Chapter 1774: The Primordial Villain |
The three-story buildings alone would have been extraordinary in any settlement on the continent, where commoners lived in single-story hovels and minor nobles rarely built above two.
Here, every building had three heated floors with quartz windows, and the city stayed open and walkable despite housing a hundred thousand people.
Old-growth trees rose from gaps in the road where any other builder would have laid more stone.
Myrasyn ran her fingers along an oak trunk as they passed, and beneath her hood, her ears twitched. "Outstanding... This tree... Despite having just been built around... It’s happy. So happy..."
Alexios was quiet for several minutes.
A mage who could raise a city like this in an afternoon would transform any kingdom.
His eyes drifted to Morgana.
She’d commanded the same seven elements for centuries, buried in her research the entire time, and it had never occurred to her to build a single wall.
Even if she couldn’t replicate the sheer scale, or make the magma chamber... Those were luxuries people could manage without.
But buildings made of reinforced earth?
His border settlements near the beastkin raids, the ones his soldiers rebuilt by hand every few years, could have looked similar to this if she tried.
The look he gave his wife lasted two seconds, and the disappointment in it carried centuries of squandered potential. Morgana caught all of it.
Her chin rose, and the arrogance in her iridescent eyes came from knowing he wasn’t wrong.
"A waste of time."
"..." the disappointment in her husband’s expression grew to new heights as he didn’t even try to argue, knowing it was futile.
"Hahaha! It’s winter but I don’t even need boots! So fun!"
A shriek cut through the street.
A girl of nine or ten years came tearing around the corner, barefoot and laughing, a half-open bucket of bright yellow paint clutched to her chest. She was running so fast she didn’t see the group until she was among them, and her foot caught a loose stone and sent her sprawling.
The bucket went up.
Yellow paint hit Quinlan’s chest in a wide, spectacular splash.
"Ow...!" The girl curled around her foot, tears springing to her eyes.
The spot where she’d kicked the stone was already swelling red. Then she panicked, looking up with a frightened expression. "I-I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I didn’t-!"
Quinlan looked down at his paint-covered shirt.
"Wait!" Elisabeth’s hand shot forward. "Villain, don’t hurt-!"
Out of all people, it was Alexios who grabbed his daughter’s shoulder.
"What?!" she shouted, but he merely shook his head. "Let me go, he will-"
Alexios shook his head.
He understood the anomalous man well enough to know the girl was in no danger, and watched with a mind that housed a myriad of difficult thoughts as Quinlan crouched beside the girl, caught her under the arms, and set her on her feet.
"Huh? Mister?"
She yelped, shocked, and stared up at him with wet eyes, waiting for the anger that was supposed to follow.
He brushed the grit from her knees, and she just stood there, sniffling, watching his hands work like she couldn’t understand why they were being gentle.
"Hmm..." Quinlan looked at her foot. "Does it hurt badly?"
"Y-yes... Very..." the girl nodded, even if she was thoroughly confused.
"Let’s see..." He produced a crystal vial and uncorked it with his thumb, pouring a thin stream over the swelling, and the redness faded before she could finish flinching.
The girl gasped. She wiggled her toes, looked down at her foot, wiggled them again. "It doesn’t hurt anymore...! How’d you do that?!"
"A healing potion, my wife made it."
"A healing potion?!" The girl’s expression turned from wonder to horror in a heartbeat. Her bottom lip started trembling and her voice came out so small it barely carried. "B-but Papa says those cost more money than he makes in a whole month... We can’t... I can’t pay you back..."
Her breathing quickened, eyes darting between the vial and Quinlan’s face, and she looked seconds away from a full meltdown.
"My wife makes a lot of these." Quinlan’s voice was easy and warm. "She’d kill me if I charged your father for it."
The girl froze mid-panic. "...Really?"
"Really."
Her eyes brightened so fast it was like watching a candle get lit. "Your wife sounds wonderful! Is she pretty?"
"The prettiest."
The girl beamed at him, all traces of terror gone, replaced by the unshakeable conviction that any man with a pretty wife who made free healing potions had to be a good person.
