I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 295: Watch Your Back

I wasn’t quite sure what happened after that. Between putting on the strange blindfold and being asked to take it off, everything in that span felt like a gap carved out of my memory. One moment I was tying it behind my head, and the next, someone was telling me to remove it.

When I pulled the blindfold from my eyes, I found myself standing in a ruin.

Not a building. A city... An entire city, hollowed out and rotting, abandoned for over a decade at the very least. Collapsed roofs sagged into the streets. Walls had crumbled into heaps that nature was slowly swallowing. The air smelled of old stone and something faintly acrid, like burnt metal left too long in the rain.

I was shocked, but belatedly swung my gaze around to confirm who was beside me. Cressida was not there. Instead I saw the green-haired man, still pulling his own blindfold down with a scowl already forming. And a woman with long black hair who stood perfectly still, surveying the ruins with the same casual interest one might give a cloudy sky.

The man looked indignant.

”Hey! Where are we?”

There was someone standing before us, but it was none of the people we’d seen before. A man in dark crimson armor, his helmet tucked under one arm. He had the posture of someone who’d stopped caring about standing straight a long time ago, not from laziness but from the particular exhaustion of someone who’d stood guard over too many things.

He glanced back and spoke in a harsh tone.

”Weren’t you taught not to ask questions if you wish to live?”

The green-haired man growled and lunged at him, throwing his full weight behind the motion. The soldier shot a hand out to catch him, lazy and loose, the kind of grab that said he’d done this a hundred times before.

That carelessness was exactly what the green-haired man exploited. He batted the soldier’s hand aside, seized the collar of his armor, and hauled him close.

”Look here, you little piece of runt.” The green-haired man’s face was inches from the soldier’s. ”When I ask a question, I’ll kindly appreciate it if you give me an answer of any sort. I’m here anyways, it’s not like I want to run away and inform the enemy. Where the hell am I?”

The soldier stared into the man’s face for a long moment.

He had a mustache and a beard that simply filled the line beneath his jaw, nothing elaborate. His eyes were what held attention. Deep black. Blank but not empty. Dangerous but not aggressive. As if those eyes existed in a limbo between both states, stuck there permanently.

Then he moved. Calmly, he reached up and wrapped his fingers around the mercenary’s wrist. Then he simply peeled the man’s grip from his collar with a slow, grinding force that could not be resisted.

It was silent. But in that silence, it was clear who the stronger one was.

The two of us who were bystanders could tell who had won, but that was all there was to it. We saw the surface. Only those two understood the true depth of the chasm between their strength. If there even was one, of course.

The soldier turned to all of us and spoke in a genteel manner, as if nothing had just happened.

”No one is owed the privilege of information. This group is to travel from this point to the center, where we shall all assemble and survive the night.”

He looked over us and shook his head with something close to pity.

”Who in their right mind would agree to jobs like this,” he muttered, but clearly enough for us to hear.

The green-haired mercenary said nothing. He was rubbing his wrist with a small frown etched across his face, the kind a man wears when he’s recalculating someone he’d underestimated.

”Follow me.” The soldier moved forward without waiting.

And we, being mere mercenaries who wanted to make a few coins after being robbed of everything else, did as he said and followed in silence.

We walked for a while, and in that time I couldn’t keep my mind off everything that could go wrong with Cressida’s plan now.

’I hope I can find her easily, or else I might be slightly fucked...’

Maybe slightly was an understatement. But getting fucked was getting fucked. No discrimination on amount, severity, or anything else.

”Are you by chance from the Water Lands?”

The dark-haired woman spoke to me. It took a moment before I actually registered she was talking to me. I stuttered as I tried to respond without any preparation whatsoever.

”Hem, uhm, y-yes, n-no, I’m actually from far away...”

She glanced at me. Blood-red irises in her upturned eyes, drifting to their sharp corners to study me from the side.

Then she scoffed.

”I see. It’s fine to keep some secrets. I’m just fascinated by your sword... did you have it made far from here?”

Her gaze dropped to my waist for only a moment before returning to my face. Then she simply looked away, without ceremony.

”It’s a good sword.”

I chuckled, lightly and a little shyly.

”Well...”

”That thing is a fake, young lady. I can tell at a glance.”

The green-haired mercenary cut in. I frowned.

”Those Crystalis rats are known for their forging capabilities, but they’re only Forgorian wannabes. No matter how hard they try, their craftsmanship will only look stunning and excel in beauty. There’s nothing authentic about it.” He grinned, sharp and mean. ”That thing will break. I give it three strikes from my Bone-Piercing Spear.”

I wrapped my hand around my sword hilt and turned to face him. My gaze went dark.

”Do you want to test that theory?”

The man flashed me a wicked grin and stopped walking, one hand reaching behind him to grip the long shape wrapped in cloth across his back.

The woman stood behind us both, watching. Saying nothing.

The soldier glanced back.

”Out with it, you two! Save that energy for the Nightfall!”

I gave the mercenary one more glare and sighed.

’People are really working hard to piss me off today... okay. Alright. I see.’

I eased off and kept walking behind the soldier. The mercenary followed a moment later.

”You’d better watch your back,” he called after me. ”I can tell you haven’t been in these wilds long.”

With a cold gaze, suppressing the wrath that threatened to spill over, I stayed silent.

’You watch yours.’