Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1779 Unruly Ruffians

Quinlan brought his guests down through the canopy before anyone on the ground could notice.

Wind cushioned each guest onto the broad limbs of an ancient oak overlooking the clearing, steady enough to stand on, and he threaded a current between the leaves that carried every sound from below to their ears as clearly as if they were standing in it.

Jasmine settled beside him and rested her cheek against his shoulder, watching the scene.

Below them, the children were close enough now to pick out faces, and the first thing that registered was the sound of one adult losing a battle she had no chance of winning.

A young woman in white nunʼs robes stood in the center of the clearing with her hands on her knees, bent double.

Her glasses had fogged and slipped halfway down her nose, freckles were flushed crimson across both cheeks, and her habit was streaked with so much dirt and grass that the white had become a suggestion.

”Come... back... here...!” she wheezed, reaching toward a dogkin girl who was already twenty meters away and accelerating.

”Catch me if you can, Sister Mira! The pack only follows the strong!” The girlʼs ears flattened with glee as she looped the clearing in three seconds, came sprinting past the nun close enough to ruffle her robes, and called ”I canʼt bow to such a disappointment!” over her shoulder before she was gone again.

”You damned brat...!” Mira keeled over, nearly dying on the spot. ”I donʼt want you to bow, just listen to your damned caretaker! Iʼm the adult and youʼre the child!”

”Such faulty logic wonʼt work on me!” distant giggling was the response her grunts received.

”Goddess have mercy...” She braced her hands on her knees and breathed like a woman contemplating a career change.

Then she straightened, pushed her glasses up with the back of her wrist, and turned toward the tree where the elf girl had been sitting a few seconds ago.

The branch was empty.

”...Where did she go?”

A voice drifted down from considerably higher. ”You look tired, Sister Mira. You should sit down and drink water. Lots of it.”

The elf girl was perched on a branch twenty meters up, bare legs swinging, perfectly at ease, stroking the bark the way someone would pet a cat.

”Wah!” The nun was on the verge of suffering a heart attack.

Sister Mira, the freckled, bespectacled nun Quinlan had snatched off a rooftop during the siege of Greyhaven and dragged across the kingdom to help evacuate orphanages, had been calling him a motherfucker ever since.

Now, as a woman who only ever took care of human children up until a certain overly arrogant and unfairly handsome primordial scumbag brought her over to this accursed town, dealing with non-human kids was a whole new world, a world in which she was stumbling around with great difficulty...

”Come down from there this instant, young lady!” she screamed, though it sounded more pleading than threatening.

”I like it up here.” Her pointed ears twitched, listening to something only she could hear. ”Also, please lower your voice. Youʼre disturbing mother nature.”

The little girl began petting the tree as if consoling it. ”Donʼt worry, the loud lady means no harm... Sheʼs just greatly misguided.”

”I cannot believe this!” Mira muttered, fixing her glasses for what was clearly not the first time today, ”Why wonʼt you sit lower? What if you break your neck?”

”???” Pure confusion replaced the elfʼs expression, looking as if the mere idea of falling off a tree was alien to her.

”Haaah...” Mira gave up on the elf and spun around to find the dwarven boy, only to discover that the spot where heʼd been standing was now an empty hole in the dirt.

”The depths are calling to me!” he shouted from below, his excited voice echoing.

”Oh no you donʼt!”

She dropped to her knees and plunged both arms in up to her elbows.

Her fingers found a boot and she pulled.

The boot came.

The boy did not.

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

She planted her feet and heaved, and the boy heaved right back.

”Unhand me, wench! Iʼm done living under the oppressive sun!”

The earth widened as he burrowed deeper with the stubborn efficiency of someone who was very good at this, and Miraʼs arms sank to her shoulders.

”You are not... a mole...!” she grunted, cheek pressed to dirt. ”You are a child! Children do not live underground!”

A muffled voice rose from below. ”Dwarves do!”

”Youʼre SEVEN!”

The two human children sat on a log nearby, watching with the calm acceptance of being the only ones Sister Mira could actually catch.

”Sheʼs gonna lose,” the boy said.

”She always does,” the girl confirmed.

”The fresh meat... theyʼre fun,” the boy smirked, watching the nunʼs futile efforts.

”Super fun!” the girl cheered, feet dangling even faster with excitement.

In the oak above, nobody spoke.

Myrasynʼs fingers had found Isvethʼs at some point during the chase and were gripping hard enough to tremble.

Her eyes moved from the dogkin girl still sprinting laps to the elf in the branches to the dwarven boyʼs hole, and each one pulled the same expression deeper across her face.

Alexios hadnʼt blinked in a while.

”Holy Son...” Myrasyn whispered, and the question had nothing to do with the game. ”Whatʼs going on?”

”Absolute destruction,” Quinlan grinned.

”Thatʼs not what I meant!” Myrasyn hissed, pouting. ”The races! Theyʼre playing together!”

While ʼplaying togetherʼ mightʼve been a bit of a stretch from a certain point of view considering each kid was doing their own thing, to Myrasyn, it was anything but a stretch.

They were all working together to have fun at the expense of their caretaker.

Such a scene had never been witnessed before. It was world-shattering.

”Theyʼre orphans of Miri Town, taken care of by the volunteer nuns and funded by us,” Jasmine explained in Quinlanʼs stead seeing how he was content to keep their shell-shocked guests guessing. ”The cruel nature of slavery left the non-human kids without parents while the human kids lost theirs to war, slavery, and other misfortune.”

”Here she is.”

”Our screeching superstar.”

Voices drifted from the far side of the clearing.

Two women emerged from the path leading toward the settlement walls, each trailed by a cluster of children who poured from the treeline behind them like a dam had burst.

The first was an elven nun with ears every bit as long as Myrasynʼs and a basket of bread on one hip.

Six children followed her in a loose pack: two elves, one dwarf, a human boy, and two beastkin who spotted the clearingʼs dogkin girl and broke into a sprint to join her with matching shrieks.

The second was a wolfkin sister with gray ears pressed flat beneath her wimple, carrying a blanket under one arm and a sack of bottles over the other.

Her group was the largest of the three, a dozen children, mostly human, with two dwarves, two elves, and a bearkin boy mixed in. They marched behind her in a neat line and scattered the instant they reached the clearing.

”Mira, people can hear you from the other side of the continent,” the elf sister sighed.

”They just wonʼt listen!” Mira shouted from the ground, still gripping the dwarfʼs boot with both hands. ”Help me!”

The elf sighed, set down her basket, and looked up at the elf girl perched twenty meters above with extended arms.

”Come down.”