Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 376

Chapter 376: EX 376. Speechless
Leon stepped forward.

His presence pressed softly against the air, steady and confident.

“We came to test our new abili—” He cut himself off and corrected himself with a quieter tone. “Apologies. We’re here to destroy the Hallow.”

Silence wrapped around the fog filled zone.

The Dowager stared at him, unable to form a response.

In the span of five minutes, this boy had stolen the words from her lips two separate times.

She didn’t know if it was his calm declaration, the impossible lack of hesitation, or the faint trace of something ancient drifting beneath his voice.

Whatever it was, it made the moment feel heavier than anything she had endured in the last three corrupted years.

And she could only manage a quiet thought.

‘Did he say destroy the hallow?’

****

The Dowager studied Leon in a quiet stretch of mist, her amber eyes trailing over him with a composure that came only after years of keeping herself sane in isolation.

For a heartbeat, she simply watched him, letting the weight of the past three corruption-ridden years settle behind her ribs.

Then she eased out a slow breath, the kind someone takes when they decide to behave rationally despite every instinct insisting otherwise.

“Just the seven of you?” she asked, voice calm and steady.

Leon shook his head.

“No. Not the seven of us.”

A hint of relief touched her posture. She opened her mouth, clearly intending to ask where the rest were, but Leon reached the end of the thought faster.

“It’s just the six of us handling it. Mali’s here to cheer us on.”

Malachi’s brows twitched upward.

‘Is he talking about me?’

The Dowager didn’t say anything.

She only stared at Leon with the blank patience of someone who had already accepted the chaos he brought into the room.

If she hadn’t adapted, she might’ve gone mute from how many times he stole the breath from her lungs in under ten minutes.

When she finally exhaled, her tone softened. “With the way corruption flows around you, I assume you can permanently kill corrupt creatures.”

Leon gave a single nod.

“If you had shown up three years ago,” she murmured, “things might have been very different. But now…”

Her words faded.

The unfinished thought lingered in the cool air, but Leon made no move to ease it.

He preferred to show, not explain.

She straightened slightly.

“Concerning my first question, how did you enter here?”

Leon turned his head toward Elizabeth.

“Lizzie cast the spell. You should ask her.”

The Dowager’s attention shifted towards Elizabeth.

And the draconian met her gaze with a steady calm.

“I only cast it, the one who can answer properly is the maker of the spell.”

A quiet stillness crossed the Dowager’s features. “My daughter…”

Her expression tightened, a shadow of old pain slipping through.

“How is she?”

Leon’s reply came with a rare solemnity.

“She’s doing good. Alexander’s taking good care of her.”

A murmured breath left the Dowager, something gentle, and obviously motherly.

“That’s good. He always puts her first in everything.”

“That’s not the only thing he’s putting—” Leon whispered to himself.

“Excuse me?”

Leon didn’t flinch.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”

His tone soon settled into something far more grounded as he asked,

“By the way… where are we?”

He had already figured this wasn’t the true heart of the Hallow.

The real Hallow was supposed to be an immense scar left in the world by the clash between the First Arman Emperor and the Beast God.

This place felt different.

Mist pooled everywhere, swallowing depth and distance like a curtain drawn too tight.

The Dowager found no reason to hide the answer. “This is also part of the Hallow,” she said.

“But it’s the periphery, where my law has the greatest effect because of the proximity to the barrier.”

Luna steadied herself as she finished explaining the history behind the place.

The Hallow had been the first corruption cluster to appear on Pandora.

It grew faster than anyone could predict, birthing new clusters around the world like spreading cancer cells.

If left alone, it would have swallowed the continent before anyone could create a proper countermeasure.

So she had created the infinite barrier, a spell woven from her own law.

But unfortunately a law could not remain active forever, so the barrier recycled natural energies from the outside to constantly feed it.

The periphery around the Hallow was the place where her law compressed the strongest, slowing the Hallows spread and giving humanity precious time.

Leon had listened to her with a quiet focus.

Until he suddenly asked something that made her heart drop.

“Is it normal for corrupt creatures to enter the periphery?”

Her eyes widened as she turned.

Moving through the mist toward them was a creature that should not have been able to cross her mist.

It crawled low on six legs, each step scraping the ground with a wet, chitinous sound.

Its body was coated in pitch-dark ichor.

It had no eyes, only eight twitching tentacles jutting from its face.

Ten tails snapped like whips behind it.

The corruption inside it burned at a rank 9 level.

Luna stepped forward, her own aura blooming around her in a deep, steady pulse.

“Once in a while, one manages to trespass,” she said.

“But I push them back each time.”

Her aura swept across the mist, clearing it like a curtain.

What it revealed froze her spine.

Not one creature.

A hundred.

All the same twisted shape.

All rank 9.

A bitter realization cracked through her chest.

“It must have been the breach. The disruption created a passage for them to enter the periphery.”

She turned to Leon with an aggrieved look, though she did not place blame on him.

“I hope you will help me push them back.”

Leon’s mouth curved into a calm smile.

“I’ll do you a favor far better.”

He looked over his shoulder.

“Adrian. Eden. This one is on the two of you.”

Adrian rolled his neck until it cracked.

“I thought you would never ask.”

Eden walked up beside him with his hands in his pockets, Blessing perched lightly on his shoulders.

“Don’t worry, captain. We got this.”

Luna watched the two boys pass her.

She couldn’t help herself.

“Just the two of them? We should take this seriously.”

Before she finished the complaint, something thudded on the ground beside her.

She turned her head instinctively and froze at the sight.

A headless corrupt beast lay at her feet, its body twitching for a breath before collapsing into drifting black dust.

Luna’s gaze soon shot upward.

As her eyes widened in shock at the sight.

“How is this possible?”