Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger-Chapter 124: Ex . Ten Steps Ahead

Dark energy exploded from Eleanor’s body like a dam shattered by divine wrath. It flooded the cavern in a wave of suffocating pressure, turning the air thick, heavy, and almost unbreathable.

Leon stood still, his eyes wide with genuine bafflement. His senses screamed as he watched her transform, but even his instincts couldn’t quite wrap themselves around what he was witnessing.

A voice boomed from within her, no longer hers, it was deeper, ancient, and warped with reverence and rage.

"Yes... offer your body and soul to me, so I may fulfill the wish of our GOD!"

The ground cracked beneath Eleanor’s feet. All around the cavern, demons shrieked, not in fury, but in agony. Their bodies convulsed as the life essence was ripped from their cores, siphoned away in thick streams of black mist, all of it surging toward her like a tidal wave.

Leon could feel it. Her presence, her very existence, growing stronger by the second.

F-rank... E... D... B... A... S...

And then it hit SS-rank.

The pressure swallowed the entire cave. Even the stalactites above began to tremble.

But Leon just blinked, his expression showing boredom at the transformation occurring.

Eleanor’s hair, once golden, now shimmered with oily black. Her eyes, once clear and blue, had turned a piercing, haunting violet. Her uniform was gone, replaced by a flowing shadow-dress that bled black mist into the air around her. The change wasn’t just physical. She didn’t even feel human anymore.

Then, the voice inside her body returned, colder than before.

"Now, boy... offer yourself for the resurrection of our GOD."

Leon narrowed his eyes.

Resurrection?

’All this hassle is because some fanatics are trying to raise their dead god? I swear to God I’ll be the first one to drive my sword through that god’s heart.’ Leon didn’t care how he’d do it; all he knew was that he would.

He tucked the thought away for later and stood up straighter.

"What if I don’t do what you want?" he said simply.

The SS-rank aura erupted again, spreading like a shockwave through the cave.

It was powerful. Familiar, even, he had felt this level of pressure before. His mother and His father were both SS-rank. But this... this was different. This wasn’t the refined might of a Federation commander.

This was twisted.

Then the voice inside Eleanor prepared to speak again,

"Then I’ll have to use—"

But it cut off.

The body staggered. Her eyes widened as blood spilled from her mouth. She clutched her chest, then collapsed to her knees.

The SS-rank aura shattered like glass.

"...What did you do to me?" the voice growled, suddenly afraid.

But it wasn’t Leon who answered. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

A new voice spoke, rich and feminine, carrying weight and majesty.

"He didn’t do anything. I did."

Dark flames burst to life beside Leon.

From within, a figure stepped out, her silhouette elegant and deadly. Her hair, once white due to exhaustion, now flowed like black silk. Two dragon horns curled from her temples. Her amber eyes glowed with the authority of a sovereign beast. And just beneath her eyes, glowing dragon runes shimmered with quiet power.

Elizabeth.

Leon’s lips curled into a grin as he glanced her way.

"You really know how to do an entrance."

****

Darkness coiled in the air like smoke from an unseen fire. Eleanor’s master, still speaking through her trembling lips, stared up from the cave floor, wide-eyed and stricken. The confidence, the arrogance it had worn like armor just moments ago had cracked clean through. Leon could see it. That flicker of disbelief buried beneath the hatred. And he smiled.

"I think I should receive a title in the future better than Dragon Slayer," Leon said, in a light, and almost playful tone.

Beside him, Elizabeth, now fully revealed in her dragonkin form, regal and radiating ancient might, turned slightly. A blush danced across her cheeks, softening the sharp power etched into her expression.

"Please stop teasing me," she muttered, though her lips tugged into a faint smile.

The moment between them, delicate and genuine, was a slap to the face of the demon bound within Eleanor. It boiled. Literally. The body beneath it twitched violently as dark energy tried to surge again but failed. It howled, voice raw and broken.

"DO YOU DARE IGNORE ME?!"

The laughter and warmth faded. Both Leon and Elizabeth turned toward the twisted figure on the ground. Eleanor’s body was upright but hunched, shadow seeping from her back like tendrils searching for form. Her eyes, her master’s eyes, glared up at them with venomous fury.

"What... did you do to me?" the voice rasped, gritted and agonized.

Leon crossed his arms and tilted his head.

"It’s simple," he said. "You ingested dragon blood."

For a heartbeat, silence.

Then, pure unfiltered shock.

The eyes of the demon through Eleanor widened as the realization crashed into it like a falling mountain. "Dragon... blood..."

The demon understood the implications. Dragon blood was distinct from any demon blood; it was stronger, bolder, and purer. Its racial traits were so dominant that should any demon blood attempt to integrate into the body it inhabited, the dragon blood would go on a rampage, affecting both the host and the invader. The demon had tried to hijack a vessel that was already claimed, albeit temporarily, so it received the full backlash.

The demonic presence inside Eleanor spasmed. Cracks of shadow peeled off her form, and it howled again, this time in confusion and disbelief.

"You... you knew she was a mole from the beginning!"

Leon’s eyes narrowed. "I didn’t."

That answer cut deeper than any blade. The demon froze.

"...Then how?"

It didn’t take long. Before the answer unfolded within its mind like a cursed scripture. "You... you gave the dragon blood to all your teammates," it whispered.

Leon didn’t respond. He just stood there, calm, and silent. But silence, in the face of paranoia, is louder than any confirmation.

It believed him.

And it was only half right.

Leon hadn’t known Eleanor was the mole. Not at first. But suspicion had started to coil in his gut after the A-rank demon attacked them right after they cleared their last stronghold, and the A rank demon attacked right when he and his team were low on stamina, and vulnerable. Something had felt off. The timing was to good to be coincidental.

So Leon watched, closely.

And what he noticed was strange behavior, not from Eleanor, but from Eden.

Which is why, late one night, Leon took a handful of Eden’s hair while he slept and sent it to the only person he knew could analyze it.

Elizabeth.