Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1543  New Combat Doctrine

Seraphiel nocked an arrow and put it through the gap between Drekkenʼs helmet and his gorget.

The garrison commander grunted as he tanked the shot seamlessly. His tower shield absorbed Lucilleʼs next axe blow with a crash that shook dirt loose from the basin walls, and his counter came in the same breath, war-hammer swinging in a horizontal arc that would have caved in the Bloodmongerʼs chest if Iris hadnʼt stepped between them.

The hammer hit Iris square in the guard.

She folded. Her feet carved furrows through the dirt, her arms buckled to her chest, and for a half-second it looked like Drekken had broken her in one swing. Seraphiel felt the impact pulse through [Aegis of Dawn]ʼs tether and her hand twitched toward healing on instinct.

She stopped herself.

ʼNot Iris. Never Iris.ʼ

”[Severance of Mercy] transmuted a Child of Reckoningʼs pain into raw power instead of mending wounds. Healing Iris too early meant burning through the stockpile sheʼd been building with every hit.

So Seraphiel watched a woman she loved take a blow that would have hospitalized most fighters and did nothing about it.

Iris straightened. [Painforged Might] was already converting the damage into fuel, the agony of the impact settling into her body the way a coal settled into a furnace.

Lucille snarled while already lunging past her.

[Bloodmongerʼs Fury] was doing its work. Every hit Lucille landed stacked her damage, and every hit she took stacked it faster. Her first blow had dented his shield. Her second buckled the rim. Her third made the veteranʼs arm shake for the first time.

But Drekken was a fortress. Level 71, centuries of experience holding lines against forces that should have broken him, and his class was built to outlast exactly this kind of pressure. He set his shield, absorbed Lucilleʼs fourth strike, and drove his hammer into her ribs before she could reset.

Two ribs broke. Seraphiel heard them go from twenty meters away.

Lucille spat blood and swung again.

At the same time, the healer elf was running calculations in her head. ʼLucille can fight on those ribs for another thirty seconds before the fractures compromise her swings. The enemy seems to favor a three-count rhythm. He shields the hit, absorbs the impact, then counters on the third beat. He drops his guard shoulder on the counter.ʼ

Seraphiel drew and released, using her Dawnbringer classʼs magic properties. The arrow punched through the gap between Drekkenʼs shield and his shoulder guard and buried itself in the meat of his arm. He grunted, wrenched it free, and angled his shield toward her.

The shift left his flank open and Lucilleʼs axe bit into his opposite shoulder guard before he could compensate. Drekken roared and his backswing caught Lucille across the torso, hammering the broken ribs. She staggered and her next swing came in low and ugly, all fury and no technique, the pain rewriting her form.

But despite her front-linerʼs bad shape, Seraphiel wasnʼt healing the ribs.

She was laser focused on the tanker.

ʼHe drops that shoulder in two more swings.ʼ

Iris stepped into Drekkenʼs next hammer blow.

She deflected the hit with her sword, but deflecting a hammer swing with that much weight behind it was easier said than done. She got hit in the shoulders and the pain fed [Torment Cycle], every ounce of agony pooling into the well sheʼd been filling since the first hit.

Lucille hit the shield with everything her stacked fury had built. The buckled rim split and fragments of enchanted steel skittered across the basin floor.

Drekken abandoned the shield.

Both hands went to his hammer and the swing he unleashed was faster and heavier than anything heʼd thrown with one arm. The first blow caught Iris across the ribs and launched her sideways. The second missed Lucilleʼs skull by a fingerʼs width. The garrison commander fought the way cornered veterans fought, dropping defense entirely in favor of the kind of violence that made incomplete fighters crumble.

Neither woman hesitated.

Iris set her stance. Blood ran from her mouth, her armor was bludgeoned in multiple areas, and her skin turned purple where she got hit, but her eyes were steady and the air around her sword shimmered with stored force that Seraphiel could feel from across the basin.

”[Torment Cycle].”

She drove her blade into the center of Drekkenʼs chestplate.

Every hit sheʼd taken since the fight started came back through the steel in a single eruption. Drekkenʼs own hammer blows, every bruise, every fracture his strength had inflicted on her body returned with accumulated interest. The impact cratered his chestplate inward and sent a web of fractures across the surface from collarbone to sternum.

He remained standing.

Bleeding from the mouth, chestplate caved, hammer still in his hands, he planted his feet because that was what Drekken Molvaine did. He held ground.

”Iris, we gotta finish it! Heʼs injured!”

Lucille charged him. Blood poured from her mouth and her broken ribs ground against each other with every stride, but [Bloodmongerʼs Fury] had stacked so high that the pain was just fuel now, her axe trailing sparks as she hauled it overhead for a blow.

Iris was right beside her. Her sword arm shook, her forearms were swollen purple from absorbing hammer blows meant for siege walls, and every breath came through gritted teeth. But she ran anyway, blade raised, because Drekken was cracked open and this was the moment and if they hit him together heʼd break.

Hopefully.

Two women, torn apart and burning through their last reserves, closing the distance with everything they had left.

Seraphiel passed between them like they were standing still.

