SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts - Chapter 518 518: Provoking Them
The forest no longer felt calm.
It felt suspicious.
Damien crouched along a high ridge overlooking what used to be a simple eastern cluster.
It wasn’t simple anymore.
The remaining demons had condensed their formation. Patrols overlapped now. Suppression nodes glowed brighter. Essence signatures moved closer together.
They knew.
Not who.
Not how.
But they knew something was hunting them.
Damien exhaled slowly.
He had erased six already.
Three more from a smaller outlying rotation earlier that morning.
The structure was weakening.
And weakening systems reacted violently before collapsing.
He could continue with slow elimination.
Or…
He could just provoke them.
His gaze sharpened.
“Luton.”
The slime rippled at his shoulder.
“We don’t retreat today.”
It quivered approvingly.
He descended the ridge without masking his presence this time.
He let them feel him.
The first demon to detect him screamed — a shrill warning that cut through the trees.
The clearing erupted instantly.
Seven regular demons rushed forward in staggered formation.
Two intelligent ones emerged seconds later.
So this was what remained in the eastern cell.
Good.
Damien stepped into the clearing openly.
No ambush.
No concealment.
Just presence.
One of the intelligent demons narrowed its eyes.
“It’s you.”
Damien didn’t respond.
The first regular demon lunged.
He sidestepped and crushed its skull with a downward punch so hard its body flipped backward mid-air.
Before it hit the ground, Luton shot forward and swallowed it whole.
No corpse.
The second demon leapt from the side, claws crackling with black essence.
Damien caught its wrist mid-swing and twisted.
The arm snapped.
He drove his knee into its chest, shattering ribs inward, then hurled it into two approaching demons.
They crashed together violently.
The clearing exploded into motion.
Three demons attacked simultaneously.
Claws. Teeth. Essence-coated limbs.
Damien moved like a blade through cloth.
He ducked under one slash, elbowed another in the throat, pivoted, and smashed his heel into a demon’s jaw hard enough to spin its head sideways unnaturally.
But numbers mattered.
One claw raked across his back, tearing cloth and drawing blood.
Another struck his side.
He retaliated instantly — grabbing the attacker’s head and smashing it repeatedly into the ground until the skull caved in.
Luton devoured it.
Two down.
The intelligent demons finally joined the fray.
One extended its hands outward and released a pulse of destabilizing essence that warped the air around Damien.
The other charged directly in, claws extended.
Damien grinned slightly.
Finally.
He launched forward instead of retreating.
The charging intelligent demon met him head-on.
Their fists collided.
The impact cracked the ground beneath them.
The demon snarled.
“You destabilize what you don’t understand!”
Damien headbutted it mid-sentence.
Bone cracked.
He followed with a barrage — three punches to the ribs, one to the throat, a spinning kick to the temple.
The demon staggered but did not fall.
Stronger than the soldiers.
Behind him, two regular demons lunged simultaneously.
Damien twisted but this time he didn’t evade fully.
He allowed one claw to graze his shoulder while he grabbed the second demon by the neck and slammed it into the first.
Luton surged upward like a tidal wave and swallowed both before they hit the ground.
Four.
The destabilizing pulse from the second intelligent demon hit him fully.
The air compressed violently around him.
His vision flickered.
His knees buckled slightly.
The first intelligent demon seized the opening and drove a claw into Damien’s abdomen.
It pierced skin.
Not deep.
But enough.
Damien’s eyes darkened.
He grabbed the demon’s wrist with one hand.
And with the other, he punched through its chest.
Not delicately.
Not surgically.
He drove his fist so hard that his knuckles tore through bone and out the demon’s back.
The creature froze.
Damien ripped his arm free, black blood spraying across the clearing.
He didn’t wait.
Luton engulfed the corpse immediately.
Five.
The destabilizer screamed and charged.
It unleashed another pulse mid-run, warping the forest around them.
Trees bent. Soil cracked.
Damien stepped into it instead of away.
The pressure crushed against him.
He felt ribs strain.
Blood filled his mouth.
He smiled.
He had faced worse.
He gathered essence into his legs and vanished from where he stood.
He reappeared behind the demon.
Before it could react, he hooked an arm around its neck and drove it face-first into the ground.
The impact cratered the earth.
He straddled its back and began punching.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each blow heavier than the last.
The demon tried to surge energy again but Luton wrapped around its legs, immobilizing it completely.
Damien grabbed its horns and pulled its head backward violently.
The spine snapped.
He didn’t stop.
He tore the head off entirely.
Luton consumed the remains.
Seven.
Two regular demons remained.
They hesitated.
Fear flickered in their eyes.
They attacked anyway.
Desperation made them sloppy.
Damien caught one mid-air and ripped its arm off.
He used the severed limb to beat the second demon across the face before crushing its skull with a stomp.
The last demon tried to flee.
Luton was faster.
The slime surged forward and swallowed it from behind.
Eight.
Silence fell briefly.
Heavy.
Thick.
Then aroar tore from the tree line.
Another intelligent demon.
Not part of the eastern cell.
Drawn by the chaos.
It burst through the trees with fury in its eyes.
“You dare—”
Damien didn’t let it finish.
He sprinted forward.
Their collision split a tree in half.
This one was stronger than the previous two.
Their fists met in a violent exchange.
Blow for blow.
Shockwaves rippled outward.
The demon grinned through blood.
“You are accelerating it!”
Damien answered with a knee to its jaw.
The demon retaliated with a backhand that sent Damien skidding across the clearing, carving a trench in the soil.
He wiped blood from his mouth.
Good.
He launched back in.
They traded strikes brutally for minutes that felt longer.
The demon slashed his chest.
He shattered its kneecap.
It headbutted him.
He tore out one of its eyes.
Luton waited, coiled, watching for an opening.
Damien created one.
He baited a heavy overhead strike, sidestepped, and drove his fist upward into the demon’s throat with everything he had.
The impact lifted the creature off its feet.
He grabbed its head mid-air and slammed it down with bone-breaking force.
The skull cracked.
Not enough.
He mounted it and began hammering downward with relentless precision.
One. Two. Three. Four.
The ground beneath them cratered.
Finally, the demon’s core fractured audibly inside its chest.
Its body went limp.
Damien stood slowly.
Blood dripped from his chin.
Luton consumed the final corpse.
Nine.
Thirty minutes.
Nine demons.
Two intelligent. Seven regular soldiers.
The eastern cell was effectively destroyed.
Damien exhaled slowly.
He was bleeding in multiple places.
Bruised.
Cracked ribs likely forming.
But alive.
And stronger.
He glanced at Luton.
The slime pulsed with satisfaction.
He had wanted to feed them to Fenrir.
To Cerbe.
To distribute growth evenly.
But without Luton’s battlefield control, this would have been ten times harder.
He accepted it.
Kills by summons still fed his own growth.
Slower.
But steady.
He looked around the destroyed clearing.
Blood soaked the soil.
Trees splintered.
Suppression markings cracked.
The stabilizing grid in this region was now shattered.
And he knew that the captains would feel this.
This was no longer quiet erasure.
This was open war.
Damien rolled his shoulders and stared deeper into the forest.
“Send them,” he muttered.
Because now, he was ready to hunt something stronger.
