Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1503  Using Their Teachings

The trial had given him many things.

Small things, mostly. Adjustments. Refinements. They were the kind of gains that didnʼt announce themselves with a system notification or a stat increase but settled into his muscles like a second language learned too late to be native but too useful to ignore.

ʼAnd as many great men have said throughout the ages,ʼ Quinlan mused as he closed the distance on the first squad of defenders, ʼitʼs not the size that matters. Itʼs how you use it.ʼ

His mana was climbing. The regeneration rushed upward with every second he wasnʼt burning reserves, and right now that mattered more to Quinlan than creating spectacle after spectacle. The ice dome was expensive. The soul army was expensive. Lightning was expensive. If he kept throwing large-scale spells at every pocket of resistance, heʼd drain himself dry quicker than he could regenerate.

Which meant it was time to use what three very specific teachers had spent weeks carving into him.

Nyxara had chosen them. The slutty demoness had measured Quinlanʼs weaknesses and selected the three she believed would give him what he needed most.

Hanae for the blade. The samuraiʼs grace and economy, the art of making every cut count.

Dragnar for pain. The ancient warriorʼs philosophy that the bodyʼs suffering was a library of truth, and that those who flinched from it would forever remain illiterate.

And Kiryssa for the killing itself. The primordial drow assassin who had taught him that enemies did not always come from the front, that the most dangerous strike was the one you never saw coming, and that mercy in close quarters was a luxury reserved for people who enjoyed funerals.

Three teachers. Three disciplines. All of them about to get a field test.

ʼTime to put it together.ʼ

[Elemental Stance: Flame]

The boost gained from his trial to the cultivation world of Zhenwu activated.

Heat erupted from his core. It spread outward through his muscles, his tendons, his bones, settling into every fiber with a familiar aggression that sharpened his reflexes and added raw force behind every movement. His Strength stat climbed. His strikes would hit harder. His saber would cut deeper.

And none of it cost him more than a trickle of mana to maintain.

The first soldier saw him coming.

A spearman. Level sixty-something, tall, well-trained, pivoting from a soul soldier heʼd just dispersed with a triumphant shout still dying on his lips. His eyes found Quinlanʼs armor, registered the threat, and his body did what centuries of Ravenshade doctrine had drilled into it.

He braced. Lowered his center. Set the spear.

Quinlanʼs saber came across in a rising cut that Hanae would have approved of. Smooth. Economical. The blade followed an arc that wasted nothing, carrying the momentum of his approach into a single clean line of steel that caught the spear shaft two inches below the head and sheared through it like wet paper.

The spearman stumbled forward, suddenly holding a stick.

Quinlan was already past him. The saber reversed, trailing a whisper of displaced air, and the follow-through opened the manʼs throat as Quinlanʼs boots carried him into the next engagement without breaking stride.

[Youʼve slain Garret Vosner (Level 61). Youʼve gained 53,500 XP.]

Hanaeʼs gift was in full effect. Every movement served a purpose. Every cut traveled the shortest path between intent and result. Sheʼd beaten that into him over days of relentless sparring in the primordial realm, correcting his angles by fractions of degrees, adjusting his grip by millimeters, until the blade stopped feeling like a weapon and started feeling like a limb that had always been there.

Three more soldiers charged.

The lead man wore heavy plate. His greatsword came down in a two-handed overhead that wouldʼve split Quinlan from crown to navel if it had landed.

Quinlan sidestepped and let the blade pass close enough to scrape his pauldron. Pain flared across his shoulder where the edge kissed the gap between plates, and he accepted it.

Information.

ʼI underestimated his speed and despite his looks, heʼs a skilled swordsman.ʼ

Dragnarʼs voice echoed from the trial, calm and absolute. ʼPain is the bodyʼs greatest method of communication with the mind. It is the one sense that refuses to lie.ʼ

The graze told him exactly how far the greatswordʼs reach extended. The next dodge would be tighter. More precise. The pain had mapped the danger zone, and now his body knew where it was.

He told Synchra to conserve. ʼDonʼt protect me unless itʼs critical. Save your reserves for when we really need it.ʼ

The Anima armorʼs response was an unhappy pulse of warmth against his skin. She obeyed, but she didnʼt like it.

He drove the saber into the gap beneath the plate knightʼs raised arm. The Flame Stance added enough force that the blade punched through the chain underlayer and kept going.

