Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class - Chapter 524: Grim Student Examination (8)
Chapter 524: Grim Student Examination (8)
[Round 13 leaderboard]
Rank 1: Almond Regalon
Rank 2: Norezo Lav’eil
Rank 3: Zuma Ongrai Zed
Rank 4: Baratos Yelvain
Rank 5: Roman David
Rank 6: Mephis Vikans
Rank 7: Lobezi Varkeshi
Rank 8: Nuttain Norrono
Rank 9: Dravos Quenrai
Rank 10: Xu Ti’lam Reze
Rank 11: Jeral…
Almond’s eyes sharpened, his lips curving into a satisfied smile.
Finally, he took the first rank.
And a new name also popped up directly at the second rank.
He came back into the top 10 in the overall leaderboard, but Lily and others were nowhere to be seen.
’They have to grasp a Rune of Power fast.’
…
Round 14 begins.
This battlefield was a midnight plain. The sky was a vast dome of black glass, fractured by streaks of violet lightning that crawled like veins across the heavens. Beneath their feet stretched an ocean of shadows so deep it felt bottomless, rippling with a strange, viscous texture. Every step sank slightly, as if walking upon liquid night.
And from that night, enemies emerged.
Not predators of flesh — but wraiths. They moved like whispers, clinging to the edges of sight, dragging sickness with them. Each carried with it a lingering malice, like poison woven into the marrow of the world.
’Debuffs?’ Lily’s eyes flickered.
The enemies of these rounds were ethereal and applied various debuffs that had to be resisted where they specifically attacked.
Movement speed reduction.
Invert Movement.
Sense Distortion.
Various kinds of poisons.
They didn’t attack, but applied debuffs, but when they attacked, it was dangerous.
If people didn’t deal with the debuffs before they attacked, things would get nasty because one more thing everyone discovered was that their attacks against these wraiths reduced significantly the more debuffs they were affected with.
But in one area of this dimension, someone was starting to deal with them very quickly.
Amidst over a hundred chaotic wraiths, Lily floated with a sea of darkness above her, permeating her entire domain, and releasing her Dreadolons that took on the debuffs from her while she absorbed all the information she could from them.
This was her chance.
’My truth…’
Her hair drifted unnaturally in the airless plain, and her eyes glimmered faintly, the kind of light one might mistake for stars — if stars bled darkness instead of light.
Her chakrams spun in her hands, leaving behind rings of faintly glowing script as she moved them, each sigil heavy with foreboding. Around her, the Dreadolons stirred — her monstrous summons shuddered, black mist seeping from their scales and bone, their claws dripping with venom that infected everything around them, even the space itself.
For the first time since the trials began, Lily’s breath trembled. Not from fear, but from pressure — the pressure of something waiting to be born inside her.
The wraiths attacked her as if sensing something. All of them.
Lily was already almost immune to their debuffs since she could transfer them, hence the number of wraiths around her was also increasing.
The first wave struck with silence. No roar, no cry — just a ripple of killing intent slashing toward her throat from all sides.
’Hex.’
Her chakram flashed, intercepting with a curved arc. But it wasn’t steel that cut — it was an icy despair. A curse, a hex carried along the blade, splintering the echo into a heap of writhing ice that froze their ethereal forms and dissolved them before they got devoured by Eidolons that popped out of the Tenebrian Sea.
But, everything distorted as a ripple spread out from her Tenebrian Sea, like multiple waves.
And as these waves passed through every inch of her domain’s range, all wraiths became sluggish, purple frost marks appearing in their bodies and absorbing their power before channeling back to Lily.
But that wasn’t all. The time itself within her domain was getting distorted, divided.
The ground pulsed like a heartbeat. A second, deeper rhythm rose in her chest, spreading up her veins, darkening her skin with faint, glowing lines. They pulsed black-violet, bleeding time itself into her body.
Everything she perceived as her enemies slowed to a crawl while she and her Eidolon turned faster.
Her shadow grew taller, longer, stretching unnaturally across the battlefield. And within it — something stirred.
A Rune.
It carved itself into her chest in silence, jagged like broken clock-hands, flowing like venom, its shape constantly shifting. A sigil of black and violet, bleeding motes of green haze like poisonous spores. Its center was a hollow ring like an empty clock face, endlessly ticking as if devouring time itself.
Rune of Power: [Eclipsed Dreadspire].
Darkness. Time. Ice. Hex. Curse. Void.
