SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts - Chapter 469

Chapter 469: Clearing The Battlefield
The battlefield stank of sulfur and blood.

Smoke from burning demon corpses drifted in thick, oily trails across the plains. Warriors lay collapsed on their shields, panting, trembling, barely able to lift their weapons.

Some knelt in exhaustion. Others dropped outright, armor clattering as if their bodies had finally realized the fight was over.

But Damien wasn’t finished. Not even close. The horde was breaking.

They were retreating, fleeing in scattered packs across the plains.

However, Damien couldn’t allow that.

Not with demonic essence still crackling around their limbs in unstable pulses. Not with the scent of whatever hole they’d crawled out of still lingering thick in the air.

A single variant demon fled past a fallen warrior.

Damien’s blade pierced its spine before it took a second step.

“Don’t let them regroup,” he muttered.

Fenrir growled in agreement, lowering its body as its eyes locked on the retreating demons.

A few warriors mustered just enough strength to shout.

“Wait—!”

“Sir! Don’t push ahead!”

“Great warrior! You’ll get surrounded—!”

But the words fell uselessly into the wind.

He was already moving.

Fenrir launched forward in a burst of white essence, kicking up dirt as he sprinted after the nearest retreating cluster.

Damien vaulted onto the wolf’s back mid-run, settling in effortlessly as they cut through the plains like a living spear.

Behind him, Commander Haldric watched with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

“He’s… still going?”

One of the younger soldiers collapsed, clutching his chest. “I-I can’t move anymore… If I try to fight even one more, I’ll die…”

“Forget that, if one of them attacks me right now, I’m very certain that’ll be my end.” Another soldier screamed in pain and fatigue.

Haldric sank to one knee, dropping his sword beside him. “All of you, hold your positions! If you chase them now, none of you will survive long enough to return.”

“But he’ll be alone!” someone protested.

The commander looked at the disappearing figure of Damien and his white wolf. The figure in black coat, slicing through the dimming light like a predator chasing lesser prey and shook his head.

“He’s not alone,” Haldric said quietly. “Whatever that man is… he’s used to fighting entire hordes on his own.”

An older warrior beside him murmured, “Then… he’s insane.”

“Maybe,” Haldric said, “but we owe our lives to that insanity.”

The others didn’t respond. They simply watched with hollow eyes as Fenrir’s form shrank across the plains, chasing the demons with frightening speed.

The fleeing demons screeched and stumbled as they ran. Panic distorted their movements.

Their limbs flailed, some losing balance, some tripping over their own dead. Others pushed their own kind down just to get ahead.

It didn’t matter to Damien and Fenrir. The large summon caught up effortlessly.

Damien leaned forward, gripping Fenrir’s fur as he lowered himself to gain more speed.

“Push harder,” he whispered and Fenrir obeyed without so much as a grumble.

They blasted through the plains with a speed that tore grass from the ground, closing the distance between themselves and the scattered demon clusters in a matter of mere minutes.

Damien didn’t aim for their center.

Not yet.

He targeted the rear first and his blade flickered once.

Three demons dropped, decapitated in a single strike.

Fenrir snapped the torso of a fourth demon in half without slowing.

The horde shrieked in terror.

Some demons tried to turn and counterattack. That in itself was a wrong choice.

Damien’s fist shattered a skull. His heel crushed a spine.

Fenrir tore through the ones attempting ambushes, ripping their limbs apart with effortless precision.

But as he fought, Damien’s eyes remained sharp, focused not on the kill, but on their direction.

They were fleeing northeast.

Exactly where he wanted them to go.

“They’re going back to the crack,” he murmured. “Good.”

He had positioned Luton there earlier, before he headed into battle, a seemingly harmless task for the jiggling stellar slime. But Luton wasn’t harmless. Especially when stationed beside a demon breach.

Damien had known others would come through. Fresh ones. Abnormal ones. Reinforcements that could’ve joined this horde.

Except they didn’t.

Because Luton ate every demon that crawled through.

By now, the slime was probably bloated with essence and humming with delight.

Damien smiled faintly.

“That little glutton better have left space for these.”

Fenrir snarled sharply, leaping over a demon that had tripped in its panic. Damien sliced its neck before the demon hit the ground.

Another group broke off, fleeing in a different direction.

Damien clicked his tongue. Fenrir veered instantly, cutting them off and forcing them back toward the main fleeing cluster. ‘Things are going perfectly.’

