Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1381  Masterʼs Order

Her bow was gone. It had been taken a long time ago, first locked away, then brought back out, only to be mocked. Strung wrong. Bent. Used as something to laugh at. A reminder that the things she had been proud of could be turned into tools for his amusement. Halveth had never liked women who were stronger than he was. So he made sure they never had the means to overpower him.

Now there was only her humiliating fabric between her and death.

It would not protect her from his attack one bit.

Her fists felt small when she clenched them. Light. Breakable. She tried to picture striking that thing in the sky. Tried to imagine bone meeting that ominous, black armor.

Her mind could not finish the image.

Her body reacted anyway.

Old habits clawed their way up from where they had been buried. Angles. Distance. Height. Unlike Halveth, her senses were far more acute and precise, letting Vaelith see the way the air had shifted when he vanished. He had not disappeared. She knew that with the same certainty she once knew wind before rain. He had gone higher, flying above the window, so they lost sight of him.

Hiding.

Her warrior instincts screamed to run. Every sense begged for it. Run. Scatter. Survive.

The slave magic tightened.

Her feet stayed planted.

Her mouth opened.

”Iʼll stay behind. You two, take Lord Halveth to the bunker and-”

The words jammed halfway out.

Sound reached her first.

”Glh…”

Wet. Wrong.

A breath trying to escape through a throat that no longer worked.

She froze.

Behind her, something gurgled.

Lord Halveth was no longer behind her.

He was above her.

Stone had erupted from the floor in a jagged, brutal spike, thrusting up at a slanted angle. It had entered him between the legs, splitting fabric and flesh alike, and burst out through his throat. His mouth hung open around the rock, jaw forced wide, tongue pinned uselessly to one side. Blood ran down the stone in slow, uneven trails, dripping back onto the tiles he had once paced with authority.

His eyes bulged. Still alive. Barely.

Vaelithʼs breath caught.

ʼWhat…? When…?ʼ

Her thoughts stumbled over themselves. There had been no warning. No sound of casting. No impact she could remember. One moment, Halveth had been clutching her robe. Next, he was impaled like a grotesque banner.

Her gaze snapped sideways.

He was there, seated on the sill of a far window. The dark armored man had not burst through stone or shattered walls to arrive. He simply entered through an open window, showing how lacking the internal defenses of the city were, relying on the barrier, manpower, and defensive artillery. Once inside, bypassing the military, Farnath showed little resistance. Now, the ominous entity was close enough that she could see the faint glow of red behind the visor.

Still.

Unhurried.

As if he had been there the entire time.

ʼSo fast… So silent…ʼ Vaelith murmured inwardly.

The slave magic surged again.

Despite the spike. Despite the blood. Despite the fact that their master was already dying, the command still held. Her body shifted, stepping back into position. The other two moved as well, flanking her automatically, placing themselves between the impaled man and the seated figure.

Protect.

At any cost.

The armored man did not rise. Did not draw a weapon. He watched them with nonchalant curiosity.

Vaelith felt it then.

A pulling sensation deep in her chest. A dimming. As if someone had turned down a lamp behind her eyes.

Her knees threatened to buckle.

She understood.

When a master died, bound slaves who had their contracts secured tightly did not gain freedom. Instead, they lost themselves. Consciousness faded, locking them in place until collection so that inheritance could happen, with another name replacing the old one on the contract.

But something told Vaelith that she would not be passed down to the next lord of Farnath.

Darkness crept in from the edges of her vision.

She forced herself to look at him one last time.

He should have been terrifying. Everything about him said danger. Power. Finality.

Instead, what met her heart was something else entirely.

Joy.

Her lips moved.

”Thank you…”

Then the world went dark.

…

Quinlan stayed seated for a breath longer.

The three elves lay where they had fallen, bodies slack, breathing shallow and even. Then he exhaled.

”As a slave master myself, I might not have the right to judge…”

His gaze shifted to Halvethʼs corpse.

”But man, what a cowardly piece of shit. I donʼt even want to claim your soul. Itʼd taint me.”

Then he looked up toward the sky. ”Lilyanna, you can have him.”

Quinlan raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

The stone obeyed.

The pillar inside Havlethʼs corpse thickened in a slow swell. Rock pressed outward, expanding. Flesh stretched. Bone bowed. His spine arched, then failed. The sound was dull and wet, more pressure than impact.

Quinlan turned his wrist.

Wind answered.

A clean current wrapped around the three elves, lifting them just enough that their hair stirred and their robes shifted. The air carried them toward him, gentle and steady, and moved through the portal he summoned just now. Miri Town lay on the other side, sunlit and calm. Jasmine stood waiting for the new arrivals. As the governor of his lands, sheʼs been very busy, and even more so since he began migrating thousands of slaves of various races over.

But the brunette merchant girl with big ambitions was more than ready for the challenge.

”Hm? Quin is already at work, I see,” she smiled fondly while stepping forward, reaching out to hold the paralyzed ladies as they drifted through.

They were gone before the stone finished its work.

The pillar continued to expand.

Halvethʼs body gave way from the inside out. Armor split along seams never meant to bear outward force. What remained could not hold together. The stone reached its limit and stopped.

Then everything else failed.

The chamber was painted in a single violent moment. Walls. Pillars. The ornate carpet Halveth had commissioned himself.

Quinlan pushed his palm forward.

Wind slammed outward, hard and precise, forcing the spray of blood and innards away from him. Nothing touched his armor. Not a drop.

When the air settled, the pillar stood alone, thick and inert, its burden gone.

Quinlan rose from the windowsill at last.

He glanced once more at the empty space where the elves had been, then turned and flew out of the window, looking for his next prey.

And just like this, minutes passed. The terror of the man in the skies grew with each passing moment as he obliterated whole battalions while remaining near untouchable for the human defenders.

To resist, one needed to have the ability to conduct aerial warfare. The defenders of Farnath were simply not prepared for that, especially not while they had to contend with undead hordes, blue-skinned creatures - each of whom was now akin to walking one-man armies - the gang of ladies tearing their streets and walls up, as well as the Elvardian push that had reached the walls.

To fight back against Quinlan, simply throwing javelins at him was no longer enough. Heʼd grown far too powerful for such a crude method to restrict him.

And as a result, Farnathʼs fate had been sealed as soon as it became the Primordial Villainʼs next target.