Novel Full Chapter 480: Didn’t Protect Your Hand
Chapter 480: Didn’t Protect Your Hand
Seliah, drenched in sweat but alive, called out as she speared another demon. “Sir Damien! They’re retreating!”
He looked up.
The demons were indeed breaking formation and scattering back toward the same place they’d arrived from.
Some limping. Some crawling.
A few dragging wounded limbs.
Haldric shouted, “DON’T LET THEM ESCAPE! WE CAN’T HAVE THEM REGROUP!”
Damien raised a hand sharply.
“NO!”
Everyone froze.
“If you chase them,” Damien said, “the variants will lure you deeper. They want you in the area. They want a massacre.”
The soldiers exchanged uneasy glances.
Haldric stared at him. “How do you know?”
“Because I’ve been fighting demons longer than a lot of people.” Damien stepped forward, eyes sharp. “This wasn’t a full attack. It was a probe. They wanted to test your defenses… and see if any strong fighters lived here.”
Silence.
Only Fenrir and Luton made sound, the wolf chewing on a demon, and the slime devouring another corpse like a starving glutton.
Damien continued, voice low. “There are creators out there. Still alive. Still making new variants. And this—” He gestured at the battlefield. “—proves they’re getting bolder.”
Haldric’s jaw clenched. Seliah swallowed hard.
The exhausted soldiers looked at Damien as if he were the only thing holding the horizon together.
Damien exhaled slowly.
“Well,” he muttered, “at least Fenrir and Luton ate well.”
Fenrir burped.
Luton wobbled like jelly.
Haldric let out a shaky laugh. “You might be the strangest mercenary I’ve ever met.”
Damien shrugged. “I’ve heard that once or twice. Or maybe more.”
The fields were quiet now, save for the crackling fires from the burnt plantations and faint whimpers of wounded demons being swallowed one by one by Luton.
The worst of the attack was over.
But Damien’s suspicions were no longer suspicions.
They were confirmed.
The demon creators were active and their experiments were spreading.
And to Damien… that meant one thing.
He needed to grow stronger. Fast. More reasons to return to the Forest.
The smoke from the first skirmish still lingered in the air, drifting lazily over the trampled fields.
Soldiers were exhausted, wounded, or slumped over their weapons catching whatever breath they could. Damien and Haldric stood near the edge of the farmland, surveying the battered earth.
“We should head back,” Haldric said, wiping demon blood from his gauntlets. “Before night falls.”
Damien gave a short nod. Fenrir padded beside him, tail flicking lazily as though the earlier battle had been a light warm-up. Luton was the opposite, swollen from its meal, wobbling in strangely content circles around them.
However, as the second passed by, it began to reduce, shrinking back down to its base size.
They were thinking of going to rest but the world wouldn’t let them rest.
HOOOOOON—!!!
Another horn blared from the western watchtower.
Haldric’s head snapped toward it. “What again?!”
Damien’s more tuned senses felt it first. The faint pulses of weak, scattered demonic essence. Nothing like before. Smaller. Fewer. Sloppy movement.
“They’re not done,” he muttered. “But these ones are weak.”
Haldric glanced at him. “A retreating wounded batch?”
“No,” Damien said. “A second volley. Probably meant to hit while we were still fighting the first. Quiet unfortunate that these ones will die without fulfilling their purpose.”
The soldiers groaned, but discipline snapped them into formation again. They were tired, but ready.
“Commander!” a scout shouted as he approached. “Fifteen… maybe twenty demons incoming! Small ones!”
Haldric grinned humorlessly. “If that’s all… we can handle it.”
Damien stretched his neck and turned to Luton.
“You’re up.”
The slime vibrated like a drum.
“And Seliah,” Damien added, glancing back toward the city gate, “keep the rear safe.”
She nodded and took her team to seal off the entrance path to the fields.
The demons came into view shortly after, hunched, snarling goblin-like demons with sickly skin and dripping fangs. Barely intelligent. More like scavengers than soldiers.
Damien didn’t move. He crossed his arms, letting the soldiers handle their end.
Haldric raised his halberd and shouted. “CHARGE!”
The soldiers roared, pushing forward with renewed vigor.
Luton expanded once again and rolled into the center of the battlefield like a boulder made of gelatinous doom. The first demon lunged at it and disappeared halfway into its surface with a wet gulp.
Another tried stabbing it with its claws but et the same fate.
FWWORP!
It was gone, swallowed alive.
A third demon fled, realizing too late that the red blob was the most dangerous thing there.
Luton simply bounced forward like a happy child and flattened it.