”[Empowerment] had been converting her Magic stat into physical power since the day sheʼd unlocked the class - after eating Rosieʼs flower - pouring half her base Magic into Strength and Agility, a quarter into Vitality. The result was a Dawnbringer who could move faster than most tankers could track. Especially when she was written off as an archer shooting weird magic arrows.

Sheʼd never had a reason to show this off because sheʼd spent every fight since her class evolution healing the reckless women charging ahead of her.

But her philosophy of warfare and her role in it had changed since her lessons with Luminara.

Light gathered in her right hand and solidified into a blade of pure radiance, the [Divine Arsenal] forming between one stride and the next.

She drove it through the fissure in Drekkenʼs chestplate.

The garrison commanderʼs body seized. His teeth bared, blood spraying between them, and a sound tore out of his chest that was half roar and half the groan of a man whose organs were burning. But he didnʼt drop. His hands locked around his hammer and he swung at Seraphielʼs head with immense fury.

”You little cunt!”

Seraphiel was already moving. She released the light blade in his chest, planted one foot on his knee, and vaulted. Her body arced over his hammer swing with the fluid grace of an elf who had been putting stat points into Magic since before these women she called her best friends were born, and she landed on his shoulders, thighs locking around the sides of his head.

Drekkenʼs hands left the hammer and clawed at her legs, trying to pry her off.

”What kind of a nasty bitch elf fights like this?!” he screamed in confusion.

”This nasty elf bitch does!” Seraphiel grinned manically as she wrestled the man with all she had.

Lucilleʼs axe hit him in the gut.

Irisʼs sword punched through the gap in his side armor a half-second later.

He lurched. His legs buckled and straightened, the fortress refusing to fall even with two blades in his body and an elf wrapped around his neck. That was when the Dawnbringer finally got what she was aiming for all along. In the exertion it took to tank the ladiesʼ hits, he failed to account for the elf sitting on his shoulders. Seraphiel grabbed his helmet, yanked his head back, and drove the light blade into his throat.

Once. Twice. Three times. Four.

Each thrust punched through muscle and cartilage and came out the other side trailing radiance and blood, the [Divine Arsenal] burning where it cut, cauterizing and reopening in the same motion as she pulled it free and drove it in again. Blood erupted upward across her face, her neck, her chestplate, soaking through the gaps in her armor and running down her arms in hot streaks.

Drekkenʼs hands fell away from her arm. His knees hit the dirt.

She stabbed him twice more before his body finished falling, riding him down to the ground with her thighs still locked around his head and the light blade buried to the hilt in the ruin of his throat.

Silence.

Seraphiel pulled the blade free and the radiance dissolved, leaving her sitting on the shoulders of a dead man with his blood dripping from her chin.

[Twilight Judgment] activated on the kill. Golden light poured from Drekkenʼs body and flooded into Lucille and Iris in a wave that knitted broken ribs, sealed gashes, and purged the exhaustion from their muscles in a single pulse. On Iris, [Severance of Mercy] twisted the healing into something sharper, transmuting her remaining pain into a surge of energy.

Lucille blinked. Her ribs didnʼt hurt anymore. Her breathing was easy. The drying streaks on her face were the only reminder sheʼd been bleeding at all.

She looked at Seraphiel, who was climbing off Drekkenʼs corpse with blood matting her blonde hair to her cheeks and soaking her armor from collar to waist.

”What happened?! Where were my heals, miss elf?”

Seraphiel giggled. She actually giggled, her hand coming up to cover her mouth, smearing blood across her lips in the process, and for a moment the contrast between the sound and the sight of her was so absurd that neither Lucille nor Iris could speak.

”Ever since a certain someone got a berserker class, Iʼve had to spend all my time healing her because sheʼs too reckless to protect herself,” Seraphiel said, her voice carrying the warm, chiding tone of a woman who had patched Lucilleʼs wounds a hundred times too many. ”When Luminara heard that, she scolded me. She said I was performing my protective duties wrong.”

She wiped the blood from her chin with the back of her hand and looked at Lucille with eyes that were soft and carried absolutely zero apology.

”According to her, the best protector is one who eliminates the threats to her family.”

She met Lucilleʼs eyes with a warmth that had no business coexisting with the gore soaking her skin and armor.

”Iʼve changed. Donʼt expect me to stay in the backlines anymore. If you girls struggle to finish the job, Iʼll do it myself. Thatʼs my new combat doctrine.”

Lucille stared at her.

Iris stared at her.

”The healer stole my kill,” Iris said flatly.

”Yep. And now sheʼs talking smack,” Lucille nodded.

”Youʼre welcome,” Seraphiel laughed.

Lucilleʼs grin spread slow and wide, the kind that started in her eyes before it reached her mouth. ”Would you look at that… Miss serene elf is drenched in the blood of her enemies.” She looked Seraphiel up and down, taking in the blonde hair matted red, the blood-soaked armor, the gore still dripping from her chin. ”I know a certain man whoʼd love this development.”

Seraphielʼs cheeks flushed beneath the blood.

She grinned anyway. ”Yeah. I do too.”

Iris scoffed and turned away, but neither of them missed the faintest curl at the corner of her mouth.

Across the basin, Isara Blackveil stepped out of the smoke with both hands raised and murder in her hollow eyes. On the opposite side, Vex, Kitsara, and Serika stood ready.