I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 304: Priorities

The bone spurs on its skull flared outward, and I felt a pulse of essence that made my vision blur for half a second. Some kind of area attack. Concussive force, spiritual pressure, something. It hit like a wall of hot air, and I planted the Frostfang point-down in the stone to anchor myself against it.

The pulse passed. I was still standing.

And a crimson wall of fog had rolled forth from me, slamming against the spiritual pressure and pushing back against it. It wasn’t exactly matching it, certainly not overpowering it, but creating enough resistance that I could breathe and move.

Around me, mercenaries who’d been caught in the pulse were picking themselves up off the ground. Some weren’t getting up at all.

The creature lunged.

Both front legs came down simultaneously, aiming to flatten me into the stone. I dove sideways, feeling the impact through the ground as those pillar-thick limbs cratered the spot where I’d been kneeling. Dust and debris erupted in a cloud that turned the air opaque.

I used the dust. Visibility was gone, but I knew where the creature was. I could feel its essence, a vast dark pressure to my left, and I moved toward it rather than away.

The Frostfang found the underside of its jaw.

I drove the blade upward with everything I had. Strength, momentum, the measured stream of essence that I’d been feeding the sword. The blade punched through the softer tissue beneath the skull, through the layers of muscle and bone that protected whatever served as this thing’s brain, and the frost detonated inside its head.

The creature’s entire skull erupted in a web of white cracks. Frost raced along the bone spurs, down the neck, across the carapace, turning black chitin white in seconds. The creature shuddered once, a tremor that ran through its entire body and transferred into the ground beneath my feet.

Then it was still.

[Your Soul Plane has expanded slightly from slaying multiple Spirit Summons and absorbing a fragment of their Spirit Essence permanently.]

A small brown creased my face as I saw this.

’Uh... I had no idea I was doing that.’

I was dazed for a moment, I wanted to pull my information up too se how much was slightly but there was no time, granted that indeed I could feel my energy climb a little bit higher, and a small refreshing feeling washing over me, but it was still nothing compared to what I experienced when I masturbated not to even talk about those times with Yuan.

I sighed and pulled the Frostfang free. The blade came out coated in dark fluid that was already freezing solid.

The battlefield was quiet again. The real kind of quiet this time.

The creature’s legs gave out one by one, each impact sending a shudder through the ruins. When the body finally settled, it lay across the width of the corridor like a fallen building, its frozen skull resting within arm’s reach of where Dull stood with his mouth slightly open.

Which, for Dull, was practically a standing ovation.

The smaller summons scattered. Without whatever was directing them through the larger creature, they lost cohesion and broke in every direction, some fleeing back toward the Night Fall Order’s lines, others simply running blindly until they hit walls or rubble.

I stood there for a moment, catching my breath. The frost on the Frostfang was receding, crawling back toward the hilt like a tide going out, and the cold around me softened from biting to merely uncomfortable.

My essence had dropped noticeably but at the same time had increased a bit, however, that increase wasn’t enough to diminish the expenditure.

That attack on the skull had been reinforced by [Emperor’s Presence] and had cost more than I would have liked, the frost detonation especially. But I’d budgeted for this. One major expenditure per hour was sustainable if I kept the smaller fights efficient. The math still worked.

’Barely. The math barely works.’

The mercenaries were staring. Not all of them, some were still dealing with wounded, some were watching the Night Fall Order’s line for the next wave. But enough of them had seen it. Enough of them had watched an F-rank mercenary kill a creature that had shattered the Night Guard’s barrier like glass.

Sergeant Kael was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. It wasn’t the contempt she’d shown at the encampment. It wasn’t respect either. It was something in between, the face of someone recalculating.

Jose had slid off his pillar at some point during the fight. He was standing now, which was the first time I’d seen him do that voluntarily, his green hair catching the firelight, his expression somewhere between amused and genuinely interested.

"Hey," he said. "I had no idea this kid was a monster..."

Sulin hadn’t moved. But her eyes had changed. They were narrower now, sharper, the casual assessment replaced by something more focused.

I walked back to the line. The frost trail behind me was already melting, leaving dark streaks on the stone.

From beyond the ruins, the horn sounded a third time.

And the ground trembled again.

Everyone readied themselves again, many of the mercenaries had lost their lives but there were still many of them standing on the line.

As for me, this situation was getting slightly bothersome because my goal in this plac was certainly not to fight for twelve hours, my goal was to find a way to enter the Auction, but I knew absolutely nothing absolutely nothing about it and the one person who did was no where to be found.

I exhaled tiredly.

’I guess, I would have to pull this on my own.’

But that also meant that I needed to wait until the battle had descended into absolute chaos, right now, the Night Guard were still maintaining their formations and even though the mercenary and them had suffered damages, the Night Guards themselves were still in good shape.

So there was still an ample opportunity for things to get really chaotic, and that would be my window to go to the Auction.

’But where is it located.’

I glanced back at the base we were protecting and squinted my eyes.

’I think this much is quite obvious.’