I Only Summon Villainesses

Kassie thrust her sword forward with an explosion of force. When the blade punched into the Glacial Patriarch, it drove the massive ape backward and slammed it into the glassy ice wall hard enough to shake the entire cavern. Cracks spiderwebbed across the frozen surface.

The Spirit Beast flailed its arms desperately toward her, growling with ravenous eyes and gnashing its teeth with raw indignation. Foam and frost dripped from its maw. But Kassie merely returned a cold, undisputed stare, her hair slowly falling to cover part of her face from the violent movement.

'Yeah, that's the look. Real comforting.'

She pushed the sword even deeper, sinking it slowly to the crossguard while stepping closer to the Spirit Beast. The ape grandpa grew weaker, and could barely hold her gaze at this point. Its breathing turned shallow, rattling. With its last strength, it threw one hand forward — but Kassie reacted with a speed my eyes couldn't successfully track.

All I registered was the sharp crack of her boot heel slamming the creature's hand into the wall, pinning it there. She stood positioned like some goth dominatrix teaching her newly acquired pet to submit.

'A goth mother with a foot fetish… I've really got to help her start keeping count of these at this point.'

As for me, I was armed with a dagger, practicing my combat forms on the spirit beasts that were burning and flailing around like drunk dancers at a bonfire.

'Tendons!'

I crouched low and shot toward another, twisting my dagger into a reverse grip and slashing clean across the Achilles heel. The creature buckled. I pivoted back to normal grip and plunged the blade deep into the tendon. The beast roared — heavy, wet, full of rage.

'Be clear, dammit! Are you crying from the fire or the stab wound?'

These creatures just screamed at everything. There was no reliable feedback here, no way to know if I was actually improving or just stabbing things that were already half-dead from the white flames. For all I knew, I could've been practicing terrible form on corpses that were seconds from collapsing anyway.

'How am I supposed to get better if I can't even tell what's working?'

Behind me, Kassie slashed horizontally across her sword, tearing through the Patriarch's midsection in one brutal stroke. The wound gaped open, spilling intestines and gore across the ice. Something flew out at blurring speed and slammed into the back of my head just as I raised my dagger for another killing blow on a Blizzard Mauler.

[You have killed a Primal Elite (Tier 4+) Spirit Beast: Glacial Patriarch]

"Owww!" I yelled, clutching my skull and spinning around in anger — but then I saw the macabre way the Spirit Beast's stomach hung loose before Kassie, intestines and putrid blue blood pooling across the ice. Steam rose from the mess.

I quickly reconsidered my anger.

She turned to me with a blank expression, sword still dripping.

"What?"

I shook my head fast.

"Nothing. Please, carry on."

She glanced around the cavern, then brought her gaze back to me.

"That was the last one."

I offered her my gentlest smile — the one that said 'please don't disembowel me next.'

"Then you should rest."

Just as I spoke, my eyes drifted down, searching for whatever had hit my head earlier.

A few meters from my feet lay a blue orb, faintly glowing against the dark ice. I bent down and picked it up. Cold. Smooth. Almost weightless, like holding frozen moonlight.

Immediately, the lodestar spoke.

[Mid-grade Spirit Core Identified]

'Oh?'

Right. Spirit Beasts dropped cores.

'How had I been sleeping on this the entire time?'

All those corpses we'd left behind, all that potential profit just rotting in caves… I could've been rich by now. Well, relatively speaking.

"Feels like the one we were given for the summoning ritual," I muttered, turning it over in my palm. "But smaller. And colder."

Kassie approached, her eyes fixed on my hand. She moved with that predatory grace that still made me slightly uncomfortable.

"A spirit core."

I looked at her with slight surprise.

"You know about this?"

"Who doesn't?" She crossed her arms over her ample breasts. "They're a physical manifestation of the soul and spirit nature embedded into the body. Every creature has one, but it's more pronounced in beings that have been exposed to Spirit essence for extended periods."

'Hmmm. That actually makes sense.'

I inspected the blue orb more closely, watching faint light pulse beneath its surface like a frozen heartbeat. It felt heavier than it looked, not in weight but in presence.

'The Academy never taught us about this, though.'

My jaw tightened.

'That place is utterly useless. They hide all the important information just to keep us dependent and controllable. What else are they not telling us?'

I glanced at Kassie. She'd been exposed to massive amounts of Spirit essence after her real death — stuck in the Spirit Realm or whatever that place was called for god knows how long.

"So… you have one of these too?"

She looked away from my hand, something unreadable crossing her face. Her expression shuttered completely.

"Nothing as banal as this."

