I Only Summon Villainesses

Atlas stood there blinking at me. Every one of his Commanders was doing the same, though whether they were technically his Commanders or simply people who deferred to him, I hadn’t worked out yet. The hierarchy was clear enough. He was at the top and everyone else was trying not to stare.

They were failing.

All of them were looking at me like they had never seen a properly built man before. I retrieved my shirt from where the attendant had hung it during the measurement and pulled it back on, glaring at each of them as I did.

’You’d think a Sovereign-rank reveal would be the headline, not my physique.’

“Ah… I see, I see.”

Atlas’s voice cut through the silence like a blade through cloth.

“Truly a man of priorities.”

He straightened, and his posture shifted to express less curiosity, more calculation.

“You did come here for something after all. Perhaps we can discuss the finer details after you’ve had a successful Auction Night? I will personally escort you to the entrance and see to it that your items are accepted.”

The change was immediate. Five minutes ago, I was a mercenary he just couldn’t afford to ignore. Now I was being offered personal escort by a man whose Commanders wouldn’t breathe without his permission.

’Funny how that works.’

“What about outside?”

He glanced through the window. The cacophony of the battlefield was distant from up here, but it was still roaring. Steel on steel, the crack of summons detonating against summons, voices that could only be screaming. The man’s expression shifted, conflicted. I could read it plainly enough. Asking me for a favor felt like too big of a request now that he knew what I was.

Their system said Sovereign. Mine still read F-rank. I had plenty of reasons to believe theirs was the broken one, but dwelling on rank discrepancies wasn’t going to change anything happening outside that window.

I sighed.

“I made a promise and I intend to uphold it. There’s going to be a clause to it all, though.”

The moment I spoke, all of them placed their hands in front of their bodies and listened with the kind of attention usually reserved for religious sermons. I actually had to lean back from them for a moment. The reverence was suffocating.

But they merely smiled, unchanging in their eerie expressions.

“Please, Lord Cade, carry on,” Atlas said.

’Oh, it’s Lord Cade so quickly? That didn’t take long at all.’

“My Summon can be quite impatient, so the moment she enters the battlefield, we’re shifting from defense to offense. And it’s all for your benefit.”

He did not respond immediately. His gaze dropped, though his back stayed straight, and his jaw tightened.

“There is a reason why we play defense in this war… unless you underestimate the Night Fall—”

“Unless you underestimate me.”

I let it rest there, holding his gaze without blinking.

He stared back. The room held its breath. Then he chuckled, a sound that started low and cracked into something genuine.

“Ha, of course I don’t! You’re a Sovereign, the second one since a long time. Of course I’d take the opportunity to witness the power of a Sovereign-tier Summon!”

I shook my head at them pitifully.

’These people really underestimate me down to the letter.’

But it was fine. I had been dealing with this since day one. Underestimate me all you want. What I wouldn’t condone was underestimating my supreme villainesses.

“Whatever.”

I walked to the window of the room and set a foot on the ledge, kicking it open with the lightest touch. The frame swung wide and the noise of battle flooded in, raw and immediate.

The Commanders behind Atlas flinched. He raised a hand and all of them settled back in place. He himself kept his gaze on me, expression blank, just watching. Waiting to see what I would do.

What I wanted to do was something I had been thinking about since the walk up here.

I grinned.

Then I summoned Maggie.

But unlike before, I didn’t summon her standing on the ground. She materialized mid-air, right there in the middle of the dark sky, and immediately began plummeting toward the ruinous battlefield below.

Maggie did not flinch. Eight thousand years of existence will do that to a person. She did, however, turn to me for a brief moment as she fell past the window, and the glare she shot me carried a very specific message.

The message was that terminating the contract between us and sending her back to the spirit world was not going to save me from what she intended to do about this.

’Is that even possible? Can she reach me from the spirit world?’

I had been quite happy with this little stunt when I thought of it. Now, watching the murder in those crimson eyes shrink into the distance below, I was having second thoughts.

’Damnit. I better run.’

Maggie, though, did her thing.

She didn’t try to stop herself. Didn’t try to change her trajectory. She simply let herself fall with the wind, and then the ground exploded.

White dust erupted from pulverized stone, ruins shattered outward in a ring, and the shockwave rolled across the battlefield in every direction, swallowing both sides of the fight in a blanket of debris and silence.

“Woooohhh—”

Atlas was already behind me at the window, his eyes wide as he watched the ripple of destruction consume the field below. The dust cloud was still rising, still spreading, and nothing down there was moving.

I sighed, then looked him straight in the eyes.

“I think you can draw your forces back now.”

Atlas looked down at the battlefield. It was silent. Just smoke swallowing everything and everyone, all activity had seized.

He chuckled.

“I understand you’re young and full of guts. But that is a very rash decision. Your summon needs my men down there to do whatever it is she intends to do.”

He leaned against the window frame, his eyes sparkling as they traced the settling dust cloud.

“What summon is that, though? Did I just catch a glimpse of a nun’s habit, did I see wrong?”

I closed my eyes and suppressed the irritation rising in my chest.

“Listen. You asked for this and I’m offering it. Without me on that battlefield, my summon is going to tear everyone apart. Both friend and foe.”

He shrugged, looked down at the carnage one more time, then shifted a cool smile to me.

“Then go down there. I’m not withdrawing my soldiers.”

My mouth fell open.

’No… what the actual fuck?’