I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 388: The Chase

Gilbert threw the airship forward with a speed that frightened even me. Not long after we took to the sky, a wailing alarm exploded through the whole of Jadecrest Island.

Luckily, we were on the edge of the island’s harbor and had flown off before the alarm went off.

The entire island came to life, furious siren lights blazing on top of the large airship and several the harbor lighthouse. The dragonfly ships that were roaming the airspace all suddenly turned in one direction.

No matter how much of a head start we had, we still found ourselves in a sea of ships. Because of the incident, whatever it was, the patrol was incredibly and unusually high.

And in not more than ten minutes of taking flight, several vessels were already heading towards us from afar, from all directions that were seeable. From the window, I could see them plunging forward with furious speed.

They were especially nimble vessels, whizzing through the air, with a ghostly blue light emanating from behind them.

They inched faster with each closing second, making a little apprehensive about our situation.

Gilbert, however, looked calm and focused. This, in fact, might have been the most serious I had ever seen him since I got to know him.

He steered the vessel to the side, thinly dodging one of those dragonfly vessels that tossed itself in front of us. That thin dodge caused him to scratch the side of the vessel with Nightyell’s side fin.

But it didn’t seem to be an issue.

The ship was smaller and had taken damage that couldn’t be ignored, tilting to the side with smoke rolling out of it.

He commandeered the airship with an explosive speed, bracing the wilderness of the sky like some avian horror.

I glanced back, trying to see how things were behind us, and it was not looking good at all.

"Gilbert, we might get slowed down from behind!"

"Oi, oi, oi, will you sit back and leave this whole thing to me, kid? I was born on a goddamn airship!"

A wide smirk split his face, and he leaned forward, gripping the steering tightly while still throwing the ship through the myriads of smaller ones, snapping between them by the skin of the teeth.

He locked in on the steering, his gaze glued to the windscreen as Nightyell continued a catastrophic dive.

Gilbert seemed to be waiting for something, but at the same time, the crowd of air vessels behind us were banding together at an alarming rate, equalling shooting themselves forward with a desperate speed that could no longer be ignored. They were on our tail.

The sky was free after there was a considerable distance between Jadecrest and us, but the shadows of all those smaller ships, marred the sea so much that they were like a horde of spirit fiends tearing through the wind with nothing but a devastating murderous intent to rip the flesh of the larger avian horror.

Granted, these were all scraps of metal.

’The poetic soul in me is slipping away, goddamn! Getting out there and blasting them to flames is an option, but let’s trust him... for now.’

It was difficult to keep trusting Gilbert. I mean, when one looked at the kind of person he was, who was going to trust him with their life?

But, he had said our lives, so based on that, I convinced myself that he deserved it, holding onto the chair apprehensively.

Gilbert kept pushing Nightfall forward in a straight line, not maneuvering anything. He kept going and going, simply flying forward at a steady, explosive speed.

The speed was frightening enough to place a wide gap between us and the horde of vessels.

However, the farther we went, the less wider the gap was, because the vessels were coming from different directions and mounting a strange formation over each other.

And the formation was arranging itself midair as we blew forward at that steady pace, slowly manifesting some larger almagamation of a colossal dragonfly ship.

Whatever cue Gilbert was waiting for, I didn’t know it but time didn’t seem to be that friendly anymore. We needed something to break the chase.

’He sure as hell better get that cue within three seconds, or else I’m taking matters into my hands.’

Perhaps I wasn’t so much of a trusting person.

My hand twitched, and I readied myself to vanish from the ship, or drop Kassie on top.

At the same moment, an especially deep and ancient groan reverberated from below, like a churning slowly rising from the depths of the ocean.

Gilbert glanced down and went visibly pale.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit — curse our luck!"

Looking down, confused, I asked in a hurried tone.

"What is that?"

"Damn Naval Prefecture, that is a very sophisticated, tri-functional ship!"

I glanced down and cursed my luck.

The vessel looked far different from the vessel that was docked on Jadecrest Island. Although they appeared to be roughly the same size, this one was deep blue with black stripes by the side. The metal was arrayed with fins that shot upwards like columns, and there were about ten of them on the surface.

Suddenly, those blue metal fins began to shoot out of the ship. At first, they looked like much smaller airships than the dragonfly vessels, but their speed was unbelievable.

The first one collided with us, and that was how I understood what they were.

’Damn bombs!’

Nightyell shuddered, groaned, and veered slightly off course, but Gilbert steered with strained might, rolling with a hardened will and stubborn grip. The ship groaned back into its initial pace and surged forward.

Only one of those things had hit us. And we were thrown off course.

The others were swiftly swallowing the distance between, even exploding on the dragonfly vessels that blocked their path and immediately scattering them from the formations they were trying to build. The broken ships plunged into the sea with burning scraps of their body falling with them.

"Gilbert, I’m sorry, but I—"

"Now!"

With that shout, he sharply grabbed a lever — about two different levers — pulling them both swiftly before handling the steering and pulling it towards his chest.

In that moment, Nightyell suddenly, with unexpected sharpness, dove into the sky. It was as if the ship, for a moment, dared to defy gravity.

It turned vertically upward and shot higher into the sky. The multiple explosives that bolted across the air to reach us all lost their targets, colliding against the frontlines of the colossal formation in an explosive chain of destruction.

A few of them ambitiously veered higher, but to no avail. Nightyell was impossibly tearing upward with terrible speed.

A proud smile appeared on my face as I glanced at Gilbert from behind. Then I glanced at White Feather, who had been silent all along, lost in the depths of her thoughts.

"We will—"

My words froze as I heard the strange sound of Nightyell’s engine. The engine stuttered in an uncomfortable rhythm.

Before I even got to say anything, the sound of the engine galloped to absolute silence.

Gilbert looked back and allowed a pale smile.

’Crap, I think I forgot to fuel her...’

We plummeted back down.