Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 378

Chapter 378: EX 378. Show Off
Two dark wings tore free from the swirling light, feathers made of shadow and flame scattering into the mist.

A pair of hands followed, both marked with glowing sigils, gripping the edge of the rift as if dragging the rest of the body forward.

The light peeled away, shrinking and folding back into itself, and Eden emerged.

His wings beat slow and steady, keeping him suspended above the periphery.

They looked nothing like the wings of any creature.

They were sharp, sleek, and wrong in a way that made the air twitch around them.

His eyes glowed in mismatched colors.

The right burned with a deep violet, the left with a sharp crimson.

On either side of him floated two spheres of condensed energy, one crackling with flame and the other pulsing with corruption.

The Dowager stared at him, struck silent.

She had seen human prodigies, she had met divine beings, she had watched corruption twist the world into nightmares.

Yet what hovered before her now felt like it belonged to none of those categories.

It felt like something new, something the world had never been meant to contain.

This was Blazing Void.

It was the kind of form that only existed through sheer willpower and a broken rule or two.

The remaining corrupt beasts turned their heads toward him.

Their bodies quivered, their tentacles shook, and their eyeless faces lifted in unison.

Instinct warned them they were staring at a predator far beyond their level, but instinct could not make their legs move fast enough.

Eden inhaled.

When he spoke, the voice that came out was layered, the sound of two beings aligned so perfectly they might as well share a soul.

“Amaterasu.”

The spheres floating beside him drifted closer until they touched.

The moment they met, a new flame ignited.

It was dark, heavy and alive.

It spiraled into a mass large enough to swallow a house whole, the color bending the light around it.

The beasts felt it.

Every one of them tried to flee, but the world around them slowed as Eden sank deeper into his Lord talent.

Time thickened and their movement lagged.

The creatures froze mid-stride, as if caught in cooling tar.

Eden lowered his hand.

“Burn.”

The command was simple.

The result was absolute.

The dark flame swept outward, rolling across the periphery like a quiet tide.

It touched the trapped beasts and erased them. No screams.

No final burst of strength.

Just instant, perfect silence.

Their bodies fell apart before they could register pain, turning to drifting motes of corrupt dust that scattered across the ground.

Eden descended through the falling ashes, landing with a light step.

His wings folded back into him as the Blazing Void form dissolved.

Blessing perched on his shoulder again, humming softly, as if the two of them hadn’t just erased fifty rank nine abominations in seconds.

He turned his head toward Adrian.

The shield-bearer was already cutting through the last of his own targets.

****

Eden’s dark flames curled away, as he drifted back toward the group with his hands in his pockets.

Blessing perched on his shoulder like nothing extraordinary had just happened.

On his way back Eden turned to Adrian, his tone light, almost teasing.

“It seems it’s my win, try to finish up quick.”

He walked away with an easy, casual stride, still half-smirking and carrying that eerie calm that came from someone who had glimpsed power far above mortal comprehension.

The residue of his ability lingered in the air, as if time itself was still catching up to the moment he’d warped.

Adrian let out a quiet scoff.

“Show-off,” he muttered under his breath, though there was no bitterness in it.

Only a spark of excitement.

Eden’s technique, Blazing Void was still fresh in his mind, but he hadn’t yet grasped the price behind it.

That form hadn’t simply been flame and corruption merging; it had been Blessing and Eden fully overlapping, soul and ability intertwining.

The moment the wings tore free, corruption, thick enough to drown most high-stage fighters, was released; yet, it still held in perfect balance.

Blazing Void wasn’t some inherited skill.

It was something Eden and Blessing created during their long campaign clearing clusters, it was born from desperation and innovation.

The union demanded everything from both sides. Eden’s body carried the control factor of a cluster guardian deep in his psyche.

Blessing held raw corruption in her being.

When they merged, even for a heartbeat, the risk wasn’t injury, it was takeover.

Before Eden’s rise to the divine stage, they could only survive the union for three seconds.

Three seconds of overwhelming strength before corruption tried to burst into his mind and hollow him out.

But that was before everything changed.

Before he stepped into divinity.

Before his talent evolved into a Lord Talent. Before his loyalty to Leon became more than camaraderie, before that vow anchored his very self.

Eden had wielded corruption as if it feared him instead of the other way around.

And now, with Eden walking away, the battlefield fell quiet for half a heartbeat.

Adrian rolled his shoulders, lifted his shield, and moved forward.

The creatures that were still alive, what remained of the fifty meant for him, bared their jagged mouths and screeched.

Rank 9 corruption pulsed off them in waves, thick enough to make lesser fighters fall to their knees; yet, a simple, sharp smile, one that spoke more than any boast could, plastered itself on his face.

“Alright,” he breathed, settling into stance, “time to end this.”

He stepped toward the swarm, ready to go all out, finally free to unleash what he’d held back till now.

****

Adrian never took Eden finishing first as a sign of weakness on his part.

If anything, the pile of corpses behind him proved otherwise.

For someone built for defense, cutting down that many rank-nine creatures was already absurd. Still, a tight spark ran under his ribs.

Eden had shown off in front of their Lord.

Adrian refused to be the one overshadowed.

A snarling blur lunged at him.

Claws swept across his chest, yet nothing touched him.

The strike slid through his body like it was passing through light itself, and in the same breath the creature’s torso split open as if fate had simply corrected the error.

His Lord talent pulsed quietly around him.

[Throne of Denial]

Any fate of injury meant for him returned to its owner.

Any fate of death meant for him vanished before reaching him.

That was the throne he carried.

Untouchable and immutable.

A shield shaped by will rather than metal.

But even a throne had limits.

Its nature was defense first.

Reflecting hits alone wouldn’t give him the kind of impact he needed.

Not when Eden had just turned half the battlefield into charcoal.

Adrian rolled his shoulder, grounding his stance. He could feel Leon’s presence behind him.

It pushed something fierce awake inside him.

He wanted to show his Lord the reason he’d sworn the vow.

A dozen corrupt beasts circled, sensing the shift. Adrian exhaled, fingers tightening around his shield.

A dark shimmer coiled along its edge, space bending like a curtain about to be pulled aside.

“Black Star Art,” he said, voice low, almost a promise.

“Ultimate form… .”