had boiled over. Ravenshade had known what it was picking a fight with. Elvardia, the dwarves, the Covenant of Eternity, the foxkin, and whatever else the Alliance had cobbled together over centuries of preparation. And Ravenshade had marched anyway, with enough bodies and mages to meet all of it head-on.

That meant Duke Tharion either had something Quinlan couldnʼt see yet, or Ravenshade was more desperate than he realized.

Either way, a creature that hadnʼt seen daylight in longer than the oldest human had been alive was marching alongside the Alliance. This was the kind of war that only happened once, and both sides had brought everything they had.

This was their endgame. Both of them.

ʼAnd I just stumbled into the middle of it.ʼ

Gorthrax wore no crown. No ornament. His armor was black and featureless, pitted by ages that predated the kingdoms fighting on this field. The runes carved into his skull were so old they had worn smooth at the edges. He moved with the patience of something that had stopped counting centuries a long time ago.

Archlich Vozen and the Drowned King flanked him the way honor guards flanked a king. ʼThatʼs the boss,ʼ Quinlan thought. The realization settled into him with a cold certainty that had nothing to do with analysis. You didnʼt need to know Gorthraxʼs history to feel what he was. The other undead lords projected power. Gorthrax simply was power, the way a mountain was tall. It didnʼt try. It just stood there and everything else looked up.

”Quin...” Seraphiel murmured.

”I know.”

The undead column reached the battlefieldʼs edge and kept coming. They hit the Ravenshade rear lines like a second tide, and the duchyʼs soldiers, already reeling from the Drowned Kingʼs flank assault, buckled under the fresh wave.

For a moment, it looked like Ravenshade was about to break.

Then the light came.

It started as a glow on the Ravenshade side of the field, faint at first, easy to miss in the smoke and chaos. Then it grew. White-gold radiance pouring upward from a single point behind the human lines, so bright that soldiers on both sides flinched and turned away.

A figure stepped forward through the Ravenshade ranks, and the undead in her path came apart.

They outright dissolved. Holy energy radiated from her in waves that stripped the necrotic bindings from every corpse within a hundred meters, and bodies that had been clawing at Ravenshade soldiers a second ago collapsed into ash and bone fragments as the magic holding them together simply ceased to exist.

She wore armor that shone like captured sunlight, impossibly bright, impossibly clean amidst the filth and gore of the battlefield. Ceremonial plate that should have been decorative but moved with her like a second skin. A divine aura clung to her so thick that Quinlan could feel it from the air, pressing against his own necrotic senses like oil against water.

Behind her, a contingent of priests in white and gold spread into formation, staves raised, already channeling healing and buffing magic into her in continuous streams. They moved with the coordination of people who had trained for exactly this deployment.

Felicityʼs voice cracked the silence.

”Elisabeth?!”

The princess had gone rigid, both hands pressed over her mouth, eyes wide and locked on the shining figure below.

Quinlan needed a moment to recognize that this was the same woman heʼd seen at Alexiosʼ celebratory party.

”The Dawn Breaker, Elisabeth Valorian…” he whispered. ”Your elder sister.”

NSFW art on Patreon and DC