Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner-Chapter 344: Home training 2

"You know what the truly beautiful part is?" she said, lifting him by the throat with one hand. "I’m still going easy on you, precious. This is mother being gentle with her new acquisition."

Her smile was radiant, maternal, and absolutely terrifying.

"But if you keep struggling, I might have to get serious. And trust me, darling—you really don’t want to see mother when she’s serious."

The processing center had become a graveyard of twisted metal and sparking electronics. Every surface bore the scars of their one-sided battle, but Noah was beginning to understand something crucial—this wasn’t a tactical engagement anymore. This was survival. Pure, desperate, animalistic survival.

’Stop thinking like a soldier. Start thinking like someone who wants to live through the next ten seconds.’

Her grip tightened around his throat, cutting off his air supply with excruciating force. Not enough to kill, just enough to remind him who held all the power. "Now then, shall we discuss your future arrangements? I have such wonderful plans for—"

Noah drove his knee upward with everything he had left, aiming for her solar plexus. She released him with a laugh, stepping back just enough to let the strike pass harmlessly by.

"Rude!" she chided playfully. "And here I thought we were having such a nice chat."

The floor beneath her feet spider-webbed as she launched herself forward, concrete and steel unable to contain the explosive force of her movement. Noah’s enhanced perception caught the moment of impact—her right foot driving down with enough pressure to crack reinforced foundation material, the kinetic energy transferring through her leg like a coiled spring releasing its stored power.

She covered twenty feet in a blink, her fist aimed at his sternum with enough force to cave in his chest cavity. Noah threw himself sideways with a blink, void energy crackling around him as he tried to create distance. Her knuckles grazed his ribs, and even that glancing contact sent a boat load of agony through his torso.

"Too slow, darling," she said, already pivoting on her left heel. The floor groaned under the rotational force as she spun, her tail whipping around in a devastating arc that would have taken his head off.

Noah dropped flat, feeling the displaced air ruffle his hair as the appendage passed overhead. Before he could recover, her foot was descending like a meteor toward his prone form. He rolled desperately, and her heel punched through the concrete where his head had been, leaving a crater six inches deep.

[Health Points: 1380/1750]

[Void Energy: 1250/2200]

"Questions!" Noah gasped, scrambling to his feet as she extracted her foot from the ruined floor. "I have questions about—"

"Questions?" Her laugh was like breaking crystal mixed with the sound of tearing silk. "Oh, how precious! The little pet wants to learn!"

She was moving again, her approach pattern completely unpredictable. This time her left foot planted with such force that the steel support beam beneath the concrete buckled, sending a visible shockwave through the floor. The momentum carried her into a spinning kick that would have pulverized his skull.

Noah ducked and weaved, his survival instincts overriding tactical thinking. No more calculated responses. No more analyzing attack patterns. Just react, survive, breathe, repeat.

"The soldiers!" he shouted, dancing away from a combination that turned the air itself into a weapon. "Why were human soldiers working with your kind? What did you do to them?"

"Working with us?" She paused mid-attack, tilting her head with genuine curiosity. "Oh, sweet child. You still don’t understand, do you?"

Her next burst of speed was beyond anything Noah had witnessed. Both feet drove into the ground simultaneously, and the reinforced concrete didn’t just crack—it exploded outward in concentric rings as she launched herself forward like a missile. The visual was like watching a small bomb detonate in reverse, all that destructive energy focused into pure forward momentum.

Noah’s void blink barely saved him from being obliterated. He materialized ten feet to her left, but she’d already adjusted her trajectory mid-flight, her elbow driving toward his temple with enough force to liquefy bone.

He tilted his head just enough for the strike to whistle past his ear, then immediately threw himself backward as her follow-up knee came hunting for his ribs. The displacement of air from her missed attacks was creating miniature sonic booms.

"They weren’t working with us, precious," she said, landing with catlike grace before immediately launching into another assault. "They were being improved. Enhanced. Made better than their pathetic baseline biology allowed."

"Improved how?" Noah demanded, weaving between strikes that would have killed him a dozen times over. His enhanced reflexes were the only thing keeping him breathing, but he could feel his reaction time slowing as exhaustion accumulated.

"The same way I’m going to improve you, darling!" Her voice carried maternal warmth that made his skin crawl. "Neural integration. Biological enhancement. Psychological conditioning. We take your cute little human minds and make them actually functional!"

A devastating uppercut grazed his chin as he jerked his head back. Even the partial contact rattled his teeth and sent stars exploding across his vision.

"Functional?" Noah spat blood, continuing his desperate evasion dance. "You mean enslaved!"

"Oh, such ugly words!" She tisked disapprovingly, her next combination forcing him to contort his body in ways that stressed joints to their breaking point. "Mother prefers ’optimized for purpose.’ Humans are so wonderfully adaptable once you remove all that pesky free will."

Her left foot planted again, and this time Noah caught the full visual impact. The concrete didn’t just crack—it shattered in a perfect ten-foot radius around the point of contact. Chunks of debris flew in all directions as her leg muscles compressed and released like industrial pistons. The kinetic energy transfer was so perfect, so mechanically efficient, that it was almost beautiful in its destructive precision.

