Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 383

Chapter 383: EX 383. Proud Teacher
Leon watched her closely, his breath steady, his expression calm.

He knew what was coming.

The Dowager, on the other hand, looked confused.

‘Is that Dragon Tongue? No, this is different.’

Dragon tongue wasn’t foreign to her.

She’d lived long enough to see true dragons speak worlds into motion.

Their voice carried dominion over their own nature, magic, might and the hierarchy of their kind.

But what she sensed from Elizabeth wasn’t that familiar weight.

It was colder.

As if her presence reached for something dragons were never meant to touch.

Dragons commanded life with authority. Elizabeth commanded the boundary that came after it; Death.

That was her own gift, her own nature.

[Throne of Finality].

A talent that bent anything dead, or close enough into her legion, so long as the creature’s rank didn’t surpass hers.

And the swarm ahead of her was filled with nothing stronger than rank seven vermin.

Perfect prey.

Her pseudo-draconic form amplified everything she was.

Sigils pulsed across her skin like living brands. Horns curved upward with quiet menace.

Origin energy from her three cores surged through her, building with each breath she took.

When she said “Begone,” it wasn’t a command.

It was judgment.

All at once, bodies collapsed.

Rank seven abominations dropped like their strings had been cut, their single eyes dimming.

The thud of so many corpses striking the steps rolled up the staircase in waves.

The rank eight and nine creatures halted, their instinct finally overriding their hunger.

They studied her from the dark, hesitant, wary.

Nothing happened.

For a moment.

Then the corpses twitched.

A slow, unnatural jerk, like cold fingers pulling them up from beneath the skin.

Leon saw the shift first.

The faint curl at the edge of Elizabeth’s lips, the steady glow in her eyes.

The Dowager’s face paled as the dead began to rise.

One corpse jerked, then another, then dozens—until a carpet of rank seven bodies clawed upright, joints snapping back into place.

A foul energy pulsed through them, tying them to her like strings to a puppeteer.

Elizabeth didn’t turn around.

She didn’t need to. Her voice drifted back to the group, calm and certain.

“Get ready for a show.”

In front of her, the risen swarm faced the living monsters still frozen on the staircase.

****

As soon as the first corpses twitched back to unlife, it didn’t take long for the risen rank-7s to hurl themselves at the rank-8s and rank-9s further up the steps.

They moved like a tide of rot, a frenzied mass crashing into the higher ranks without fear or hesitation.

Since the rank-7s had made up nearly the entire swarm, their numbers alone warped the battlefield.

In the span of a breath, the white steps below became a marketplace of gore, undead bodies slamming into their former kin with crazed, mindless devotion.

Corrupt beasts could only fall to corruption itself, and Elizabeth’s legion carried that in abundance.

But her undead weren’t bound by the same rules as the living swarm.

They died only when she permitted it.

Each time an undead rank-7 was torn apart, the body pulled itself back together, limbs reattaching with wet cracks as it launched itself again at the nearest enemy.

They fought like beasts that couldn’t comprehend the meaning of defeat.

Leon’s squad watched in silence.

The carnage was loud, but their reaction was quiet, stunned into stillness.

Rachel’s voice finally broke the hush when she caught the smile stretching across Elizabeth’s face. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t kind. It was the sort of smile seen in stories whispered to scare children.

“She’s way scarier than she looks,” Rachel muttered.

Nikko, Adrian, Eden, and Malachi all nodded without hesitation.

Leon blinked at them, baffled.

“What’s scary about a girl enjoying herself?”

“…”

“…”

The look the others gave him was the kind reserved for lost causes.

Whatever hope they once had for Leon’s sense of self-preservation, it was gone.

The Dowager, meanwhile, stood in stunned quiet. She didn’t flinch as the slaughter played out beneath her, but her expression tightened in disbelief.

“How does a power like this even exist…?”

For three years she had seen creatures born from corrupted laws, forged in warped divinity, creatures that twisted the rules of life and death. She had thought Adrian and Eden were anomalies.

But this… this was something entirely different.

Elizabeth clicked her tongue.

“Tch. Even after the undying gift I gave you, you still can’t win?”

The squad glanced at each other, unsure if she was genuinely disappointed in her undead.

Elizabeth lifted her hand lightly.

“Fine. I’ll give you a little boost.”

On the battlefield, several undead rank-7s collapsed as a magic circle burned open beneath them.

Their bodies convulsed once before her voice rolled out in cold command:

“Fuse.”

The corpses sank into the circle like melting wax, their shapes warping together in a grotesque blend.

A moment later, a single larger creature rose from the glowing sigils, still undead, still obedient, and now radiating the power of a solid rank-8.

It hurled itself forward with a roar, and the battle took another brutal turn.

****

As the clash unfolded across the steps, the pattern repeated itself in every pocket of the battlefield.

Rank-7 undead toppled, their bodies swallowed by sudden circles of pale sigils.

They rose again, stitched together into bulkier, stronger forms.

Each fusion birthed a new rank-8 abomination that hurled itself back into the carnage.

The change was instant.

These new creations actually held their ground. Rank-8 undead tore through living rank-8 abominations, ripping out the corruption inside them and offering their broken frames to Elizabeth’s will.

Once she claimed them, they too were dragged into the ritual—eight rank-8 corpses merging into a single rank-9 monster that stepped out of the circle with a shudder that shook the air.

This was the system her talent had always held before evolution.

[Eternal Dragon Requiem] hadn’t rewritten itself when it evolved; it had refined what mattered. Anything useless had been shed, but fusion was far from useless.

It was destructive, efficient, and terrifying enough to turn tides on its own.

So, as the number of rank-8 undead swelled, Elizabeth calmly escalated again, fusing all of them into towering rank-9s that plunged into the fray like executioners.

What had been a deadlock moments ago shifted hard.

The living swarm buckled.

Rank-9 undead cleaved through them, dragging more bodies into Elizabeth’s grasp.

The steps, once pale and pristine, became streaked with dark splatter as the undead carved a path forward, methodical and unstoppable.

Leon watched the massacre with a bright grin and wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye.

“I taught her well.”