Damien watched with faint amusement.
Haldric watched with faint horror.
“By the gods…” the general whispered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen something eat with such… joy.”
“That’s Luton,” Damien said dryly. “Always happy when demons show up to be eaten.”
The soldiers struck down the remaining demons with relative ease. Anyone who managed to kill one didn’t even get to look at the corpse twice before Luton slurped it into its body like a noodle.
“HEY! I killed that one!” a soldier protested.
Luton wobbled at him.
The soldier paled. “Nevermind! All yours!”
Within minutes, every last demon was dead or eaten.
The second attack ended faster than the first.
Haldric stretched his back and breathed out. “Thank the heavens. And thank your… slime.”
Damien smirked. “He lives to serve.”
“Serve what?” the general muttered under his breath. “Nightmares?”
But it was done. The battlefields were clear.
“Let’s head back,” Haldric said, raising his arm to direct the retreat. “All of you regroup! Move!”
The soldiers formed ranks and began marching toward the city. Damien walked with them, Fenrir a silent white shadow at his heels, Luton bouncing happily beside him.
The walk back should have been uneventful.
It wasn’t.
As they neared the city gate, a group of richly dressed nobles approached on horseback. Their silks and bright cloaks were absurdly out of place among blood, sweat, and demon ichor.
Leading them was a round man with an over-decorated coat, gold rings on all ten fingers, and a feathered hat so tall it wobbled when he walked.
Haldric muttered, “Ah… Lord Ravendan. The most annoying noble in the kingdom.”
Damien raised a brow. “The name fits.”
The noble strutted forward with the ego of a man who had never swung a sword in his life.
“AHA! Men of valor!” he declared loudly. “Congratulations on surviving another demon spat! I must say—”
Then he saw Fenrir.
And everything else vanished to him.
“My word…” Ravendan breathed, eyes widening. “What… what is this majestic beast?”
Fenrir growled softly, a warning rumble.
Damien put a hand on the wolf’s head.
“Fenrir is not for sale.”
Ravendan blinked. “Who spoke of selling? I merely expressed adoration! But since you mention it—”
Damien sighed.
Here it comes.
“—how much?” Ravendan asked, puffing out his chest. “Name your price.”
“Not for sale,” Damien repeated, firmer.
Ravendan waved dismissively. “Everyone has a price, young man. I offer one thousand gold coins!”
The soldiers around them stiffened.
One thousand wasn’t a small amount.
Damien didn’t even blink. The amount wasn’t near enough to even make him blink. “Not for sale.”
“Hmph. Very well. Two thousand!”
“No.”
“Five thousand!”
Damien’s jaw twitched. “No.”
Ravendan grinned triumphantly, believing he had cracked the code. “Ten thousand gold coins! More than most generals earn in two years! Enough for a manor, a dozen servants, and—”
“I said no.”
“But—”
“No.”
Ravendan puffed up like a rooster, annoyed at being dismissed publicly. His noble companions whispered among themselves, exchanging smug smirks as though Damien would soon be forced to bow.
“I happen to be a tamer myself,” Ravendan said proudly. “Your wolf will be treated with the utmost care. I guarantee it. He will be—”
He reached out. He reached for Fenrir.
Damien opened his mouth but the warning came too late.
Fenrir’s head snapped forward with blinding speed.
CHOMP!
“AAAAAAGHHHHH!!! M-MY HAND! MY HAND—!!!”
Ravendan screamed as his right hand disappeared between Fenrir’s teeth. Blood sprayed in an arc, splattering the noble’s silk cloak and the dirt beneath him.
The soldiers recoiled, wincing in pain as though it was their own hand that had gotten bitten.
The nobles all screamed.
Fenrir calmly spat the severed hand out onto the dirt with a disgusted snort.
Damien placed a hand on the wolf’s neck. “You warned him. Good job.”
Ravendan collapsed to his knees, clutching the stump of his wrist, shrieking like a banshee.
Damien crouched next to him, voice flat and unbothered.
“You should probably hurry to a healer.”
Ravendan stared at him, eyes wild with pain and outrage.
“If you’re fast enough,” Damien continued, “they might be able to reattach that before the nerves die.”
“You—you—MONSTER!” Ravendan spat, trembling.
Damien shrugged. “You tried to touch Fenrir.”
“M-MY TITLE—my status as a noble—!”
“Didn’t protect your hand.”
A few soldiers snorted. Others openly laughed. Several nobles turned pale. A handful stepped back, suddenly nervous to even be near Damien. No one wanted to be next in one to have their hands bitten off.