Primordial Villain With A Slave Harem

Chapter 1773 Into New Whisperfield

The city announced itself before they reached its edge.Sound came to greet them, hammering and voices and a child's laugh carrying over the wind, and then warmth crept through the soles of their boots twenty steps from the nearest building as the snow underfoot thinned to slush, then bare earth, then dry stone.

"Defenses... Yeah, we're working on it," Jasmine chuckled dryly under her breath, noting how the soldiers didn't give them much trouble.

In fact, they just strolled right in.

But to their credit, at least the outside patrols caught them.

"Heads gonna roll?" Felicity giggled.

"No... Not yet. They're only settling in."

"Settling in?" Myrasyn asked, confused. "Your guards are?"

"Something like that~" None who were in the know explained, instead wearing sly grins.

The reveal would have to wait.

"Hmm... What nasty young ladies you are... Tormenting your elders with suspense..." The elven queen narrowed her eyes, pouting, then began diligently studying her surroundings to unearth the mystery.

While that would take some time, what was instantly apparent to her was how every step was warmer than the last, and by the time Jasmine led them past the first row of buildings, the winter they'd left on the hilltop felt like a different country.

Heated stone stretched in every direction, dry and clean despite the winter pressing in from the treeline, and the buildings lining the main road rose three stories of compressed earth with frosted quartz windows that caught the pale light in amber.

Between them stood oaks and evergreens the builders had refused to touch, their branches heavy with snow while the roads beneath stayed bare.

"Approve... So pretty... Amazing..." Isveth nodded to herself every few seconds, seeing a new tree or other greenery show up, as if she was grading the Holy Son's city.

Kids were kicking a leather ball between stacked crates, barefoot on the warm ground, and the screaming that accompanied the game had the sort of unhinged enthusiasm that could only come from having been at it for hours.

A woman leaning out of a second-story window was mid-conversation with her neighbor below.

"You can't even compare! Back home I couldn't afford firewood half the winter, and here in New Whisperfield the ground heats itself!" She laughed, bright and disbelieving. "We haven't even finished unpacking but I love it so much better already!"

Alexios's stride slowed. "New Whisperfield?"

That... Whisperfield...?

The one that was his settlement in Ravenshade?!

The border county's capital?!

"I might've relocated your city's one hundred thousand citizens." Quinlan shrugged with not an atom of regret existing in his entire being. "Oops."

"You did what?" Alexios couldn't believe his ears.

"Whisperfield was taken a little more than a day ago!" Myrasyn yelped quietly from beneath her hood. Then her eyes widened and her head whipped toward Jasmine.

"Is that why the guards are still 'settling in?!'"

"Bingo~ They're hard-working people. Just need to give them some time."

Quinlan added nothing of his own, letting his proud governor do the talking since she seemed to be really in her element.

Far be it from Quinlan to interrupt when one of his girls was this chirpy and cheery, electing to just listen to her go on with a content heart.

Then a burst of laughter drew every eye to a small square where two roads met.

A boy of seven or eight stood on an overturned crate with his arms raised, palms pushing toward the sky.

"BRRRMMMM!" he bellowed, cheeks puffed with effort. "The cool guy with the pretty brown-haired lady did it like this! And the buildings rose!"

A smaller girl beside him was rising from a crouch with her arms stiff at her sides, being the building.

Then she began complaining, dissatisfied. "I want to be the pretty lady, not the buildings!"

"We don't have enough of us for that!"

"..." the little girl began pouting hard, reminding the onlookers of a certain overly expressive elven queen.

A third kid smacked the first one's shoulder. "No, the stairs came after! They grew out of the wall like..." He spiraled a finger upward. "Tktktktkt!" The boy on the crate pushed harder.

"Nuh-uh! He did it all at once! BRRMMM, BRRMMM!" The building-girl toppled over and started giggling, forgetting she was busy complaining.

Quinlan watched them with his hands in his pockets, grinning inwardly.

"You did the finishing touches while they were watching?" Alexios shook his head. "You truly can't help yourself but show off, can you?"

"Finishing touches?" Quinlan looked at the old man with innocence that looked so wrong on his face that Alexios shivered from head to toe and reached for the hilt of his blade, prompting Quinlan's eyes to dance with amusement as he explained, "I built it from scratch while they watched. Threw it together in a couple hours."

