Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 296

Chapter 296: EX 296. Ascendant
Leon stared at the glowing panel before him, eyes narrowing as the numbers settled. Every stat, Vitality, Stamina, Strength, Senses, Speed, Aura, had reached 10,000. But what drew his focus wasn’t the digits; it was the new title beside his rank.

C-Rank (Mortal >>> Ascendant).

He exhaled, a faint grin forming.

Trial takers were graded in three major stages—F to D Rank were the Mortal Stages, C to A Rank the Ascendant Stages, and S to SSS Rank the Divine Stages. Each was more than a simple rank-up, it was a transformation. The jump between stages wasn’t about quantity. It was quality.

A single stat point in the Ascendant stage carried the weight of dozens from the Mortal realm. Even affinities changed, becoming denser, sharper and truer to their nature. Force pulsed with new gravity, and Destruction… it whispered louder now, like it had found its voice.

It was no wonder mortals hardly defeated ascendants, but Leon was beyond either. His stats were monstrous, but more than that, he had tools: his Art, Point Burn, and his twin affinities. Even so, he knew the truth. No amount of tricks could match the raw divinity of those in the divine stage. That was why his battle with Lancelot had ended in a loss, it was because Lancelot had grasped that divine power.

“But now…” Leon smiled faintly.

Now, he’d joined the ranks of the Ascendant.

Battling two stages above was difficult; however, just one would be doable.

Above him, the night trembled. Across the battlefield, the seductress, pale-skinned, crimson-eyed, and still cloaked in sin, watched in disbelief. She had seen through countless veils of deceit in her lifetime, yet somehow this boy had fooled her inside her own domain.

Her lips parted in silent fury. ‘How?’ She could feel the corruption in him, the same taint that birthed her, but it wasn’t wild like hers. It was not only contained but controlled and tamed as well.

The next moment, Leon entered a battle stance, and this motion so, annoyed her to her core that her voice slipped through clenched teeth. “So, because you escaped my senses, you think you can take me on? I eat little boys like you for break—”

Before the word finished, the air shifted.

A heavy pulse spread outward, thick and crushing. Leon’s Force Domain unfolded, far stronger than when he’d faced the golden lieutenant. The pressure alone forced the seductress to her knees, cutting her words short. The world seemed to bow beneath the invisible weight.

Her hair whipped wildly as she screamed, “How dare you!”

But Leon was no longer on the ground.

The space beside her rippled, then he appeared, Void Blade humming like a black sun. His attack points burned away in a rush, flooding power into his body. Every movement cracked the air as he swung.

The seductress reacted on instinct, erecting a barrier of warped crimson energy, just in time for the blade to crash into it. The sound echoed like a thunderclap.

BOOM!!

Her barrier shattered.

The sheer force of the blow sent her flying through the street, smashing into a marble building that crumbled under the impact as dust billowed into the air.

Leon didn’t wait. His eyes flared with pale light as he dashed forward again, steps blurring into afterimages.

He wasn’t done.

Not even close.

****

Leon’s boots struck the cracked pavement as he surged forward, the night air trembling around him. But suddenly a low, guttural wail suddenly split the silence, then another, and another. In seconds, the entire city was screaming.

The sound wasn’t human.

From every street and shadow, the grey brutes howled in agony. Their bodies convulsed as threads of black and violet energy tore free from their cores, drawn away by an unseen force. One by one, they collapsed into ash as that energy streamed through the streets, all converging toward a single point, where the seductress had crashed.

Leon’s eyes narrowed, and his pulse quickened. “So that’s what you’re doing…”

He poured more power into his legs, his figure vanishing into a blur. But before he could reach her, the air erupted.

BOOM.

A dark explosion blossomed from the ruins, tearing apart the surrounding block. The stream of energy halted midair, then vanished, consumed. The air was thick with heat and a foul, metallic scent.

Leon raised his arm to shield his eyes as the smoke cleared.

Something moved inside the crater.

And what stepped out wasn’t the woman from before. It was something else.

Bat-like wings unfurled from its back, their veins glowing faintly crimson. A spiked, devil’s tail coiled and lashed behind it, the tip razor-sharp. Twin horns curved upward from its skull, and its body, no longer soft or lithe, had swollen into a grotesque bulk, muscles rippling under ash-colored flesh.

It was an abomination, half woman, half monster, neither and both. The faint remnants of the seductress’s beauty lingered cruelly in its chest and face, but the rest was a nightmare sculpted from sin.

Leon’s jaw tightened. The sheer weight of its aura pressed down on the city like an ocean tide. This wasn’t the same opponent.

“High Rank Seven…” he muttered, eyes narrowing. “So that’s your true form.”

It made sense now. The golden man had been a a fragment of her divided power.

A bitter laugh escaped him. “Good thing I took him out first,” he said under his breath. “If you’d reabsorbed that power… this fight would already be over.”

The creature’s head turned sharply toward him, its voice distorted, layered between male and female, human and something else. “You…..I….be…come…one.”

Leon tightened his grip on Void Blade. “Over my dead body.”

The ground shattered beneath his feet as he launched forward. The abomination roared in fury, wings spreading wide as it met him halfway.

Force and destruction collided in a blinding flash.

The shockwave tore through the city, ripping apart the street below as the two figures crashed into each other, Both born of corruption, one tame the other chaotic.

This was no longer a battle between man and monster.

It was Ascendant versus Divine.

****

A/N: Mass release, if we get to top fifty of golden tickets ranking.

Thanks for reading ^^