Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger

Chapter 403: EX 403. Primordial Confrontation

The question slipped out of him before he realized he’d spoken.

"Can’t we bring the people from the world into the new timeline? Isn’t that the point?"

The woman wearing his mother’s face watched him with a soft patience that only made the knot in his chest tighten. "It isn’t possible," she said. "Only you and your squadmates can cross into this timeline. You are the focal points of its creation. Even if we could bring others in, it would undermine everything. Corruption’s focus would shift. The balance you forged would collapse and disaster would follow."

Her explanation sounded too smooth. Too neat. Too detached from the weight of what it meant.

Leon felt something inside him snap. He didn’t notice how sharply his voice rose until it echoed around them.

"So you’re just going to let a whole world die?"

She didn’t flinch.

"It is the only way."

"Bullshit." The word cracked out of him, raw and unfiltered.

"All your methods failed before. What makes you so sure this one won’t?"

Her eyes narrowed, the first real sign of irritation she’d shown.

"We have done the calculations. Don’t let your emotions blind you to the larger truth."

Leon let out a quiet, humorless laugh.

"Oh, I see."

A flicker of confusion crossed her borrowed features.

"What do you mean?"

"This entire thing is a game to you, isn’t it?" Leon said. His voice steadied, but the anger in it didn’t fade.

"If one world doesn’t last, you make another. If that one falls, you build a new one. Over and over. As if lives are just pieces on a board you can reset whenever you feel like it."

The primordial stiffened. Her calm cracked—just a hairline fracture—but it was there.

"We have tried," she said, and her voice rose slightly, carrying a strain that hadn’t been there before.

"Do you have any idea what it is like to watch worlds we shaped die again and again? To stand powerless as everything collapses? Do you?"

"I don’t," Leon said.

"And I never want to. Because I’m not letting you sacrifice my world for some stupid agenda."

Her expression darkened, an ancient sharpness bleeding through the gentle mask of his mother.

"So you mean to oppose us? You’re willing to throw away your chance to survive, with your women and your followers, for something that will end in failure?"

"For my family," Leon said quietly, "I’m ready to defy the stars."

Void Blade shimmered into his hand, the familiar weight grounding him as he faced the primordial head-on.

The air around him thickened, as if the world itself held its breath.

"So," Leon said, his eyes locked on the woman who was not his mother, his voice steady and unshaking,

"you’re either with me... or you’re against me."

****

All around Leon, the stars stirred.

Every primordial, from those burning like supernovas to those no larger than drifting planets, turned their gaze toward him the instant Void Blade was summoned in his grasp.

Their light tightened, focusing on the lone human who had raised a weapon in the heart of their realm.

A voice like molten iron rumbled through the void.

"Did he truly draw his sword at the Brightest Star?"

Another flared hotter, its tone sharp.

"What insolence. Does he understand where he stands?"

A colder one followed, more incredulous than angry.

"How could someone with such a nature be the one to contain corruption?"

Leon stood his ground, blade angled toward the woman wearing his mother’s face. His pulse throbbed in his ears, but he didn’t flinch.

Off to the side, the primordial whose star-voice echoed Originus remained silent.

His vast body dimmed as he thought, ’Boy... what are you doing?’ Among them, he was weaker, still carrying the scars of his long ages spent as a progenitor on early Pandora.

The dragon-shaped primordial coiled its titanic body, its eyes narrowing like twin suns.

’Don’t do anything reckless,’ it thought, unwilling to intervene yet unable to look away.

The woman with Leon’s mother’s face hovered forward, her expression unreadable.

"You know you cannot win if you face me."

Leon kept the blade pointed at her, fingers steady despite the crushing weight of every star-god watching him.

"I won’t know unless I try."

The words trembled in the cosmic silence. Her gaze softened, not with pity, but with a strange, distant sadness, before she raised her hand toward him.

Leon braced himself, Void Blade humming as he drew on every fragment of will he had left.

But she didn’t strike.

A circular tear opened beside him, spiraling outward like a wound in space. Wind rushed from it, pulling at his clothes, tugging gently at his stance.

"I hope you know what you’re doing," she said quietly. For the first time, her voice sounded almost human.

"Because there won’t be any do-overs if you die."

The portal widened, swallowing the light around them.

****

A silence swept over the constellation of living stars. Their light dimmed to a steady, watchful glow. None of them moved. None of them spoke. Even the harsh, judgmental whispers that had filled the air moments ago fell quiet.

Originus, small compared to the others yet carrying an old weight, let out a breath that rippled like heat across starlight. Relief softened his glow.

’Thank the core,’ he thought, watching Leon lower his blade.

’At least there would be no clash. Not today.’

The brightest star hovered above them all, her radiance casting long shadows over the cosmic expanse.

She studied Leon in silence, the stubborn line of his jaw, the intensity in his eyes.

’Is this it?’ she wondered.

’The impulsiveness that swayed the three Overlords? The reason they stepped down and chose to follow him instead...?’

The thought lingered, unsettling.

****

-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!