Chapter 1994: Silky

Ayame heard Marielle’s broken warning from beside the treasure piled along the upper gallery.

"A monster?" The samurai turned toward the woman trembling in Andre’s arms. "No. A primordial demigod who has already killed a god? Yes."

Marielle tried to pull herself higher against her husband’s chest. Pain tore through her ruined mouth as she attempted to answer, but she couldn’t get past the first sound.

"A..."

Beyond Ayame, Black bent to inspect a weapon the spiders had brought him. He turned it over, then let it disappear into his ring with the rest of the offerings.

A god.

The woman had said he’d killed a god while he stood there sorting through a sack of fucking loot.

"He’s met the Goddess too," Seraphiel added, smiling at Marielle. "He even wounded her."

"He ruined the bitch’s purity~" Vex purred, her pentagram eyes bright with pride.

"The... Goddess...?"

Andre’s voice cracked on the word. Marielle felt his arm tighten around her, holding her so hard that the broken stumps of her teeth scraped together.

She wanted him to tell them to stop. To call them liars. The Goddess watched over Thalorind, heard their prayers, stood above everything they had ever feared. These women were discussing hurting her with the same fond amusement they’d shown while their husband boiled the nest alive.

"Oh, you girls are making him sound so small~" Lucille purred. "Baby is so much more than that."

The caramel-haired woman came closer, her bloodied weapons resting at her sides. Marielle shrank against Andre as Lucille bent to meet her eyes.

Utter sadism shone in that beautiful green gaze. She was enjoying this, taking her time with the woman who had demanded they sacrifice Aurora and then threatened to burn through Sera’s chest.

Marielle could hear herself breathing through her damaged mouth. Lucille let her struggle for air, smiling until the terrified mage could look at nothing else.

"After all, he is..."

Lucille let her finish.

"The... Primordial Villain... Quinlan... Elysiar."

The name left Marielle’s lips in a wet, strangled whisper.

She remembered the announcements. The Soul Records had named Venthros’s killer before every living being, calling him by the title she had just spoken. Another universal announcement had stripped the world’s necromancers of their designation and bestowed it upon him.

She’d watched his soul soldiers fight and still hadn’t understood.

Bloody foam gathered at her lips as she struggled for air, her face turning ashen beneath the bruises. All morning she’d been ordering that man around. She had pressed her staff against his wife’s chest and screamed for him to obey her.

Andre whimpered.

His legs buckled, taking them both down against the gallery wall. He kept Marielle clutched to him through the descent, staring over her head at the black armour. He’d raised his sword against the family of a god-slayer, and the man’s mercy had been to keep them alive as his property.

"That’s right," Lucille said softly.

Quinlan glanced toward them. The crimson grin across his helmet turned with him, and Marielle buried her face against Andre’s bloodstained clothes with a choking cry.

He returned to the offerings while Lucille straightened, thoroughly pleased.

Seraphiel watched the couple huddle together before looking at Celia, still unconscious in Serika’s arms. She came to stand beside Quinlan as he gathered the last bundles.

"Quin, before we leave... Celia’s father. Don’t forget the quest."

He let the last bundle vanish into his ring and turned toward the spider. Behind her, the surviving brood crowded the passage, waiting for her next call.

"Right. We came here for a reason other than XP farming."

The queen lowered her head as he approached, her damaged mouthparts drawing together.

"Good... I good."

"Then help us. One of the people you caught escaped, but he still thinks he’s down here. His wounds have healed. Why hasn’t his mind recovered?"

She clicked uncertainly, glancing toward the rescued prisoners.

"Food... stays. Even when... cuts silk."

Sera came closer. "What keeps them like that? Your venom?"

"First... venom. Then... their magic. Holds... inside. Quiet food."

Aurora crouched beside an unconscious woman, lifting her wrist while Sera questioned the queen about how long the effect lasted. The answer brought a pleased little clicking from the monster.

"Long. Very... good food."

