Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 398

Chapter 398: EX 398. When The Stars Allign
Out of everyone touched by corruption, apart from Leon only two had ever adapted to it, two lesser spawns shaped under circumstances so strange they barely counted as precedent.

The first was Blessing.

Her creation had been a complete accident, born when Leon’s transformation into a Void Spawn collided with her own evolution into a Cluster Guardian.

Eden had steadied the process, but the result was something unpredictable: a being molded by corruption while the Hallow still smothered Pandora.

The second was Eleanor.

The time she had been bound to the Demon Lord: a being formed from refined corruption, had left her soul scarred and strangely receptive.

Leon had only needed to nudge her, guiding that dormant affinity with his corruption until she crossed the threshold and became something new.

Two corrupt beings, shaped long before the Hallow was destroyed.

At a glance, it might have looked like an inconsistency, proof that the massive campaign against the Hallow had been pointless.

After all, if corrupted life could exist while the Hallow still stood, did destroying it really matter?

But the answer was painfully clear once Leon picked the pieces apart.

Neither Blessing nor Eleanor possessed the one trait the trial required.

Their corruption was fixed, contained inside them with no ability to spread.

They couldn’t pass it on through children or through assimilation.

They were endpoints, not beginnings.

If Leon turned Pandora’s people into void beings using that same method, even if he spent years pouring corruption into every single one of them, it wouldn’t matter.

He would still fail.

The trial wasn’t judging whether he could transform a population for a moment; it was judging what the world would become after he left.

A solution that died with its host wasn’t a solution.

But a corruption that could evolve… that could grow… that could spread…

That was the path forward.

In the void of Leon’s mindscape, the Dowager’s expression finally steadied.

Her breathing was rough, her chest rising and falling as she recovered from the overwhelming rush of sensation that had torn through her.

Even here, in a place without flesh, she felt it echoing through her as if her soul had bones that still trembled.

It was an experience she knew she would never forget, nor ever feel again.

Then Leon felt it.

A new pull inside him.

A third connection.

Stable, expanding and alive.

A translucent screen unfurled across his vision.

[SSS–VII Rank Trial Cleared]

And before he could even finish processing the words, the world around him cracked like thin ice.

Light surged in from every direction.

The void splintered.

Pandora dissolved.

And everything shattered.

****

Leon drifted through the dark like a man caught between breaths, his thoughts loose and half-formed.

The void around him felt weightless, almost soft, as if exhaustion itself had become a place.

Somewhere in that silence, a voice murmured, faint and familiar.

“I still can’t believe he managed all of that in such a short span.”

Another voice answered from deeper in the dark, calm and reflective.

“It matches the signs he showed before entering the trial.”

Leon’s brow tightened. He knew that voice. He just couldn’t place it.

Then the first one spoke again, baffled. “Do we even have a reward prepared for something like this?”

Leon’s eyes snapped open.

“What do you mean no rewards—”

His words cut short.

The void was gone.

In its place stretched a cosmos so vast his mind balked at the scale.

Stars floated around him by the thousands, some no bigger than lantern lights, others so enormous that supernovas would’ve looked like sparks beside them.

The sight stole the rest of his breath.

“Oh, he’s awake,” a starry voice chuckled, echoing through the astral expanse.

“But such a strong reaction over something as small as a reward?”

A dry, older tone answered from another corner of the stars.

“He isn’t a dragon. And even if he were, that particular trait was erased during the Origin Era.”

Leon stood in the starlight, completely lost. Conversations drifted over him like threads of an ancient tapestry, none of them making sense.

He reached for the one anchor he always relied on.

‘Originus,’ he called out in his mind. ‘Please tell me what’s going on.’

No answer.

The absence hit harder than any strike he would have taken in the Hallow.

Originus had always been there, awake or dormant, distant or focused, but always there.

Leon had never experienced silence from him.

A new voice rose from the stars.

“The copy isn’t in this plane. Only true primordials exist here.”

Leon turned toward it, instinct already forming the name.

“…Originus?”

The star pulsed with amusement. Then a laugh rolled across the cosmos.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

“Boy, don’t insult me by mistaking me for a phantom copy.”

Leon stared back, blank-faced.

“…At least I know where he gets it from.”

The star sputtered as if about to fire back, but another presence cut through the entire realm.

This voice didn’t echo. It resonated. It washed through the cosmos like an incoming tide, and every lesser star dimmed as if bowing.

The source was a single star, massive, brightest of them all, shining with a gravity that pulled Leon’s attention without effort.

And then it began to shrink.

Not fade, but condense.

Not dim, but focus.

Light drew inward, compressing until the star folded into the silhouette of a figure. The transformation was so abrupt any other person might have flinched or stumbled.

Leon didn’t.

His breath stopped for a different reason entirely.

Standing where the star had been was a woman, her outline familiar in a way that hit him deep, primal, impossible to misinterpret.

His voice wavered as the word escaped him.

“…Mom?”

****

-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!