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Chapter 1759: What Duke?
Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Quinlan held the King of Vraven’s gaze across the frost for what felt like an eternity.

The two men measured each other, both having a great deal to say.

Then Alexios’s gaze moved to Ayame, and for a moment the king looked older than the centuries behind him.

"We have a lot to discuss." His voice carried only to the three of them. "In private."

Quinlan didn’t respond.

His attention moved to Ayame, to the hand resting on her katana and the composure she’d rebuilt mere seconds ago.

If she wanted to demand answers from the man who signed her into chains right here, in front of nearly every faction on the continent, he was ready to let her even if it would cost him as far as politics went.

Ayame’s grip tightened on the hilt for a breath that stretched long enough for Alexios to notice.

Then she gave the king a short nod.

Non-allies were listening. Whatever Alexios had to say, giving it away for free would be foolish.

Quinlan’s smile returned as his gaze found the king’s.

Alexios accepted the nod with a slight inclination of his head toward Ayame.

Then his tone shifted as his eyes found Quinlan again. "I noticed a certain presence during the fighting."

His eyes were as flat as they could be.

"Care to explain why my duke was standing next to your criminal friends on a foreign battlefield?"

Quinlan blinked at the question, pausing for a moment, then sighed.

"Have you finally gone senile, old man?"

Far beneath where they stood, a different conversation took place.

"When will this crazy fucker let us out? This is beyond disgraceful!" Alastair fumed, hissing as quietly as he could.

"...Would you rather explain to the king what we’re doing here?" Sareth Greenvale asked, clutching her knees to her chest in the dark.

"..."

Duke Alastair Greenvale, vassal directly to the man standing in front of Quinlan right now, was squatting a hundred feet below with every notable officer and soldier he’d brought to this war.

Not long ago, Quinlan had enslaved the duke and effectively turned Greenvale into his puppet territory.

He’d forced the man to march his elite soldiers to this battlefield alongside Consortium criminals, fighting a war against Elvardia that had absolutely nothing to do with his duties, and if Alexios confirmed what he suspected, the consequences would be immediate.

Which was precisely why Quinlan had carved a pocket beneath the arena while simultaneously raising the colosseum around everyone else.

Greenvale was a chess piece he was forced to risk because of the situation the Elvardians put him in with their ambush, but he wasn’t about to let the king confirm his suspicions that easily.

"Oh, your duke. I get who you’re talking about, old friend." He glanced over his shoulder and pointed at Kaede’s unconscious form, where Seraphiel’s golden hands were still working. "She’s being healed."

A vein throbbed at Alexios’s temple. "You know what I meant."

"I might be a genius," Quinlan blinked innocently, "but I can’t read minds. Yet."

"Alastair Greenvale." The king’s patience was a thin, fraying thing. "You shameless bastard."

He didn’t say it out loud because of the ears that could overhear it, but the accusation was crystal clear.

’You enslaved my duke, forced him to march his soldiers here alongside criminals, and expected no one to notice?’

"You really are off your meds. Where’s Felicity?" Quinlan sighed again, pretending to look around. "Someone needs to put gramps back to bed. He’s hallucinating again."

"Quinlan Elysiar."

A shameless shrug welcomed the king’s growl.

"It must’ve been my foxy playing tricks on you."

"..." Alexios’s eyes cut to the dogkin ranks.

In the beastkin sections, the foxkin in question had her brother’s prosthetic arm in both hands and was turning it back and forth with the critical eye of someone who’d personally watched it being forged.

*Knock knock.*

She rapped her knuckles against the elbow joint, and the clean ring of metal carried. "Quinnie and the self-repressed girlie did a truly impressive job with these!" She beamed up at Darius, white ears perked.

"That they did!" The dogkin prince flexed the arm, rolled the shoulder through its full arc, and grinned wide enough to split his face. "That elf lass poured her heart into these. She deserves some proper love for that kind of work, has the brother bedded her yet?"

Kitsara’s ears folded with an exaggerated air of refinement. "I might have a loose mouth but even I won’t discuss my friend’s intimate life behind her back."

On the flat ground, Quinlan watched the exchange with open pride. "Isn’t she amazing?"

Alexios’s expression was so dry it could have started a fire. "So you’re telling me that girl produced thousands of Greenvale soldiers from her tails, maintained their formation while impersonating Alastair, fought alongside your women in her own skin, and killed Silver. All at once."

