Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1632 New Destination

His women came off the crest.

Ayame came first. The katana stayed at her hip and her arms had finally uncrossed, and she descended the slope without hurry. The rest fell in behind her.

Down on the road, Quinlan still had Sera folded into his chest. Sylvaris Vaelorith stood with her hand at her collarbone and her gaze fixed on her daughter. She had nearly spoken more than once since Seraphiel had leapt off the crest, meaning to do what she had always done in public: rein her in, remind her that the heir of the clan did not climb her man like a tree in front of the high houses of the nation.

Yet she had not done it.

For the first time in her daughterʼs life, she had not done it.

A warm, enormous pride had moved into her chest instead, and had filled every place the reprimand usually sat. By every standard she had raised Seraphiel under, it had no business being there. It was there anyway.

Less than a year ago, her daughter had been chained in a slaverʼs stall, wearing belly dancer silks and a contract that stripped her of every right a person could own. Sylvaris had gone to bed every night for months knowing she could not reach her. The Vaelorith clan had risked everything to bring her home, and in the end, she had only come home because the only living son of the First Elf had reached her first.

That was the daughter currently permitting the high nobles of Elvardia to rise.

Sylvaris watched Seraphielʼs smile sharpen against Quinlanʼs throat as a matron looked back over her shoulder and stared straight into her eyes. She watched her daughter arrange the curve of her hip against black plate for the viewing of every rival clan on the continent.

Her own smile cracked through before she caught it.

Let her be, she thought.

The moon elf was proud.

Down at the base of the rise, Vex had seen enough.

”Elf.”

The Hexwitch had reached Quinlanʼs elbow without anyone noticing she was moving. Her ponytail was still settling from the sprint. Her red eyes were narrowed on the blonde elf currently wrapped around the man she considered hers.

”Arenʼt you a bit too clingy?”

Sera did not so much as open her eyes.

”Like, objectively.” Vexʼs fingers drummed once against her own hip. ”Iʼm not even being mean but asking professionally as the resident expert on being clingy.”

Still no reaction from the blonde at Quinlanʼs throat. Seraʼs cheek pressed a fraction deeper into his neck.

Vexʼs eyes narrowed another degree.

”Hubby. Tell her.”

Quinlan said nothing and that was all the answer the Hexwitch would receive from her man.

Vexʼs mouth flattened. ”I see...”

She made a different decision.

She jumped and closed the gap in a half-step and launched herself at the open side of his body. The Hexwitch did not accept second place in any arena that involved Quinlan. Her arms locked around his free shoulder, her thighs clamped around his other hip, and her cheek buried into the crook of his neck on the side Sera had not claimed.

”Mine.”

It was muffled against his throat.

Seraʼs gaze lifted. She tilted her chin a fraction in Vexʼs direction without lifting her head from Quinlanʼs other side. Blue met red across his collarbone.

Neither blinked.

Quinlan, now holding two women, looked over at the rest of his girls.

”...”

Then Blossom was gone.

The dogkin had been bouncing on the balls of her feet at the crest one heartbeat. The next, the hilltop behind her was empty.

Quinlan felt her before he saw her.

Two slender arms came around his middle and clamped tight just above where Seraʼs thigh rested against his hip. Her cheek buried into the space between his shoulder blades. A muffled ecstatic sound traveled up his spine through [Synchra]ʼs plate.

”Master...”

It was drawn out, adoring, and completely unrepentant.

”Welcome back...”

Her cheek rubbed once.

”Thank you, Blossom. I missed you.”

The blonde propellerʼs spinning increased tenfold all of a sudden while across Quinlanʼs collarbone, the staredown held.

For three full breaths, red held blue.

Then Vexʼs mind slipped somewhere else entirely.

The Hexwitch was on a road at the head of an elven column, wrapped around the man she had decided she was going to give all of herself to, grinning into his throat while the woman who took her in after lionkin ravaged her village and consumed her family alive was missing.

And here she was.

Throwing a tantrum over a hug.

The narrow in her red eyes released all at once.

Her face went still. Then it pressed harder into Quinlanʼs throat, and she tucked herself all the way into the seam where his neck met his shoulder.

