I Only Summon Villainesses

The chains were still burning, still holding the perimeter, and the Emperor’s Presence was still suppressing everything in range. The remaining three large creatures were moving away from me now, not advancing. The smaller summons had broken entirely, scattering in every direction, some of them running into walls, some of them running into the mercenaries’ blades.

Sulin was among them like a scalpel in a wound. Every touch was a death sentence. Her red-veined bloodline ability dismantled the disoriented summons with a clinical efficiency that was almost beautiful, if you were the kind of person who found precision violence beautiful.

Jose’s green lances were falling like rain. He’d abandoned the ground-level fighting and was back on his elevated perch, his spear planted beside him, both hands conducting the light constructs with the casual authority of someone directing an orchestra. Each lance found its target. Each target stopped moving.

I killed the third large creature with chains alone, binding all four legs and letting the Sanctified Immolation eat through its carapace until it collapsed under its own weight, burning from within.

The fourth tried to flee. A chain caught it by the tail and anchored it to a block of rubble. It dragged the rubble for ten feet before the fire reached its legs and it went down.

The fifth was the smartest. It dropped its spiritual pressure entirely, playing dead, hoping the fog would pass it by.

The Chains of Confession didn’t care about pretense. That was rather the point of them. The chain found it, wrapped around its skull, and the fire asked a question that the creature couldn’t answer honestly: Are you still a threat?

The answer was yes. The fire responded accordingly.

I pulled the chains back in. They retracted into my body with a heat that settled into my bones and my blood, and I scaled back Emperor’s Presence to its passive state.

The fog thinned and the battlefield came back into focus.

And following that everything went quiet again. The quiet this time was more like the calm after the storm, the kind that followed slaughter rather than peace, filled with the sounds of the wounded and the settling of dust and the distant crackle of flames that hadn’t quite burned out.

My essence had cratered. I could feel the deficit like a physical weight, a hollowness behind my sternum that made my breaths feel shallow. The budget was destroyed. I’d spent three hours of reserves in about four minutes, and the math that had been working was now a problem I’d need to solve very creatively over the remaining nine hours.

’Damn it.’

I walked back toward the line. The frost on the Frostfang was receding again, the blade returning to its dormant state, and the cold that had surrounded me faded until it was just me and my own body heat and the night air.

The mercenaries parted for me.

That was new. They didn’t just step aside, they actively created space. The shaking first-timer was staring at me with an expression that I could only describe as religious. The wiry woman nodded once, which from her was probably the equivalent of a parade.

But it was the conversations I caught in fragments that told the real story.

“…no way that’s F-rank. No way in hell.”

“He lied. Has to have. You saw those chains? That fire? The whole battlefield felt different when he did whatever that red fog was.”

“Maybe he’s undercover. Night Guard plant. Nobody registers F-rank with abilities like that.”

“My cousin’s a C-rank Summoner and he can’t do half of what that kid just did. Not a quarter.”

“F-rank my ass. He must be an S-rank Spirit Summoner”

Sergeant Kael had stopped looking at me entirely, which I was fairly certain meant she was looking at me more than ever. She was talking to one of the Night Guard summoners in a voice too low for me to catch, but the summoner kept glancing in my direction with an expression that was halfway between suspicious and afraid.

Sulin appeared beside me without making a sound. Her hands were clean, which was disturbing considering what I’d just watched her do with them.

“You’ve been holding back,” she said.

I chuckled shyly, scratching the back of my neck.

“I’d say I’ve been budgeting, I have never had to fight a twelve hour battle so I had to.”

She considered this, her red eyes studying my face with the same focus she’d given the battlefield. Then she scoffed.

“Budget’s blown now.”

“Yep.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

I shrugged. “Worry’s expensive. I can’t afford it… like you said, budget’s blown.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile, that I was sure about. It was almost like she stopped herself from being so terrified.

Jose strolled over, his spear back across his shoulders, his expression settled into its default state of amused disinterest. He looked at the five massive carcasses scattered across the corridor, then at me, then at the mercenaries who were very carefully not making eye contact with our group.

“So,” he said. “When do we talk about how an F-rank just soloed a Siege Line?”

“We don’t,” I said.

“Right.” He grinned. “Because that would require acknowledging it happened, and that would be inconvenient for whoever registered your rank. Ah, I really should reconsider what I said then shouldn’t I? I’m sorry, I hope you didn’t take it to heart, I was joking.”

I didn’t respond to that.

From beyond the ruins, the horn sounded again. Fifth time tonight. And I was less than halfway through this battle with less than a third of my essence remaining.

The ground trembled.

’I really need to find that Auction.’

I looked back at the base we were defending. The structure loomed behind our position, its architecture older and more deliberate than the ruins surrounding it. The Night Guards were defending it with a ferocity that went beyond professional obligation. This wasn’t just a strategic position to them.

Something was underneath it. Or inside it. Something worth twelve hours of blood.

’Quite obvious, isn’t it.’

The horn’s echo faded, and the next wave began to move.

’I think I may need Maggie’s help this time.’