"Very cool," Quinlan said. "Now undo it."

Her clicking stopped.

"Undo...?"

"Let them wake up properly."

The queen folded her surviving legs against herself. "Never... did. Food wakes... bites. Runs."

"And if you tried?"

"Don’t... know. Can try... Don’t know... Probably... Impossible..."

She sounded increasingly miserable about disappointing him. Quinlan rested a hand on her lowered head before she could begin backing into her children.

"I already told you. You’re fine. I won’t hurt you so long as you obey."

"Okay..." She didn’t seem to fully believe him, looking around nervously. "What... to do?"

"Isn’t it obvious?" Quinlan grinned. "You’re going to help my women work it out."

Black Fang had joined Aurora beside the captive. At the alchemist’s invitation, she examined the old punctures in the woman’s arm, then looked toward the queen.

"A sample would be useful."

"I’d like my equipment too," Aurora said. "If the venom starts something the victim’s own mana keeps sustaining, neutralizing the venom afterward wouldn’t stop it."

Sera’s eyes narrowed at the woman lying between them.

"That would explain why healing the injuries got us nowhere."

"Then let’s take our helpful friend home," Quinlan decided.

The queen’s head lifted beneath his hand.

"Home...?"

"You’ll have plenty to eat. Monsters, though. People are off the menu, and so are their farms and livestock. The same goes for your children. Can you manage that?"

"Yes. Children... listen."

She turned and clicked into the passage. The nearest giant immediately retreated from the human patients, pressing back against the brood behind it.

Ayame watched it go, then glanced at Quinlan.

"You haven’t bound her, have you?"

"I still can’t subjugate monsters."

"Hmm... I knew that, but the way she behaves..."

"Right? She’s trying awfully hard for someone who can still refuse," Serika observed with a grin, shifting the sleeping Celia in her arms.

At Quinlan’s feet, the queen carefully moved a hooked leg out of Sera’s path. The elf looked down at the cleared space, then up at him with a spreading smile.

"Perhaps she likes you."

"An excellent judge of character."

Ayame snorted.

Quinlan gave the queen another pat. "You were truly impressive in our fight. I’d like to see what the monsters back home make of you. They’ve had things far too easy."

"You’re going to make her chase them?" Lucille asked.

"Compete with them. Hunt them. Give them a reason to grow stronger, and let her brood grow with them. I want to see what they can evolve into now."

Serika began laughing. "Even his monsters aren’t allowed to slack off!"

"Of course they aren’t. And when invaders come, you’ll of course help my people fight them off."

The queen cautiously nudged her head against his palm.

"I... strong. Good."

"Very good. First, we have a patient to help."

Quinlan opened a [Warp Gate] against the gallery wall, revealing the garden of his estate in Iskaris. Beyond the opening, Rosie’s vast trunk rose above the house, its silver-green bark catching the light.

He stepped through first. With his earth magic, he raised a broad enclosure at the garden’s far edge, leaving an opening facing the gate for the brood to enter.

The queen called her children after him. They hurried through in a scraping procession, following his pointing hand into their temporary pen while their mother watched from the threshold.

"Stay... here. Good. Stay."

When the last had passed, Quinlan closed the enclosure’s entrance with earth. The spiders clustered along the walls, settling at their mother’s final clicking command.

To carry the captives through, Quinlan returned to the gallery and used his earth magic to separate the paving beneath them into broad slabs. Lucille and Kaelira laid the patients on blankets before his wind lifted them through the gate, still supported by the stone.

Andre tried to stand with Marielle in his arms. Before his injured arm could give way, Quinlan raised the floor beneath the couple and carried them through together. Andre clung to his wife, staring into the garden as the slab settled beside the others.

There, Emily, the head maid, was already hurrying out with Dorothy and the others, carrying water and fresh bedding. Aurora kept the woman they’d examined beside the terrace for treatment, leaving Emily to arrange rooms for the remaining patients, including Andre and Marielle.