’Why is this bastard so attentive? He was fighting five elders!’

Quinlan cursed inwardly, but the grin didn’t waver.

"Not even that old fox could manage something like that." Alexios watched him with the patience of a man who had been catching lies for a thousand years.

"Have you considered that Yoruha never went all out? Speaking of..." Quinlan tilted his head. "Where did she end up, anyway?"

"Stop diverting the topic, you bastard."

Quinlan ignored the old man’s yapping and realized he genuinely didn’t know.

The last he’d seen of Yoruha, she’d torn through Kaede’s dimensional tear into whatever waited on the other side, and hadn’t reported back since.

"Where is my mother?"

Elisabeth’s demanding voice sounded from behind Alexios.

Ayame answered before Quinlan could be bothered to.

"Somewhere nearby." Her voice carried a smile that was all composure and no warmth. "Why don’t you go find her?"

Elisabeth’s gaze shifted to the petite samurai, and the surprise was evident in it. "You-"

"You’ve called my partner a hypocrite, spat on his address to the fallen, and haven’t stopped sneering at him since you got to know him." Ayame’s hand rested on her katana, and her blue eyes held the princess’s without blinking. "All that is to say, yes. I do dare address you without respect, Arch Priestess."

It was the first time in her life that Ayame had spoken to a devotee of the Goddess’s faith without a shred of deference, and the ease with which the words left her told Quinlan everything he needed to know about what she’d taken from today.

She knew now what kind of deity Elisabeth worshipped and what kind of justice that church dealt in, and whatever respect the samurai girl might once have shown had long since been buried.

Elisabeth’s mouth opened and closed without sound.

The Goddess was the highest power on the continent, worshipped as omnipotent and omnipresent by every nation.

Nobody spoke of her faithful the way this girl just had, because nobody who valued their life spat on the Goddess’s devotees and walked away from it.

Yet here she stood, faced with a lunatic who wore his heresy like a badge of honor and an entire household perfectly happy to join him in it, and for a moment Elisabeth genuinely didn’t know what to do with that.

Quinlan watched his samurai put a follower of the bratty Goddess in her place and made no effort whatsoever to hide how much he enjoyed it.

Unsteady footsteps reached them from the side.

Maelstrom crossed the last stretch of flat ground with his chest puffed out and his legs not quite cooperating beneath him, and the look on the syndicate general’s face was one that no living member of the Vesper Consortium had ever worn before.

For hundreds of thousands of years, the Consortium had existed in shadow.

Their leaders met in underground halls and abandoned warehouses, their names spoken in whispers and warrants.

Every generation of Consortium leadership had dreamed of the day one of their own would stand before a monarch as an equal, not as a prisoner being marched to execution. Maelstrom was about to live that dream on shaking legs.

"Vesper Phenom Devil." He addressed Quinlan by rank first, placing the younger man where the Consortium’s hierarchy said he belonged, far beneath his own station. Then he turned to Alexios, straightened his back, and delivered the words he’d been rehearsing in his head since he started walking over.

"King Alexios Valorian." The formality was immaculate. The grin splitting his face underneath it was not. "On behalf of the Vesper Consortium, I greet the crown of Vraven as an ally on this field."

< Chapter 1759: What Duke?

Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem
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  1. Online Offline
    Despawning
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    1768 Ayame's Realization

    The glare that burned behind them carried every ounce of wounded pride and predatory fury the wolfkin lord had swallowed since the negotiations began.

    He held it there, seconds stretching, turning heavier, as if sheer will could convey the promise his words weren't allowed to make.

    Then he scoffed, sharp and guttural, and turned his back on the armored figure.

    "This is a grave mistake!" The snarl tore across the field as Skarn stalked away, his grey fur still bristling.

    Rajah's amber gaze lingered on Quinlan for a beat longer than Skarn s had, cold and measuring, before the tigerkin lord turned and followed without a word.

    Quinlan watched them go, then looked at Gorruk.

    The bearkin lord seemed to be the one all of them listened to. At least somewhat... Vargis was not only a dogkin, a tribe not counted among the apexes of the beastkin, but he also had familial ties to Quinlan.

    All of this made Gorruk the one worth talking to.

    "I’Il reach out soon to iron out the details," Quinlan said, "You have my word."

