Chapter 1730: No, Seraphiel Vaelorith.
Quinlan said nothing.
His gaze swept the battlefield.
The dwarven lines. The undead horde. The Fujimori ranks.
Every banner that had marched through Kaede’s portal, every soldier who served the coalition that had dared keep Black Fang chained in a cell.
They had tortured her. Beaten her until her bones broke and broken them again after they healed just so they could enslave her.
Enslave.
Black Fang?
Mana rolled off him and hit the soldiers beneath like a change in altitude, and a crossbowman on the front line dropped to his knees with blood running from both ears.
To turn her against him?
They did all those horrors to her...
To beat him?
The second pulse cracked the frost on every shield beneath him.
Black Fang already carried infinitely more pain than she ever should have, and these vermin had piled more on top of it.
He laughed, and a hundred of Vozen’s undead on the nearest flank seized mid-stride, their jaws cracking open in rasping shrieks as they turned on the soldiers beside them and began swinging at anything within reach, living or dead, their binding scripts flickering like candles in a gale.
"Kick back and watch?"
The air around Quinlan went black as if the sky itself had flinched away from the man standing in it.
"No, Seraphiel Vaelorith."
Quiet enough to be a reply. Loud enough that the men below snapped their heads skyward, because the mana woven through those three words pressed on their skulls like a vise.
Sera’s grin went feral as a strong jolt rushed through her body. She’d known what his answer would be before she even opened her mouth.
"They hurt a woman I care far too much about, so we conduct the greatest recorded massacre in the history of the Iskaris Continent."
His voice carried mana, and the mana carried his will, and the will hit every allied soldier on the field like a war drum struck inside their ribs.
"Until they throw their weapons away and kneel, they are to be slain! Now go! Eradicate the Elvardian scum and their filth from the face of Thalorind!"
...
The Elite Souls had already been surging with their new power, batteries burning at their backs and wounds closing with every kill, but their master’s words hit them like a second wind that made the first look gentle.
A thousand blue-skinned soldiers pressed forward as one, and the formations that had been grinding through the coalition line turned into a tide.
"YES!!!" The loyalist elves who had marched under the coalition’s banners heard it and screamed in understanding, thousands of voices rising at once as they threw themselves at the enemies they’d been standing beside a minute ago.
Across the field, Isveth’s rebels heard it too.
The Head Shrine Maiden raised her sword arm and shouted, "As the Holy Son commands!"
The fanatics who had followed Quinlan since before they reached the heartlands surged forward with a cry that tore across the field, raw and absolute, and the two elven forces that had finally chosen the same side crashed into the coalition’s crumbling flanks from opposite ends of the line.
...
Maelstrom’s head whipped toward his own ranks.
His Consortium soldiers were pressing harder.
He was a competent enough man to understand that they were not doing it because he’d ordered it nor because the tactical situation demanded it, but because the Primordial Villain’s words had landed in their spines and their bodies had answered before their brains caught up.
"Oi bastards!" The general’s roar cracked across the Consortium line. "You lot fight harder because I tell you to fight harder, not because Devil barks from the sky! You’re my soldiers, understood?!"
A veteran sergeant drove his spear through a dwarven shieldbearer’s guard with a grunt and glanced back at his general. "Has nothing to do with Devil, sir! Our men and women have great morale because of your outstanding leadership!"
Maelstrom’s eye twitched, sensing the sarcasm that was outright dripping. "I’ll whip you raw if you don’t shut your mouth!"
"Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!" The sergeant saluted and went back to killing.
...
On the Beastman Confederation front, Skarn’s wolfkin heard the Villain’s voice roll over them and their formation tightened without a single order from their lord.
Skarn’s lips pulled back from his teeth as he growled at the skies. "Don’t tell my warriors what to do!"
Beside him, Rajah was already baring his fangs at the sky. "We fight because we choose to, not because some outsider commands it!"
But the tigerkin at his back were surging into the undead line with a ferocity that hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago, and the wolfkin flanks were doing the same.
Rajah’s snarl deepened as he watched his own soldiers fight like they’d been buffed by a potent magic spell. "I knew he’d become a problem..."
Farther back from the front, Vargis watched the chaos ripple through the Confederation ranks with his arms crossed and a low chuckle building in his chest.
"Seeing your husband in action fills me with satisfaction, daughter." He glanced sideways at Kitsara, and the pride in his eyes was clear for all to see. "I did my duty as a father and gave you to a strong mate."
Every trace of feral combat energy drained from Kitsara’s face in an instant, replaced by a flush that climbed from her collar to her fox ears. "Dad! You can’t just say things like that! It’s the modern age! Nobody talks about ’giving away’ their daughter to a ’strong mate’ anymore!"
Her five dark, demonic tails curled inward, climbing her thighs.
Then the flush burned away as fast as it had come, and the red eyes that snapped back to the battlefield were pure predator.
"My unfairly amazing mate needs my help." She began walking forward. "So either get ready to do something useful or see you later, old man!"
She was gone before Vargis could respond, black hair streaking toward the front line with all five tails fanned out behind her.
Darius clapped a hand on his father’s back hard enough to rattle the chieftain’s armor, laughing. "Bahaha! Little Kits might’ve turned into a kinky demonic fox who gets her brains plowed out by that man every night, but she sure retained her humor! It’s good to see!"
"...Don’t do this to me." Vargis grunted, trying his best to not have any image appear in his head.
"Only cowards run from reality, that’s what you told me all the time as a kid! Bahaha!"
"This... This is different," Vargis sighed, but the grin on his face didn’t fade.
He raised his axe and screamed. "After today, the dogkin will rise to never-before-seen heights! We shall slay our enemies and carve our future by our very hands! For glory!"
Every warrior of the dogkin tribe rushed forward with a mighty battlecry.
...
Quinlan watched the tides shift from above, every front surging at once as his words finished what his mana had started.
Then his gaze moved to the ridge.
The ice spire he’d built still stood where he’d left it, massive and pale against the winter sky, and the thing entombed inside it had been waiting long enough.
It was time to settle things.
