I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 202: The Oasis Worm: Endgame

The chains found purchase.

All five of them burrowed into the beast’s hide like white serpents, sinking deep into segments that had to be at least thirty meters thick. The Oasis Worm screeched, a sound that made the previous cries seem like whispers.

’Good. Scream louder.’

The [Chains of Confession] blazed with white light, and I could feel the connection snap into place. It was like grabbing onto a live wire, except the electricity was information, pouring into my skull in torrents of fragmented sensation.

Hunger. Endless hunger. The memory of swallowing caravans whole, of digesting travelers for weeks while they still screamed. The satisfaction of creating false oases, of luring prey with the promise of water in a land of death.

’Jesus Christ, this thing is evil.’

But I didn’t need its sins. I needed its pain.

”Maggie!” I shouted into the sandstorm. ”Auto-da-fé! Now!”

For a moment, nothing.

Then white flames erupted from somewhere below the beast, spiraling upward like a pillar of divine judgment. The Pyre Saint rose through the maelstrom, her chains trailing behind her, her eyes burning with that cold, terrible light I’d seen only once before.

When she’d burned an entire plaza to ash.

She hung in the air, arms spread wide, and began to speak.

”In nomine Patris...”

The words weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. They carried across the desert like a funeral bell, each syllable pressing against reality itself.

”...et Filii...”

The beast thrashed harder. It knew. Somehow, it knew what was coming. Its massive body coiled and uncoiled in the sand, trying to burrow, trying to escape. But my chains followed it, extended infinitely, five anchors of burning white light that wouldn’t let go.

’Five more seconds. Just five more seconds.’

”...et Spiritus Sancti.”

Kassie burst from a cloud of sand twenty meters to my left, her armor dented, her helmet cracked. She landed beside me, and the dents and crack were forming back to shape.

”What are you doing?!”

”Ending this.”

”You idiot, the essence cost alone will—”

”Amen.”

The world turned white as if someone had poured light into existence until there was nothing else. The heat hit me a moment later, a wave of pressure that should have turned my skin to ash but didn’t. [Martyr’s Endurance] earned its keep.

The Oasis Worm screamed.

It wasn’t a screech this time. It was a death rattle stretched across a creature the size of a mountain, a sound that seemed to go on forever as pillars of holy fire erupted from every point where my chains had touched its body. The flames spread like infection, racing along its segmented form, immolating it section by section.

I watched the creature burn.

And then I felt them.

The deaths.

Not one death, not two, not even hundreds. The Oasis Worm wasn’t just a beast. It was a living graveyard, a creature that had devoured over thousands of victims over the decades that their souls had become part of it. And now, as the Auto-da-fé burned the worm to nothing, it burned them too.

[You have killed an Apex (Tier +++) Spirit Beast: Oasis Worm]

I dropped to my knees.

’No, no, no—’

Screams, faces, names I didn’t know and would never know all poured through me, one after another, each one like a knife in my skull.

”Cade!” Kassie’s voice was distant. I felt soft hands on my shoulders. ”Cade, breathe!”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could do was experience their final moments, over and over, as the holy fire released them from the prison of the beast’s body.

The light faded.

The screaming stopped.

I found myself on my hands and knees in the sand, breathing in great heaving gasps. My vision swam and my head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it from the inside.

’Eight hundred essence. Eight hundred essence for one attack.’

I pulled up my status with shaking hands.

[Spirit Essence: 1117/2,600]

I laughed. A broken, hollow sound leaving my throat.

’We actually did it.’

The Oasis Worm was gone. Not dead—gone. Where the creature had been, there was only a vast crater of glass, sand fused into a smooth surface by the intensity of the flames. The pillars that had formed its false oasis had collapsed into rubble. The sandstorm was settling, revealing clear sky for the first time since the battle began.

Maggie descended slowly, her feet touching the sand with unnatural grace. But I could see the cost. Her face was pale, her movements sluggish. The chains that usually floated around her hung limp at her sides.

”Maggie...” I managed.

She looked at me. For a moment, her expression was unreadable.

Then she staggered almost about to fall. I scrambled toward her on hands and knees, but Kassie got there first and caught her before she hit the ground, cradling her with a gentleness I’d never seen from her before.

”What happened?” Kassie asked with a tone of worry.

I exhaled and said:

”The signature ability... has a very terrible drawback. If I had to endure that... I can only wonder how much she had to endure.”

And it wasn’t just now... before now, how exactly did she carry the weight of every burden she carried.

Now that I thought about it, I had used her to destroy all those population at the plaza. Surely it had to have caused a very huge backlash on her. But I didn’t notice.

At the time, I was also too burdened to feel anything or perhaps it was simply because it was the lives of innocent people.

I exhaled again, as tiredness set into my heart. Tristan and Levi reached me and both touched me.

”Well done.” Tristan said with a small, proud smile on his face.

Levi however, looked like he’d seen a ghost. His mouth was slightly opened.

”Boy. Did you just go and kill an Apex Spirit Beast?!”

It wasn’t until Levi spoke, I realized the magnitude of this feat.

’I just killed an Apex beast, level three!’

I paused for a moment and inquired, looking at the floatinf lodestar panel.

’Wait, what did I get?’

I checked every corner of the panel, even the back.

My first Apex kill and I got nothing for it!

Absolutely nothing!