SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts - Chapter 485: Helping A Village
Chapter 485: Helping A Village
The village lay in a shallow basin between two low hills, its fields trampled into mud and ash, its fences shattered as though something large and careless had passed through them again and again.
Damien saw it from a distance.
Smoke curled lazily into the bloody evening sky, thin and grey. Not the thick black plumes of a city under siege, this was worse in a way. Smaller and quieter.
The kind of smoke that meant people were still alive inside, burning whatever they could to stay warm, to stay visible, to stay hopeful.
Fenrir slowed beside him, hackles rising.
Luton slipped down from Damien’s shoulder and stretched slightly, its surface rippling with anticipation.
“They’re surrounded,” Damien said calmly.
He didn’t need heightened senses or mana perception to know. The land itself told the story. Crops half-harvested. Abandoned carts. A broken well stained dark with blood. This wasn’t a battlefield, it was a waiting room. The were under attack and we’re simply waiting to be massacred.
Damien exhaled. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”
The demons weren’t particularly clever.
They rarely were.
A loose ring encircled the village, some prowling between broken fences, others crouched on rooftops like grotesque gargoyles, their forms warped by demonic essence.
There were clawed hounds with exposed ribs glowing red-hot, bloated carrion demons gnawing on livestock, and a handful of winged scouts circling lazily overhead.
They weren’t attacking yet.
They were playing with the villagers. Messing around if one could call it that.
Waiting for fear to ripen before they would go in for the kill and continue devouring the villagers.
Damien stepped into the open.
The first demon noticed him immediately, a hound with too many eyes. It snarled and attacked Damien but it could never hope to reach such a figure.
Fenrir moved faster.
The wolf became a white blur, jaws snapping shut around the demon’s skull. Bone shattered. Essence flared. Fenrir landed smoothly, swallowing the core without breaking stride.
The sound broke the siege’s fragile balance.
Demons shrieked.
The ring collapsed inward.
Damien walked forward as if strolling through an empty road, purposely keeping his essence core hidden so he didn’t overwhelm these spawns of hell with the pressure he would radiate with his core fully revealed.
A winged demon dove toward him seeing as he stepped through the path like he owned it.
Damien simply flicked his wrist.
A compressed burst of magic essence snapped its neck midair and slammed it into the dirt like a thrown stone.
Three carrion demons charged together, their bloated bodies dragging across the ground.
“Luton.”
The slime surged forward, splitting into flowing tendrils that wrapped around all three demons at once. There was a brief hiss that was followed by a dreadful silence as they were dragged screaming into its body and dissolved.
The villagers watched from behind broken walls and shuttered windows, eyes wide, disbelief freezing them in place. “Who the hell is that and what are those scary creatures with him?” One of the villager asked the woman standing beside him.
“I don’t know so please remain quiet before the demons find and devour us. This man might be able to rescue us. But that’s only if we manage to stay alone till he can.” The woman replied with a whisper and immediately returned to be mute.
The man simply nodded, too scared to reply with words after the woman had made her statement known to him. They just kept quiet as they watched the new figure continue walking into the village.
Damien didn’t stop.
He didn’t speed up either.
Another demon leapt from a rooftop, claws outstretched.
Damien stepped aside and punched once. A blow reinforced with magic essence. It was more than enough to ruin this Grade Six demon and Damien wanted to confirm this once again.
The demon’s torso collapsed inward, its body folding around the impact before it hit the ground already dead.
Fenrir tore through the outer ring like a storm, white fur streaked with red and black. Luton followed behind, devouring anything that tried to flee, its surface glowing faintly as it absorbed demonic essence.
Within minutes, the siege unraveled.
Demons panicked.
And they wanted to flee.
Damien did not allow it. “Since when did you all become so intelligent that you’d want to run away in the face of death?”
He moved with brutal efficiency, intercepting escape routes, striking down runners, crushing wings, severing limbs. This wasn’t a battle. It was an extermination on his side.
Just as these demons had massacred the villagers, Damien would finish all of the demons here. Since they wanted to play with the lives of humans, he would play with theirs too.
