Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1701 Suicidal Freak

Quinlanʼs elements came alive with utmost aggression. Fire erupted in walls between exchanges to buy half-seconds of spacing. Earth surged in slabs that tilted Ragnarʼs footing mid-charge. The terrain stopped being subtle adjustments and became architecture: magma channels widened into barriers, stone funneled the ridge narrower with every pass, and the air itself thickened with wind pressure that slowed Ragnarʼs charges by a fraction the dwarf couldnʼt compensate for.

And through all of it, the blood kept flowing. Wind curled around Quinlanʼs forearm in a constant thread that pulled crimson from the wound and fed it across the hilt in a cycle that never let [Soul Reaper]ʼs edge dry. Every strike deposited more agents inside the enemy, and the agents multiplied inside every wound the regeneration sealed over.

Ragnarʼs second contamination site lit three exchanges in. A crimson vein spread beneath his right hip where a score had sealed over fresh blood, and the ritual surged to purge it just as it had the shoulder. But the shoulderʼs dormant contamination chose that moment to reignite, both sites pulling regeneration in opposite directions, and for two full heartbeats the dwarf kingʼs body couldnʼt decide which fire to put out first.

”You wonʼt outlast me!” Ragnar roared, and the fist he threw at Quinlanʼs chest carried enough force to crater the stone behind the miss. The next exchange brought Ragnarʼs knuckles close enough to brush [Synchra]ʼs dead shard at the base of Quinlanʼs neck, and the shockwave alone sent the Villain sliding backward across stone with his vision swimming. Wind caught him, steadied him, and the blood from his forearm never stopped flowing because he never let it.

Ragnarʼs left arm seized. The third contamination site had rooted while the ritual was busy fighting the first two, and the crimson network spreading through his left bicep locked the muscle in a spasm that pulled his swing wide. He powered through it with brute force, the arm answering his will through sheer hatred, but it answered slower than before.

”Why wonʼt you close it?!” The question tore out of Ragnar as his regeneration fought on three fronts simultaneously, his fused plate thinning visibly where reserves were being cannibalized from every surface to fuel the internal war. ”Use your ice, Villain! Seal that fucking wound before you bleed out!”

Quinlanʼs answer was to draw [Soul Reaper] across his own forearm a second time, refreshing the cut that had started to clot due to his high Vitality, and the surge of crimson that followed was bright enough to cast light across the stone between them. He recoated the blade in a single pass and came forward.

Ragnarʼs eye changed.

The fury was still there, burning as hot as it had since the ritual consumed his soul, but beneath it sat something the dwarf king hadnʼt felt in long centuries. He was looking at a man who was bleeding to death on purpose, whose aura burned brighter with every drop that left his body, who fought with the calm efficiency of someone who had already decided how this ended and was simply executing the steps. The wind that curled around Quinlanʼs frame carried his blood in visible threads, and the primordial energy radiating from his exposed skin had turned the air between them into a pressure thick and hostile that pressed against Ragnarʼs fused plate like a second atmosphere.

The Primordial Villain was spending his own life as currency to expedite Ragnarʼs execution, and the exchange rate was tilting further against the dwarf king with every heartbeat.

Fear.

Ragnar hadnʼt felt it since before the ritual burned his capacity for self-preservation out of his soul, and the fact that it had found a way back in through the chemical certainty of the dark ritualʼs embrace told him something his rage refused to accept: the man in front of him was more committed to this kill than Ragnar was to his own survival.

”Suicidal,” Ragnar breathed between charges that grew less certain with each pass. ”Youʼre suicidal, Villain. Youʼll die on this ridge. Iʼll make sure of it!”

Quinlan didnʼt answer. His elements answered for him: earth surged beneath Ragnarʼs leading foot and threw his balance sideways, magma pooled in the stumbleʼs landing zone, and [Soul Reaper] found the gap in the recovery with three contaminated inches that sealed over a fourth site of primordial infection.

The terrain was a corridor now. Every pass had narrowed the ridge further, funneled the dwarf toward the lines Quinlan wanted him on, and the magma glowing in the channels cast Ragnarʼs failing body in red-black light that matched the blood running down the Villainʼs arm.

Ragnarʼs charges had less room with each exchange, the contamination spreading through his left side dragging that arm a fraction slower than his right, and the sounds rising from his chest had turned wet and labored as the ritual burned through the last of what it could spend.

Quinlan then read the line the way Black Fang would have read it. When Ragnarʼs contamination-locked left arm dropped on the wind-up he put everything through the gap.

His elements compressed into [Soul Reaper] alongside every thread of blood the wind had been feeding to the blade, and the saber bit into the widest seam of crimson instability on Ragnarʼs chest where accumulated contamination had turned fused armor-flesh into tissue that couldnʼt hold.

The blade went through. Through plate, through flesh, through the body of the dwarf king whoʼd traded his future for power and met the one man willing to open his own veins to end him. The tip emerged from Ragnarʼs back, and the wound did not seal.

Seven elements and a saberʼs edge had always been enough to defeat the dwarf king. Ragnarʼs ritual had just been refusing to let him die.

Now... His knees hit the stone as the necrotic current failed outward from the chest, contamination reaching critical mass while fused armor-flesh lost cohesion and plates cracked apart without regenerating. The fortress heʼd made from his own body was falling from the inside, losing to the riot happening inside while he was bombarded by Quinlanʼs strikes on the outside.

His eye found the man, and the fury in it had lost its edge. ”Is she really this important to you, Villain?”

Quinlan didnʼt respond to his words even now and just pulled the blade free.

The dwarf king fell forward onto the dirt of his kingdom as the Primordial Villain stood over him with crimson running from his forearm, bare-chested, swaying, his vision fading at the edges.

But there was only one thing on his mind, and it wasnʼt connected to his injuries.

ʼBlack Fang... Wait for me.ʼ

”[Subjugation].”