This wasn’t just chaos. Damien was herding them. Forcing the demons where he wanted them to go.

He was heading them like sheep. Sheep being driven to a slaughterhouse.

The demons were too panicked to notice the subtle shifts in his attack patterns. How he purposely struck in angles that pushed them toward the northeast. How he killed certain demons first to influence their movement. How Fenrir targeted groups only when they tried to scatter.

This wasn’t wild fighting. It was all tactical and calculated.

Damien’s kind of madness, one that made perfect sense only to him.

A demon variant, one that was taller than the rest, turned to face Damien. Its warped limbs crackled with unstable rage. It screeched and lunged in a frenzy.

Damien ducked beneath the claw swipe. His hand pressed against its chest. “Wrong.”

A burst of force sent the demon flying backward into its own retreating comrades, toppling five at once.

Fenrir pounced on the pile and crushed the creature’s skull between its jaws.

Damien didn’t even glance at the corpse.

His eyes were on the horizon. “Closer,” he muttered.

He could sense it now. The faint thrum of corrupted essence bleeding into the air.

The breach.

A tear in the mundane land that demons crawled through. A wound on the earth’s skin.

And just as he expected, the scent of Luton was there too.

Powerful, excited, and hungry. Damien arched a brow. “Looks like someone enjoyed the feast.”

The landscape changed abruptly, a shallow ravine that dipped into cracked ground, blackened as if burned from beneath. Jagged fissures glowed faintly with violet corruption, pulsing like veins.

The breach wasn’t fully open.

Not large enough for high-ranking demons.

But it was enough for this horde that kept pouring out almost endlessly.

The very horde Damien was delivering straight into Luton’s mouth.

The demons screeched in confusion when they recognized where they’d run to. Some tried to stop. Others tried to scatter.

It was too late.

A cheerful bubbling sound echoed from the ravine.

The demons froze but the manipulator, Damien, smirked as he watched the realization dawn on the demons.

“Oh, there you are.”

Luton slid out from behind a boulder—no larger than a barrel now, but pulsing with a density far greater than before. It quivered excitedly upon seeing Damien.

BLOORP.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Damien said.

Fenrir lowered its body, lips pulling back in anticipation.

The demons screamed in terror while Luton launched forward without hesitation.

The ground shook as demons scrambled backward—only to slam face-first into Fenrir as he blocked their escape. Damien moved in tandem, cutting down the few that tried to climb the ravine walls.

Luton devoured the first demon with a loud, delighted slurp.

It didn’t stop.

It tore through the retreating horde like a vacuum made of stellar greed, swallowing demons whole, shrinking and expanding as if its essence rotated with each meal.

Some demons tried rushing Damien instead.

“Wrong direction,” he said calmly. His blade flickered and they fell.

Others tried to overwhelm Fenrir but the summon simply answered with fangs, claws, and mad fury.

Within minutes, the ravine became a one-sided massacre.

The last demon, one of the new variants, unstable and twitching, crawled on its elbows, trying desperately to escape.

Damien stepped on its wrist, pinning it to the ground.

“You shouldn’t exist,” he said bluntly. “I don’t know what led to your creation but I’m certainly going to end your existence. I’ll be the end of your race.”

He flicked his foot, sending the demon tumbling into the air.

Luton devoured it mid-flight.

The ravine fell silent.

Only the faint vibration of the breach remained.

Luton waddled closer, humming happily, swirling with the essence it had consumed.

Damien crouched and patted it.

“Good work.”

Luton wobbled, making a sound as though the slime could purr.

Fenrir huffed jealously.

“You’ll get yours later,” Damien said. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Fenrir straightened proudly.

Damien rose, scanning the horizon.

Smoke still curled from the distant battlefield.

The warriors were alive.

He’d done his part.

Now, he needed more. Strength, knowledge, and even preparation. He needed all of it!

The demons would return, stronger, more numerous, more monstrous.

And he would need to be ready.

He motioned for Luton to follow.

“Let’s go meet our new neighbors,” he murmured.

The kingdom waited.

And Damien intended to walk into it with the scent of demon blood still clinging to him.

“But first, I gotta close that breach.” He said as he forged a large ball of flames that soon began to compress as soon as it appeared.

It shrunk down to the size of a fist and then he tossed it towards the breach after mounting Fenrir and taking off into the distance.

Booooom!

An explosion rang out