SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts

Kraaa!!

Arielle’s blade cracked against bone, again.

Kreeee!!

Another scream. Another splash of black blood against her cheek. Another heartbeat spent standing when her body begged her to fall.

The narrow gorge that had once been their salvation was now a graveyard. Piled demon corpses clogged the chokepoint, their bodies twitching and steaming with residual essence.

And yet, they kept coming. Crawling over the bodies of the dead. Clawing their way forward like rats drowning each other to reach air.

Arielle backed up three steps and nearly collapsed as her boot slipped on coagulated filth. Her balance failed—until Aquila was suddenly there, catching her shoulder and steadying her like a crutch made of lightning.

“You’re slowing,” Aquila said, voice clipped in her humanoid form. Her twin blades were stained to the hilt with ichor, her once-flowing white robe now slashed and darkened with ash.

“I’ve been slowing for half an hour,” Arielle muttered between breaths.

They’d been fighting too long. Too deep. Too alone.

Her body ached in places that couldn’t be healed with potions anymore. And worse than the fatigue was the sinking knowledge in her chest:

There was no end to this and if she indeed continued like this, they probably would die without anyone finding their corpses.

She hadn’t even gotten tge chance to signal for help so this might as well be this graveyard.

She looked up—another wave cresting over the distant ridge. Twisted brutes with misshapen jaws, long-limbed stalkers with no eyes, aerial screechers that launched bolts of toxic essence from high above.

The horde was no longer probing.

It was charging.

“Reinforcements won’t make it in time,” Arielle said aloud, not because she wanted Aquila to respond—but because saying it made her resolve harder. Sharper. Even though she wasn’t entirely sure that would be the case.

Aquila said nothing.

She didn’t need to.

She saw the truth too.

A shriek rang from above. Arielle turned and ducked just as an acid bolt zipped over her head, hissing as it struck the ridge wall behind her. Stone boiled. The air shimmered from the heat.

She couldn’t even feel her shoulders anymore. The muscles were too frayed. Her arms moved on instinct, not strength.

Arielle’s core burned from constant mana compression and redirection. Her legs quaked with every backward step.

Aquila drove a blade into the chest of a lunging stalker, then grabbed Arielle by the front of her shirt and pulled her back again.

“Retreat,” Aquila said.

Arielle blinked. “No.”

“Retreat, now.”

A demon flanked their left—Aquila responded first, spinning and slicing off its arm mid-swing, then kicking it backward into a glyph trap. The explosion echoed through the canyon, but Arielle barely registered it.

She was losing clarity. Her vision blurred.

Another demon. Closer this time.

Aquila didn’t wait for more.

Mana surged.

Her form unraveled—white robes splitting into strands of light, feathers bursting outward like wings unfurling from the depths of her core.

Within two heartbeats, she’d returned to her full griffin form. Her claws gouged the ground, wings snapping outward like thunder. Her head lowered and eyes narrowed with divine focus.

She extended a claw.

“Get on.”

Arielle didn’t argue.

She ran—stumbling into Aquila’s flank, dragging her legs up over the beast’s back like a drunk trying to mount a horse in a thunderstorm. Aquila launched upward the moment she was on, wings blasting dirt and broken bone into the air.

They soared high, then swept low—retreating through the trees, soaring back over the path they had taken earlier.

When they landed, Arielle collapsed onto the grass, heaving. Her hands trembled as she tried to reach for her bag. Her fingers missed the strap twice before finally gripping it.

Aquila paced nearby, watching her.

“We’re out of potions,” Arielle rasped.

“I know.”

“I don’t know if I can stand again.”

“You will,” Aquila said calmly.

Arielle leaned her head back and looked up at the treetops. The sun had faded almost completely. Only a blood-orange streak remained on the edge of the sky. The light was failing, and the air stank of rot and burning roots.

She sat up. Bit her tongue until the shaking stopped. Then drew a small dagger and cut into the inside of her palm.

“I can power one more magic circle,” she said.

“Make it count.”

They returned to the bottleneck with one goal: cut until there’s nothing left to cut.

Aquila dove with wings carrying the full brunt of her fury, tearing into the front wave of demons. She’d lost all subtlety now—she didn’t dance around her enemies. She crushed them. Wings shredded. Claws split skulls. Her screeches were like thunderbolts cracking from mountain peaks.

Arielle dropped behind her, bleeding from the hand, smearing the carved blood into a sequence of runes etched into the stone with her last knife.

A blood trap.

Not refined. Not precise.

But devastating. It sucked all her remaining magic essence out of her.

The moment the lead stalkers crossed the line, Arielle shouted, “Detonate!”

The magic circle flared with red light, then burst into a wave of concussive flame.

Boooooooom!!

It wasn’t clean—it caught Aquila on the edge—but the griffin powered through it with only a snarl.

Dozens of demons were incinerated on impact.

But dozens more came.

They always came.

Arielle was on one knee, breathing smoke, barely able to lift her weapon. Her limbs were numb. Her head spun. The scent of her own blood was thick in her throat.

And then—the horn.

Hooooonk!!

A blast of deep, echoing resonance that made the trees shake.

Then a second.

A third.

Then light—bright, essence light—shot from the east ridge.

Arielle blinked and turned her head.

Figures appeared on the horizon, just beyond the upper tree line. Riders. Marching columns. A wyvern banner flapping in the wind.

Not Damien’s.

But something else.

Then the first spell tore through the horde—an arcing chain of electricity that danced across ten demon bodies at once.

Swiiiishhhh!

The second was a storm of ice lances that froze half the ravine.

A detachment of elite mages charged forward behind it, supported by mounted archers and high-class mercenaries from Greshan’s east checkpoint.

Arielle coughed. “Who the hell—?”