Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1581  Evil Spirit

”Commander, thatʼs a young nature spirit! We just attacked a child of the Verdant Mother.”

Two more archers lowered their bows. An elf in the second row hadnʼt drawn at all, her green eyes fixed on the tiny figure perched on the Primordial Villainʼs shoulder with an expression caught between duty and horror.

”She is no spirit!” Aelindraʼs voice cracked across the line. ”She is a weapon of the Necromancer! A minion of evil, nothing more! Reload and fire!”

The archers looked at each other. The hesitation lasted one breath. Then training won over instinct, and twelve bows came back up with fresh arrows nocked.

Their faces said what their hands wouldnʼt. They reloaded. They didnʼt believe her.

The dryad on Quinlanʼs shoulder was breathing harder than she had been a moment ago.

”Elite elven archers are a problem, Father.”

”Angle me.”

Rosieʼs roots shifted beneath his feet. The network that was holding him upright because his legs hadnʼt been reliable since the warhammer hit his skull, rotated him forty degrees to face the elven line. It was a smooth motion, the roots adjusting like a living platform, and Quinlanʼs red eyes found the archer line through the fractured mess his concussion gave him.

He didnʼt need precision for this.

Wind and fire left his hands at the same time. The gust hit the elven line first, a wall of compressed air that stripped their footing and scattered their ranks, and the fire followed half a breath later into the cluster of bodies the wind had made.

The dwarves wore blacksteel. The dwarves had Vitality stats that could absorb punishment and armor that took real force to crack. Killing dwarves cost him mana he couldnʼt spare and effort his broken body complained about with every cast.

The elves wore silver-green plate built for speed.

They burned.

The fire ripped through the light armor like it wasnʼt there, and the elven rangers who had been putting mana-laced arrows through Rosieʼs roots were suddenly on the ground screaming and rolling. The ones who kept their feet long enough to run were hit by Morganaʼs lightning from behind, the puppet queenʼs voltage arcing between the metal plates that the elves wore specifically because they were light and conductive.

Eight dead. The rest scattered.

Aelindra watched a third of her archer line die in four seconds and her expression went cold.

Then Ragnarʼs voice boomed across the field.

”What are you doing?! Fight him!”

The dwarven king had managed to put on half his spare armor. The breastplate sat on his burned torso and the left pauldron was strapped in place, but his legs were still bare, the greaves abandoned when the first bolt of lightning from Alexiosʼs advancing forces had cut the strapping short. He looked like a man whoʼd gotten dressed during an earthquake.

His own dead were rising against him, his formation was buckling, and his elites were dying in waves against a man who should have been a corpse ten times over.

”He is one man! Injured! On empty mana! I will not watch my army suffer more losses from a single bleeding-”

A golden blade punched through the dwarven rear line.

”Couldnʼt you have put on your pants first?”

The voice came from behind the dwarven line and it carried a thousand years of patience that had finally run dry.

Alexios Valorian exploded through the gap his vanguard had carved in the dwarven line, golden longsword in his hands.

His gaze examined Ragnarʼs half-armored, hairless, one-eyed form. The bare legs. The missing beard. The burns. Everything below the half-strapped breastplate was on full display.

Alexios tilted his head.

”Wait.” His eyes traveled down, then back up. ”Ragnar, have you been a woman this entire time?”

The silence that followed was louder than the battlefield.

Three dwarven elites in the nearest formation looked away.

As it turned out, the king of the dwarven people did, in fact, not pack much. Not at all.

A sound came out of Ragnar that had nothing to do with strategy or composure. It was raw, guttural, and it came from the place where a dwarfʼs pride lived, the place that a beard protected and a crown dignified.

”I will wear your skull as a helmet, Alexios!”

”You already have a helmet. Shouldnʼt you prioritize a strap-on?”

”ALEXIOS!!!”

The warhammer came around with enough force to split the earth.

Alexios sidestepped. The warhammer cratered empty ground.