She was airborne for exactly 0.3 seconds, covering twelve feet in a horizontal arc that would have been impossible for anything bound by normal physics. Her fist sought his heart with surgical accuracy.

Noah’s response was pure instinct—twist left, duck low, let the punch pass over his shoulder close enough to feel the heat from her knuckles cutting through air molecules. Her other hand was already coming around in a backfist that would crush his skull.

He dropped to one knee, the strike passing through the space his head had occupied milliseconds before. But she was already adapting, her knee driving upward toward his exposed face.

Noah threw himself sideways into a roll that would have made his lieutenant Cassandra Beaumont, his instructor, weep with pride. Her knee struck empty air, but the force of the missed attack was enough to crack the wall fifteen feet behind where he’d been crouching.

"Fascinating," she murmured, pausing in her assault with predatory interest. "You’re not actually trying to hurt mother anymore, are you? You’ve realized it’s pointless. Now you’re just trying to survive."

’She’s figured it out. She knows I’ve shifted strategies.’

"Smart boy," she purred, beginning to circle him like a cat studying a wounded mouse. "Such excellent survival instincts. Mother is more impressed by the minute."

"Why?" Noah gasped, his chest heaving as he tried to recover some stamina. "Why go through all this? Your species is obviously superior in every way. Why not just wipe us out and be done with it?"

"Wipe you out?" Her laughter was genuinely delighted. "Oh, darling, that would be such a waste! Do you know how rare intelligence is in this galaxy? How precious consciousness becomes when you’ve spent eons surrounded by mindless matter?"

She moved again, but this time Noah was ready. Instead of trying to counter or analyze, he simply flowed. Duck, weave, sidestep, roll. His body moved on pure instinct while his mind stayed clear and focused.

"Humans are magnificent," she continued, her attacks coming in relentless waves that would have overwhelmed any normal person. "Violent, creative, adaptable, stubborn. Perfect raw material for improvement. Annoyingly hard to kill, your species, we have come to realize are. But it is that very natural talent of survival, retention and proliferation that keeps your kind in this battle. So I have a question for you; why destroy art when you can perfect it?"

A spinning kick forced Noah to lean back until his spine creaked. Her foot passed inches from his nose, and he could feel the displaced air trying to drag him forward into the attack’s path.

"Plus," she added with psychotic cheerfulness, "conquest is so much more entertaining when your prey can appreciate the artistry involved!"

Noah was beginning to see something in her movement patterns. Not a weakness exactly, but a rhythm. A cadence to her attacks that suggested she was still holding back, still playing with him.

’She’s enjoying this too much. Getting careless because she thinks she’s completely in control.’

"The integration process is quite painless," she continued conversationally, launching into a combination that turned the air around Noah into a storm of potential death. "We simply replace the inferior parts of your nervous system with our own using our ...what do your kind call it?..." She paused for dramatic effect, "Ah yes, Ace. Using our ace. Your creativity remains intact, but all that messy independence gets smoothed away."

"Sounds like you’re afraid of us," Noah said, barely avoiding a strike that would have caved in his sternum.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. Her attack pattern shifted, becoming more aggressive, more personal. The maternal facade cracked for just a moment, revealing something genuinely dangerous underneath.

"Afraid?" Her voice carried an edge like breaking glass. "Mother fears nothing, least of all a species that can’t even properly utilize the primitive technology they stumble across!"

But Noah had seen the crack in her composure, and something was building in his chest. Not hope exactly, but something harder. Something that refused to accept defeat even when every rational calculation said he should.

’Street fight mentality. Stop trying to win. Focus on the damage you can do. Just focus on the next move. Then the next. Keep breathing. Keep moving. Something will present itself.’

Her next assault was her most vicious yet. Both feet planted simultaneously, twin craters forming in the reinforced floor as she launched herself forward with enough force to shatter concrete barriers. Her approach was a streak of lethal intent, claws extended, ready to end this charade of a fight.

But Noah was no longer thinking. He was reacting. Moving. Surviving.

[Void Blink activated]

He materialized directly above her attack trajectory, using her own momentum against her positioning. For the first time in the entire fight, he had achieved a superior angle.

[Null Strike activated]

Void energy began building around Excaliburn’s blade, the erasure field coalescing into something that could unmake matter at the quantum level.

But instead of striking immediately, Noah did something that defied every tactical manual ever written. He waited. For exactly 0.2 seconds, he held his position, letting the null energy build to maximum potential while calculating her likely evasion vectors.

Then he struck.

Not where she was, but where she would be when she realized the danger and tried to escape.

Excaliburn descended in a perfect arc, void energy trailing behind the blade like a comet’s tail. The strike was aimed not at her current position, but at the exact point in space she would occupy when her enhanced reflexes kicked in and she attempted her standard evasion pattern.

The Harbinger Widow’s eyes went wide as she recognized what was happening. For the first time since the battle began, genuine surprise flickered across her features.

The blade was millimeters from her skull, void energy crackling with enough destructive potential to erase her from existence. And for the first time in their entire encounter, she had nowhere to go.

The human boy was actually about to end her.

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