Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 974: In a Real Bind

<You didn’t address my second point!> Vex snarled through clenched teeth as another brutal strike from Sareth nearly saw her lose both of her knees.

Quinlan didn’t reply.

Because he knew perfectly well that she was right.

He hadn’t addressed her second point on purpose because there was nothing to address. She wasn’t lying, wasn’t exaggerating, wasn’t being modest or insecure.

She simply wasn’t built for long-range.

Her power, her talent, her combat instincts… they shone brightest when her blade was carving into flesh up close. Like Iris. Both ladies were more than swordswomen, but needed one to be at their best.

Kitsara, having overheard their conversation and wanting to be more useful than a damsel in distress, moved.

But the moment the foxkin sprinted, darting for the edge of the suppression field, the halberd shifted.

Sareth’s foot slammed down.

Green, spectral chains snapped out of the floor like striking vipers. The moment Kitsara bolted for the edge of the zone, they coiled up like a trap long set—because that’s exactly what they were.

A spell woven directly into Sareth’s Absolute Prohibition.

“[Chain Lock: Fleeing is Forbidden]!”

Kitsara didn’t even get halfway.

The chains ensnared her legs mid-dash, dragging her backward in a violent jerk of her whole body, slinging her straight toward the descending edge of Sareth’s halberd that was gleaming with the joy of a blade that knew it was about to snuff someone’s life out.

“Quin!!!” the foxkin woman screamed, panic overwhelming her entire existence. As her life flashed before her eyes, all the Nine-Tailed Sorceress could do was call her beloved’s name in utter desperation.

The halberd cleaved down with monstrous force.

But it met steel.

*CLANG!*

Quinlan’s saber intercepted from one side.

From the other, Vex’s hexblade crashed against the halberd’s shaft in a crossguard stance, anchoring herself with pure instinct and grit.

Together, they halted the killing blow.

But Sareth didn’t even blink.

Her lips curved into a victorious smirk. “Got you.”

It hadn’t been a miscalculation on her part, but a trap within a trap. She had counted on their intervention. Their protective instincts. Their desire to protect their ally, even if it would cost them dearly.

And she punished them for this weakness of theirs.

With impossible fluidity, she twisted her halberd along the parried axis, rotating it. The blade’s edge scraped past Vex’s guard, then flashed upward, catching her across the face.

*SLASH!*

“Agh!”

A grunt of agony burst from the hexwitch as a red line tore through her right eye.

Simultaneously, Sareth reversed her momentum and turned on Quinlan, sliding the halberd’s hilt back with a brutal spin. Her stance dropped lower, leveraging both power and technique, and drove the rear of the weapon into his shoulder joint with pinpoint brutality.

The joint popped. Bone cracked.

Then, she pivoted her stance once more.

*SSSHHK!*

The halberd sliced across Quinlan’s arm, right at the elbow.

The limb fell.

His saber dropped from his hand, clattering beside his foot.

Sareth didn’t pursue immediately. She didn’t need to. The battle was as good as done.

She simply pulled back, reset her footing, and rotated the halberd in her hands a few times.

Two of the strongest warriors had just been maimed in three motions of hers.

“This is why I said that your strength is yours only because I’ve permitted it. Now that you’re no longer allowed to wield your spells, you’re nothing more than pigs in a slaughterhouse.”

She raised her halberd again.

And the air grew heavier still.

That was when Quinlan raised his ruined arm. At least, what was left of it.

Blood sprayed from the stump, each pulse slow and dreamlike, framed in agony and silence. His eyes followed the crimson spiral as it painted the floor, spattering across the cracked stone, across his saber, across his boots.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t move.

Time dilated into a sliver of eternity, and within that moment, a storm of emotions exploded forth inside him. Fury. Desperation. Grief. Guilt. Resolve.

His girls—his warriors, his partners, his everything—stood behind him, wounded, rattled, staring down death itself. And it was his fault. This mission, this prison, this overreach had been his plan, perhaps having gotten a bit too big of an ego after slaying a literal god. Compared to that, what’s a prison manned by mortal humans?

… how wrong that one assumption was.

And now they would pay the price for his hubris.

Blossom. Feng. Kitsara. Vex.

No!

Losing them simply wasn’t an option. It was not a permissible outcome.

He would not allow it.

A cold stillness washed over him.

His breathing evened. His pulse slowed.

And then, from somewhere deep inside his body…

*Thump.*

The sound echoed inside his ribcage like a war drum struck by fate itself.

*Thump. Thump.*

The air vibrated with it.

Sareth narrowed her eyes as she moved to bring her halberd down on him, not wanting to see the outcome of whatever it was that he was attempting.

Even she felt it.

From within the deepest recesses of Quinlan’s being, the Still Heart, the absolute refinement of the mortal cultivation path he attained in the world of Zhenwu, began to stir once again, now transported to the world of Thalorind.

The re-awakening took place violently.

*BOOM!*

His heart slammed once more, and this time the sound didn’t stay within his chest. It rattled through the cracked stones of the prison floor. It shook the steel reinforcements of the corridor. It vibrated across the enchanted chains still glowing on the walls.

The heartbeat of a sovereign.

No more useless thoughts remained in his mind. Only instinct. Only a single, all-consuming purpose:

Break the domain. From within.

And as the next thunderous THUMP rang out…

The underground prison began to tremble. Dust drifted from the ceiling. Arcane wards flickered. The very walls seemed to lean away from him, forced by his will.

It was in this moment that a war engine had awoken from slumber.

And siege was imminent.