I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 287: I Would Have Caved Your Ribs If You Weren’t Kassie

Kassie came at me harder than she had before, and that forced me to brace my defensive wall even stronger than the last. It wasn’t just about actually defending anymore. It was about the force behind the defense itself. Or else, I would get thrown across the air like a ragdoll.

But at the same time, it was slightly funny, trying to contend with Kassie’s strength. Not that she was using everything she had on me to begin with.

I staggered back and Kassie followed through with a brutal overhead arc strike. She treated the wooden stick like it was a greatsword, and honestly, I had no idea how she was doing it. The thing certainly wasn’t one. Frostfang was supposed to be far stronger than a mere stick, and yet in Kassie’s hands, for some reason, that stick carried almost equal force as her actual blade.

As the overhead strike fell toward me, I didn’t wait to receive it. Instead I twisted and rolled away to the side like a desperate rat trying to survive at all cost. I shot up quickly, dashing away because I knew for certain that she would already be after me.

Before I looked back...

No.

I had felt a gust of wind that prompted me to look back, to see how far she was from me. Despite my increased speed, Kassie had closed the gap effortlessly, appearing right in front of my face as I turned around to gauge her.

Seeing this, I instantly switched tactics. I lunged my head toward her nose.

But of course, Kassie hadn’t just appeared before me without a plan. Her chin shot up and smacked my jaw from beneath, throwing my head upward. She twisted in the air and landed a backhand slap across my face that sent my body rolling out of position.

I spun through the wind but managed to stabilize as I was about to land, dropping to my knees instead of stumbling across the ground. But even as I landed, Kassie was already upon me again.

’Come on!’

I shot backward, rolled in the air, and landed on my feet to regain stability, then dashed forward toward her, swinging Frostfang from my side and riding a momentum maximized by the charge.

My sword was aimed at Kassie’s flank as both of us closed on each other. I didn’t expect that Kassie would, of course, be caught by an obvious attack like that, so what I decided to do was this...

I pulled Frostfang back before it reached her and redirected into a slash aimed at her leading knee. She adjusted instantly, stick dropping to intercept, but by the time it came down I had already yanked the blade away and looped it toward her shoulder. She shifted to meet it. I pulled again. Swung low. Pulled. Came from the opposite side.

Each time Kassie moved to answer, Frostfang was already gone. Each time she read where I was going, I wasn’t going there. She was faster than me, stronger than me, and her reads were better than mine. But I wasn’t trying to hit her. I was trying to get her to believe that I was never going to.

The fifth feint climbed toward her neck and died before it arrived, curling into a sixth arc aimed at her ribs.

And this time, I didn’t pull.

The sixth was the real one. Not the eighth, where any sane person would expect the pattern to break, and not the seventh, where a clever person might anticipate it. The sixth. Right when the pattern had settled deep enough to feel like it would just keep going.

Frostfang drove toward her ribs with everything I had behind it.

Kassie’s stick came across and caught it. The impact shuddered through my arms and I staggered, but for a fraction of a second before the block landed, her eyes had widened. Just barely. The smallest crack in that composed expression.

She had been late.

Not late enough. Not against her. The block was clean, the parry was solid, and the force behind her stick still pushed me back three full steps. But she had been late, and both of us knew it.

Kassie lowered the stick and looked at me.

"You layered eight feints into that sequence," she said with a flat tone while her gaze were still on me.

I was breathing hard. My arms were shaking. "I was going to do eight but I broke at the sixth."

"I know. That’s why it worked." She tilted her head slightly, studying me the way she studied things that interested her. "If you’d gone to eight, I would have caught it. If you’d stopped at a number that felt natural, four, or five, I would have caught it. Six is an ugly number. It sits wrong. The rhythm hadn’t resolved yet, and you committed before my instincts told me you would."

She tapped the stick against her palm.

"If I were anyone else, that would have caved in my ribs."

I couldn’t tell if I was proud or terrified by that sentence. Maybe it was both.

"But you’re not anyone else," I said.

"No." She smiled. It was not a comforting smile. "I’m not."

The stick blurred.

I didn’t even see where the first hit landed. I just felt my left side light up with pain and then the ground was sideways and then I was rolling and then something caught me across the back and I was face-first in the dirt with the air punched out of my lungs.

By the time I managed to get my hands underneath me and push up, Kassie was already standing over me with the stick resting across her shoulders.

"Again," she said.

I picked my sword up and shot towards her in a whirlwind pattern, aware of the darkness that loomed ahead of this strike and how I was going to lose again.

But what do I do?

A man can only try... One day, he shall prevail.