"You did what?!" Alexios shouted, bewildered beyond belief.

"Stop screaming you senile fucker, you'll blow our cover. And yeah." Quinlan shrugged. "Only had a few hours because I had to get back to robbing your other cities blind before Elvardia could hog all the spoils."

"..." For once, Alexios didn't even have it in him to call him a bastard.

The sheer scale of what Quinlan had done here... The quality, the quantity, the speed...

Just the fact that he relocated this many people to a place that was clearly extremely far from the original Whisperfield... Located in the wilderness no less...

But no, the people who should be huddled together while freezing to death under tree branches while the men did a mad rush to put together some shabby shacks were having the time of their lives, settling in with joyous faces.

'Not just joyous... Hopeful.'

They were hopeful for their future.

The old king felt his knees shake, something he never experienced no matter what enemy stood before him.

Myrasyn's lips curved beneath her hood. "We knew you were spiriting the human citizens from under our nose but the benefits you brought to the war effort were too valuable to make a problem out of this." Her tone carried more amusement than accusation or anger. "But to think you were taking them to make them your own citizens...?"

Then her eyes caught a detail that made her stop. "I only see humans. What have you done with the non-human slaves you took?"

"We'll get to that shortly, don't you worry," Quinlan mused mysteriously.

"Hmph!" A second deadly pout materialized on the gorgeous queen's delicate lips. "So many secrets... My heart can't take this!"

"You'll manage."

"So cruel... A family of sadists!" Then she whispered under her breath, in a note that was far too low, "No wonder Black Fang likes you so much..."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing!"

"Hold on." Elisabeth pushed forward, golden hair slipping free of her hood. "Don't just brush past what he said! He built all of this in a few hours?!"

Quinlan looked around as if seeing the city for the first time and finding it somewhat lacking. "It's a bit shabby, I know. I could've done a better job if I really wanted to, but as I said, I was limited for time and I prefer giving people a skeleton and letting them make it their own instead of giving them the finished product."

"I didn't mean it like that! What you did here is..." she bit her lip, not wanting to say the next word. But there was no helping it. The priestess gulped her pride down and whispered, "Otherworldly."

"Thanks. I didn't know you could be nice."

"... I'm an Arch Priestes… Helper and protector of the people…" she might've complained, but the argument came out weak.

"Guess I'm not a person, then?"

"..." Her expression soured, much to Quinlan's internal enjoyment. He didn't show any of it, of course.

The next stretch of street proved his point of this being a skeleton ripe for customization without a word.

A man was painting his earthen wall a deep red while his daughter held the bucket. Two women argued about curtain colors for a window they hadn't installed yet.

A flower box hung from a railing that had been bare stone hours ago, bright petals against brown earth.

Morgana, who had been silent since the foot of the hill, spoke.

"The heat." The words came out like they cost her something. "How?"

"I created a magma chamber beneath the bedrock then branched its conduits into every building. The people get just enough to give them heat without turning their homes into a cooking pot."

Quinlan kept walking as he explained. "After some trial and error, I managed to create a passive system that refuels itself in said magma chamber. Well, we'll see how long that cycle lasts, but it should go for at least a few years."

To every leader in the procession, what he explained with casual nonchalance was a sign of unbelievable power.

Morgana replied with nothing, and her silence carried more weight than any of Elisabeth's outbursts, because the Queen of Vraven understood exactly how difficult carving a geothermal network through bedrock was.

'Difficult...? More like impossible. The amount of precise elemental manipulation needed, combined with the unfathomable mana expenditure that must've accompanied it...'

All of a sudden, the queen's eyes began swirling again as she couldn't help herself but want to study him all over again, her curiosity rekindled in full.

"Stop staring at my boyfriend like that, psycho," Jasmine chimed in, and Morgana's head whipped sideways as if she was slapped.

'I'll murder this haughty bitch!' she cursed inwardly, without opening her mouth. She knew better.

But that didn't stop her from complaining inwardly. 'Why are none of them standing up for me?! She threatened me with whipping and now called me a psycho, and my husband and daughters don't even react!'

Alexios was far too busy to care, as he felt his legs go weak all over again.