I watched her walk away toward the cavern's far edge, her posture stiff. The temperature seemed to drop a few degrees around her.

'Cryptic as ever.'

Still, I turned the core over again, feeling its weight — or lack thereof.

'There's got to be serious money in this. Who knows? This might be my hack to finally making some actual income in this death trap of a world.'

I turned slowly to survey the charred corpses scattered around the cavern and grinned, sharp and a little unhinged.

'Looks like I'm going grave-robbing today.'

Surprisingly though, their hardened flesh was easy to cut through — but I think that was owed to the flames, because it was relatively difficult to cut through the monsters Kassie killed. The ones she'd slaughtered were still frozen solid, their cores locked behind layers of ice-hardened muscle. I managed to secure a good number of spirit cores, then looked back to where we'd come from with a wistful expression.

'So many corpses. So much money. Just sitting there.'

But too much time had gone by. Not that Kassie was going to let me go back… not with the way she was patiently looking at me. Her arms were crossed again, one boot tapping against the ice.

Since Spirit Cores were more physical than spiritual, there was no way for me to take them to my spirit plane. But then I thought about the materials I'd been receiving so far… they had to be more spiritual than physical, right?

Speaking of which, I took the time to check them out.

Thus diving back into my spirit plane, I returned to the familiar scenery of the cathedral, now pristine and ethereal. Pure glass windows caught nonexistent light, throwing white lights across the marble floors.

'This really is a terrible contrast to what I believe my soul should represent.'

As I thought about the items, a new display of runes appeared — words describing each material I'd received. Focusing on the Patriarch's Ice Crown, a semi-circular frozen crown with sharp edges appeared in my hand, along with its information.

[Ice Crown]

• This is a rare crafting material that can be used to create frost aura spirit gears

'Ah… point on.'

It was just as I suspected. Crafting materials existed in some weird half-spiritual state.

I focused on the rune of the dagger.

[SPIRIT GEAR]

Name: Bloodthorn Twin Daggers

Grade: Common

Type: Weapon (Paired Daggers)

Base Effect:

• +6% Slashing Damage (Dual-Wield Required)

• Minor Bleed (3% proc chance, 2 HP/sec for 5 sec)

Durability: 90/100

SE Cost: None (Passive effects)

[Paired daggers crafted from Blood Wolf fang and spine. The beast's hunger lingers in the blades. Must be wielded together]

I stood for a moment, observing it silently. Then I clicked my tongue.

'Tsk, it's not like I paid for it anyway. At least he cared enough to hand me something.'

I glanced forward. On the edge of one of the pews, Bloody Magdalene was seated, leaning like a crooked gangster and glaring at me with those hollow eyes. I waved to her, and her eyes glowed maliciously.

Then I left immediately.

'Not dealing with that today.'

With that, I confirmed that truly, I couldn't move the spirit cores into my Soul Plane. So now, I had no choice but to move with a load. I packed them into my coat and tied the loose ends together, slinging it over my shoulder as we continued our journey. The cores clinked together like frozen wind chimes.

With this much weight, I couldn't practice anymore. I just had to support Kassie with the flames. We continued forward like that, and I occasionally added some more cores when we passed fresh kills. I couldn't be too greedy, because space was limited — and also because my shoulder was already screaming.

'Maybe I should've thought this through better.'

Eventually we got quite deep into the cavern and noticed something different this time.

I wore a small smile as I looked around me.

'Wow… finally.'

All around the floor there were mangled corpses of Blizzard Maulers and Glacial Patriarchs. The bodies on the floor formed a trail that led us forward, a breadcrumb path of violence.

'I was beginning to wonder what the hell the others are doing…'

I threw Kassie a glance as she surveyed the corpses.

"Who do you think did this? I'm betting it's Elena and her team… she must have met really strong people. Maybe that Maxwell guy."

However, Kassie's gaze only darkened. Her voice came out cold, colder than the cavern itself.

"There's trouble…"

I frowned, the whole joy of soon meeting other people — as long as they weren't trying to kill me — dying down for the moment.

"Trouble? What trouble?"

She looked at the corpses intensely, studying the wounds with a professional eye.

"The wounds, the level of execution… this was not done by any of your neophyte mates."

'Uh? Neo… fight? What the hell is that?'

"What do you mean? I'm pretty sure Elena's summon is strong enough to wreak damage like this…"

Kassie was looking at me when I held her gaze. There was something serious about her expression that quickly made me shut up and gulp. The temperature around us dropped again.

"So… what do you think?"

Her eyes followed the trail of bodies, and she spun her sword before placing it on her shoulders. Her helmet reappeared, hiding her facial features completely.

"Follow me." She said.