I Only Summon Villainesses

I stood for a moment on the metal surface of the airship. Due to its shape, it was slightly slanted, and even standing made me feel like I was going to slip down at any moment.

But I was quite fortunate… since Kassie had taught me a thing or two about taking advantage of gravity, I was able to remain standing. I inhaled deeply and then exhaled softly.

When I exhaled, a hot fume of wind seeped out of my nose. I felt like my entire body was boiling, except I couldn’t actually see the boiling.

I started with a wheel of flame that was just a few centimeters around my body. This wasn’t strenuous and was far easier than what I was aiming for. After watching Maggie’s battle with the Heroic Summoner of Ifrit, I had a vague idea. She wasn’t much of a teacher like Kassie, so I had to figure out how to effectively use her abilities on my own.

Granted, I was also sure that when they progressed to the Advanced Tier, they would gain more firepower, and my mastery was going to get much better.

I swung my hand around my head in a gentle motion, using it to softly guide the flow of the flames. Then I suddenly extended both hands forward.

The circle of flames responded with the same suddenness. They expanded into a wide ring of flames that immediately mixed with the tornado Tristan’s summon had created.

The moment the flames mixed with the tornado, they instantly channeled a great amount of fire, and I didn’t hold back either. In fact, I had been preparing for this expansion, and if I didn’t pour more essence into the flames to increase their firepower, the amount of flame channeled through the swirling wind would have immensely dwindled…

…And certainly not enough to deal the kind of damage to the harbor that we needed.

So I doubled down on the essence expenditure and even moved my arms in circles that copied the flow of the tornado. While minding my own footsteps, this helped the flames navigate their path through the channel.

It wasn’t like they were simply being thrown around. It was now as if they saw a narrow empty space and exploded forward through it with fierce speed.

It took a lot out of me, of course. This required a far more delicate control of flames. I wasn’t just shooting flames outward. I was minding my body movements, copying everything I had noticed Maggie doing during that fight. I was trying hard to mirror it all on my own.

It was far more strenuous than simply exploding flames and shooting them around. And naturally, the firepower — I could feel it from where I stood. The heat of the flames seemed to have increased twofold due to the amount of essence I poured into them.

Perhaps my delicate control was also doing something. I didn’t know. What I did know was that it was fierce and terrifying.

My gaze lit up when I saw its vicious power consume the tornado. The wind tornado was turning into one of flames that was heading downward at a whirling speed.

Then finally the flames reached the bottom of the harbor with a frenzied movement, and the moment they did…

First, a vociferous roar rolled through the harbor and then into the sky line. Following it was a chain explosion of orange flames mixed with white fire that rolled forth, connecting from ship to ship and disintegrating them in an atrocious spray of steel, impact, and flames.

The harbor was consumed by a river of white flames that moved like water.

The moment the first flame of the tornado touched down, instead of continuing to move the tornado, I collapsed it.

It was an effort born out of laziness, though. Because I felt that going from guiding flames through channels of tornado into moving the entire tornado of flames was a terrible escalation that I was not at all ready for.

So with the force that the flames were already whirling with, I decided to collapse everything onto the harbor.

And it turned out there was a blessing in laziness after all.

My heart hammered as I stared down at the scenery.

’Wait… oh crap! Levi!’

He was there on one of those ships, and I had just sent the entire inferno crashing onto all of them.

’It’s Levi! It’s Levi! My flames are nothing to him… right?’

I forced a smile onto my face. Levi dying to my flames would’ve been such an iconic moment, but I truly didn’t see that happening.

The flames flooded the harbor and consumed the men holding their swords. They rolled forward and latched onto buildings, swirling through their rooms and unweaving their structures from the inside, spraying burned splinters of wood into the sky.

The flames took a moment before they reached the wall, and when they did, their force had diminished. Even though they licked against the wall and tried to reach farther, their driving force had greatly died down, so the flames remained mundane at best, spreading only like a normal fire outbreak.

’Hm, that’s disappointing.’

But at the same time, it was well-done damage.

I released a relieved breath and panted a little as sweat dripped down my face.

I leaned on my knees for a moment, panting there until I caught my breath enough to stand back up and stare down at the havoc I had single-handedly wrecked on an entire harbor the size of a town.

My face curved into an ecstatic grin.

’Okay… maybe now I’m beginning to look the Sovereign part.’

I felt Nightfall shift beneath my legs and slowly descend. But at the same time, a turret thundered, and with the sound came a cannonball that bolted through the air and completely shattered the side wing of the ship.

Before I could react, all I could see were smithereens of metal flying through the sky.

My eyes froze wide for a moment as I wondered at the sheer speed of the strike — and how they could immediately recover from the fierce flames I had just flooded them with.

The ship tilted to one side, its entire weight drifting.

’Kassie, I think it’s time…’

I hadn’t even finished sending the message when I materialized her. Almost at the same time, another turret thundered.

And with the same immense speed, the cannonball pierced through the wind and was about to tear through Nightyell’s wing.

I was angled toward the side that had been shattered earlier. There was no way I would have made it in time.

However, the Tyrant Empress…

Kassie’s form blurred like a crimson wind as she swirled viciously and met the cannonball with her feet.