Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

"There he is," the Villain smiled.

"AH- my lord- Your Majesty- sire-!" Hadric hit his knees in front of his sovereign, gauntlets coming up, words arriving in whatever order they escaped. "The coins- I wasn’t- there’s a counting protocol! Standard procedure! I count everyone’s- I have a mother!"

Quinlan’s crimson eyes flared bright. The Soul Reaper’s flames intensified. Synchra’s red veins raced.

Hadric made a noise no knight academy had ever trained a man for.

Then his nerve snapped outright.

"Mercyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!"

Hadric departed at a full sprint through the vendor row, screaming all the way.

"Hmm..." Quinlan mused, stroking his chin. Then, as if nothing had happened, he moved on.

"..." Iris looked at Seraphiel. Seraphiel looked at Iris.

One of the remaining knights began taking Quinlan’s fee, coin by careful coin.

"That," Quinlan told him pleasantly, "was the last entrance fee this gate will ever collect."

He turned to the street.

"People of Aldoria! The Goddess raised the labyrinths for everyone, and for too long you’ve paid nobles for the privilege of risking your own lives inside them."

He swept a hand at the little stone doorway.

"From this day, in every land under my rule, every labyrinth gate stands open. Go get strong and make me proud."

As far as Quinlan was concerned, these labyrinths were the perfect training tools to get one started on their leveling journey. If he allowed people to train for free, he would have more superhumans down the line to bulk his nation up with quality citizenship.

If he wanted to make money, which he did, there were many better avenues to tax.

For one heartbeat the street held its breath.

"...Free?" The boy by the stall looked up from his coppers. "It’s free?!"

He counted them again, the eleventh time since dawn, and for the first time all morning the number did not matter. Twenty bronze had been the entire distance between him and the rest of his life, and the Villain had erased it in one sentence.

"The Villain opened the labyrinths!"

The street came apart. Explorers and adventurers roared, the scattered queue poured back out of hiding as a mob of celebration, and a potion vendor bellowed, "Free samples!" going along with the sovereign’s vibes.

Quinlan raised one hand, and a second warp gate opened beside him.

<We’re beginning, ladies,> he sent over the family link. <Come on through.>

The family stepped out of the gate into the middle of a street festival that had not existed a minute ago.

Ayame came first, then Serika, Lucille, Vex, Kitsara, Blossom, Kaelira, and Aurora. Eight women took in the roaring adventurers, the weeping boy clutching his coppers, the three knights cradling two hundred twenty bronze, and their smug husband, in that order.

"It’s the whole harem!"

"Don’t stare at them! Don’t stare at any of them, he’ll take your eyes!"

A farmhand near the front of the queue dropped to one knee and started thanking a goddess. He was not particular about which one.

"Yay!!" Blossom’s ears shot straight up, and she began cheering along with the crowd on pure enthusiasm. "Blossom doesn’t know what we’re celebrating, but it must be about Master!!"

The rest of the girls looked from the festivities to their man with extremely wry eyes.

"I left a half-built dwarven council for this," Ayame said, arriving at his shoulder. Her gaze swept the entrance sign, the queue, the little stone doorway. "Quin. What is this?"

"Our next campaign."

"A labyrinth." Flat as a blade. "I told you on your second day in this world that labyrinths pay worse than the wild."

"You did. Then we killed or befriended everything the wild had worth hunting." Quinlan gestured at the tiny doorway with real affection. "The deep floors are the only renewable hunting grounds left on this continent."

Ayame’s eyes narrowed, because that was not the question that mattered, and both of them knew it.

"And the beastkin? You seriously intend to level up instead of running them down?"

"We could obliterate them. A week, two at most, and the Confederation kneels." He said it without a trace of doubt, and nobody present doubted it either. "But Vex once made a very good point."

Vex stopped mid-step.

"..." Her red eyes came around slowly. "That’s right. I always make good points."

Then her head tilted. "Which one?"

"The Heavenly Restriction has stood over this continent for hundreds of thousands of years," Quinlan repeated her logic, while his witch glowed. "Whoever drew it never once came back to collect. The odds of that changing this week, or this month, are next to none. Which means..."

He spread his hands and let his family finish it.

"...there’s no clock," Serika said slowly. The grin crept up her face as she said it.

"Chances are that past the Veil, we’re small fish," Aurora added, arms crossed, mind already three steps down the road. "At least, that’s the attitude we should operate with."

"The races need the time just as much as we do," Lucille chimed in warmly.

"I opened a kitchen under the dwarven mountain this morning," she continued. "The dwarves are darlings, and not one of them can ask a human to pass the salt without rehearsing it first, much less an elf. A few months of the races working side by side and it becomes natural. Force it, and it tears."

"So Iskaris settles into its new shape at its own pace, with nobody getting the new world shoved down their throat." Ayame took the thesis home, and her voice had gone thoughtful despite herself. "And we spend that time climbing, so that whatever waits beyond the Veil finds us as ready as this continent can make us."

She looked up at him, eyes narrowed with deep suspicion.

"You planned this. You, the man who fled a council hall this very morning."

"I run from nothing. I delegate."

The girls traded looks around the circle, and the same verdict settled over all of them at once. Their man could not sit through a single council meeting. He had never balanced a ledger in his life and clearly never would.

And every woman present was beaming at him anyway, because the job he actually held was leading his family to the best future in reach, and at that job, no being in this world could touch him.

"Enough talking." Iris rolled her freshly healed shoulder, red eyes already fixed on the doorway. "Let’s go."

"You’re right. Let us begin, sidekick," Ayame agreed sweetly.

Iris’s eye twitched.

"Labyrinth time with Master!!" Blossom was vibrating in place.

Then Kitsara raised a finger, five tails swaying slower and slower.

"Sooo... question." The foxy’s voice climbed carefully toward hope. "What about the beastkin. We just... leave them alone?"

"Leave them alone?" Quinlan repeated.

The Primordial Villain chuckled, low and rolling, and the sound alone made half the girls lean in.

"No, my beloved fox. The beastkin are about to face a crisis unlike anything in their long history."

He said nothing more.

His girls, warm-hearted women every one, looked at their chuckling man and grinned like a den of adorable little demonesses.

Together, they followed Quinlan through the labyrinth’s stone doors.

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