The man dropped.

The second soldier, a swordsman in heavy chainmail, lunged. Quinlan parried, steel screaming against steel, and the impact jarred his wrist. The third came from the left, a woman with a mace, swinging for his ribs.

Lightning crackled through his legs. He burst sideways, leaving the mace to whistle through the space heʼd occupied, and closed on the swordsman before the parryʼs echo faded. The saber found the chainmailʼs collar and punched through.

[Youʼve slain Torren Blackwall (Level 58). Youʼve gained 44,000 XP.]

The mace-wielder screamed and charged.

A bolt of compressed fire left Quinlanʼs off-hand and struck her in the chest. The impact threw her into the barricade with enough force to crack the timber.

[Youʼve slain Maerra Galvon (Level 53). Youʼve gained 38,500 XP.]

He kept moving.

Then the air behind him shifted.

It was subtle. A displacement of pressure against his back, the kind of disturbance that a normal fighter would have missed entirely. A breath of cold where there should have been none, the telltale signature of spatial magic folding someone from one point to another.

Kiryssaʼs lessons fired before his brain caught up.

ʼThe killing blow, when delivered by a skilled killer, always comes from the angle youʼve dismissed. If your back feels safe, itʼs because someone wants you to think so.ʼ

The primordial drow had spent an entire week appearing behind him without warning. Materializing from his shadow, from the blind spot beneath his arm, from the space heʼd just turned away from. Every time, sheʼd pressed a blade to a vital point, grinned, and declared him dead.

Whether she actually went through with the kill or not mostly depended on how sadistic she felt in the moment.

This played over and over, until flinching became awareness. Until awareness became instinct. Until Quinlanʼs body stopped needing his brain to tell it that death was coming from behind.

The rogue materialized behind.

A man in dark leather, daggers already mid-thrust, spatial blink spell still crackling at the edges of his silhouette. Fast. Well-trained. The kind of assassin who had killed dozens of targets with this exact technique and had no reason to believe it would fail now.

Quinlan sidestepped in the last moment and drove his elbow backward into the manʼs face.

The assassinʼs nose shattered and his legs quit on the spot. He collapsed onto the stone like someone had cut his strings. His spatial blink spell fizzled and died, the residual energy dissipating into the cold air as his body settled flat on his back.

He blinked up at the sky. Then at Quinlan.

The Primordial Villain stood over him in black armor wreathed in the Flame Stanceʼs heat distortion, saber in hand, with the glow of his crimson eyes visible behind the visor.

The rogueʼs mouth worked.

”Just what are you, Creature...?” The words came out cracked. Broken. ”You shattered the barrier with a finger. You raised a dome over the entire city. You command hundreds of soldiers pulled from thin air.” His voice climbed, ragged and trembling, as the full scope of what heʼd just tried to assassinate pressed down on him. ”You fight with a blade like youʼve trained for centuries. You tank hits in melee without flinching. And now you move like one of us?”

His head dropped back against the stone.

”What the hell are you supposed to be...?”

Quinlan looked down at him and did not entertain the question.

”Honor or life.”

The rogue stared. His chest heaved. Blood ran from his shattered nose and pooled in the hollow of his throat.

His hands twitched around the daggers.

Then he tossed them aside. The steel skittered across the stone and came to rest against the battlement wall.

Ice crept from Quinlanʼs boot and raced across the ground, crystallizing around the manʼs wrists and ankles in thick bands that locked him flat to the stone.

”Smart man,” Quinlan declared and turned.

A volley of arrows was already in the air.

A squad of archers on an elevated platform forty meters along the battlement had watched the exchange and decided that a stationary enemy was a dead one. Twelve shafts climbed in a tight cluster, arcing toward him with the precision of soldiers who had been drilling this exact shot since before Quinlan was born.

Wind answered with a thought.

A gust ripped sideways across the battlement, catching the volley mid-flight and shoving every arrow off-course. The shafts scattered into the ice domeʼs inner wall and shattered against the frozen surface.

Quinlan raised his free hand toward the archers.

Lightning gathered in his palm and shaped itself. A crackling arc of white-violet energy stretched outward from his fist and curved, elongating, thinning, until a bow of pure electricity hummed in his grip. A bolt of compressed charge formed where the string would have been.

”Is this how you do it?”