I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 507: All Bark And No Bite

All my senses went numb and blank. While the vicious creature dragged me along, I had no idea where — in fact, I had no idea I was being dragged at all. It was somewhere in the middle of it that I came to, my skin tearing against the sharp stones of the ground, the pain arriving a full breath before the awareness did. Grit in my mouth. Cold rock under my cheek. The steady, scraping haul of my own body over ground that didn’t care one way or the other.

That pain sharpened my dampened senses back into the reality of my situation. And when it did, what my eyes took in was a long creature. It looked like a woman. Long black hair, and a pale body gone almost white in the dark. The longer I stared at it, though, the less sure I became that it was a woman at all.

Or maybe I was just being stereotypical.

The skin stretched over muscle in a way that defined every cord underneath, and even as it hauled me across the stone I could watch its arms ripple with the work. The strange part, though… was the height.

Tall. Not an unbelievable height — from what I could measure in the dark, seven feet, give or take. The real problem was the way the body bent.

It started looking less like a man. Less like anything human at all. The features were there, the ones that might trick you into calling it a person, but it wasn’t, and once I remembered that this thing had spoken straight into my skull, the last of my doubt went quiet.

‘I might be fucked…’

I checked around me. No Wren. The sword was gone, dropped somewhere back along the road, maybe, or maybe the beast had done something to her that I hadn’t seen. I didn’t know. The only thing I knew right now was that I needed out of this grip.

And honestly, that part wasn’t too difficult.

The moment I extended my hand, its hair moved. It elongated all at once and spread over me like a blanket, cinching around my hand, my arms, my legs, down over my face, drawing everything into one tight bundle. Then it kept dragging me like nothing had changed.

My movement was gone now, near enough. But of course a little rope of hair wasn’t the only card I had to play against this ugly vermin. The problem was just the mobility, or the lack of it, now that it had trussed me up this thoroughly.

That, and I was still worried sick about Wren.

This time, though, I did something a little differently.

Instead of blatantly thinking about what I meant to do, I thought about Wren. I buried my intentions under the worry, layered the fear for her thick over the top of the plan until you couldn’t tell one from the other.

Then I set myself on fire.

I never knew hair hated fire so much.

I was resistant to the flames I could put out — always had been. The heat that would have cooked anyone else just sat on my skin like warm water. The creature had no such luck, and that gap was the whole reason I’d hidden the plan under the worry. This thing could reach into my head and read what I was about to do while I was still thinking it. So I gave it the wrong thought to read.

The hair caught in white flame and the creature came apart at once, thrashing like something rabid had crawled inside it. It twisted at angles a body shouldn’t manage and clawed at its own scalp, tearing off fistfuls, trying to get ahead of the fire.

And white flame moves fast. Oh, it moves fast.

It was already racing up the strands toward the head, licking for the seam of the skull. The beast broke into a run and slammed headlong into a pillar of stone. The hair kept burning and kept holding. Some of it was still cinched tight around me even as it charred through.

The run made everything harder again. I did not want to be under one of the boulders that tore loose and went flying every time the thing rammed another pillar in the dark.

Somewhere in it, I got my eyes free. And when I did, I let one of my chains loose. Chains of Agony now.

The chain latched onto the creature and I poured agony into it, the exact weight of everything I should have felt back there in the fire, if I weren’t resistant to it. That agony went to work on it from the inside.

No physical wound. Only a simulation. But that was the whole danger of the chains. They couldn’t tear a body, and yet they could convince a body it was already dead.

Or just make it wish it were.

Each chain carried its own kind of pain, and I had seven of them now. I couldn’t quite picture what would happen if I sank all seven into one thing at once.

‘Since I can’t picture it, why not find out?’

I struck the second chain into its body and the creature locked up, trembling, unable to move.

The second chain delivered a tearing pain. The kind that felt like two invisible clawed hands prying your insides apart.

The creature shuddered. It couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but fold, and as it crumbled to the ground the grip of its hair came loose around me and fell away in burnt ribbons.

The third chain had already shot out. But just as it moved to sink into the head, the beast dropped flat to the floor.

[You have slain Level 3 Profane Beast: Lost Mouth]

‘Tch. Couldn’t even put up a longer fight.’

***

[Author’s Note]

This is a brief apology to express how sorry I am for the recent inconsistency in update. I have been busy trying to put my life together, also I have been trying to visit my drawing board and get things working especially since this arc is very important.

But I’m back and I advise you to not horde those power stones or golden ticket. If you think you want an extra chapter, you might even decide to drop a castle gift for me, and I pump some out. Hehehe.

Thank you for your forgiveness.

If you’re not on the discord server, you’re wrong. Here is the link: https://discord.gg/UA8vMwmR2q