I Only Summon Villainesses

[Yin and Yang Spirit Essence has harmonized]

[Your body has absorbed a powerful yang spirit essence]

[The Spirit Essence is rushing through you and tugging at the walls of your soul]

[Your Spirit Essence has increased]

[Your Spirit Essence has increased]

[Your Spirit Essence has increased]

[Your Spirit Essence has increased]

[Your Spirit Essence has increased]

[Your Spirit Essence has increased]

[Your Spirit Essence has increased]

[You have gained a new summon]

’Uh?’

Confusion didn’t begin to cover it.

’A new summon?’

Before I could make sense of any of it, the lady beneath me was swallowed by a blue light, and it flared bright enough that I staggered back, my rock-hard dragon left dangling in front of me for no one.

Right there before me, she vanished.

One second there’d been warmth under me. The next there was bare stone, and me kneeling over it like an idiot.

I frowned, glancing around the cave. The essence was still running its laps through me, a warmth that pushed out to my fingertips and then pulled back toward somewhere behind my sternum, tugging at the walls of my soul exactly like the notification had promised. The stone was cold under my knees. Somewhere off in the dark, water dripped and counted out the seconds.

’Uhm... what is going on.’

My mind was already tallying up the pieces. But of everything crowding in at once, one question shoved its way to the front, and that question was simple.

”What happened to Ilse?”

Something had to be wrong with her, and I suspected it tied back to the reason Brunhilde had looked the way she did.

’It couldn’t be that she died, right?’

I honestly didn’t want to think about that. But it was my brain’s loudest voice saying it, and it wouldn’t shut up.

It seemed the likeliest case, too. The same way I’d made White Feather my summon, it looked like I’d made Brunhilde mine. But if I had to say it... there was something different about Brunhilde.

[Your summon’s Fortitude has risen]

[Your New Summon has gained an Ultimate Signature Ability]

[You have gained an Extra Attribute]

[Brunhilde (Calamity) has been ripped from her summoner and bound to you]

’Huh?’

So Ilse wasn’t dead. That was something, at least. It didn’t solve anything, though. If anything, it made everything harder, because I was learning something new and important about myself right there in the dark.

’Nah... there’s no way that’s possible, right?’

I stood there in the dark, chuckling in disbelief, my own laugh coming back at me off the cave walls and sounding stupid.

’I can take summons away by having sex with them?’

It was the obvious conclusion, given my history with White Feather and now Brunhilde.

The light that had vanished came back. It gathered into a pear-shaped silhouette and gave off a chill that raised the hair on my arms and turned my next breath into a pale ghost in front of my face. Then it dimmed, faded, and left a woman with an explosively hot body standing where it had been. The blue glow drained out of the air last of all, and the cave went back to its ordinary black, except for her.

There were vast differences between the Brunhilde from before and the one I was looking at now.

The old Brunhilde had looked like a teenager. The ancient aura had been there, sure, but set beside what stood in front of me now, she’d seemed half-formed.

This Brunhilde had a fuller body and an ethereal beauty that bordered on divine. Her white hair had turned glacial-cyan, the color of ice given a single strand and told to grow, and it cascaded over flawless alabaster skin. Her azure eyes sat half-lidded, watching me. The air a few feet around her had gone colder than the rest of the cave, and I could feel it on my skin from where I stood.

There was a cold edge to her gaze, and it was frightening to look at. There was so much of Kassie in it, and somehow it managed to be more threatening without a single word spoken.

She was clad in elegant white regalia traced with black accents, and it revealed far more than it hid. Cleavage, the immense power of her bare thighs, the lower hem riding high between them.

And let me talk about her hips. Her devastatingly huge hips.

”Are you going to keep leering at me?”

I paused.

’Just when it was about to get interesting...’

”Brunhilde? Is that you?”

”Who else would it be?”

She sounded the same and different at once. She sounded older. Much, much older.

”What happened?” My gaze darkened. ”You said you’re going to explain, right?”

She smiled.

”Yes, I said that.”

She walked closer, her thighs rippling and her hips swaying with every step. The cold came with her, a clean, biting cold like standing beside an open window in the dead of winter. She set one hand on my shoulder, then slid it slowly up to my neck, her fingers cool against my skin as she combed them through my hair. She was much taller than me, close to Kassie in height, so the reach cost her nothing.

With the surge of essence, I was in a much better place too. The deep ache that had set up house in my ribs and along my spine, the one I’d stopped noticing because it never left, was simply gone. As if it had never been there.

But it was Brunhilde who had benefited from all this the most.

”Ilse is not you. You’re a very special summoner, Cade,” she said, bringing her hand to my cheek.

’How pleasing...’

It was good to have a summon just come in and value you right off the bat.

’Let’s not jinx it.’

I kept my mouth shut and let her continue.

”It was an art I never thought possible. But when I saw your summon with the white hair, I suspected it might be. As you know, I am a Calamity, like your Tyrant Empress. In my time, they called me the Frost Valkyrie. As a unique race, even your Tyrant Empress feared me greatly. Still, amongst the others, she had a stubbornness I took interest in.”

She sighed, and the look that settled over her was almost sentimental.

”And would you look at her now. She has become all I envisioned she would be. I couldn’t be prouder, as her Master.”

I tilted my head slightly.

”Why did she try to kill you, then?”

Brunhilde chuckled and walked behind me. Her steps made no sound on the stone, and I decided not to think about that too hard.

”Why else? She probably hates me.”

I shot her a look over my shoulder.

”What hell did you put her through to be hated that much?”

The next second, I added, quickly,

”You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know about it.”

She gave a coy smile.

”You’re a Valkyrie? What’s a Valkyrie?”

”We are a subrace of the Celestial race... some call us Divine Birds.”

I gave her a dubious look.

”So you’re a bird? I don’t think birds are allowed to be this sexy.”

She laughed.

”Oh, Cade, you flatter me.”

Hearing her laugh, I noticed the air in the cave had settled. I stepped back, folded my arms, and regarded her seriously.

”So?”

She stood still, leaning her weight onto one leg, which somehow made her hips even more prominent.

”No one can summon a Calamity. You have to be an anomaly to summon one. But let’s start with what a Calamity even is. There are certain individuals across history who were outstandingly strong. Strong enough for even the gods to worry. The ruined course of nature does its thing and makes them available for summoning. Bringing them out of the spirit world isn’t the hard part. The problem is keeping them. These are beings that can slaughter you and don’t mind going back to where they came from. The cost of spirit essence is another major concern.”

None of that sounded reassuring. I kept my face flat, but something cold walked down my spine that had nothing to do with the air in the cave.

She paused, then added, careful now.

”But the Gods went the extra mile and blacklisted them, locking them away from summoning entirely. So you could say they built a black room and dumped individuals like this inside it. And do you know what you have been doing, Cade?”

”What? Don’t tell me. I’ve been unblacklisting them?”

She chuckled.

”Even in all your specialness, you can’t overwrite the power of the gods. You are rather defective.”

I squinted slightly at the word.

’Yeah, you didn’t have to rub it in my face, Brunhilde.’

She continued regardless.

”You can only summon from that black room, for some reason. There, and nowhere else. You’re equipped to satisfy and tame these figures, too. Calamities in particular. It’s almost intuitive to think someone is using you to plan something. But rather than that, another explanation would be that you’re that.”

I frowned, a curious frown this time. These were the answers I had been hunting for.

”That? What’s that?”

She smiled.

”An Heir.”

Sadly, I had more questions right away.

”Before watching you at the ocean, I was sure someone was using you. But after seeing you there, I was certain... You’re an Heir.”