I Only Summon Villainesses

With Kassie and White Feather working together, the pace of the battle moved differently. Things went from four to ten way too quickly as Kassie, unlike White Feather, was a brutal and ruthless fighter.

She rolled in the air and landed on the ship. The entire surface shuddered, and a wide net cracks spread across where she had landed. A few soldiers flew away and landed inside the water.

The ones that had been far off, had immediately reorganized themselves. They probably thought they were fast enough until White Feather appeared behind one with her steel blade sticking out of his belly. She tore to the side and the white line of the sword flew across another’s neck, dropping him to the ground.

Kassie did not spare her a glance. As White Feather handled the left, she shot to the right and grabbed the first soldier, crushing his helmet and awesome visor beneath her grip. The entire thing caved and crumpled. The soldier, under intense pain, released a berserking shout which Kassie’s armor condescendingly shrugged it off.

She whipped the soldier away from his position and threw him around, smashing the others with his body.

In a circular pattern, they all flew back as if they all were struck by an invisible, devastating shockwave. Kassie lowered her upper body with her sword on her shoulder. For a moment, waves of her dominance shot off her.

Held captive by the oppressive will of the Tyrant, the world seemed to struggle to breathe. Then she moved. Before my eyes, she simply vanished and all I saw was a crimson lightning that flickered across.

The ship shuddered once again. Gilbert painfully gasped, as he saw several cracks shake the entire mass of the ship.

Everything exploded with a furious force that Kassie had generated with her sudden speed. Even the body of the water, detonated in a colossal surge of water from both sides of the ship.

Then a second later, everything stilled… and no man was left standing.

I opened my mouth slightly.

’What in the… was that a skill?’

No, it certainly wasn’t. I knew Kassie’s skills, that didn’t fit into the description of any of them.

While I stood there frozen in shock, she glanced back.

“We should be in a hurry, shouldn’t we?”

I gulped. She suddenly looked even hotter than she was.

’Damn Kassie.’

“Yes, indeed, we are in a hurry!”

She glanced at White Feather, something silent moving in her gaze. Then she turned away, her hair flying.

White Feather meanwhile, tilted her head. When I walked up to her, she turned to me.

“She’s very strong.”

“Trust me, more than you can ever imagine.”

We then walked towards the hatch together. Before we opened the door, Gilbert ran quickly, gently approaching Kassie.

She paused and glared at him, causing him to shiver for a second before gently pulling the hatch open. Kassie glanced at him with contempt before descending.

After she climbed down, a heavy breath escaped from him and he crashed on the ground.

“Oh thank goodness, I was worried about the door for a second there.”

I raised my brows.

“Seriously. Enter.”

He hurriedly climbed in.

“Be careful with the door, those things are expensive you know. I never had an extra entrance to my former airship.”

“You mean Nightyell.”

“Yea, that one.” His voice echoed as he descended into the belly of the ship.

White Feather went first and as I decided to go down, I could feel subtle vibrations were traveling through the metal ladder I held.

’Oh God, come on Kassie.’

As much as I appreciated the enthusiasm, I would have appreciated to have been waited for!

I stepped off the last rung of the ladder and the vibrations I’d felt through the metal became sound — a continuous rolling impact that had stopped separating into distinct blows and merged into one ongoing pressure. Like a storm that had gotten inside the hull.

The corridor stretched ahead of me, deep blue walls lit from above by pale light strips, and it took me two seconds to find Kassie.

She was at the far end of it.

I counted three soldiers still upright between us and her. Past tense, technically — they were upright for about as long as it took me to register them.

The crimson lightning flickered and surged forward.

In the confined space, the shockwave had nowhere to go, so it went into everything simultaneously. A crack ran up the left wall from floor to ceiling in an unbroken line. One of the light strips above went dark. The three soldiers went down in the same instant, in different directions.

’Right. She’s already past pleasantries.’

White Feather moved into the branching corridor to my left, silver flashes marking her path through the soldiers who had split to flank us. I could see from the half-step movements she was using that she was still managing her essence with care.

I moved forward with Frostfang in my hand, ready for anything that may pop up.