    Gorruk nodded toward the armored figure, a slow dip that carried the weight of a handshake between men who didn't quite trust each other but understood the math.

    "We'll take the foxin with us, Gorruk said, his attention shifting to the disarmed soldiers huddled among the beastkin ranks. "What's left of them falls under the Confederation's jurisdiction."

    Quinlan nodded in response. Silver's remnants were a mess the Beastman Confederation would have to sort through on its own, and he had no interest in meddling with their internal politics as long as whatever they decided didn't circle back to bite him.

    Gorruk turned without ceremony, and the beastkin withdrawal began.

    It wasn't a retreat.

    Skarn's wolfkin fell into formation first, moving with the tight discipline of a pack following its alpha regardless of his mood, weapons still drawn and ears flat as they filed away from the field.

    Rajah's tigerkin followed in loose, prowling clusters, amber-striped soldiers casting glances over their shoulders at the elven and human ranks as if memorizing faces for a later date.

    The dogkin lingered longest.

    Vargis gave Quinlan a long, measured look before turning to his soldiers. "Let's move."

    Although he visibly would've liked to stay, he had his duties as the tribe's leader.

    "Bye-bye everyone!! Thanks for the help!" Kitsara cheered, waving energetically at her people.

    The dogkin troops fell in behind Vargis with tails wagging upon hearing the gratuitous words their princess had spoken, and more than a few of them stole glances at Blossom as they passed, ears perked and eyes bright with the same fierce approval their lord had shown during her eruption.

    Gorruk's bearkin moved last, massive forms peeling away from the edges of the field in unhurried strides with their lord at the center.

    Among them, the foxkin prisoners shuffled, disarmed and surrounded, trembling like deer in the headlights.

    Four separate columns filed off the flat ground, each tribe keeping its own line and its own pace, and the gaps between them said everything about the state of the Confederation that words hadn't.

    A collective exhale rolled through the elven ranks as the last beastkin column disappeared from view, thousands of shoulders dropping at once as the tension that had been coiling since Skarn first snarled at their queen finally bled out of the field.

    They had come within a breath of fighting each other, and every elf present knew it.

    "She's been stabilized."

    Seraphiel's voice arrived from behind Ayame, warm and steady.

    The Dawnbringer had been kneeling over Kaede since the negotiations began, golden light fading from her palms as she rose to her feet and dusted off her knees.

    Ayame found her sister being lifted off the ground by two elite soul healers, Kade's body limp and her breathing shallow but even.

    The stat loss from the Fujimori blade going inert had turned injuries she could have fought through into ones that put her down, and now she hung between the two souls like a puppet with its strings cut.

    Ayame watched them carry her away, and the expression on her face was one that didn't belong to either version of herself.

    Not the composed second-in-command, nor the bratty girl.

    Just a woman staring at the unconscious body of the sister who had sold her and ruined her life, not knowing what to do with any of it.

    A hand landed on her shoulder, heavy and warm.

    "You have all the time in the world, Quinlan said, his armored fingers squeezing once. "No need to rush anything."

    Ayame exhaled slowly, the tension leaving her frame in stages, and nodded. "Yeah. I know."

    Quinlan's visor lingered on her for a beat, then the fire behind it shifted. The helmet receded until his face was bare for the world to see, showing a smirk. "Tell me, how was it?"

    Ayame turned to look at him, and the grin that spread across her face was the most satisfied expression she had worn all day.

    "Roasting the priestess?" She tilted her head, savoring the words. "It was phenomenal."

    "WHAT?!" Elisabeth's shriek nearly took their eardrums out. After all, she was only a step or so away. “I'm still right here, you know! Only the beastkin left!"

    Ayame didn't so much as glance in her direction. She shook her head, still grinning, and her voice carried the lightness of a fresh discovery, the kind of universal truth that left her amused beyond belief.

    "I've learned something new today, Quin. If you have a gullible little sister who sold you into slavery and almost ruined your entire life because she was too easy to manipulate, all you really need is an Arch Priestess to use as an emotional punching bag and suddenly everything feels just a bit brighter."

    "HAH?!" Elisabeth's voice cracked on the syllable, her face cycling through so many shades of red it was almost impressive.

    Myrasyn covered her mouth with both hands, but the laugh escaped through her fingers anyway.

    It was new to all listeners, the heretical behavior these people showed toward the Goddess and her chosen. Though they had to admit, listening to them had been anything but boring.

