Novel Full Chapter 1496 Flaring Greed
Chapter 1496 Flaring Greed
The buzzing fly.
The vulture.
The weaker version of Morgana Ravenshade.
His own words echoed in his skull, and each one landed like a slap. He’d said those things in front of his soldiers. In front of his city. He’d built their confidence on a foundation of intelligence reports that had just been rendered worthless.
The speech platform where he’d rallied a hundred thousand people was a crater.
His assessment had been rational. Every piece of intelligence he had supported it. The man had never broken a barrier alone. He’d always relied on the dwarven engines to do the work.
The count’s throat worked. He looked at his soldiers. He looked at the open sky above his city. He looked at the dwarven artillery already pivoting to fire at walls that no longer had a shield.
“All units to the walls!” His officers stared at him.
“Move!” Aldren roared. “The barrier is gone, not the walls! Not the gates! Not you! Move!”
They moved.
…
High above the smoke, Quinlan heard laughter.
It came from deep inside his soul realm, rich and warm and utterly delighted. Nyxara’s presence bloomed against his back, the phantom weight of her settling against him like a cat finding the warmest spot in the room.
<Look at them!> she breathed. <Look at their faces!>
He could feel her grin through the bond.
<The dwarves who thought their engines were the pinnacle of destruction. The elves who measured power in centuries of training. The poor little soldiers who believed a wall of mana would save them.> Her phantom fingers traced his collarbone. <And now they stare at a single man in the sky, forced to realize they’ve been living a lie!>
Her laugh was low and satisfied.
<Those faces, Little Ruin! That bewilderment. That beautiful, helpless confusion when mortals realize they don’t understand what they’re dealing with…>
She sighed against his neck.
<It’s simply divine! Don’t you agree?!>
Quinlan’s lips twitched behind the helmet.
He wasn’t that much of a sadist… But he had to agree. Seeing those expressions certainly did not sour his mood.
But he did not entertain the demoness. It was not the time.
His right arm hung at his side. The bones in his index finger were powder. His mana channels from elbow to fingertip had ruptured, and blood still seeped through the cracked gauntlet. Every muscle in his body trembled from the cellular overload. His heart hardened.
There was a city of a hundred thousand people below him. Celebration was for after he dealt with all this.
Right now, there was work to do.
Quinlan looked down at the people in particular.
Through the smoke and the dust and the chaos, a hundred thousand of them scrambled across the streets of Whisperfield. Soldiers sprinted along the walls, repositioning without a barrier to hide behind. Battlemages dragged injured channelers away from the wardkeeper circle, where the barrier crystal sat dark and cracked. Civilians hauled supplies, barricaded doors, and carried children.
And on the eastern battlement, a count with white knuckles and a steady voice screamed orders at men who had every reason to run yet didn’t.
Quinlan watched.
They knew the barrier was gone. They knew what had destroyed it. They had watched their sky break apart, and their speech platform turn to rubble. Every soul in that city understood, on a primal level, that the thing hovering above them was beyond anything their walls could answer.
They were fighting anyway.
Women dragged wounded soldiers behind cover. An old blacksmith carried an armful of freshly sharpened blades to the nearest garrison point, his back bent, his steps sure. A group of teenagers was hauling pitch buckets up a stairwell, passing them hand to hand in a chain that moved faster than panic should have allowed.
Hardy people.
A warmth stirred in his chest. It had nothing to do with mana, elements, or the lingering burn of overloaded pathways.
He liked what he saw.
These weren’t sheep waiting to be conquered. These were people with spines. People who stared at the impossible and decided to sharpen their swords anyway. People who would build, and fight, and work, and refuse to break even when the world told them they should.
People like that were rare.
People like that were valuable.
The warmth shifted. Deepened. Became hunger.
That’s the resource. Not the walls. Not the forges. Not the land.
The people.
And in a short time, they would belong to Elvardia, captured, enslaved, or conscripted to act as fodder for the war machine. Or worse – given to the Covenant of Eternity.
‘A few thousand here and there. That was enough before.’
The thought arrived on its own.
‘Miri Town has, what, a few tens of thousands? Built from what I could skim between sieges. A settlement. A start.’
He looked at the old blacksmith, still ferrying blades.
‘But I’m not the same man who started that town.’
His gaze moved to the walls. To the garrison. To the count who was still barking orders with the voice of a man who would fight until the stones gave out.
A hundred thousand. Soldiers, craftsmen, farmers, mages. An entire city’s worth of talent and defiance. All of it was about to be fed into Elvardia’s resources.
‘Why settle for scraps when I can take the whole thing?’
Deep inside his soul realm, Nyxara giggled. The Primordial Demon of Lust was beyond thrilled to see the greed manifest in her chosen companion. She suddenly realized that she was adoring this man even more than she thought possible.
But she did not interrupt, did not address Quinlan. The demoness allowed him to come to a decision of his own.
Quinlan knew. The scale was far different. A few thousand refugees smuggled through a portal was one thing. Claiming an entire county capital’s population, openly, in the middle of an active siege, with the Elvardian army watching? That was a declaration. That was a line.
He ran the math and considered: could he even do this to begin with? After all, the defenders hadn’t surrendered yet.
But there was an even more pressing question.
‘Do I want this?’
He looked at the city one more time. At the smoke. At the defiance. At the count who was already adapting, already fighting, already refusing to die quietly.
His heart answered.
Yes.
All of them. He wanted all of them.
He’d been content with scraps, skimming refugees, predominantly going for orphans and slaves.
He was no longer content.
Dukes had duchies. Counts had counties. Kings had kingdoms. Nobles across this continent sat on thrones built from land and people and power accumulated over centuries, passed down through bloodlines.
Why was he any different?
Why couldn’t he have more?
The greed rose through him like heat from a forge. Clean and honest and unapologetic. The same impulse that had driven him since the day he arrived in this world. The same hunger that made him fight when he should have run, steal when he should have hidden, build when he should have cowered.
Primordial greed. The kind that looked at the world and said mine.
The words he’d spoken to Alexios echoed through his skull.
‘I will be taking over now.’
Quinlan grinned behind the helmet.
His mana ticked upward, climbing steadily.
He looked down at Whisperfield one final time. At the city that thought it was under siege by Elvardia.
It wasn’t.
Not anymore.
“Let me make good on that promise of mine, old friend,” he murmured.
Then he called upon his mana.