SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts - Chapter 487: Arriving At The Seaport

Chapter 487: Arriving At The Seaport

The man didn’t hesitate.

He lunged again, faster this time, dagger crackling faintly with corrupted mana. It was now glaringly clear which side he belonged to. The cult, just as Damien had thought.

Damien sighed. “Wrong target.”

Luton surged forward. The slime moved like liquid shadow.

Before the cultist could react, Luton expanded explosively, splitting into thick tendrils that wrapped around the man’s wrists and ankles. The dagger clattered uselessly to the ground as his limbs were yanked apart mid-motion.

“Arghhhh!!” The cultist screamed.

Luton lifted him off the ground, suspending him in the air, limbs stretched outward, his body held aloft like a grotesque crucifix.

The Stellar Slime didn’t crush him, it absorbed just enough to immobilize, tendrils partially sinking into flesh and clothing, holding him firmly in place.

Damien stood slowly, brushing dirt from his gloves.

“You picked a bad moment,” he said calmly. “I was hungry.”

The cultist laughed.

It was a thin, cracked sound—more hysteria than humor.

“You think this changes anything?” the man rasped through the mask. “You’re already too late.”

Damien stopped a few steps away, eyes cold.

“Talk,” he said. “Or you’ll wish I hadn’t caught you alive.”

The cultist’s head tilted.

“Alive?” he echoed softly. “Oh, mercenary… that was never an option.”

Damien felt it then.

A faint pulse of unstable mana deep within the man’s chest—tight, compressed, wrong.

A self-destruct core.

“Speak,” Damien ordered. “Now.”

The cultist inhaled sharply, chest rising with effort as Luton tightened slightly in response to Damien’s will.

“The Gates are weakening,” the man said quickly, words spilling out now. “Not one. Not two. Many. Across the world. And we aim to break the seals on all of them the moment we find them!”

Damien’s gaze sharpened.

“Gates,” he repeated. “So Delwig wasn’t unique.”

The cultist laughed again. “You saw one crack and thought you’d stopped it? That was just a portion. A failed project you may call it.”

A cold weight settled in Damien’s gut.

“How many?” he asked.

The cultist shook his head weakly. “Even we don’t know. Some are buried. Some forgotten. Some… sealed so long even history forgot they existed. However, we’re looking for all of them as I speak.”

No records.

That explained it.

“And the variants?” Damien asked. “The demons you’re creating.”

“Creating?” The cultist scoffed. “No. We’re refining. Accelerating what was always meant to happen.”

His breathing grew labored.

“The ones you’ve seen are only the beginning,” he continued. “Test subjects. Proofs of concept. When the Gates open wider… you won’t recognize what comes through.”

Damien’s jaw tightened.

“And Twin Disasters?”

That got a reaction.

The cultist went still.

Even through the mask, Damien could feel it—the shift. Fear. Awe. Obsession.

“Something ancient stirs there,” the man whispered. “Older than demons. Older than us. We don’t know if it’s salvation or annihilation… only that it’s ancient.”

Damien’s mind flashed with images—the cracked seal, the unnatural silence, the pull he’d felt even after leaving.

“Why there?” he demanded.

The cultist shook his head again. “We don’t know. That knowledge was lost long before our time. Even the founders… even they only know fragments.”

The pulse in the man’s chest spiked.

Luton reacted instantly, tightening its hold.

Too late.

The cultist’s laughter turned wet and broken. “You can’t stop it,” he gasped. “You can’t guard every gate. You can’t be everywhere at once.”

His head fell back.

The core detonated inward.

There was no explosion.

Just collapse.

The cultist’s body convulsed once, then went limp as blackened veins spread across his chest. The energy annihilated him from the inside, leaving nothing but a charred husk suspended in Luton’s grasp.

Damien stared at the corpse for a long moment.

Then he exhaled slowly. “Release him.”

Luton obeyed.

Thud!

The body fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, already beginning to crumble into ash.

Damien ran a hand through his hair, eyes dark.

Multiple Gates but no records and locations.

Also, there was no time to go around checking for gates.

And Twin Disasters… awakening.

He looked north. Then east.

Then back, in the direction he’d come from.

Apnoch. Arielle. Lyone.

He clenched his fist.

“I don’t have the luxury of chasing ghosts,” he muttered. “I have people waiting for me that I’ll have to return to. So the sooner I get this over with, the better for me and them.”