”How dare an overcooked boar invade my kingdom?” He raised his longsword. ”Let me turn you into a proper feast.”

”This is not the time, Alexios!” Ragnarʼs voice was shaking, logic forcing its way back into his brain. ”We have a common enemy. That man is a threat to both our nations. Help me kill him and we settle our affairs after!”

Alexios laughed.

”Common enemy. You are the king of the nation invading my lands. You brought wyverns and foxkin assassins and undead hordes to my kingdom.” The golden longsword leveled at the dwarf. ”You know, Iʼve been thinking far too much these past few months. Iʼm done with that. Iʼm going to kill everyone standing in front of me, one after the next. Youʼre first.”

Ragnarʼs warhammer came up. ”You fool, youʼve gone senile!”

An old manʼs mad eyes welcomed his statement. ”After all these months, I finally feel alive. If this is what being senile means, I embrace it with all my heart!”

Alexios closed the distance in a single step and the golden longsword descended.

The Warrior King was grinning. Blood ran from a gash above his brow and down the left side of his face, pooling in the creases of a smile. The king was gone.

What remained was the man who had earned the title Warrior King, and for the first time since Quinlan Elysiar had set foot on his continent, since Elvardia had marched on his borders, since the criminal syndicates had bled his cities, since his youngest daughter had chosen the enemy… Alexios Valorian was not thinking.

He was fighting.

”Let us bleed to the last drop.”

The impact drove Ragnar into the ground up to his bare knees.

Dwarven guards threw themselves between their king and the Warrior King. Alexios carved through the first three before the fourth managed to lock shields with the fifth. It bought Ragnar two seconds to pull his legs free and swing, and the warhammer caught Alexios across the hip.

The Warrior King skidded sideways, boots digging trenches, and came back with a counter that opened Ragnarʼs bare thigh from hip to knee. The dwarf king roared and the two Level 74 titans crashed into each other with a violence that scattered soldiers from both sides.

On the western front, Lilith Ravenshade had seen the opportunity.

Quinlanʼs position was exposed. The dwarven formation that had been shielding him from her side of the field was breaking apart under his own rampage, and for the first time since the convergence began, there was a clear line between her spellblade and the Primordial Villainʼs back.

She took it.

The spellblade flared and Lilith crossed the gap in a burst that left a scorch mark across the earth. Jallen and Bronnya flanked wide, Void dissolved into shadow, and the Scarlet Lilies moved as one toward the man who had taken so much from her.

Scar landed in her path.

The soul general touched down between Lilith and Quinlan with both daggers raised and blue-tinged blood still drying on her arms from the fighting, and her spectral eyes met Lilithʼs living ones across a distance that used to mean friendship.

Lilithʼs spellblade dimmed for a fraction of a second. Then it burned brighter.

”Again?!” The word tore out of her. ”Why do you keep standing in my way?! He is being swarmed from every direction! Go protect him from them instead!”

Scar tilted her head. The gesture was so human it hurt to watch on a face that burned with ghostly fire.

”I trust the little lady and the others to protect Master from them.” A chuckle, soft and wrong coming from a dead womanʼs mouth. ”But I know you four the best. So this duty falls to me.”

Lilithʼs grip tightened on her spellblade until the metal creaked, then she swung.

The Scarlet Lilies hit the soul armyʼs perimeter behind her. Jallenʼs spear drove through a spectral dwarf. Bronnyaʼs shield crushed two more. Voidʼs dark energy dissolved a cluster of lesser constructs. But Scar held the center, and as long as Scar held the center, Lilith wasnʼt reaching Quinlan.

Just like this, every faction was fighting every other faction.

And in the middle of it all, the Primordial Villain rampaged.

He carved through dwarves, elves, humans, and undead alike while the nations tore each other apart around him, and the soldiers who survived long enough to watch him work carried the same expression: the wide, hollow stare of men and women who had just learned what it meant to share a battlefield with a furious primordial.