I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 537: A Breath of Fresh Water

Everything took a somber turn as we descended the plains of the Precipice. Down was the only direction our circumstances had left us.

At first it was fine, because I could still hear Brunhilde. Then her voice went too.

I was drained, and tired. And we had little to survive on in the depth of that ugly terrain.

If there was one thing that kept me sane, it was the fact that I had company.

We descended into a closed cave. Ascending was sort of impossible, and we managed to explore every facet of the place only to discover that there was no end to it.

The one good thing about weeks of doing nothing in a dead tunnel is that the well fills. Not the way it fills in the living world. It seeps, the way it had after the river, a thread of water into the bottom of a dry socket, so slow I could have counted the drops. Weeks of that is not much. But it is not nothing, and it was the only thing down there quietly working in my favour.

At different intervals we would sit to rest, drinking water and sleeping, unable to differentiate days from nights. Perhaps that was due to the eternal darkness of the Precipice. Perhaps it was the nature of that hideous, hollow depth.

We always slept whenever our bodies were tired though. Sometimes, we managed to keep watch. However, it did get to a time where we did not care any more about such things as keeping watch. If a deceptive spirit beast had orchestrated all of this, that would have been the exact moment to strike while the iron was hot.

But Ilse and I lived through even that.

The depth was like the belly of some gigantic snake. No. Like several gigantic snakes that had been merged together. There were hollow channels running off the hollow channels, each holding different kinds of macabre wonders in them, and we learned quickly not to stand and look into any of them for too long.

We spent each and every single day learning the new bar for what was allowed to exist in this world. It was unsettling, in fact, that all of these things had existed at some point. The Precipice is a memory of everything even if the world forgets.

That is the one thing I have been able to admit after spending quite the time here.

Of course, I was sure it hadn’t been years. It didn’t feel like months. But it did feel like weeks. And then even in the depth, more weeks passed us by.

Even Wren’s voice went silent at some point.

Through the tunnels, I continued to drag Brunhilde’s sword. The guard wore two grooves into my palm, so I moved it to the other hand, and then across my shoulder, and then back to dragging, because dragging was the only one of the three my arms would still agree to. The point rang off every stone it found. Afterwards, when my arms would not do even that, we stopped.

We had to make a difficult decision to abandon it despite knowing it was heavily linked to wherever Brunhilde had been locked. I laid it flat against the wall so it would not fall over. That was a stupid thing to worry about, and I worried about it anyway.

Then we continued our journey through the darkness of the depths. And time weathered the searing thing between Ilse and me.

One day. If that word applied in any sense.

We both sat by a small stream of clear water that ran across the edge of the cavern tunnel. It was another one we had branched into, and the water was the first clean thing either of us had seen in a long while.

She stared at it with a bleak look in her eyes.

“I don’t think I’ve been so happy to see myself in a while, even though I look like crap.”

“Heh heh, the little things matter.”

She turned to look at me, with all that dark grime over her face. There was something like derision in the set of her mouth.

“How do you manage to still be stupid in situations like this?”

I gave her a dashing smile.

“Someone has to keep someone sane in this insane place. And so sorry, I’m the only one that rose to the occasion.”

I glanced around at the empty tunnel, at the water, at the rock.

“Oh shoot, I think I’m the only one willing to rise to the occasion, sucks for you.”

“I think you may be losing your mind.”

I chuckled.

“I certainly agree with you, but this place is certainly not the cause of it.”

She stayed looking at me for a couple of seconds. Then she turned and lowered her face towards the water, and there was a small protrusion of horns on her head, and she actively watched them in the surface until they went down flat into her hair and disappeared completely.

Then she scooped a cup of water in her hands and drank first, then she washed her face and washed her hands and legs, even using the water to wash her shoulders and the top of her breasts. It was grueling to have to watch that.

I distracted myself and washed my whole face, and drank, and washed my body too. Then I sat back and settled against the opposite wall, silent.

Ilse was seated on her knees, still bending down in front of the stream. Her behind was really curvy and tantalizing in a torturous manner.

And just when my mind was slowly being ensnared by the view, she glanced back and shot me an electrifying glare.

I looked away, whistling.

She still glared at me. Then the glare began to get uncomfortable and I turned.

“What? What? You can’t blame me, have you tried being stuck in darkness with a lady as hot as you.”

She groaned and looked away.

“With what I know about you, if you were with anyone less, you’d still spout those same words.”

A dark frown covered my face.

“I find that offensive, to me and to that person. I think I will regard them the way befitting of them.”

She shrugged and moved and leaned on the wall beside me. Her shoulder was warmer than the rock was, and it stayed that way.

There was silence for a while.

“I have barely known you for a week, in that one week, you have dragged me into a hellhole and stolen my summon. Amongst many other things.”

“I also, saved you from death, account for that too.”

She stared at me, dazed.

“You would have died by the hands of my summon, if not for me. It would have been the end of you and Brunhilde, remember.”

She went silent.

“Well, you should have let me die then, I don’t know if living in so much darkness is better.”

After that, we were silent for a while.

“So…”

“Do you want to fuck.”

We both started at the same time, but I think I might have taken it a mile.

“Are you really serious?”

I pointed to her.

“Please, the floor is yours, you were saying ma?”

‘…’