Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

Lancet looked up and around at their horrified faces. ”Oh, you guys.”

His fingers closed around Baroq’s forearm. The forearm was thick and corded, which was expected as Lancet had seen him snap steel rods to hit him with.

Still, when Lancet squeezed, his fingers sunk deep into the iron skin.

The sound was wet and meaty. Cartilage and bone grinding together under Lancet’s pressure. Baroq’s eyes went from triumphant to confused to agonized in the span of a heartbeat.

His grip on Lancet’s throat dissolved instantly, both hands flying to his ruined wrist as a shriek tore out of his throat—high and animal, nothing like the tough-guy sneer he’d worn seconds ago.

Lancet didn’t let go.

He dropped back to his feet, planted them wide, and used Baroq’s own panicked momentum against him.

His free hand shot up, grabbing a fistful of the Barbarian’s collar, and he spun. The heavy boy became a projectile, his boots scraping uselessly against the wet tiles as Lancet pivoted on his heel like a hammer thrower at the Olympics.

Unable to stop himself, Baroq’s heavy skull rushed down to meet the even heavier metal door handle of the nearest toilet stall.

CLANG.

The sound echoed off the tiled walls like a bell being struck with a sledgehammer. Baroq’s eyes rolled back instantly, his body going limp mid-flight.

He crashed against the stall door, bounced off, and hit the floor with a wet slap, out cold before his skull finished ringing.

Lancet released the collar, letting the Barbarian head hit the ground.

”Get him!” Cecil shouted.

The Twins moved as one. They always did. Cecil’s hands sizzled with heat distortions, and he pushed waves of them towards Lancet’s chest. The goal was to burn right into his heart.

At the same time, Cillian thrust both arms forward. He couldn’t manipulate ice, but he could make the air cold enough for ice to form.

Successfully, a spear of ice materialized in front of him, its tip needle-sharp and also aimed directly at Lancet’s heart.

Lancet’s ring pulsed silver-blue. 23 charges remaining.

He activated Thor’s Thunder Step.

A sweeping thunder sound zipped in the room, and Lancet dodged the first set of combo blasts.

Deciding he didn’t want to waste Skill Charges on defensive moves, he decided to physically dodge the next attacks.

When the heat and chill came again. He went low, dropping into a crouch so fast his knees almost kissed the tiles.

The ice spear screamed over his head, close enough that a single frost-tipped hair broke off and spiraled away. The heat surge followed a heartbeat later, the hotness kissing the back of his neck as Lancet twisted beneath it.

When he shot back up, Lancet was ready to counter attack.

His left hand caught Cecil’s extended wrist—the one still trailing vapor from the heat attack—and yanked.

The heat bender stumbled forward, off-balance, his eyes going wide as Lancet’s right fist cocked back. The punch wasn’t fancy. It was a bare-knuckle, put-your-hip-into-it blow that drove deep into the soft meat just below Cecil’s sternum.

Cecil’s diaphragm spasmed. Every ounce of air in his lungs evacuated in a single, pathetic whoof. His mouth opened in a silent scream, spittle flying, as his knees buckled.

Rather than simply letting him fall, Lancet swept his leg, catching Cecil behind the ankles and sending the boy crashing sideways. Right into Cillian, who had been winding up for a second ice spike.

The twins collided in a tangle of limbs and curses, their temperature attacks fizzling out as they hit the wet floor in a heap. Cecil’s still-smoldering sleeve sizzled against Cillian’s frost-rimed jacket, steam hissing between them.

”Stacey!” Kallan had drifted awake. ”Do something!”

Stacey Blue’s eyes snapped open.

They weren’t blue anymore. They had somehow evolved to purple. Lancet didn’t know what they meant but she threw both hands toward him, fingers splayed, her whole body going rigid with focus.

The air between them rippled, visible waves of psychic pressure started to distort the bathroom’s fluorescent light.

Then Lancet felt the spike. Designed to bypass every physical defense, it drove straight into his amygdala, filling him with agony crafted from Stacey’s worst nightmares and sharpened into a needle.

But Lancet’s Intelligence and Constitution was high enough to rival the mental assault of a Mind Mage in the same level group as him.

Her magic slammed into his mental defenses and shattered, fragmenting into a thousand harmless shards that dissolved before they could even tickle his prefrontal cortex.

Then, he slowly started to walk toward her.

Stacey’s jaw dropped.

”No,” she whispered. ”No, that’s not—that’s impossible—”

Lancet kept walking. Each step was slow, deliberate, the sound of his boots echoing off the tiles like a countdown.

’I didn’t have time to prepare for it last time, but as long as I know she’s about to mess with my mind, I can physically prepare myself,’ he thought. ’And with my Constitution and Intelligence already higher than most, it’s easier to fight back against her annoying powers.’

Stacey scrambled backward, her spine hitting the porcelain edge of the sinks. She tried to push herself over them, to put anything between them, but her legs had turned to jelly. ”Stay back! I—I’ll scream! I’ll tell the faculty—I’ll tell them you attacked us—”

Lancet stopped inches from her.

His ring pulsed silver-blue. 22 charges remaining.

His hands shot out, grabbing the lapels of her pristine white uniform, and he lifted her up onto her tiptoes, then higher, until her designer heels dangled an inch above the floor.

Her purple eyes were still wide, still glowing, still trying desperately to find a crack in his mental armor.

Nothing.

Lancet channeled a fraction of Thor’s essence into the ring. Not lightning, exactly. He just exerted the Heroine of Thunder’s pressure.

The apocalyptic weight of a Valkyrie’s presence, the kind of aura that made lesser beings forget how to breathe. It washed over Stacey like a tidal wave, static electricity crackling through Lancet’s fingers and dancing across her collar.

He dragged her face so close it felt like they would kiss. Then he spoke with a whisper.

”Who’s terrified now?”

Stacey’s glow died.

Her eyes rolled back—white, then nothing—and her body went completely limp, held up only by Lancet’s grip on her uniform.

He held her there for a moment, watching her face slacken, then gently lowered her to the wet floor. She slid down the sink cabinet and settled in a heap, her purple hair fanning out across the tiles like spilled ink.

Lancet straightened up.

The bathroom was quiet. No groans yet, just the drip-drip-drip of a leaking faucet and the sound of the ventilation fan.

Bodies were everywhere. Baroq sprawled against the stall door. The Twins tangled together like puppies, still breathing but utterly unconscious. Kallan staring at him, but paralyzed by the electric shock causing his limbs to spasm, blood leaking from his nose. And Stacey, curled at his feet like a discarded doll.

Lancet rolled his shoulders and looked down at Kallan one last time.

”You guys really need to learn how to pick your targets.”

Kallan’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

Lancet adjusted his collar. Stepped over Kallan’s twitching leg and pulled open the bathroom door.

”Crowd Control, bitches.”

Then he walked out into the hallway as if he’d just finished washing his hands.

×××××

A few minutes later, Lancet gently pushed open the glass door of the Academy’s Medical Wing.

Nurse Hallow looked up from her paperwork. When she saw him, she tilted her head exhaustingly. ”Mr. Leogardt. Are you about to add more Profits to your Academy debt?”

Lancet shrugged innocently.

”I’m trying my best not to, Miss Hallow.”

Nurse Hallow smiled and shook her head.

”Sit on the bed, Lancet.” She reached for her medical kit, already pulling out disinfectant and bruise salves. ”Let’s see what you’ve broken this time.”