Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger - Chapter 440

Every divine and origin stage expert stood coiled tight, senses stretched thin as wire. This was the worst possible moment for an intrusion. Leon sat unmoving at the center of it all, suspended in lotus position, his presence quiet yet overwhelming, like a star about to ignite.

Whatever was happening to him was delicate. Sacred. If disrupted, no one could guess the cost.

And yet the void split open anyway.

Energy surged. Weapons half formed. Laws trembled.

Selena stood near the front, her spine straight, her hands clenched so tightly her nails bit into her palms. Darian was beside her, solid as a wall, while Luke and the newly risen SSS ranks took position behind the origin stage experts without being told.

No one panicked. No one spoke. If something hostile came through that gate, it would not take a second step.

The leader raised one hand, her single good eye never leaving the swirling light.

“Hold,” she said. “We wait.”

Power gathered, compressed, ready to be unleashed at a thought.

Then someone stepped through.

Luke’s breath caught in his throat.

A young man emerged from the portal, boots touching the floor with a sound far too ordinary for the tension in the room. Luke stared, disbelief crashing into recognition. His son. Standing there alive, stronger than he had ever imagined, carrying a presence that made the air feel heavier.

Sandra froze beside him, one hand flying to her mouth as Eden stepped fully into the hall. For a moment, she forgot to breathe.

More figures followed.

Diana’s composure cracked as Elizabeth walked through the portal, her expression firm, her aura sharp and focused. Ignatius stiffened, eyes narrowing as he felt the unmistakable pull of blood and kinship.

Akira’s shock was quieter but deeper. Nikko stepped out next, and the pressure rolling off her was overwhelming. It eclipsed his own newly attained origin stage like a mountain looming over a hill. His heart sank and soared at the same time.

Adrian followed, posture rigid, eyes already scanning the room like a soldier returning to a battlefield he never truly left.

Then Racheal emerged.

The elves present stirred uneasily. Some leaned forward without meaning to. Others felt an ache deep in their chests, ancient and instinctive. They knew she was a bloodborn, yet their blood reacted to her existence, as if something long denied was standing before them at last.

Whispers threatened to break out.

Then the final figure stepped through.

Silence fell so hard it felt physical.

She wore Selena’s face.

Not an imitation. Not a disguise. It was her face in every detail, from the shape of her eyes to the faint lines carved by worry and love. Yet the presence was wrong. Too vast. Too distant. As if the universe itself had borrowed familiar skin.

Selena staggered back half a step, her heart slamming against her ribs.

The woman’s gaze swept the hall calmly, taking in the perimeter, before locking on the drawn power and the unmoving figure of Leon at the center.

When her eyes settled on him, something unreadable flickered beneath that borrowed expression.

The portal closed behind her with a soft, final sound.

No one attacked.

No one spoke.

Every instinct screamed that this being was not an enemy in any simple sense. She stood there quietly, laws bending around her presence.

The brightest star, wearing Selena’s face, froze the longer she studied Leon.

At first it was curiosity. Then disbelief. Every attempt to peer deeper met resistance. Not brute force, not concealment, but layered incorporeal barriers that rose instinctively, one after another, shielding him from being read. They were not constructs she recognized. They were not techniques. They were responses, as if reality itself refused to let her look too closely.

“How is his power skyrocketing so fast…” she murmured.

This doomed timeline had promised decay, collapse, inevitability. She had prepared herself to witness suffering, desperation, the slow grinding end of existence. What she was seeing now had never entered her perfect calculations.

Around them, the hall stood tense. Divine and Origin-stage experts watched the newcomers with coiled vigilance, yet the newcomers’ attention were fixed on only one person. Leon.

The brightest star wore shock openly. Adrian, Eden, Nikko, Elizabeth, and Racheal wore small, knowing smiles.

This was familiar.

This was their captain.

Then the world cracked.

BOOOM.

The sound was not merely heard. It was felt. It rolled through the hall like a physical wave, slamming into every presence at once.

All eyes snapped away from the new arrivals and locked onto Leon.

His body lifted slightly from the ground, suspended as if the concept of weight had momentarily forgotten him.

Around him, something invisible shattered. Not air. Not space. A boundary. The kind that bound existence itself. Star-like fragments scattered outward, translucent and radiant, drifting like broken glass from a night sky.

His hair whipped violently in the surge of power, strands dancing in unseen currents, yet his expression remained calm. Centered. Unmoved.

The brightest star’s breath caught.

Those fragments… they felt familiar. Too familiar.

They were remnants of limitation.

“How is this possible?” she said, the words slipping out before she could restrain them.

What was unfolding before her violated perfect reasoning. Violated causality. Violated every universal structure she understood.

This should not be happening. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

And then she felt it.

A sudden hollowing sensation.

Her connection to the laws flickered.

Not weakened. Not resisted.

Seized.

The pressure in the hall multiplied instantly. Space stretched and folded in on itself like a breathing thing.

Time lurched, slowing to a crawl before snapping forward again. Reality shimmered, turning abstract for a heartbeat before resolidifying with a violent certainty.

The laws reacted.

No, they rejoiced.

They trembled with excitement, converging instinctively around Leon, not in submission born of force, but in recognition. Like scattered pieces returning to their origin.

Like servants welcoming their sovereign home.

For the first time since her birth, the brightest star felt truly small.

Not because Leon overwhelmed her.

But because the universe itself was leaning toward him.

For now, its true master was being born.