Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 399

Chapter 399: EX 399. History Class
Leon hung in the quiet of the void, still trying to wrap his head around what stood before him.

The figure looked so much like his mother that, for a moment, the rest of existence blurred out of focus.

Her hair spilled down her back in soft black waves, and those crimson eyes, sharp, deep and almost tender, felt as if they were reading every corner of his soul.

His breath caught.

He didn’t blink.

Then the woman tilted her head, studying his reaction with a faint, curious smile.

“Oh? Is that how you see me?”

Her voice was familiar, but just different enough to break the illusion.

Leon’s brows pulled together as the quiet around them shifted, the other stars dimming in importance.

Before he could speak, she continued.

“I only used an ability to make my appearance easier for you to accept. I took the form of the person who would give you the most comfort.” She paused, glancing down at herself as though amused.

“It seems that person is your mother.”

A dull ache pulled at Leon’s chest.

The brief spark of hope he’d let flare up burned itself out, leaving behind a sting he hadn’t expected.

Of course it wasn’t her.

His mother was strong, brilliant, a force of nature in her own right, but she was still human.

SS-rank or not, she couldn’t step into a place meant only for beings far beyond the mortal plane.

He exhaled slowly, forcing the disappointment out of his system.

He cleared his expression and steadied his voice.

“Alright. What did you want to talk about?”

He didn’t love the fact that someone was speaking to him while wearing his mother’s face, but he let it slide.

Clearing the trial, left him in too good a mood to start a fight with a primordial.

The woman nodded once, her posture sharpening.

“Good. Then let’s get straight to it.”

Her crimson eyes softened for a moment.

“First, congratulations on clearing the final trial.”

Leon blinked.

“Final trial?”

She nodded again, this time with a sense of weight behind the motion.

“Yes. What you have just completed was the highest difficulty, SSS-VII. And now that you’ve reached this point, you deserve the truth.”

He didn’t move, but his pulse ticked a beat faster.

“All worlds linked to the Trial World take part in its cycle,” she said.

“Every challenge, every test, every ‘trial’ you receive starts from a single source: an altar. These altars you find within the Trial World aren’t just trial nodes.”

Leon narrowed his eyes.

“Then what are they?”

“Time machines,” she said simply. “Anchors that send trial takers back into the history of the world on which each altar stands. You aren’t just fighting monsters. You are reliving the past of a long dead world.”

A cold thrum ran down Leon’s spine.

He swallowed once and said, quieter than before,

“Pandora…”

Her crimson eyes met his.

“Yes,” she answered.

“You were fighting inside Pandora’s past.”

****

The void settled into a slow, quiet drift as the truth unfolded in Leon’s thoughts, each piece clicking into place with a weight he could feel in his chest.

The trial world had never been a mystery on its own.

It had simply appeared one day, revealing itself to the four great worlds drowning under demon infestation.

Yggdrasil, the world tree that cradled the elves in its endless canopy.

Nostra, the ocean planet of the beastkin, where thousands of islands floated like scattered jewels.

Ignis, the furnace realm of the dragons, a world born from fire itself.

And the Blue Planet, the fragile home of humanity.

Demon hordes had invaded these worlds without warning, and with them came despair.

Yet in that same darkness, a select few across each race awakened access to the “trial world,” gaining strength at speeds none had ever witnessed before.

It was the only reason the four worlds hadn’t collapsed entirely.

But those trials… they were nothing like the one Leon had just tackled.

For three hundred years, the records kept by humans and the other races painted trials as fragmented events.

Each challenger was confined to a single, narrow region, unable to move beyond specified borders, forced to clear whatever challenge the trial dictated within that space.

Leon’s first trial had been exactly like that.

Except now, as he replayed everything in his mind, something felt wrong.

Too wrong.

The disparity between past trials and this final one was absurd.

His recent trial hadn’t been a “zone” or a “scenario.”

It had been an entire world. A living, breathing world with its own rules, history, enemies, and consequences.

And then the realization struck him like cold lightning.

‘If the altars were time machines… then every trial was sending challengers into different points in Pandora’s own history.’

Every “scenario.”

Every “closed zone.”

Every “mission.”

All snapshots of Pandora’s past, replayed, repurposed, and weaponized to turn challengers into warriors capable of fighting demons.

It explained the inconsistencies, the eras that didn’t match, the cultures that shifted from trial to trial.

Leon’s breath stilled.

Then… the people inside those trials—

Were they real?

Were they echoes?

Were they, lives already lived?

And the bigger question, the one that settled heavily in his gut:

Why?

What was the purpose of forcing countless trial takers to experience Pandora’s history?

Who decided this?

What outcome were they being steered toward?

Leon didn’t need to chase those answers alone.

The being wearing his mother’s face stood right in front of him, calm, ancient, and unbearably familiar.

He lifted his gaze to her, the questions burning behind his eyes.

****

Leon held himself still, waiting for the explanation he’d been chasing since the moment the truth began unraveling.

The woman wearing his mother’s face watched him with those familiar crimson eyes, then spoke in a calm tone that felt strangely at odds with the weight of what she was about to say.

“I can see your confusion,” she said.

“Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything to you.”

Leon’s breath slowed.

This was the moment, answers to a mystery older than the trial world itself.

“As for whether the trials are real or a simulation,” she continued, “the answer is quite simple. They are neither.”

“…”

Silence stretched across the void.

Surely that wasn’t the end of it. But the primordial only tilted her head slightly, as though she had concluded her explanation.

“…Is that all?” Leon finally asked, his voice cutting through the quiet.

A puzzled expression crossed her face. “Oh? I assumed you would have already figured it out from that.”

Leon stared at her, stunned into silence for the third time in less than five minutes.

If she wasn’t wearing his mother’s face, he didn’t know what he would’ve done.

The casual tone, the effortless confidence, the complete lack of urgency, it didn’t match what he expected from someone who claimed to stand at the foundation of creation itself.

‘Is this person seriously one of the beings responsible for the world?’ he wondered, doubt flickering through him despite everything he’d seen.