I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 200: The Oasis Worm [part 1]

The question was so obnoxious. What did he mean? What did we drink? We drank water, of course!

”Uhm. Water?”

He frowned at us, including Tristan. Seeing the expression on his face, a subtle frown creased Kassie’s brows and she stepped forward, leaving Cindy’s side and passing inside the pillars that jutted from the ground like enormous spikes. The moment she stepped onto the reddish concrete structure, she stopped dead. Her frown deepened, something shifting behind her eyes.

”Cade! Get out of there now!”

As she yelled, the pillars began to grind and vibrate. The vibration resonated with the ground itself, a deep tremor that ran up through my legs — and the floor immediately tilted, driving me straight toward the depth I had drunk from.

Not just me. Tristan and Nisha too.

I rolled, grabbed a stone slab. The bulge wasn’t large enough for my fingers to find purchase. My hand slipped against the worn surface, nails scraping uselessly.

But before I could fall, a hand caught mine and threw me upward with brutal strength.

Storm exploded beside me in a howl of wind — Tristan and Nisha had summoned their spirits instantly.

I flew into the air. Below me, the pillars rotated and shot inward with immense speed, stone grinding against stone, determined to crush me between them before I could escape. Before they could close, Kassie flew between the converging pillars and split her legs in a perfect horizontal line, catching both surfaces and stopping the massive structures from slamming together. The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing through the ancient stone.

In the meantime, I fell.

I summoned my sword at the same instant, body plunging straight toward the water. But white flames formed a tornado directly beneath me, swelling for a moment before exploding outward with crazy speed — seconds before impact. I used the explosive force to launch myself outside the ring of pillars, boots skidding against sand as I landed.

Kassie retracted her legs and rolled through the air with practiced grace. As the pillars moved in again, they suffered a thunderous sequence of kicks that resonated across the entire desert. Each impact cracked the massive structure and made it slow down, almost as if reconsidering its choices, before Kassie landed outside the sphere of pillars as well.

Nisha, Tristan, Levi — all of us were now on the same side. I summoned Maggie just in case, feeling her familiar warmth materialize beside me.

The structure was shifting now. Sand rose and fell like a waterfall in reverse, cascading upward and outward — evidence that something monstrous wanted to reveal itself from beneath.

I narrowed my eyes as I watched this happen, heat rising in my chest.

Levi stared with a dark scowl on his face. A sandstorm was forming around us, grains stinging exposed skin, when he spoke softly against the rising wind.

”I think... this is very, very bad news.”

I glanced at him.

If Levi was saying this, I wanted to believe it truly was. But I still needed to be sure what exactly he meant.

”What... exactly do you mean?”

He sighed, looking up even as sand completely obscured our vision, the sky disappearing behind a wall of churning brown.

”Well... that’s no doubt the Oasis of Shemiah desert.” He exhaled and added, ”It’s a popular spirit beast that plagues Travellers. Over three decades, it’s been well known and marked.”

His expression and voice grew wary.

”Which makes its presence here quite confusing... it’s supposed to be in Hotvale desert. This is Tamil desert. Hotvale is over to the west of the continent, not the east.”

Tristan and Nisha were as clueless as I was.

Tristan turned to the rising mountain of sand and asked:

”What rank are we looking at?”

Levi answered immediately. ”Apex... and if we’re looking at the same Oasis, then it most likely could be a level 3 Apex.”

I paused and thought for a moment.

The Maelstrom Serpent I’d fought was level 3, but at least it had been Primal. Roughly as strong as the boss of the ice gate would’ve been. Now this was an Apex tier, level 3...

I wasn’t sure twice as strong was going to cut it. It was more accurate to say that whatever this beast was, if Levi was being accurate, it was going to be at least ten times stronger than the Leviathan Eel had been.

Kassie interrupted my thoughts at that moment.

”How about you guys sit this one out?” She turned to me. ”...and let the fire wizard and I take care of this.”

I glanced at Pyre Saint, who stood staring upward with a dark expression, flames already licking at her fingertips.

I found this idea to be actually amazing. Kassie was a genius.

”Guys, I think we should—”

Just as I spoke, the entire place shook and the sand began to come undone. A mountain of it rushed across the ground, forming a storm that could swallow us whole.

Nobody at this point needed to be told what to do. We lunged backward, trying to outrun the storm and avoid being caught up in the collapsing dunes as the colossal creature finally revealed itself from the sands.

I watched the sandstorm roll forward with devastating power and swallow Kassie, Maggie, and Cindy instantly, their forms disappearing into the churning brown.

But while I was moving away, I saw Kassie’s silhouette plunge out of the storm and into the sky. A silvery thin chain glittered behind her, flying upward like a thread that was infinitely long.

Kassie had summoned her sword already, and the chain was following her sword arm. It wasn’t until she cocked her arm backward and slung the blade that I discovered the chain was connected to the weapon itself.

The sword covered vast distance in the sky and buried itself in the body of sand that had risen above half the visible horizon.

A loud cry thundered across the entire desert — my ears felt like they were going to split in two from the sheer force of it.

But the sword had found strong purchase now. The chain pulled taut, then slacked. The next thing I saw was Maggie rising into the air like an expert stuntman, using the chain as her guide.

She erupted flame in her arms. Each one was like a falling meteor — their white radiance brightened the shadowed sky and turned the sand to glass where it touched. In the next moment, they crashed into the abhorrent creature and exploded into a torrent of fire that came raining down.

As the flames descended in actual drops of liquid fire, the rest of us had to run and move further from the battle scene so we wouldn’t get burned.

Well, them in particular. I had no issues with Maggie’s flames and couldn’t be hurt by them.

The creature, hit by the ferociously white flames, finally began to reveal itself.

What I saw was a body of pillars. The creature was like a worm — a worm made of crude, colossal spikes, all of them connected in segmented sections that stretched beyond counting.

If I had to take a strange guess... I wanted to say that perhaps that one Oasis, or what at least had looked like an Oasis, was only a single segment of the beast’s body.

My face paled at the realization.

Terrifying... Truly terrifying.