Almond and Lily both had their understanding of Void from Voiderran, and knowing its characteristic of nullifying notions, it was a must to add their understanding of void in their Rune of Power’s birth.
Lily’s performance was getting uber exceptional in this round for obvious reasons.
Not only did she acquire her Rune of Power, but her combat arsenal, in addition to her Rune of Power, was utterly dominating in this round.
And thanks to the wraiths, she also got insights into exotic types of curses and hexes, birthing not only more variety of debuffs, but finally breaking through in her quality of debuffs and weakness applications.
Lily’s second Grim Tree—the Eclipse of End- was entirely dependent on debuffs, but the power boost she got with the build was also insane.
[The Eclipse of End]
—First Branch: Moonless Veil.
—Second Branch: Eclipse Convergence.
Moonless Veil: Any direct hit you do with your attacks inflicts enemies with -5% of overall attack power and -5% potency in sensing range. Can be stacked up to 10 times.
Eclipse Convergence: Attacks against enemies under debuffs deal more damage. +5% attack power per debuff, up to 100 stacks.
As the round was coming to an end with only one hour remaining, the nightmare began.
Since Round 11, the last one hour of each round, according to the theme of the round, spawned monsters and situations that were more dangerous and tricky.
In this round, it was straightforward.
Bosses appeared, giant, grotesque, ethereal monsters in an eldritch theme, each one spawning sinister beings.
Lily looked up at the monstrosity above her.
Its body was a cathedral of shadows, dozens of eyeless skulls stitched together into a spiraling tower of bone and void, its limbs nothing but rivers of shrieking wraiths entwined into grotesque arms. Every movement warped the ground beneath, spawning strange wraiths and birthing entire fields of debuffs into existence.
Sluggishness. Nausea. Sensory lock. Rot. Despair.
One hour remaining.
One could either kill it or escape and survive until the countdown to clear the round and move to the next for the opportunity to get more overall score. After all, there were still sixteen rounds left after this.
Lily’s eyes glinted.
She stood at the center of her Tenebrian Sea, her Dreadolons prowling in silence, their shapes blotting out the fractured lightning in the sky. Her chakrams spun idly in her hands, leaving streaks of black-violet script, her lips curving ever so slightly.
The colossus bellowed. Its voice wasn’t sound — it was weight. A curse that sought to smother existence.
The Rune of Power on her chest pulsed in reply.
“Bind.”
Her whisper rippled through the battlefield, transforming into a gift box of despair.
It exploded into colorful fireworks that shot into its body, imprinting themselves and multiplying.
The Tenebrian Sea convulsed, sending tidal waves of Eidolons outward, who let themselves get absorbed into the monster.
Instantly, the wraith-tide the monster commanded faltered. Chains of black ice sprouted across its limbs, each link inscribed with hexes that siphoned its vigor. Its movement slowed. Its roar fragmented.
And at once, it was subjected to a hundred debuffs.
Lily had created a spell that was like a seed carrying DNA, A.K.A designs, of multiple debuffs, and that giftbox of Despair was full of those seeds.
It was a Hex that chained to her other skills.
To boost the buffs, she made her Eidolons get devoured by the monster, instantly empowering and multiplying the debuffs despite this monster having quite a resistance to them.
But it was over.
The chakrams split into dozens of afterimages, time distorting around them — dozens, then hundreds.
They spun fast and faster, time itself accelerating their movement as they bloomed with her Rune of Power’s patterns.
And then—
She struck.
The chakrams fell in perfect symmetry, weaving into a single spiral arc. Time cracked as the Rune of [Eclipsed Dreadspire] flared, a black eclipse blooming behind her.
The giant froze completely, locked inside an inescapable nexus of curses.
The blow landed.
Silence.
Then a detonation of shadow and venom occurred that shredded the eldritch monster into millions of fragments. Each fragment froze midair for an instant, shackled by temporal frost, before being consumed by the Tenebrian Sea, or more specifically, the Dreadolons inside them.
The battlefield quaked as the entire monstrosity collapsed inward, leaving nothing but drifting black snow that vanished into the void.
[ Round 14 is over. ]
[Round 14 leaderboard]
Rank 1: Lily Regalon
Rank 2: Almond Regalon
Rank 3: Zuma Ongrai Zed
Rank 4: Baratos Yelvain
Rank 5: Norezo Lav’eil
Rank 6: Mephis Vikans
Rank 7: Roman David
Rank 8: Nuttain Norrono
Rank 9: Lobezi Varkeshi
Rank 10: Xu…
