Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger

Chapter 404: EX 404. The Message

Overlords, in the current era, filled a role similar to the old progenitors of Pandora. But unlike those progenitors, primordials who descended and lived as the races they created, overlords were born naturally within their own worlds.

Each carried a dormant primordial factor hidden deep in their soul, a spark that would awaken only after they reached a certain stage of growth.

There was only one overlord for each race. A single human. A single elf. A single dragon. A single beastman. Four living seeds meant to rise into the same realm as the primordials themselves.

And among them, Leon was the human overlord and the other three had chosen to follow him.

The brightest star glow flickered once before she finally spoke, calm and even.

"If you step through that portal," she said, "you won’t return to the new timeline. Not even I can pull you back."

Leon met her gaze without flinching. He dismissed Void Blade; the weapon dissolved into threads of darkness that traced back into the tattoo on his wrist. The act wasn’t submission, only restraint. He had made his point.

"I won’t change my mind," he said. "But... at least help me leave a message for my squadmates."

The brightest star lowered her light just enough to acknowledge him.

"I’m listening."

Leon’s answer came without hesitation.

"Tell them that when I am done, I will come back to get them."

He didn’t wait to see how she reacted. He didn’t pause to hear a warning or a final plea.

In a single stride, he hurled himself into the swirling portal.

The light swallowed him whole.

The brightest star remained still, her brilliance flickering ever so slightly.

****

The Brightest Star lingered in the quiet after Leon’s abrupt departure, her gaze fixed on the empty space where the portal had snapped shut.

His silhouette still echoed in her mind, stubborn, reckless, eyes burning with a resolve she hadn’t predicted.

For a moment, she said nothing. The surrounding primordials watched her in their various celestial forms, waiting for her judgment.

Then she exhaled, a soft sound that shimmered like starlight bleeding into the void.

One heartbeat later, she vanished.

The other primordials drifted back to their idle drifting, as they always did. It was the only pastime eternal beings ever seemed to keep.

She reappeared within her personal domain, a chamber of shifting constellations suspended in blue-white radiance.

She still wore the face of Leon’s mother. It settled heavily on her now, as if the skin itself remembered the boy who’d stood against her.

Her thoughts replayed the confrontation, his raised voice, the blade in his hand, the refusal to bend.

’Are we wrong?’

The question slipped through her mind before she could stop it.

She stood still, cradled by the silent expanse of her private cosmos. Doubt pressed at the edge of her consciousness, unwelcome and unfamiliar. She shook her head once.

"We will succeed this time," she murmured, her voice steady again.

"We must."

Leon’s decision didn’t concern her anymore. He’d served the purpose she needed from him. If he chose to throw himself into the old timeline? Then so be it. Some paths didn’t need guardians.

But there remained a task to complete.

"I still have to inform his squadmates," she said, glancing upward as the stars shifted around her.

"They played their part... however small."

What bothered her wasn’t the message, it was the way he had left. Not a second of hesitation. Not a moment of fear.

’He didn’t even second guess it.’

With a quiet breath, she lifted her hand. Light gathered at her fingertips as she reached across the layers of reality, weaving a connection toward the minds of Leon’s squadmates.

’Time to deliver his message.’

****

The air in Pandora felt heavy, as if the world itself was trying to make sense of what had just happened.

One moment Leon had been standing beside the Dowager, and the next he had simply vanished, no warning, no flash, just gone.

Eden’s voice broke the silence, quiet but edged with unease, meant only for the others.

"The system says we cleared the trial... So why are we still here? And why isn’t Leon?"

Adrian mirrored his confusion.

Nikko and Elizabeth stayed close to Rachel as she stood with her eyes shut, her Lord talent stretching outward like a searching pulse. When she finally opened them, the tension in her features told the story before she spoke.

"I couldn’t find him."

Nikko frowned.

"Are you sure you searched properly?"

"I did," Rachel said, steady but troubled. "There’s nothing."

Worry crept across their faces one by one, a cold realization settling in. Even the Dowager, as a lesser spawn, felt it—her bond to Leon was gone.

Only the faint threads linking her to Blessing and the unconscious Eleanor remained.

Malachi stood beside her just as lost, both watching as the uncertainty spread.

Then light burst at the center of the group, clean, blinding, undeniable.

Everyone instinctively stepped back as a figure emerged, light peeling away to reveal the face of Leon’s mother.

Nikko froze. Elizabeth’s breath caught. Even Adrian and Eden, all of them stared, stunned beyond words.

They knew that face. And they knew she should not be here.

The woman looked at them with a calm that didn’t belong to any human.

"I am not the person you think I am," she said.

Elizabeth spoke first, voice tight.

"You’re not Leon’s mother?"

Rachel, who had only seen the woman for the first time, blinked at Elizabeth’s question.

The being nodded gently.

"No. I am not. But I do have a message from Leon."

Every heartbeat in the clearing seemed to pause. Nikko leaned forward, speaking the question all of them were thinking.

"A message...?"

****

Leon dropped out of the portal like a stone hurled through eternity.

The fall stretched on and on, weightless and cold, until the world finally caught him.

BOOM.

The impact shook the barren earth and sent a cloud of dust rolling across a dead plain. He rose from the crater with a quiet groan, brushing dirt off his arms while the last echoes of the crash drifted away.

The air smelled the same, stale, metallic, and strangely hollow.

The sky held that washed-out gray he remembered too well.

And in the distance, faint tremors rippled through the ground. Trial beasts. He could feel them scattering, instincts screaming at them to flee from whatever had just arrived.

He breathed in slowly.

This desolate terrain. Those fleeing echoes. That familiar weight in the air.

No doubt about it.

A small, steady grin touched his face as he looked across the empty wasteland.

"I’m back."

END OF VOLUME 2 PANDORA