Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 393

Chapter 393: EX 393. The Hallows Master
Leon didn’t spare the entity a glance. He didn’t spare the horde either.

The void kept spitting out corrupt creatures in a steady, rippling tide, each one packed with rank nine force, a few giving off a pressure that pushed even higher.

Their snarls and shifting limbs crowded the darkness, yet Leon cut straight through them as if they were scenery.

Behind him, his squad stayed tense. Eden, Elizabeth, Adrian, Nikko, Rachel, Malachi and even the Dowager hovered at the ready, waiting for Leon to give the word so they could tear through anything foolish enough to intervene.

But Leon seemed blind to all of it. His focus had narrowed into a single line drawn between him and the broken figure hanging in the air ahead.

The entity felt that disregard like a slap. Its voice cracked through the void, raw with fury.

“STAY AWAY FROM HER!”

A bolt of corrupt lightning shot across the space. It moved like something alive, faster than natural lightning, packed with devastating power meant to tear Leon apart.

But just as it reached him, the bolt bent, snapped off its course as though fate itself had nudged it aside.

It slammed instead into the clustered creatures, vaporizing a swath of them in a burst of crackling ruin.

Leon didn’t even flinch.

He reached Eleanor a heartbeat later.

But the entity didn’t fire again.

That last attack had carried real power, enough to flatten a divine fortress, and yet not even a hair of the boy had been touched.

The realization coiled into its thoughts, cold and unwelcome.

‘What is happening?’

Even the corrupt creatures felt that fear. Their bodies twitched, but none dared move.

They simply watched, silent and waiting, as Leon floated before the chained girl.

With a flick of rank seven telekinetic force, pressure bending space like soft metal, the chains holding Eleanor snapped apart.

She fell forward, weightless in the air as Leon steadied her with the same invisible grip.

Up close, he could see it clearly. She wasn’t just injured. She was hollowed out, emptied, whatever the entity had done, shaving away the last pieces of who she had been.

His jaw tightened.

Eleanor had betrayed them.

He hadn’t forgotten that, nor had he forgiven it, and a part of him had already decided that whatever happened to her was none of his concern.

But she had still been his squadmate, and seeing her like this; seeing that demon lord sleeping calmly inside her head, nestled behind the ruin it had caused, something close to pity flickered behind his eyes.

****

Leon set his right hand on top of Eleanor’s head. She didn’t react, not even a flinch, but the moment his palm touched her hair, he felt it, the thread binding her to the demon lord tucked inside her soul.

Their connection wasn’t just deep. It was fused so tightly that ripping the demon out would take the girl with it.

That would’ve been true for anyone else. Leon had a workaround prepared.

With Rachel’s authority sharpening his perception, every metaphysical thread became visible to him, like strands of luminous wire snaking through Eleanor’s being.

The demon lord’s influence pulsed in the middle of it all, a malignant knot swelling inside her soul like a tumor.

Leon didn’t hesitate.

He cut straight through the cluster at the exact point where the demon’s essence branched away from Eleanor’s core.

Pain should have ripped through both of them.

Instead, Adrian’s talent flared at Leon’s command, redirecting the backlash entirely onto the demon lord.

The agony was so overwhelming it jolted the entity awake.

The glob of soul-flesh he was dragging out of Eleanor writhed uncontrollably, pulsing with frantic tremors as if begging to return to its host.

Leon tightened his telekinetic grip.

There would be no escape.

The incision left a gaping wound inside Eleanor’s soul.

Anyone else would’ve panicked at the sight, but Leon already knew how to seal it.

He shaped the corruption within his own body, guiding it carefully into the void the demon had occupied, filling and smoothing the break until no trace of the cut remained.

The method wasn’t something he invented on the spot.

He’d taken inspiration from Eden and Blessing’s fusion technique, except here, there were no two separate beings merging.

Just Eleanor, and a missing piece that needed replacing.

He finished the bonding process with meticulous precision.

Throughout it all, the entity lurking deeper within the void remained silent.

Not out of calm, but out of absolute disbelief.

It watched the boy manually create a corrupt creature from scratch, as if it were no more complicated than tying a knot. ‘Where did such a child come from?’

Even Blessing, perched lightly on Eden’s shoulder, stiffened.

Her eyes widened as she whispered,

“I’m sensing a second link forming from her.”

The rest of the squad stayed quiet as the change overtook Eleanor.

A soft violet radiance flared around her, washing over her broken form before sinking back into her skin.

Her spine arched, her wounds mended, and subtle features shifted.

If the squad hadn’t been watching the entire time, they might not have recognized her at all.

With the pain gone, Eleanor sagged, finally slipping into unconsciousness.

Leon guided her toward the others with a thought, letting them catch her.

Afterward, he extended the still-quivering soul-mass of the demon lord toward Nikko.

She accepted it without hesitation, fingers tightening around the vibrating entity as if it were something she’d been waiting to hold.

Only then did Leon turn his attention toward the presence lurking within the void.

“For someone so pompous,” he said, voice steady, “You’re surprisingly well-trained. I’m tempted to keep you.”

(⁠-⁠_⁠-⁠;⁠)

****

The entity felt something close to embarrassment.

Its earlier roar still echoed through the void, a bold declaration of wrath that now hung hollow in the air.

It had hurled a single strike, missed, and then, like an orphan child staring through a window at other kids playing with their parents, it could only watch as Leon moved freely, untouched and unbothered. The boy walked through its domain as if it were an empty hallway.

The corrupt creatures had felt it too.

Their fear rolled like a cold tide as they shrank back from Leon, waiting for an order that never came.

Before the entity could gather its thoughts, Leon’s voice cut through the silence.

“I’ve decided,” he said, tone almost casual as he regarded the giant presence in the void.

“I’m not keeping just you. I’m keeping your followers as well.”

****

-Authors Note-

19-Day Challenge: If we stay in the Top 50 of the Golden Ticket rankings until the 19th of this month, I will do a mass release on that day.

To make the conditions easier: If the book receives one thousand or more power stones before the 19th, the mass release is guaranteed. I believe we can pull this off, let’s go!