The passage opened into a wider junction where four corridors met at the ship’s center, and in that junction they had arranged something that was clearly designed to hold us.

Three soldiers at the far end, and even before they moved, the difference was visible. Their armor was the same deep blue plate, but the energy running through them was not.

A breathing blue-white light moved at their joints and throats in a steady rhythm, and the men carrying it had fiercely stronger appearance. The air around them instantly set them apart.

One of them turned and put his fist through the bulkhead beside him by way of introduction.

The metal buckled inward.

’Oh oh? Looks like these ones will present a daunting—’

The crimson lightning passed through the junction.

When it resolved back into the shape of a woman, the junction was considerably quieter. Three soldiers had been redistributed to various surfaces. One of them had left an impression in the ceiling that I chose not to examine too carefully.

Kassie shook her head once, looking mildly disappointed by how this was going, then she continued forward without breaking stride.

I followed.

The next corridor was broader — a cargo route, ceiling doubled, the walls pulling back.

The summon came through the left wall like the wall was a suggestion.

It filled the corridor from side to side. A mass of grey-blue that resolved into shape the longer I looked — the flat, cold eyes, the rows of teeth that curved backward, the slow and absolute certainty of forward motion.

A shark summon the size of a loaded cargo sled, moving through the interior of a steel ship fifteen meters below the ocean surface, with unhurried confidence as if it owned everywhere and was bothered by nothing.

Gilbert, somewhere behind me, made a sound that I had no word for.

Kassie looked at the shark.

The shark looked at Kassie.

The killing intent came off her in a wave. It pressed the air flat and the light strips above us flickered together and the shark’s forward motion slowed — not from any physical wall, but from something deep inside whatever the spirit was made of that had recognized what was standing in front of it.

It bit at her anyway.

She drove the greatsword into the roof of its mouth.

She planted the blade upward and forward with both hands and held it there against the closing force of the bite, and where the red sparks from the blade touched the spirit’s flesh, they burned.

The shark thrashed. Its tail sent a shockwave back down the corridor that threw me and Gilbert off our feet. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling above us.

Kassie did not move.

She twisted the blade, leveraging into the joint.

The spirit released in a single sudden dissolution and the corridor was empty.

She pulled the greatsword free and kept walking.

’At least look like you’re impressed with yourself!’

At the junction of the wall, another summon had been positioned deliberately — it filled the passage width completely, its shell flush against both walls, and the soldiers behind it were using the narrow gaps at either edge to fire from cover.

White Feather materialized behind my shoulder. She had finished with the flanking group and her blade was still drawn, silver faint along its edge.

She looked at the turtle.

“That’s an S-tier summon, the shell won’t easily—”

I scoffed.

“Just S?”

She glanced at me with small disbelief.

Kassie had already crouched.

She didn’t swing the greatsword at the shell. She drove her shoulder into the turtle’s leading edge and pushed.

The turtle pushed back and White Feather’s mouth came apart.

“Get used to it. Kassie’s strength is simply unmatched, if the sword doesn’t work, she has the physical strength to break it apart with her hand.”

I allowed myself to brag a little as the corridor held its breath. The soldiers behind the shell stopped firing. The ship groaned around us from somewhere deep in its structure.

Then Kassie dug her boots into the floor plating and the floor plating decided to lose.

The turtle moved backward. Slowly, then with a grinding momentum that scraped the walls on both sides, carrying the soldiers behind it whether they wanted to go or not. They tried to brace.

They tried to brace against a thing that was being pushed by the Tyrant Empress, and I almost felt sympathy for them.

The far wall of the corridor bent inward around the shell. Kassie held the spirit pressed against it with one arm and her greatsword found the soldiers on either side in two unhurried strokes. When their summoners went down, the tortoise dissolved beneath her hand.

She stepped through the space where it had been.

White Feather fell into step beside her. She glanced hiddenly at her before turning to the end of the passage.

At the end of the next passage, a reinforced door stood sealed, its edges traced with the same azure light as the visors.

Kassie looked at the door for one moment.

She raised the greatsword.

And split the door apart.