Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 356

Chapter 356: EX 356. Primal Fury
Malachi closed the distance in a blur. His staff dragged a trail of primal energy behind it, the pressure sharp enough to make the air quake.

He barked out,

“Journey’s Art, fourth form… Crushing Blow.”

The staff seemed to gather layers of invisible weight as it came down, each one adding a deeper gravity to the strike.

Nikko’s pupils shrank to pinpoints at the speed he moved, her instincts screaming.

She threw up her right arm, catching most of the force, only for the bone to snap with a sharp crack as the impact launched her like a fired cannonball.

BOOM!!

She slammed into one of the arena’s mountains, stone folding inward as she became lodged in its side.

Malachi didn’t give her a heartbeat to breathe.

“Journey’s Art… seventh form.” His staff shot skyward, swelling until it dwarfed him—until it dwarfed even the mountain he aimed at. “Heaven Breaker.”

The mountain-sized staff crashed down.

Rock exploded outward, dust fanning into the arena in a massive shockwave before the weapon shrank and settled back into his grip.

Silence hit the stands like a wall. Even the remaining contestants, only a handful left across the battlefield, risked glancing at the devastation.

Elizabeth studied Leon’s side profile. The way he sat unmoving, face carved into stone—it unnerved her.

“Aren’t you going to do something?”

Leon didn’t answer at first. His gaze stayed fixed on the smoking ruin across the arena.

Dust boiled around the crater, heavy and thick. Then something inside the haze rippled.

Malachi felt it too. His fingers tightened on his staff.

The dust peeled back, revealing Nikko still embedded in the shattered mountainside. Her right arm hung broken, blood ran down from her forehead—and floating in front of her chest was the same gem she had caught earlier, pulsing faintly.

Only then did Leon speak.

“I’m not stepping in, for one simple reason,” he said quietly.

As primal energy burst from the mountain in a tidal wave, ripping the clouds overhead into spirals.

Shapes formed in the roiling energy, countless ancestral beasts, spectral and vast, bowing their heads as if in reverence to kin.

Leon finally completed his earlier statement: “…because there’s no way in hell my Nikko is losing to a monkey.”

Nikko’s voice rose from within that storm, layered with something old and wild.

“Call Of The wild… seventh form.”

The arena trembled.

“Primal Fury.”

And in the next breath, all hell broke loose.

****

Call of the Wild had always been Nikko’s sharpest blade.

The art felt like an extension of her pulse, but its seventh form demanded more primal energy than her body could gather in time.

Even with her Supreme Talent, Primal Hunter, the buildup crawled too slowly.

Using it in a real fight usually meant gambling with open-ended exposure, waiting while enemies watched her guard slip.

The gem changed that.

It fed her the primal energy the form needed, pooling inside it like a second heart. Now she didn’t have to wait. She didn’t have to risk anything. She could simply unleash it.

The words slipped from her lips, steady and low at first, then expanding until they rolled across the entire arena.

“Primal Fury.”

Her hair washed into white streaked with green, lengthening in a way that made the crowd fall silent. Muscle corded along her arms and back, sculpted rather than bulky, a predatory grace sharpening every line of her body.

Her eyes narrowed to a wild gleam that felt ancient.

Across the cracked stone, Malachi gulped. Even from a distance, Nikko could feel the hitch in his breath.

She didn’t blame him. The power running through her veins wasn’t calm or polite. It wanted—no, demanded—movement.

She vanished from the crater at the mountain’s side appearing directly Infront of Malachi.

He barely had time to blink.

“Fast—” he managed, but the word broke as she spun off the ball of her foot. The kick carried so much primal force that when his staff met her shin, the energy punched straight through the metal.

It slammed into his chest and hurled him across the arena like a rag blown off a cliff.

Control. That was the difference. At this moment, no one alive handled primal energy with the precision Nikko did, and she felt that truth settle into her bones as she charged after him.

Malachi flipped midair and landed hard, hands trembling just enough to betray the impact.

He stared at her with a sharp, evaluating gaze.

“Not only can she use primal energy,” he muttered, almost to himself, “her art blends with it perfectly. So this is what she meant by talent.”

He didn’t finish. Nikko’s hand closed around his face too fast for his eyes to track.

She lifted him effortlessly, ready to drive him into the ground.

But before she slammed him, he exploded.

The real Malachi stood several meters away, breath steady but shoulders tight.

Nimble Cloud—the third form of Journey’s Art.

A clever escape, but not one that rattled her. Her right arm knitted itself back together as the lingering damage faded under the primal energy’s guidance.

“I’ll say this,” Malachi called out.

“You’re strong. Strong enough to earn my respect.”

He spun his staff once, the motion smooth, then planted his heel and drew in a sharp breath.

“So let me show you mine.”

Golden light flared across his body, bright enough that the arena shadows recoiled.

“Journey’s Art, Eighth Form—Golden Immortal.”

It shouldn’t have existed. Journey’s Art was basic, capped at the fifth form. But the way it resonated with Malachi let him push past its limits, forging sixth, seventh, and the impossible eighth form on his own.

Even so, Nikko didn’t feel threatened.

His rank, his glow, his form—it didn’t matter.

The harmony between her talent and Call of the Wild felt like something absolute. She sank into her stance, weight balanced, her breath steady.

Malachi mirrored her, staff angled low, golden aura humming.

They moved at the same moment—

—but the voice from above cut through the rising tension.

“The tournament is over,” the goat-headed overseer announced.

Light swallowed both competitors.

And just like that, they vanished from the arena.