Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger

Chapter 423: EX 423. Everlasting Torment

The creature spoke at last, its voice low and flat.

"Watching you suffer has become tiring."

Gordon could only stare, his mind slipping into numb disbelief. The world around him began to crack, then peel away, like rotten paint flaking from a wall. His transformed family was still tearing into him, teeth and claws buried in his flesh, when they suddenly dissolved into nothing. One by one they vanished.

Valeria lingered for a heartbeat longer, her calm green eyes meeting the creature’s, then she too faded from existence.

Silence followed.

Gordon found himself standing on a vast white expanse, endless and empty, surrounded on all sides by a dark, bottomless void. It was just him and the creature now. His body was still broken, mangled, bleeding. Nothing healed. The pain remained sharp and deliberate, as if the power that ruled this place wanted him to feel every second of it.

His heart began to race.

A fear unlike anything he had ever known bloomed inside his chest. It wasn’t the fear of death. It wasn’t fear of darkness or the unknown. It was deeper, more primal, as though his soul itself recognized something it was never meant to face. And the worst part was that he didn’t understand why.

After Valeria and all that he had endured, this creature should have been insignificant, monster or not.

Yet it wasn’t.

The creature shifted.

Its massive frame began to shrink, bones grinding and reshaping with sickening sounds. The dead lizard skull softened, splitting and reforming as flesh crept over it. Muscles knitted themselves into place and skin followed.

What stood before him was no longer a monster but a man.

White hair. Blue eyes.

Leon.

In that instant, something inside Gordon snapped open. Memories he didn’t remember living, moments that felt both familiar and forbidden, came flooding back all at once. The nightmare wasn’t random. The pain wasn’t meaningless.

This hell had been made for him.

Gordon’s body convulsed as the memories poured in like a flood. It wasn’t just recollection, it was reliving. Every nerve screamed, every breath burned. One after another, the memories stabbed through his skull, seven lives, seven deaths.

Buried alive as the earth closed in around him, sand filling his throat.

Burned alive, the crackle of fire and the smell of his own flesh searing.

Drowned until his lungs burst. Electrocuted until his body twisted and smoked. Poisoned, torn apart and devoured, each one a loop of agony without end.

He had thought the nightmare began today, but now he knew it had never ended.

Every lifetime was another page in a book written by suffering. His family had killed him in each one, their faces twisted by something not their own.

And every single time, she had been there. Valeria. Her soft smile warped into cruelty, her voice dripping venom as she whispered his name before ending him.

And above them all, always watching, was him.

Now Gordon saw clearly. The loops, the suffering, the false memories, the shifting worlds, everything came from the figure that stood before him now. Leon.

The same calm, cold face. The same eyes that had looked at him as though he were nothing more than dust.

Gordon’s throat rattled as he forced out a whisper, his body barely holding together, his mangled form trembling from pain and fear.

"Please..." he gasped, voice breaking, "make it stop. I can’t— I can’t endure this anymore... please... I beg you."

For a long moment, Leon said nothing. His expression didn’t change, there was no pity, no satisfaction, only an unreadable calm.

He looked down at the man who had once claimed to be righteous, a protector, but in reality, that persona was a lie, crafted specifically so the torment would cut deeper.

When he finally spoke, his voice carried no warmth. No hesitation. Just cold, simple truth.

"No."

The word cut through the void like a blade.

Gordon’s eyes widened in disbelief, but Leon’s gaze didn’t waver.

"You haven’t even begun to understand pain," Leon said quietly, his tone detached, almost clinical.

"This is only the beginning." And as he spoke, the world twisted once more: the white expanse faded to black and the void folded inward, reality warping toward a new beginning.

Ignoring the collapse of existence, Gordon kept his remaining eye fixed on Leon. For a heartbeat, something inside him snapped.

Then he started laughing.

It spilled out of him raw and broken, a sound scraped from a ruined throat. "Hahahahaha... just let me die," he choked, breath hitching between laughs. "Please... let it end... hahahaha..."

The laughter died mid-breath.

"Let me die!" he screamed, voice tearing itself apart. "Let me die! Let me die! Please—please—I don’t want to experience this again!"

His emotions fractured and collapsed into each other, laughter turning to sobs, sobs to screams, screams to hollow pleading. But no matter the shape they took, the message never changed. He wanted oblivion. He wanted release.

Leon watched him without expression.

Gordon was already broken. Completely. There was nothing left to shatter. And still, this was not the end. It never would be. This was eternity, an unbroken chain of suffering with no final breath waiting at the end.

Even if time itself unraveled, Leon would simply restart it. He would find Gordon’s soul wherever it fled and drag it back. Again. And again. And again.

This was punishment without mercy. A sentence carved into existence itself.

A warning.

Hurt his family, and pain would not stop at death. Pain would become everything.

In the next moment, Leon vanished from the white expanse. The void began to collapse in on itself, reality folding like a closing wound.

Gordon’s laughter echoed as the world dissolved around him, hysterical and empty.

"Please... let me die..."

The space went dark.

And somewhere beyond it, the next loop began.

****

-Author’s Note-

Okay guys, today is the 19th and we managed to stay in the Top 50! This is a huge win for us. As promised, I’ll be doing a mass release today.

I’ve also included a quick survey below regarding the short arc that just concluded. I was aiming for a darker tone, so I’d love your honest opinions:

Survey

A) It was okay; you did your best.

B) Author, why? Why make me read through all this suffering? Am I not suffering enough?

C) It was really edgy. Leon was already intense, but this arc took it to a whole new level.

D) Author, I’m only still here because I’m a completionist. Just finish the book so I can move on!

E) Author, here is a ’Magic Castle’ for this amazing Chapter!

F) Others (Comment below).

*****

Thank you for reading, you guys are the best! Now, on with the rest of the Chapters!^^!