    In the elven ranks, thousands of ears twitched in sync, hoping they could hear more from these people who bashed the hypocrite priestess with so little restraint.

    As the woman in question kept harrumphing about sacrilege and the like, Seraphiel began giggling into her palm and Vex's cackle followed.

    Despite the rising tide of overlapping voices, Quinlan's chuckle was the loudest of them all.

    His gauntlet came up and ran through Ayame's lush black hair, slow and fond. "Well said."

    "VILLAIN!" Elisabeth stamped her foot, golden hair flying. "I can HEAR you!"

    Nobody cared.

    Quinlan let the laughter settle around him, his fingers still in Ayame's hair, and his gaze drifted to the horizon where the beastkin columns were shrinking into the distance.

    It was time to move on.

    He had settlements to show to his new guests and a church for the Arch Priestess to lose her mind over.

    And after that, it would finally be time to crack open the secrets the Fujimori clan had been hoarding for generations.
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    1. Online Offline
      Despawning
      + 4 ⋅ 0 -
      1769 Bad Move

      Quinlan pulled his fingers from Ayame's hair and let the warmth of the moment drain with them, because the field he was standing on was still a warzone.

      The laughter had bought everyone a few minutes.
      Now those minutes were over, and the list of problems waiting for him stretched longer than the beastkin columns disappearing on the horizon.

      Bodies carpeted the ground in overlapping layers, feral undead from the Covenant's shattered horde still stumbling into clusters of wounded soldiers.

      The dwarven king sat frozen in a block of ice with no one quite sure what to do with him, and somewhere behind the elven lines, the Fujimori prisoners needed to be secured before they became four different kinds of headache.

      He didn't need to say a word.

      The tension that had been winding tighter since Skarn first snarled at him was unwinding now, and with it came the part his girls were best at: the work nobody thanked you for.

      Ayame had already pulled a cluster of soul officers aside, her bratty energy shelved into the composed noble who ran his affairs when he wasn't looking, and Quinlan could hear her voice carrying across the field as she started coordinating prisoner transfers.

      Seraphiel's golden light bloomed a dozen paces to the right, warm and wide, the Dawnbringer kneeling over a wounded elven soldier.

      Serika was hauling a collapsed barricade off a pile of bodies with her bare hands.

      Nearby, a handful of dwarven prisoners had inched closer and closer to their frozen king when they thought no one was watching, trying to sneak up and free him.

      One of them was muttering about structural fault lines and heat application points when Kaelira's long ears twitched.

      She walked over, arms folded, and the dwarves went still the momeht they registered what was standing in front of them: an elf, towering over them, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

      "I told you to keep your voice down!" one of them hissed at the muttering dwarf. "I was!"

      "Clearly not, since the elf heard you from thirty paces!"

      Kaelira ignored the bickering and walked all the way up to the ice block housing Ragnar.

      Her fingers trailed the frozen surface as a smith's analytical eyes replaced the stalwart tanker's gaze. "Heating the outer shell would cause a thermal shock that fractures inward. His heart stops before the first layer melts."

      The dwarves exchanged baffled looks. They'd been caught trying to free their king and the elf was... solving the puzzle for them?

      She tilted her head. "Chipping produces vibrations that do the same thing. The ice is elementally reinforced, so brute force won't even scratch it."

      An impressed smile replaced her pursed lips as she announced her findings: "The only person getting him out of there sately is the person who put him in."

      The dwarves stared at her with mounting confusion.

      "Either way”, Kaelira said, “I’d sit back down if I were you."

      She raised a finger to point over her shoulder without turning around.

      A dozen elven soldiers were visible where they'd been standing the entire time, longbows drawn and arrows nocked, their expressions carrying the kind of sweetness that preceded violence.

      They'd been watching the dwarves inch toward the ice block from the start, waiting with the patient glee of predators who had been told not to kill the prey unless it gave them a reason.

      "Aww... You're no fun!" One of them giggled. Actually giggled, the tip of her arrow still aimed at the nearest dwarf's throat, and the sound was the least reassuring thing any of them had ever heard.

      Then, slowly, the bows lowered, and the elven soldiers' expressions twisted into genuine disappointment.

      The color had left every dwarven face in the group.

      One of them sat down on the frozen ground, not because he wanted to, but because his legs had quit on him.