"Take the rest home." He pressed the vial into her small hands. "Pour more on it if it still hurts later."
She looked at the vial, then at him, then back at the vial.
Her fingers closed around it slowly, carefully, and she pulled it to her chest with both hands, holding it so tight she might as well have been cradling a baby bird.
Then Quinlan’s eyes drifted to the ground, where most of the yellow paint had splattered across the warm stone in a wide, ruined puddle.
Too much dirt and grit mixed in to save.
The girl followed his gaze.
Her shoulders drooped and her grip on the vial loosened as the joy drained right back out of her, bracing for the scolding she knew she’d receive back home.
Quinlan smiled at that, then fished a handful of silver coins from his pocket and pressed them into her other hand. "Here, tell your parents my carelessness caused this, so I paid for it."
She stared at the coins, then at the vial she was already holding, then back at the coins, and her mouth opened and closed several times without producing a single word.
Then, finally... "Thank you..."
"Don’t mention it."
The girl nodded, then tilted her head and squinted at him. "W-why are you all dirty, mister? You’re dressed like... the rest of us?"
"So my cover was blown, huh?" He grinned and tilted his head toward the group behind him. "Showing my friends around."
Her eyes snapped open, wide like saucers. "The builder man is showing friends around!! Everyone has to-" Her gaze began frantically darting round, a breath away from shouting something that would’ve ended every disguise in the procession, and Quinlan pressed a finger to his lips.
"It’s no fun if everyone pretends to behave."
She gaped at him, snapped her mouth shut, and nodded so hard her entire body bounced.
"Get going now. And just because the ground is nice and warm to run on doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch where you step."
"O-okay!!" she shouted excitedly then immediately yelped, realizing she was blowing their cover.
"I’m sorry!! I’ll behave now!" Then she clutched the vial and the coins tighter and bolted down the street because she had been trusted with the biggest secret of her life and she was not going to ruin it.
Elisabeth hadn’t moved.
She stood where she’d lunged, hand still half-raised, watching the girl disappear around the corner with the vial and coins the Primordial Villain had pressed into her hands, and for the first time all day the Arch Priestess had nothing to say.
What she’d just watched didn’t fit inside the world she’d built for herself, and she wasn’t ready to think about why.
"The Primordial Villain...?" the words left her lips without meaning to.
"The big bad evil..." two turbo smug elven ladies grinned at the priestess. "You must eradicate him or the world will end..."
"S-shut it!" Elisabeth hissed, cheeks going pink.
The procession began moving again soon and then rounded a bend in the road.
A wide square opened before them, cobbled in the same heated stone, with market stalls lining the edges and a modest cathedral rising at the far end.
It was unmistakable. The spire bore the Goddess’s sigil, the same golden sunburst that hung above every church on the continent, and the doors were open wide with warm light spilling out into the square.
Elisabeth’s breath hitched. "That’s..."
The Arch Priestess stared at the cathedral with a storm of emotions crashing behind her golden eyes, because a Goddess church standing openly in the Primordial Villain’s city was an impossibility her heart hadn’t prepared for, even after being told of its existence.
But then her gaze drifted sideways, away from the cathedral, across the square to the far end of the market where the stalls thinned out near a residential street.
A woman in white priestess robes stood at a fabric stall with her sleeves pushed up to her elbows, holding a bolt of linen up to the light while chatting with the housewife beside her as if they’d known each other for years.
"He did that?" the woman in white gasped.
"I know, right?! It’s outrageous!" the housewife was furious. "I ought to put laxatives in his dinner. Hmph!"
"No, I wouldn’t go that far... Just maybe..."
"Don’t satisfy him in bed?"
"...I didn’t say that."
"But you thought of it!"
No guards flanked her, no escort trailed behind, no ceremonial staff rested against the stall.
She was hundreds of meters from the cathedral, completely alone, chattering with the housewife while the merchant waited patiently for them to finish gossiping with a tired expression.
Elisabeth’s face went white.
"...Arch Priestess Velara?!"
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