I Only Summon Villainesses

Finally, I arrived at the scene where Maggie sat atop a mountain of corpses like some gang boss lady. Actually, that picture fitted her more perfectly than any nun or Grand Inquisitor or whatever she was rumored to have been when she was alive.

I stepped through the entrance. Behind me, the others held back as if pressed against a wall. Sulin, Jose, every single one of them stood well away from the threshold. Not one of them had crossed it.

The moment I appeared, their heads turned.

“Boy, where have you been?! I was worried sick about you!”

Jose smiled. “See, I told you the guy was somewhere taking a nap.”

Sulin looked at me and said nothing.

I didn’t say anything either. Just nodded and started forward when the wiry lady caught my wrist. Her grip trembled, but she didn’t let go.

Dull spoke as if translating.

“You’ve not been around, boy. This battle got viciously explosive since you left. I don’t know if that’s even good or bad for us, I really can’t tell, but what I can tell is this: I admit you’re strong. Stronger than many here. But that thing sitting there? It’s on another level from us. Please, don’t go near it. From what I witnessed, it could shatter you with a kick.”

I gulped. Honestly, I agreed with them.

’Maggie is that fearsome…’

I chuckled.

“She wouldn’t want to… unless she wants to get an eviction notice quickly.”

I walked forward regardless. Behind me, a few of them shifted as if they wanted to reach out and pull me back but couldn’t bring themselves to move any closer.

“Actually, getting an eviction notice will be the least she has to worry about. I wonder who’d win between her and Kassie.”

I chuckled again. Then every nerve in my body fired at once.

My reflexes, sharpened over the past few months, threw me sideways before my brain caught up. A leg wreathed in white radiant flame carved through the space where I’d been standing and cratered the ground. Debris and shattered stone erupted upward, a thunderous boom tearing across the ruins. Everyone behind me scrambled backward, some tripping over rubble, others shoving each other aside.

Dust swallowed the air.

I rolled to my feet inside the cloud, brushed off my coat, and walked through it. By the time the dust cleared, I was standing in front of Maggie again.

Behind me, the muttering started immediately.

“What — he survived that?! No one survived that!”

“How in the world did he dodge it?”

“I didn’t even see him move!”

I scoffed and turned to Maggie. My expression hardened.

“What are you doing?”

She raised those corpse-pale eyes. Glared at me without a word, and then she lunged, blurring into motion.

I backpedaled, listening, and at the right moment I launched forward to meet her. We closed the distance in a heartbeat, faces inches apart.

She flashed me a maddened grin. I flashed her an even more demented one and shoved myself sideways. Then I slammed back into her at a vicious angle. Her head snapped to the side, eyes widening, that mad grin stretching even further.

She snagged my hair before she fully faltered, brought her other hand down like a claw — but something like distant thunder split the air. Maggie wrenched her hand away and the projectile screamed past us, a streak of light that punched through the building’s parapet and blew it apart. Shards of stone rained down. The exhausted mercenaries below scrambled for cover, though not all of them made it clear.

Maggie’s face twisted with dark fury as she glared toward the source.

I stared in the same direction. But for a different reason.

“Cressida?”

Maggie coiled to move. I grabbed her wrist first and released a fragment of Emperor’s Presence. My voice dropped low, carrying weight that had nothing to do with volume.

“That’s enough.”

She stopped. Glared at me.

I held her stare.

“We’ll settle it later. That’s Cressida. I’m not letting you hurt her.”

She scoffed and turned away. The next second, she was gone.

My gaze shifted to the distance. Golden light poured across the horizon, washing out details, but I caught a figure sprinting through the ruins.

’Is that really…’

It was. My eyes widened.

“Cress!”

I broke into a run. We collided at a broken ridgeline.

“Cade!”

“Cressida!!”

“Cade, I suffered!!”

I stopped mid-step. “Uh? What happened?”

Her face twisted into a scowl.

“That bastard Blood Mage! He kidnapped me and wanted to take me back home!” She caught herself, the words piling up faster than she could sort them. “Oh right, I haven’t told you… my family is quite important. So if the Blood Mage is doing something like this, it must mean he doesn’t want to offend my family. Which means that bastard intends to wipe us all out.”

She grabbed my sleeve, practically yanking me forward.

“Cade, we have to hurry home to everyone.”

I scratched the back of my neck.

“I don’t think there’s any need for us to run back home, really.”

Her jaw dropped. Then her brows slammed together, fists clenching at her sides.

“What do you mean?! You don’t know — if someone has to go to the extent of kidnapping me to send me back home, that’s very bad, Cade. Very bad!”

I laughed.

“What’s very bad is someone having to face Kassie. I really don’t pity them.”

I laughed again and yawned.

“Now that everything’s all over, I’m feeling sleepy.”

Cressida stared at me, mouth still open. I tapped her shoulder and gave her a wicked smile.

“I have a lot of gist too. I also went through a lot, you see.”

She was still frozen, looking between me and the crowd.

“You’re just going to walk away? Aren’t you worried about the other?”

I smirked and gave her a dark look.

“I’d be worried about Blood Mage and whoever decides to attack them, if I were you.”