When the last demon fell twitching near the edge of the fields, silence returned to the basin.
The smoke still rose but now, it smelled different.
Not fear but relief.
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then a door creaked open.
A woman stepped out first, clutching a pitchfork with trembling hands. Her clothes were torn, her face smeared with soot, but her eyes were sharp and searching.
She looked at the corpses.
At Fenrir, standing tall and bloodied.
At Luton, quietly settling back beside Damien.
And finally, at Damien himself.
“You… you killed them all,” she whispered.
Damien nodded once. “They won’t come back.”
That was all it took.
The village came alive.
People spilled out of houses and cellars, some laughing hysterically, others crying openly. Children clung to their parents. Old men dropped to their knees in the mud, murmuring prayers to gods who had not answered until now.
Someone shouted, “A hero!”
Another voice echoed it.
Soon, the word spread like wildfire.
Hero.
Damien stiffened.
He hadn’t heard that word directed at him before and now, they were all chanting it.
A grey-bearded man approached cautiously, bowing deeply. “Sir… we don’t know who you are, but you saved us. Please—come. Let us offer what little we have.”
Damien opened his mouth to refuse.
Then he paused.
He looked around at the villagers who were all exhausted, starving, alive only by luck and stubbornness. He remembered Delwig. Remembered silence where cities should have been.
“…All right,” he said quietly. “For a short while.”
The relief on their faces was immediate.
They didn’t have much with them but they gave everything.
A fire was lit in the village square, what remained of the demon corpses dragged away and burned far from the fields. Bread, hard and uneven, was brought out. Stew simmered in dented pots, thin but warm. Someone even found a jug of weak ale saved for a festival that would never come.
Damien sat on a wooden crate while Fenrir lay beside him, alert but relaxed. Luton rested in his lap, bubbling faintly as it digested.
The villagers watched his summons with awe and fear, but Damien noticed something else too.
Trust.
Children crept closer, curiosity overpowering caution. One small boy reached out and touched Fenrir’s fur.
Fenrir glanced at Damien.
He nodded.
The wolf stayed still.
The boy laughed, pure and bright, and soon others followed. Even Luton became a point of fascination, its surface changing colors softly as it reacted to their laughter.
Damien felt… strange.
Uncomfortable.
Warm.
A woman sat beside him, offering another bowl of stew. “You should eat more. You fought for us.”
“I’m fine,” Damien replied, but accepted it anyway.
She hesitated, then asked softly, “Will you stay?”
The question hung in the air.
Damien looked into the flames.
“No,” he said honestly. “I can’t.”
She nodded, not offended. “Then… thank you for stopping.”
Later, as the fire burned low, the village elder approached again. “Sir… what should we call you?”
Damien considered it.
Names had weight.
“Damien,” he said finally. “Just Damien.”
The elder bowed deeply. “We’ll remember it.”
They offered him a bed.
He declined.
Damien rested outside the village instead, sitting beneath the open sky with Fenrir at his side and Luton perched against his chest. The stars were bright here, untouched by city smoke or magical interference.
He watched them quietly.
Hero.
The word echoed uncomfortably in his mind.
He wasn’t one.
He was a survivor.
A weapon.
But… he hadn’t hated this. The gratitude. The warmth. The simple humanity of people who had nothing left to give but still tried.
Fenrir shifted closer, pressing its shoulder against Damien’s leg.
Luton bubbled softly.
Damien closed his eyes for a moment.
Just a moment.
He left before sunrise.
No fanfare. No goodbyes.
Only a small bundle left at the edge of the village—extra rations, a handful of essence cores, a simple rune carved into stone to ward off weaker demons.
He paused at the ridge overlooking the basin one last time.
Smoke still rose, but now from cooking fires instead of burning houses.
People moved freely in the fields again.
Damien turned away.
The road stretched onward, wild and uncertain.
Fenrir padded beside him.
Luton climbed back onto his shoulder.
Ahead lay the coast. The sea. The forbidden island.
Behind him, a village slept peacefully.
Damien walked on, silent as the dawn crept across the land.