      "T-thank you.." the nearest dwarf managed, his voice thin enough to pass through a keyhole. "Why did you save us, lass?"

      Kaelira didn't look at him as she replied with zero emotion. "I have a feeling you'll play an important role in my... partner's future plans."

      She turned away. "I didn't want you dying just yet."

      Yet.

      Quinlan shook his head, amused, as he watched it all from the center of the field and felt the knot in his chest loosen.

      They've got this.

      He could leave the cleanup duty to his girls, letting him proceed with what he had in mind.

      His gaze drifted to find Black Fang. She stood apart from everyone else with her arms loose at her sides, watching the field with an expression that gave away nothing.

      But her eyes said what her face wouldn't.

      She had a certain item on her agenda, just didn t want to ask his help.

      'How adorable…’ Quinlan chuckled inwardly as he opened a [Warp Gate] beside her, pale energy swirling to life, "Will you get the preparations done for me, Black Fang?"

      The woman in question was moving before the question mark landed, stepping through the portal without a glance, a nod, or a single word in response.

      …

      He chuckled again, shaking his head, then flicked two fingers toward the ice blocks containing Hozumi and Chizuru. The frozen elders slid across the ground on a current of earth and vanished through the gate after her.

      "Everyone!" Myrasyn's voice cut across her ranks with the snap of a queen who had made up her mind. "Assist the Holy Son's women. We have a battlefield to clean up!"

      The elven army moved as if they'd been waiting for the order.

      Thousands of soldiers fanned out across the grounds, energized by the duty rather than burdened by it, seeking out Quinlan's women for direction.

      Kitsara seemed to be in her element, waving groups of elven soldiers toward tasks with a cheerful authority that had absolutely no business working as well as it did, though the real directing fell to Lucille, Aurora, and Ayame herself.

      Alexios watched the elves move, stroked his beard once, then turned to the armored man at his shoulder. "Stormlord. Represent the kingdom's interests while I'm gone. The Fujimori prisoners are still subjects of the crown."

      "Yes, Your Majesty."

      "Now then." Quinlan clapped his gauntlets together and faced the remaining leaders as if he were about to give a tour of his favorite restaurant. "Shall we begin?"

      "Yeah!" Jasmine appeared beside him, beaming, already bouncing on her heels.

      "Me too! Me too!"

      Felicity came bounding over from Feng's side, waving both arms, and the sight of her stopped Alexios's next breath.

      She was drenched in blood.

      Head to toe, soaked through, her purple hair matted flat against her skull and her clothes stained so thoroughly that the original color was a matter of speculation. None of it was hers.

      The smile splitting her face was brighter than the sun, and she bounced with the energy of a child who had just discovered the world's best playground.

      This was not the princess who had been spirited away from his kingdom.

      Alexios stared at his daughter for a long moment, and the concern that crossed his face lasted exactly as long as it took for the warrior king to override the doting father inside.

      Alexios blinked. "How are you bloodier than the last time I saw you? The fight is over."

      "Not everyone accepted defeat with grace, Father." Felicity replied with an ominous grin that belonged on a battlefield veteran twenty times her age.

      For a moment the warrior king didn't know what he was looking at.

      This was his youngest. His precious little daughter. The girl who used to cry when a flower wilted.

      Then he recognized the look in her eyes, because he'd worn it himself at her age, and the savage grin that split his face was pure pride.

      "Good."

      Felicity beamed at him, then turned and threw herself at Quinlan with full-body enthusiasm, despite weighing about as much as one of his pauldrons.

      She latched onto his armor and squeezed, smearing blood across his chestplate, and the hug was so earnest and so happy that it made the Primordial Villain look like a man being ambushed by his little sister after a long day.

      Alexios's grin evaporated in the very same instant.

      A ribbon of water coiled off Quinlan's free hand and swept through Felicity's hair while she was still clinging to him, pulling the blood out of the purple strands in a single smooth pass before spiraling down her clothes, her arms, her boots, carrying the grime away and leaving her spotless in seconds.

      Felicity looked up at him, smiling. "Thank you!"

      Before the old king's expression could finish souring at the terrible sight his eyes were carrying to his brain, Felicity released Quinlan and sprinted across the gap, slamming into her father clean and beaming.
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      1. Offline
        MyEminence
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        We appreciate you. As always!
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      2. Offline
        CreaTorDominion
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        Thanks Despawning.
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