I Only Summon Villainesses-Chapter 296: Still No Cressida

After a while of walking, we finally saw a camp in sight. The camp itself was one of those old buildings in the ruins that had been modified with carefulness, and it seemed the people that had modified it had a lot of time to do so. There were wooden structures that extended over the places where the storm of time had yanked off some parts of the edifice, and the roofing structure also seemed refurbished and complete. There were several ropes hanging down from the roof that rounded the building.

And before the building there was a barricade of sharp woods bound together to form a wall around the building.

As we walked along the road and towards the building, the sound of my step suddenly gave way to something that seemed to sink and deflect it. The ground was suddenly harder, but I paid no attention.

We reached the building in no time, and the soldier leading us raised a hand to a pair of guards stationed at the gap in the barricade. They wore matching dark coats with silver lining along the collar, identical to the secretary back at the Inn. Night Guards.

One of them barely glanced at us before waving the soldier through. The other one, however, looked at me, then at the dark haired lady, then at the green-haired man, and his lip curled just slightly.

"More of them?"

The soldier nodded. "Last batch."

"Last batch," the guard repeated, and the way he said it made it sound like he was talking about livestock arriving at a pen. He stepped aside, and we walked through.

’Charming people.’

The inside of the barricade was busier than I expected. The courtyard, if you could even call it that, was a wide clearing between the barricade and the building itself. And it was crawling with people.

There were mercenaries... dozens of them.

Some sat in clusters on the ground, sharpening weapons or eating from tin bowls. Others leaned against the barricade with their arms crossed, watching the newcomers with the lazy vigilance of people who’d already measured everyone in the area and decided they weren’t impressed. A few were actually sleeping, stretched out on the hard ground like they’d done this a hundred times before.

’How many people did they hire for this thing?’

I scanned the crowd as we moved through the courtyard, and my eyes were searching for anyone with a long bag and childish face.

Cressida was nowhere.

I scanned again, more carefully this time, checking the clusters near the building entrance, the people sitting along the barricade walls, even the ones sleeping on the ground.

Still, there was nothing.

’She should be here by now...’

My chest tightened, just slightly. Cressida was strong, stronger than most people I’d met in Recimiras. There was no logical reason to worry. And yet the fact that I couldn’t see her sitting somewhere with that ridiculous bag of hers, eating something she definitely shouldn’t have been eating, made me uneasy.

"Keep moving," the soldier said from ahead, not bothering to look back.

We followed him toward the building itself. As we got closer, I could see that the inside had been turned into a proper staging area. Through the open doorway, I could make out tables with maps spread across them, oil lamps throwing unsteady light across the walls, and Night Guards moving with purpose and quiet authority. Their territory. Their operation.

We were not invited inside.

Instead, the soldier led us to a section of the courtyard near the east wall of the building, where a cluster of other mercenaries had already been corralled. And "corralled" was the right word for it, because there was a Night Guard standing at the head of this group like a shepherd tending to something he didn’t particularly care about.

This one was different from the guards at the gate. He was older, maybe late forties, with the kind of face that had been handsome once before life decided to rearrange it. A thick scar ran from his left temple down past his jaw, and his eyes were the grey of an overcast sky, flat and disinterested.

He was in the middle of speaking when we arrived, and he didn’t stop for us.

"...the formation will be given to you when the call is made. Until then, you sit, you eat if there’s food, and you don’t wander. Anyone caught past the eastern perimeter before the signal will be treated as a Night Fall combatant and dealt with accordingly."

’He means killed.’

Jose let out a low whistle beside me, just quiet enough that only I heard it.

"Friendly bunch, aren’t they?"

I didn’t respond, but I agreed with the sentiment.

’The audacity to even be talking to me...’

The older Night Guard’s eyes swept over the gathered mercenaries with the practiced disinterest of someone who had done this many times before and expected very little from the people in front of him. When his gaze landed on our small group, it lingered for barely a second before moving on.

We were nothing to him.

"Find space, sit down and wait."

That was all we got before he turned and walked toward the building entrance, where another Night Guard was waiting with a set of scrolls.

Jose found a spot near the wall almost immediately, dropping himself onto the ground with the ease of a man who had spent many nights sleeping on worse. He stretched his legs out, crossed his arms, and tipped his head back against the stone.

"Wake me when they need us to die," he said.

The dark-haired girl, Sulin said nothing. She walked to a spot a few feet from Jose, lowered herself to the ground with far more composure, and sat with her legs folded beneath her. Her blood-red eyes swept the courtyard once, cataloging, and then settled into a neutral stare that didn’t seem directed at anything in particular.

I remained standing for a moment longer, scanning the courtyard one more time.

Still no Cressida.

’Where is she?’

The worry was harder to push down now. We had been separated when the secretary divided us into groups, but Cressida had been assigned before me. She should have arrived first. Unless something went wrong on the road, or unless the group she was assigned to took a different route, or unless...

I cut the thought off.

’She’s fine. She has to be fine. If anything, whatever tried to stop her is the one that isn’t fine.’