I Only Summon Villainesses-Chapter 301: Rising Momentum

The first hour taught me something. These people were not weak. They were expendable, which was a different thing entirely, and the difference mattered.

A mercenary with a chipped longsword could hold his ground against a foot soldier of the Night Fall Order for maybe thirty seconds, sometimes less, sometimes more. But the average was about thirty seconds before something went wrong, a misstep, a miscalculated parry, or a moment of hesitation that got punished with steel through the ribs.

And yet they fought.

The ones who survived the first engagement reformed the line without being told. The wounded crawled behind the barricade while others stepped forward to fill the gaps, moving with the grim economy of people who understood exactly what they had been paid to do.

I respected it. I also found it deeply, deeply stupid.

’Eleven hours to go and the casualties are already stacking up.’

The second wave came harder.

It was subtle at first. The Night Fall Order’s frontline shifted, their mundane fighters pulling back in clusters rather than fighting to the last. That should have been a retreat. It wasn’t. The space they vacated filled with something else.

The first one came through the gap between two collapsed pillars, a four-legged thing covered in plates of dark chitin, low to the ground and fast. It barreled into the mercenary line before anyone could react, scattering three men like they were made of straw.

"Barrier up!" Sergeant Kael’s voice cut through the chaos.

The Night Guard defensive summoners responded instantly. A translucent wall shimmered into existence across the left flank, catching a second creature mid-lunge. It bounced off with a crack that sounded like a tree splitting and scrambled back on its legs, snarling.

But the barriers could only cover so much ground. And the Night Fall Order knew exactly where the gaps were.

Another summon came through the right side. Then two more from the center. These ones were bipedal, lanky things with arms that ended in curved bone blades instead of hands. They moved with the jerky, overcorrected gait of something that hadn’t been summoned long enough to settle into its body.

The mercenary line buckled.

I had been fighting near the center, close to where Dull held his section with that metronome rhythm of his, axe rising and falling with the patience of a man chopping wood. He hadn’t spoken in twenty minutes. He hadn’t needed to. The pile of bodies in front of him spoke plenty.

But even Dull was being pushed.

One of the bone-blade creatures came at me from the left while I was pulling a dagger I had temporarily employed from the throat of a mundane soldier. I pivoted, caught the downward sweep with the flat of my blade, and redirected it past my shoulder. The creature stumbled forward with its own momentum and I drove the dagger into the joint where its neck met its shoulder.

It went down twitching.

’That was sloppy. Is trying to master multiple weapon too selfish of me?’

Ten months ago, that creature would have killed me before I could blink. Kassie’s training had carved the reflexes into my muscles through repetition that bordered on torture, but reflexes without essence behind them dulled fast under sustained fighting. I could feel the edge softening. My reactions were still sharp, but the margin of error was shrinking with every exchange.

More so, my proficiency with daggers had suffered so much. But I was still using it because using a longsword was a little bit getting harder due to space.

The nervous kid from our unit, the first-timer, had been holding together better than I expected. He fought from behind Dull’s shoulder, darting in with his short sword to finish what the axe started. Smart positioning. He had survival instincts even if he lacked experience.

Then a bone-blade creature caught him across the forearm.

He screamed and stumbled back, the spear dropping from fingers that couldn’t grip anymore. Blood poured freely from a gash that ran from his wrist to his elbow.

"Pull him back!" Dull grunted without looking.

I was already moving. I grabbed the kid by the collar and hauled him behind the remains of a stone wall. His eyes were wide and glassy, the pain not fully registering yet.

"Stay down. Keep pressure on it."

He nodded, or tried to. His whole body was shaking.

I turned back to the line and found that the gap he’d left was already being filled. Not by another mercenary. By two more bone-blade summons.

’They’re pushing the center.’

I could feel it in my gut, that quiet instinct of [Strategic Apex] that I had come to trust despite not fully understanding it. The Night Fall Order wasn’t just sending summons randomly. They were concentrating pressure on the sections where the Night Guard barriers didn’t reach, testing for weak points, probing for the spot where the line would fold.

And right now, the center was it.

I stepped into the gap.

The first creature lunged with both blades aimed at my chest. I sidestepped, letting the right blade pass within an inch of my ribs, and brought my dagger up under its guard. The point found the soft tissue beneath the chitin and sank deep.

It shrieked and pulled back, tearing itself off my blade. Dark fluid splattered across the stone. Before it could recover, I closed the distance and slammed my boot into its midsection, sending it into the second creature behind it.

Both stumbled but neither fell.

’Tch’

The second one came at me over the body of the first, using its fallen companion as a springboard.

I ducked the horizontal slash, felt the bone blade whistle past my scalp, and drove upward with the dagger into the underside of its jaw. The point punched through chitin, through muscle, through something that cracked like cartilage. It went rigid, limbs locking, and collapsed on top of me.

I shoved the corpse off and scanned the line.

More were coming.

"Flank! Flank left!" someone shouted from behind one of the collapsed arches.

Three more summons were circling around the broken pillar that anchored our left side. They moved in formation, one leading while the other two stayed wide, cutting off angles of retreat.