I Only Summon Villainesses

The first one came from my left.

I caught the blade on Frostfang’s edge and redirected it past my shoulder, stepping into the gap and driving my elbow into the man’s throat. He staggered and I followed with a short slash across his chest, frost crackling along the wound as he dropped.

“Milo, stay behind me!”

He didn’t listen. I heard the click of his catalyst activating behind me, felt the pulse of spirit essence as his book summon materialized, and then I didn’t have time to worry about him because three more were already closing in.

They moved well, quite coordinated. The one on the right feinted high while the one on the left committed to a low thrust aimed at my knee. I read it through Strategic Apex before the thrust even started, sidestepped the low blade and caught the feinting attacker with a kick to the ribs that folded him sideways.

The third came straight down the middle with a short sword. Not hesitating or wasting any motion.

I lit Sanctified Immolation.

White flames roared to life along my forearms, and I caught the blade between both hands, the fire biting into the metal. The man tried to pull back, but I held on, twisted, and ripped the weapon out of his grip. My palm found his face and I shoved him backward with enough force that his feet left the ground.

Behind me, I heard the wet crunch of Milo’s summon connecting with something. A body hit the tunnel wall.

’Good. He’s holding his side.’

Four down in the first exchange. Six left.

They didn’t panic. That was the part that bothered me. Four of their people had just hit the ground in under ten seconds and the remaining six didn’t flinch, didn’t regroup, didn’t even glance at each other. They just adjusted their angles and kept coming.

I activated Emperor’s Presence.

The red aura pulsed outward from my body, filling the junction. I felt the familiar surge as my own strength sharpened, and I watched the effect ripple through the attackers. Their movements should have slowed. Their coordination should have frayed.

It did… but only barely.

These weren’t low-level thugs. The suppression on their spirit essences wasn’t just stealth — it was trained resistance. Whatever organization fielded these people had prepared them for combat against summoners.

Two rushed me simultaneously from opposite sides. I whipped Chains of Confession outward, the chain lashing from my left arm and wrapping around the ankle of the one on my right. I yanked hard, pulling his feet out from under him, and used the momentum to pivot away from the other’s strike. Frostfang came up in a rising cut that opened a line from hip to shoulder. Frost spread across the wound like cracking ice.

He dropped.

The one tangled in my chain was already cutting at the links with his blade. I jerked the chain taut, dragging him across the wet stone toward me, and put a flame-coated fist through his guard. He went limp.

Six down. Four still standing.

Milo was handling two of them near the far tunnel entrance. I could hear the sounds of his summon engaging, the sharp impacts, a grunt of pain that wasn’t Milo’s.

The other two were circling me, and one of them was bigger than the rest — heavier build, thicker blade, moving with the deliberate patience of someone who’d been told to wait for an opening.

I gave him one.

I overextended a slash toward his partner, leaving my left side wide. The big one committed, lunging forward with a thrust aimed at my ribs.

I let Frostfang drop from my right hand, caught it with my left before it hit the ground, and brought it across in a backhand cut that caught the big man’s forearm. The blade bit deep. Frost crawled up his arm from the wound, locking the joint, and he dropped his weapon.

My right fist, still burning with white flame, slammed into his jaw.

He went down hard and didn’t move.

His partner tried to run. Chain caught him around the torso before he made it three steps. I pulled him back and put him on the ground with a knee to the spine.

Eight down between me and Milo. Maybe nine. The sounds behind me had quieted.

I was breathing hard but not spent. Frostfang was still cold in my grip, the white flames still burning steady. We’d handled it. Ten trained professionals in a confined space, and we’d—

I paused all of a sudden as I felt movement.

My Enhanced Sense caught it before my eyes did. A spirit essence flickering back to life where it should have been gone. Then another. Then a third.

I turned.

The first man I’d dropped — the one I’d slashed across the chest, the one with frost still crackling in his wound — was getting up.

He was not struggling to get to his feet. Instead, he was getting up the way one would get up from a chair. His chest was still split open and the frost was still embedded in the gash, but his arms pushed him off the ground and his legs straightened beneath him and he stood there facing me with the same blank nothing behind his covered face.

The wound wasn’t bleeding right. That was the first thing I noticed. The blood wasn’t pooling or running — it was sitting in the wound like it had thickened, like it had congealed the moment it left his veins.

“Milo.”

“I see it,” he said from behind me. His voice had gone flat.

Two more were already rising again.

The one I’d kicked in the ribs was rolling onto his hands and knees.

The big man with the frozen arm was already standing, his arm still locked in frost, his jaw visibly dislocated from where I’d hit him.

He picked up his blade with his other hand and lunged towards me.

His jaw was hanging at an angle that should have made him scream. He didn’t make a sound and just came at me.