Does ELT data end up in an RDBMS?
I think this will be easier with an example:
Database A has table C.  Database B has table D.  C and D are very similar but not identical and the data needs to be cleaned up before being loaded in to D.

ETL
An ETL program (SSIS, Pentaho, whatever) pulls the data from table C.  It then makes some changes to the data to clean it up and put it in the format that is needed.  The ETL process then moves/copies that data up to table D on Database B.

ELT
The data from Table C is extracted.  It is uploaded to Database B as table C.  Database B now has two tables, C and D.  A database process (SQL, a job, whatever) now makes some changes to the data in table C and puts it in the format that is needed.  That same process then copies the now clean data in to table D.  The temporary Table C is no longer needed in Database B and can be deleted or truncated.


In both cases the data is now loaded in Database B, Table D.  The front end application continues to use Table D.