SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts

The city of Greshan never truly slept.

Even under the dark velvet sky, its streets hummed with life—muted and rhythmic. Lanterns swung from poles. Campfires burned low near traveler tents.

Conversations whispered from merchant circles, dice clicked across tavern tables, and mercenaries drank under moonlight while keeping one eye open.

But for Damien, none of that mattered.

He had watched Arielle vanish into the roads beyond Greshan with Aquila, Zeke, and Lira. Watched them turn the corner into shadows.

And when the silence swallowed her final footstep, Damien turned around and walked back inside the inn without a word.

He said nothing to Lyone, who was still wide awake and idly counting coins like a child trying to fall asleep with gold fever.

He simply entered the room, shut the door, removed his coat, and lay flat on the thin mattress, staring up at the ceiling.

A long breath left his chest.

Sleep didn’t come quickly.

But eventually, it did.

The first hint of sunlight bled into Greshan’s skyline like golden ink spreading across the canvas of dawn.

The sound of boots on wooden floorboards echoed from the hallway. A door creaked open.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Footsteps padded across the room.

Then—

“Get up.”

Lyone groaned from under his blanket. “It’s not even bright out…”

Damien pulled the cover off him with a single tug. “Training starts at sunrise.”

“I hate sunrise.”

“You’ll learn to love it.”

“I think I’ll learn to punch you in your sleep first.”

Damien raised an eyebrow. “You can try.”

Lyone muttered curses under his breath but dragged himself out of bed, half-dressed and yawning wide enough to swallow a peach. His hair was a mess. His shirt was on backwards. One boot was missing.

Fifteen minutes later, they were outside.

Greshan stretched out before them, a maze of stone paths and mismatched architecture.

The city was a strange patchwork of merchant tents, traveler inns, smithing huts, underground taverns, and scattered guild flags—built outward, not upward. It had no walls, no clear borders, and no rulers. Just an unspoken understanding.

Damien found a patch of open space just past a row of stone storage sheds. A bare patch of dirt with enough room for movement.

He tossed Lyone a short staff and drew one of his own from the edge of his cloak.

“Focus,” he said.

“On what?” Lyone asked, stifling a yawn.

“Not dying.”

That snapped the boy awake.

~~~~~

The first hour of training was standard: footwork drills, quick reaction exercises, mana control focus. Damien was relentless but structured.

Lyone had grown—still nowhere near ready, but his instincts were sharper, his timing better.

It might’ve even been enjoyable if Damien’s mind hadn’t drifted.

Somewhere between deflecting a wild strike and correcting Lyone’s posture, something shifted in Damien’s gaze.

His eyes became distant.

Colder.

His hand gripped the staff tighter. His footwork more aggressive. His strikes less instructional and more… testing.

Lyone barely caught the first one.

The second knocked him down.

The third slammed him into the dirt.

“Hey—!”

But Damien didn’t respond. His eyes were locked, his expression unreadable.

And then another hit—spinning sweep to the legs, a sharp jab to the shoulder, a throw that sent Lyone crashing to the ground with a dull thud.

“Damien—! You mad bastard!”

This time, the boy didn’t get up immediately. He groaned, wincing as he rolled over, his arm shaking slightly from the impact.

Damien blinked.

The haze in his mind cracked.

He stepped forward. “…Lyone.”

“You slammed me,” Lyone hissed. “Like a bag of rice!”

Damien crouched beside him, offering a potion vial. “I was… distracted.”

“Oh yeah? From what? The birds?”

Damien didn’t reply.

Lyone snatched the potion, grumbling as he drank. It fizzed sharp against his tongue, warm magic stitching bruised tissue and overworked muscles.

“Here,” Damien said, pulling a small coin pouch from his side. “Use this for the healer. And breakfast. And maybe something cold to press on your spine.”

Lyone peeked inside the pouch, his eyes counting the number of coins inside. “Fifteen… no, eighteen gold?”

“You said you hated sunrise.”

Lyone blinked. “Apology accepted.”

They didn’t train again after that—not immediately.

Instead, Damien walked them back through the early streets of Greshan, where merchants were still unpacking their wares and cooks were already stoking fires.

The air smelled of spiced bread and roasting nuts.

The tavern near their inn had breakfast set up already. They took a corner booth and ordered simply—eggs, dried fruit, hot tea for Damien, milk and sugared bread for Lyone.

For a while, they just ate.

Lyone still had a small limp.

But he smiled when the bread hit his tongue.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, chewing. “But you hit harder when you’re worried.”

Damien raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Lyone said, licking his fingers. “And don’t tell me you’re not. You’ve been walking like you’re expecting something bad to crawl out of the floorboards.”

Damien stared into his tea.

“Maybe,” he said at last.

“She’ll be fine,” Lyone said.

“She might not be,” Damien replied calmly. “And that’s the point.”

They spent the next hour touring Greshan.

Not for fun.

Damien used it to learn the current movement of mercenaries through the city—what roads were busiest, which traders had stopped taking certain routes, and whether any nearby locations had gone dark recently.

Lyone followed behind, mostly silent, occasionally stopping to gawk at odd things—a floating crystal orb that hummed when you got too close, a two-headed hawker offering enchanted ink tattoos, a merchant selling pocket-sized chimera skulls.

“This place is weird,” Lyone said.

Damien nodded. “It’s a checkpoint. No law. No rulers.”

“Then why isn’t it burning?”

“Because no one wants to be the one who breaks it.”

Lyone paused, frowning. “That’s… kind of cool. Also terrifying.”

“Apparently, that’s Greshan.”

By midafternoon, they returned to the training ground. Lyone had rehydrated. His body still ached, but he was too proud to say it.

“Same weapon?” Damien asked.

“No,” Lyone said, picking a thinner blade from the rack this time. “No more sticks. If I’m going to get bruised, I want to look cool doing it.”

Damien smirked. “Suit yourself.”

They trained until the sky began to soften again, sunlight bending toward the gold of late afternoon.

And still, no sign of Arielle.

But Damien said nothing.

He only fought harder.

And this time—he remembered who he was training. He couldn’t afford to break the boy.

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