The world was moving faster now. Too fast. Whatever game was being played had progressed beyond preparation and into execution.

And there was only one place that mattered anymore.

Twin Disasters.

If something ancient was laying in there, something powerful enough to draw these cultists and their founders towards the island, then it couldn’t be left alone.

Not even for a moment.

Damien turned toward the darkened horizon.

“If it’s good,” he said quietly, “I’ll protect it.”

His eyes hardened.

“And if it’s not…”

Luton pulsed beside him, eager.

Damien stepped away from the fire, letting it die behind him as he disappeared into the night—already moving, already planning, already returning to the place that had nearly broken him once.

The Forest of Twin Disasters was calling again.

This time, Damien intended to answer on his own terms.

~~~~~

After riding on Aquila for over twelve hours without a single stop, Damien could finally feel and even see it.

The Seaport he was after. He’d arrived.

He stopped a few miles away though. Descended from Aquila and made his way to the city with his legs. He didn’t want to draw attention right from the start.

The first thing Damien noticed about the port city was the smell.

Salt, fish oil, wet rope, old wood—and beneath it all, the sharp bite of alcohol and smoke. It was nothing like the fortress cities he’d passed through before. This place lived and breathed with the sea.

Every street sloped subtly toward the docks, every building leaned as though shaped by years of coastal wind, and every face bore the weathered look of people who’d learned long ago that tomorrow was never guaranteed.

Ships crowded the harbor like resting beasts. Some were sleek merchant vessels with polished hulls and bright banners. Others were scarred warships, their sides pitted and repaired countless times. And then there were the old ones—dark, creaking things that looked like they should’ve sunk decades ago but stubbornly remained afloat through sheer refusal to die.

Damien liked the city immediately.

He entered on foot, Fenrir dismissed hours earlier to avoid unnecessary attention. Luton, however, remained perched lazily on his shoulder, its form compressed and inconspicuous enough that most people mistook it for an odd familiar or magical accessory. It pulsed faintly, content, its appetite having only grown since the last few encounters.

Damien adjusted his cloak and blended into the flow of dockworkers, sailors, merchants, and mercenaries moving through the streets.

He had questions.

And ports were where answers congregated—especially the kind soaked in alcohol.

The first pub he entered was called The Split Mast, a low-ceilinged place built almost entirely from salvaged ship wood. Nets hung from the walls, along with cracked compasses, rusted harpoons, and a jawbone that might once have belonged to something very large.

Damien ordered a mug of beer and a plate of peppered beef without ceremony. He paid upfront, tipped lightly, and sat where he could hear the most voices.

Sailors talked loudly. They always did.

“…telling you, I saw it with my own eyes,” one man slurred. “Storm came out of nowhere. Clear skies one moment, black clouds the next. Like the sea itself didn’t want us going that way.”

“Toward where?” another asked.

The first sailor spat into a bucket. “You know where.”

Damien’s ears sharpened.

“The Forest of Twin Disasters,” the sailor continued, voice dropping despite the drink. “Doesn’t matter which route you take. Every sea path leading there gets swallowed by storms. Not normal ones either. Lightning that twists sideways. Winds that scream like living things.”

Someone else snorted. “Old wives’ tales.”

The sailor slammed his mug down. “I lost two ships proving it wasn’t!”

That got attention.

Damien took a slow sip of his beer, letting the bitterness settle on his tongue.

Storms blocking every path.

Not ships.

Paths.

That distinction mattered.

He finished his meal, thanked the barkeep, and left without drawing attention.

The second pub was larger, noisier, and significantly rougher.

The Drowned Coin sat right on the edge of the docks, its windows fogged with condensation and smoke. Here, the crowd skewed heavily toward mercenaries and veteran sailors, the kind with scars that hadn’t faded and eyes that never fully relaxed.

Damien ordered peppered beef again. And another beer.

This time, he didn’t even need to listen carefully.

“They don’t sink,” a woman with a hooked nose was saying. “That’s the worst part.”

“Don’t sink?” someone echoed.

“They just disappear,” she replied flatly. “Ships, crews, cargo, all gone. No wreckage. No bodies. No floating planks. One moment they’re there, the next moment, nothing. They just vanish.”

“Roaring shadows,” another man muttered, crossing himself. “That’s what my captain called them.”

Damien’s fingers tightened slightly around his mug.

“What kind of creatures?” someone asked.