SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts - Chapter 545: Unceremonious Demise I

Minutes.

That was what it had been on paper.

But inside it—inside the weight of every exchange, every counter, every layered spell and every reinforced strike—it had felt like something longer. Something heavier. Time had stretched and bent under the pressure of two presences refusing to break, each collision dragging seconds into what felt like hours.

The demon Captain had not been wrong to be confident.

By any standard that mattered—speed, technique, spell complexity—it belonged at the top of what its grade could produce. Its spell field had been refined. Its adaptability had been real. Its composure in combat had been the kind that only came from hundreds of battles survived.

And yet, here they were.

Both of them still standing. Both of them slowing.

Not obviously. Not in a way that would be visible to an outside observer without the sharpest senses. But the signs were there for those who knew where to look.

The Captain’s spell formations had begun dropping one layer at a time. Not through disruption—but through conservation. It was spending less than before. Stretching what remained.

Damien had noticed.

He had noticed several minutes ago, actually.

He noticed it the same way he noticed most things in a fight—without drawing attention to noticing it. Just filed it away. Kept moving. Kept pressure applied. Kept the Captain focused on survival rather than calculation.

Because the moment an opponent started calculating, they started managing. And the moment they started managing, they started waiting.

Waiting for an opening. Waiting for a mistake. Waiting for the moment your essence ran dry and your body slowed and everything you had held together through sheer force of will finally started to come apart.

The Captain was waiting for exactly that.

Damien could feel it in the shift of its stance. The way it had begun angling slightly—not aggressive, but positioned. Ready to close distance the instant his attacks lost their edge. It thought it knew how this ended.

They always did.

Another exchange.

The Captain sent out a sweeping arc of condensed dark energy, wide and low, designed to force Damien off his feet or make him leap—either way disrupting his grounded momentum. It followed immediately with a tighter, faster projectile aimed at where Damien would land. A good and predicted casting.

Damien stepped over the arc instead. Just a single precise step that cleared it entirely as if he had known its exact trajectory before it formed.

The follow-up projectile came.

He turned sideways. It passed him by a margin that was either terrifyingly calculated or terrifyingly casual—even the Captain seemed unsure which.

Then Damien moved forward in a straight line. There was no feint or setup to his movement. Just pressure.

The Captain reformed its field spell quickly but it flickered. The outer layer collapsed before it stabilized and in that fraction of a second Damien was inside its range again. His fist drove into the Captain’s guard.

Bang!

The impact was different from before. It was heavier but not because Damien had more essence.

Rather, it was because the Captain had less to reinforce with.

Its guard cracked slightly. Not broke—but cracked.

The Captain reacted fast, twisting away before the follow-up could land and putting distance between them. Three meters. Four. Five.

Then it reset.

Breathing harder now.

Its crimson eyes tracked Damien as he stood still across the fractured ground. For a moment, neither moved. Then the Captain smiled neither confidently nor cruelly. Its smile seemed… knowing.

“You’re slowing,” it said.

Damien said nothing.

“Barely. But it’s there.” The Captain tilted its head slightly. “Your strikes are still powerful but the frequency is dropping. Your movement…” it exhaled slowly. “Slightly less sharp than it was ten minutes ago.”

Still, Damien said nothing.

The Captain’s smile widened. “You’re almost dry.”

It wasn’t entirely wrong. Damien’s essence reserves had also been dropping steadily. Not dramatically—he didn’t burn through it recklessly. But the fight had been long and real. Every reinforced strike, every block, every burst of speed had drawn from a pool that wasn’t limitless.

For a normal fighter, this would have been the beginning of the end.

The Captain took a slow step forward. “I’ve been in battles like this before,” it said, voice low, almost conversational. “The kind where strength matches strength and the only thing left to decide it is endurance.” Another step. “And I have never lost that kind of fight.”

Damien watched it approach.

His expression hadn’t changed.

“When yours runs out,” the Captain continued, its aura beginning to build again—carefully, deliberately, banking every fragment of remaining essence into a single effort—”I am going to take my time with you.”

A pause.

Its smile turned into something uglier.

“I will dig out your innards.” Its voice dropped lower. “And make you eat them before I kill you.” The words were delivered with complete sincerity.

Not a taunt but a promise. The kind that came from something that had done exactly that before.

Around them, the ruins of the base smoldered quietly. Fenrir sat at the edge of the clearing, watching with still, crimson eyes. Luton hovered nearby, its surface calm, its presence subdued—almost invisible if you weren’t looking for it.

Damien let the silence hold for exactly one more second.

Then he easily smiled.

.

Like someone who had heard a long and detailed plan and simply wasn’t worried about it. “That’s not happening,” he said.

The Captain’s expression hardened. “You think your reserves—”

“I know my reserves,” Damien flatly cut the demon captain before he could finish his sentence.

Something in his tone made the Captain pause. The certainty behind the statement. The complete lack of performance in it. No posturing. No desperation hidden beneath false calm.

Just fact.

The Captain’s eyes narrowed.

Then it moved as it completely stopped stalling.

Whatever it had been conserving, it committed. The air around it fractured as its aura surged, spell formations erupting into existence faster than before—not layered, not refined, not controlled.

All of it for one final push.

Dark energy screamed as it concentrated into both hands, pulling at the very atmosphere, distorting light and sound in its immediate radius. The ground beneath the Captain spiderwebbed under the pressure of its own output.

It was everything it had left, and its ’everything’ was terrifying.

A lesser opponent would have moved. Would have scrambled for distance. Would have bought time or called their summons or done something—anything—to interrupt what was clearly the end of the fight being forced.

Damien didn’t move.