Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 397

Chapter 397: EX 397. The Pleasure Of Corruption
All eyes drifted toward Leon as he stepped toward the Dowager.

The angle of his approach painted the scene with an implication none of them wanted to linger on, but that wasn’t what froze the crowd.

They heard him clearly.

He wanted to give her something. A gift of thanks for a compliment she knew she never gave.

Everyone here understood it wasn’t about a compliment anyway.

Leon’s face carried that easy, casual look he liked to wear, but beneath it sat a seriousness that pulled the air taut.

The Dowager didn’t hesitate.

Her chin lifted with quiet confidence as she answered,

“I accept your thanks.”

Leon’s smile touched the corner of his mouth a heartbeat before corruption surged through him.

It rolled out like a tidal wave, thick and heavy, reaching all the way up the sky. His squadmates stiffened.

The people of Pandora stared, breath trapped in their lungs.

The Dowager who was closest to the source, felt it most.

Something about the corruption pulled at her, soft and persuasive.

A warmth that coaxed her to stop fighting the world and rest within its embrace.

Before the sensation swallowed her completely, Leon’s voice cut through it.

“Lock onto my voice.”

The world snapped apart.

In the blink of an eye her surroundings shifted to a dark, open void.

Unlike the Hallow’s oppressive gloom, this space held a strange vibrance.

She recognized it instantly, the clarity, the disconnect from her physical strength.

A mindscape.

She drew a breath to call out for Leon, but his voice arrived ahead of her, carried from every corner of the void.

“Don’t worry, Luna. You’re in me.”

She didn’t flinch at the use of her name.

If anything, relief loosened her shoulders. He was in control. Good.

A teasing smile crept onto her lips.

“You said I’m in you. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.”

Silence pressed between them.

Leon tried to smile it off, awkward in that familiar, helpless way he had whenever older women pushed his limits.

But the expression faded quickly as his focus tightened.

Whatever he was preparing required all of him.

Her little joke fell to the background as his tone shifted.

“Are you willing to change for a new world?”

****

Leon hadn’t expected the trial to end with the collapse of the Hallow.

The quiet that settled across Pandora didn’t fool him for a second.

Clearing the Hallow had only removed the distraction, not the true requirement.

The real task hung over him like a second sky: he had to make the people of Pandora adapt to corruption and accept it into their being.

The idea sounded insane on the surface, but the more he moved through this world, the more the truth had settled in his bones. Corruption wasn’t something you destroyed.

Even the creatures he cut down didn’t simply vanish, they bled their corruption into him.

Corruption was passed on, it shifted but it never erased.

It was a substance that refused to die, a seed always looking for a new host.

So even with the Hallow gone, it was only a matter of time before another cluster just as monstrous rose in its place.

To stop the cycle, he needed Pandora to change.

And to change Pandora, he needed absolute control.

He couldn’t risk a single ripple of interference.

The Hallow’s presence had always been a shadow leaning against his shoulder, twisting the flow of corruption no matter how tight his grip was.

He could manage it well enough for combat, but this… this required perfection.

Which was why the first thing he’d done was hunt the Hallow.

Removing the largest weight, before a new one could replace it.

Now everything was set.

Every variable he could predict, controlled. Every risk he could smother, smothered.

What remained was the Dowager’s answer.

She stood in the calm of the void he’d drawn her into, nudged far from her physical senses.

The question he’d asked still drifted through her mind like a slow-moving star:

Are you willing to change for a new world?

It wasn’t a question most people would take lightly.

What kind of world was he talking about? Would it mean prosperity or ruin? A rebirth or a descent?

But the Dowager had never been the type to get trapped in long reflections, not when she already trusted her instincts.

Her gaze held steady, bright even in the endless dark.

“As long as you’re the one ushering this new world,” she said,

“I will stand behind you. No matter what.”

The void kept still for a heartbeat. Then Leon’s voice echoed through it, warm and edged with intent.

“Well said.”

A slight pause followed, the kind he only made when he was weighing something complicated.

“Try not to resist,” he continued.

“This is going to feel—”

He stopped.

“Honestly? I don’t know how it will feel. This is different from what I normally do.”

The Dowager swallowed on instinct, her posture tightening.

Either way, she wasn’t backing down.

The change hit her instantly.

A sensation slammed into her with such overwhelming force she couldn’t name it. Pleasure if one could even call it that surged through her like a tidal wave.

It wiped out thought, rattled every piece of her awareness, and dragged a sound from her throat she would never forgive herself for if her children had been anywhere nearby to witness it.

Even in a mindscape, she felt it physically, every pulse, every shiver.

Leon didn’t stop.

If anything, he pushed harder, his presence folding around her as corruption flowed in a way no human mind should ever have been able to endure.

****

-Authors Notes-

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!

P.s Read the last paragraph with a clean mind… Thank you for reading.