Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1699 How Would She?

”Your snake bitch squealed such a beautiful tone after the initial resistance broke, Villain.”

Ragnar scraped the words between strikes, aiming for the mental wound that had been steering Quinlanʼs output for a dozen exchanges. ”Want me to tell you what my boys did to her before the goblins got their little grubby hands on her?”

[Soul Reaper] scored the gap beneath Ragnarʼs collarbone with three elements behind the edge, and the strike landed cleaner than anything Quinlan had thrown in the last twenty exchanges because patience had placed it into the healing seamʼs narrowest point.

He cycled to the next angle before the cut finished sealing.

Ragnarʼs grin faltered. That provocation had always drawn fire, and the fire wasnʼt coming.

He tried twice more, filth about Black Fang followed by promises about the fate of his women, each one aimed at a wall that hadnʼt been there thirty seconds ago.

Quinlanʼs rhythm never skipped, his eyes tracking the next opening with a focus that left no room for sound, and every strike he landed while Ragnar talked hit harder than the ones before.

ʼSheʼd have killed him already by now, wouldnʼt she?ʼ

The thought arrived clean and factual, because Black Fang was a genius killer whoʼd been learning the trade since before she entered puberty. She, too, lacked the Magic or Strength to punch through Ragnarʼs defenses clearly, but somehow he knew she wouldʼve found the answer by now.

Heʼd watched her fight often enough that every lesson her technique carried lived somewhere in his body.

The waste left his footwork first. [Soul Reaper] found Ragnarʼs healing seam with two elements instead of three, the third held in reserve for the counter that followed, and the economy produced a score as deep as his desperate five-element overcommits had.

He remembered her violence, too. She carried an edge beneath the precision that detonated without warning, grace turning to savagery so fast the enemy died before they realized the pattern had broken. Control, control, control, and then everything she had through a single opening.

Three measured passes bled Ragnarʼs regeneration across both flanks, and on the fourth all seven elements converged through [Soul Reaper] into the deepest seam on Ragnarʼs right side. The saber drove three inches past the fused plate, the deepest wound Quinlan had scored all fight, but it sealed in three heartbeats and the blood that wept before it closed was blacker than ten clashes ago.

Then the ridge shifted beneath Ragnarʼs next charge, a gradient in the stone that the dwarf didnʼt register until his leading foot hit ground two inches lower than expected and his weight committed to an angle that hadnʼt existed a second ago.

Quinlanʼs efficiency had freed his hands for the terrain. Small adjustments compounded with each pass: angles tilting beneath Ragnarʼs charges, stone hardening under Quinlanʼs footing while magma pooled in channels toward positions the dwarf favored. Ragnar charged through the nearest channel without slowing, fused plate hissing where molten rock scored his legs, and the ritual poured energy into repairing damage.

”I wonʼt yield to your little magic tricks!”

The dwarf felt it and pressed harder, his charges coming faster and burning hotter until the margins Quinlan dodged by shrank to nothing. The terrain cost the dwarf and he paid without flinching, and still, Ragnar was the one forcing the other man to react.

Then the exchange came where Ragnarʼs fist and [Soul Reaper] moved in the same heartbeat, both men committing to the opening theyʼd read in the other.

”Die!” the dwarf screamed gutturally.

Quinlan put everything behind the blade. Seven elements compressed into a rising cut aimed at the one target Ragnar couldnʼt afford to lose, and [Soul Reaper] carved through the remaining eye and into the skull behind it with force that split fused plate like wet clay.

Ragnarʼs fist caught Quinlanʼs left side in the same instant, and it wasnʼt clean because none of his hits today had landed clean against a man with wind and lightning threaded through his reflexes. But this many grazes compounded brutally.

[Synchra] blazed as every remaining reserve of anima flooded the plates in a surge that turned the shard-metal incandescent, slamming against the force of the blow, absorbing what it could and distributing the rest. The armor gave everything she had left to keep her master alive, and then she fell apart. Plates disintegrated outward from the point of impact, the chest piece splitting in fragments of spent anima that scattered across the stone, shoulder guards following, then greaves, cohesion failing in sequence as the energy binding them gave out.

What remained was a shard no bigger than his palm fused to the base of his neck, dark and inert.

Wind caught him before the follow-through could connect, but [Synchra]ʼs last surge hadnʼt been enough. Pain split through his left side where the compounded force had broken past the armorʼs dying effort, and a large mouthful of dark blood left his lips. Just like that, twenty-five percent damage reduction was gone, and the next half-decent hit would take him out of the fight.

What followed happened in the single moment before his boots found stone.

ʼHow would she kill him?ʼ

The answer was obvious, because she was the Venomborne Terror. Sheʼd contaminate, corrode, turn the enemyʼs own body against itself. He remembered the deadly purple sheen that coated her blade when she meant to kill something that wouldnʼt stay dead, the way the venom ate through defenses that raw force couldnʼt crack. Poison...

Aurora had taught him the fundamentals months ago, back when heʼd tried to synthesize toxins from his elements and produced nothing worthy of mention. The attempts were flimsy, half-formed, and heʼd shelved the idea because there were faster ways to kill things at the time.

But now he was facing down a drugged, dark-ritualed, self-sacrificing murder midget who was already incredibly tanky before undergoing the process, and faster ways werenʼt working. Quinlan formed a theory.

Every wound he opened sealed in heartbeats. Raw force wasnʼt the answer.

Ragnarʼs regeneration wasnʼt a defense. It was a system, and systems could be corrupted from inside.

ʼI donʼt need to be stronger than his regeneration. I just need to introduce a variable it canʼt work around.ʼ

Quinlanʼs own attempts at poison were before the Abyssal Genesis Physique had finished rewriting him from the inside out. The blood leaving his mouth wasnʼt the same blood heʼd had back then. He was now the Bloodfather, a human primordial infused with demonic essence, and the dark crimson on his lips glowed with a luminescence that had no business existing inside a human body. Wind caught the blood before it scattered to the ground, pulled it across the hilt, and slicked [Soul Reaper]ʼs edge in threads of red-black light that burned brighter than anything the saber had ever carried. The pale flames met his blood and guttered, giving way to their masterʼs decision.

Quinlanʼs boots hit stone with a pitch-black saber coated in primordial crimson and nothing between his skin and the air.

Ragnar stood where the exchange had happened and didnʼt move. His remaining eye was gone, the socket and the skull behind it split open along the cut line, the tissue visible through the gap ruined beyond recognition.