Her arms did not let go. If anything, they tightened.

The jealousy had gone out of her entirely.

Seraʼs own smile of victory receded and her blue gaze shifted across Quinlanʼs collarbone to the white-haired head currently burrowed against his other side.

She looked at it for a beat.

Her expression softened.

”Youʼve been doing everything in your power.”

Her voice was quiet and supportive where it had been smug a few seconds ago.

”Itʼs not a sin to take a moment to breathe.”

Vex did not lift her face out of his throat, but the grip of her hand against Quinlanʼs shoulder eased by a single fraction. It was as close to a thank-you as the Hexwitch could currently manage.

Quinlanʼs gauntlet settled against the small of Vexʼs back.

”Thatʼs right.”

His voice came steady.

”And itʼs time. Let us continue.”

He turned on his heel.

Three women held on, two in his arms, one against his back. None of them loosened a fraction for the motion.

He started walking.

The rest of his girls fell in behind him, dry looks on every face.

”Warp Gate.”

...

The cold hit first: stone-smell, coal-smoke, the iron-edge of recent forging. The elven road was gone.

In Quinlanʼs mind, the notifications had not stopped.

[Ding!]

[Your Elite Soul, Veyrin, has slain an enemy! You have gained 47,000 XP!]

[Ding!]

[Your Elite Soul, Eve, has slain an enemy! You have gained 52,000 XP!]

[Ding!]

[Your Elite Soul, Ito, has slain an enemy! You have gained 49,000 XP!]

[Ding!]

They had been chiming in his skull the whole day long. Halfway across the country, the girls he had left with his soul armies were grinding hard. Morgana was there to accompany them, acting as a one-woman-artillery. Every kill they made dropped XP into his pool. Every fraction closed the gap between him and the continentʼs ceiling by another hair.

His soul armies were doing their job, now it was time for him to do his own.

Quinlanʼs gaze lifted to where the fortress sat above him on a ridge.

Dwarven stonework climbed the rock face in tiers, joined by iron bracings and siege-guards and the heavy, efficient angles this race built everything in. Chimney smoke climbed in steady columns from the garrison quarters above. Carved statues of ancestral kings looked down across the slope, gray and impassive. Higher up the mountain face, half-finished gun-pits bristled with vertical barrels that had not yet been anchored, and crews in oil-stained coats were still clambering over them. High on the rampart walk, one guard had already seen him. His horn was halfway to his mouth.

Behind Quinlan, his women changed in one single breath.

Sera unhooked from his chest and dropped to her feet without a sound, and the Dawnbringer was back in full force. A sword of pure light condensed out of the air in her right palm. [Divine Arsenal] ran down her arm in a clean gold line. Her blue eyes had gone flat and focused.

Vex dismounted in the same breath. Her boots hit ground, her gloved hand closed on the hilt at her hip, and her sword came out. She tested it once in a low arc at her side. The blade hummed.

Her red eyes had caught fire.

The crimson tattoos under her collar, down her arms, across her knuckles began to glow. Her pentagram eyes had lit. The Hexwitch who had been clinging and shame-faced two heartbeats ago was gone. In her place stood the woman Black Fang had raised in a monster-infested forest with a knife in her hand.

She was ready to cut anything that moved.

Behind the two of them, the rest of his women formed up without a word spoken.

A katana came free. A staff rose. Blossomʼs claws gleamed at his right flank as the void thickened around her ankles.

They stood behind him, a single line.

Quinlan stepped forward and the air under his boots answered him.

The wind folded itself into a column beneath his plate, and he rose.

One foot. Two.

He kept rising.

At five feet above the slope, he stopped and hung there. Black plate caught the high sun. [Soul Reaper] glided up into the air behind his shoulder in its own slow orbit. Magic began to collect around him in seven different colors at once. Earth gathered at his heels in a low red pulse. Water cooled at his left hand. Fire and Magma stirred at his right. Ice crawled along [Synchra]ʼs seams. Wind held the column he was riding. Lightning chained, quiet and patient, between his knuckles.

Seven elements at once.

The Harbinger of Aeons was charging.

Above, the dwarven guardʼs horn finally reached his mouth.

The fortress had known he was coming for seven hours.