I Only Summon Villainesses

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For the first few minutes of the beating, this bastard didn't even take a breather to ask if his work had had any effect — if I was now ready to talk.

He simply continued to pummel my face without a hint of emotion in his eyes. If it wasn't for the flat expression, I would've said he was enjoying it.

He beat the shit out of me with practiced brutality, the kind that showed he was very used to a life like this. Used to torturing people with his fists.

His white knuckles turned red from my blood, and my face was now unrecognizable. Not that I could see myself, but from the amount of immense pain ravaging my head, I could tell I was going to look worse on the outside than I felt on the inside. And I felt pretty fucking terrible.

First, my eyes were blurry, vision dim. That was enough to tell of swollen eyes. The corner of my brows and towards my temple had been split open, blood running down my face from there. The insides of my mouth were burst open by cruel injury — I felt I might have even broken a tooth or two, although they hadn't fallen out yet.

My head fell the moment he left it alone. Thick blood mixed with saliva drooled from my mouth. He stepped back and brought a white napkin from his armor, cleaning his hand with it.

The twilight was peeking from the horizon. With the three moons of Ealdrim, twilight looked different here — a grandeur minute of subtle green, gold, and silver, all breeding a beautiful color I truly couldn't name. Not now of all times.

Right now, pain dealt with me so thoroughly that I began to think of what exactly I was doing here. I began to complain to myself about finding myself in a world I didn't give two fucks about, branded a weakling, scorned, and then branded a heretic. Now people were running after me to either kill me or capture me.

And somehow, this insanely sleek pretty boy had caught up with me, stolen me from the crowd of caravans, and was beating me up.

Why was he beating me? Why? Why? Why?

'I've never felt so much physical pain before in my life.'

Even my father, who used to beat me so bad for average grades, didn't beat me half this much. This kind of beating often left people broken for life. I was certain about it.

'Ah. I'm going to be broken for life...'

Like I ever was alright to begin with.

At that moment, a soft chuckle escaped my lips.

It made the Inquisitor, who had just finished cleaning his hand, frown.

Thinking about it was just funny to me — how truly broken the world begged me to become. I was never strong. I didn't ask for strength, neither did I ask for weakness, because weakness sucked.

What I wanted was peace.

And not because I wanted to live without violence. Quite the opposite, really... it might be inconsequential to this situation.

But the boy the burden, teachings, and expectations of my father had created was not a laid-back, nonchalant, shameless boy.

No.

It was a madman. And the peace I sought was to run away from that madman who had caused his own mother's death.

A dark frown fell on my face, and I began to pull on the edges of my essence.

Immediately, the rope blasted out a bright golden light and tightened furiously against my limbs and body.

"Listen, you dirty prick." My voice sounded hoarse and strained, but it sounded. "You should have taken me back to Athermere when you had the chance."

I put more force into it. It was like trying to break out of a wall that was only closing in on you. The rope tightened and was beginning to turn my skin red, blood seeping out of my scarring flesh.

Did it hurt? So much. So much that it made me want to go mad.

But that was my source of strength. Madness.

The more it hurt, the more my determination to break forth from it strengthened. Pain was not going to be a reason for me to stop — quite contrary, in fact. Pain was always the reason for me to destroy — like when I sabotaged my father's business laptoped at the age of eight after he beat me for deciding to play with my friends when I should be studying.

This… craziness… this madness, it has always been in me.

And this bastard just gave me a reason to seek it again.

The Inquisitor stood before me with a slightly shocked expression. His eyes almost couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"You foolish heathen! You will die!!"

At this point, I looked more like a half-dead, enraged boar than I looked like a human. My face was reddened and heavily bruised, veins threatening to tear out of my head.

The glowing rope was now stained with blood, truly tightening on my body and beginning to sink into my flesh with blood pooling out.

The Inquisitor looked truly confused — he looked like he didn't want me to die, and at the same time wasn't sure if stepping in would be the right thing to do.

He gritted his teeth and at once stepped closer, raising his hand and bringing it towards my neck to knock me out. But I shifted away, letting his hand miss the point, grazing across my skin.

The touch was all I was aiming for.

As it crossed, white flames connected to his hand from my neck, and instantly, I used the little leak of essence I could grab hold of to spread the flames across his right arm.

"Arrghhh!!!"

Quickly, he began to beat his hand around, running and dancing. I calmed down and sighed as I watched this elevating spectacle.

Turned out our pretty boy was not a big fan of flames.

'What a letdown.'