Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger

Chapter 431: EX 431. A Way To Fight Back

Every divine-stage expert in the hall stilled, conversations dying on their lips. Eyes turned toward Leon from every direction.

This meeting wasn’t ceremonial. It wasn’t political. Leon was the reason they were here.

A prodigy who had returned from the dead. A weapon that had already shifted the course of battles. Whatever he was about to say would not be idle words.

It would decide the direction of the war.

Leon met the leader’s gaze, then turned to face the hall. His voice carried without effort.

"I’ve been away for a while."

The divine-stage experts listened in silence.

"My squad and I were assigned a trial that was never meant for us. A Tier VII SSS-rank trial."

Shock rippled through the hall. Faces stiffened. Breaths caught.

An SSS-rank trial. When Leon had last entered the trial world, he had been E-rank. Even if his strength back then had surpassed the norm, even if he had reached top level of the Ascendant stage, a trial of that caliber should have crushed him outright.

Akira’s fingers tightened against his armrest.

’Even sending Nikko as a guide hadn’t been enough.’ No matter how carefully he prepared, the world always seemed to raise a higher wall in Leon’s path. And the bitter truth was that this obstacle had come from a force that was supposed to be on their side.

The Primordials.

Around the hall, the other divine experts remained quiet, but a single realization settled heavily among them. Leon had survived a trial no SSS-rank trial taker had ever cleared, while standing two major stages below its intended challengers.

No wonder he had reached the divine stage so quickly.

Leon let the silence breathe before he continued.

"In that trial, my squad and I reached the clear conditions," he said evenly. "And we finally cleared the trial."

A ripple ran through the hall. One of the divine experts leaned forward, unable to hold back the question.

"Then where are your squadmates?"

It was a simple question, but it carried weight.

Reports of his deeds at Unit Alpha’s base were being passed around after being compiled by its officers. The details were shocking: taking down a Lord and destroying a lords base in under seven minutes. If Leon had returned from a Tier VII SSS-rank trial with power like this, the others who survived alongside him should have become forces in their own right.

Leon saw the expectation in their eyes. He crushed it gently.

He told them everything.

The truth of the world. The Primordials. Corruption. The revelation that their reality was nothing more than a sacrificial timeline, discarded so another could continue. He spoke of how his squadmates now existed in that surviving timeline, alive, but separated from this one by a gulf no ordinary power could cross.

As his words settled, the hall fell into a deeper silence than before. Not a single whisper remained. Even the leader’s expression hardened, a faint crease forming between her brows.

Sealed fate. Predetermined extinction. The knowledge hollowed the room.

Then a voice finally broke through, quiet but steady.

"Then why did you come back?"

Leon turned his gaze to the divine expert who had spoken. The man was a dragon in human form, his brows drawn together in genuine confusion, as if the answer should have been obvious. Why return to a doomed world when a safer one already existed. Why choose struggle over certainty.

Leon studied him in silence.

The hall followed suit. No one spoke. His parents watched him quietly from among the SS ranks, Luke beside them, all of them already knowing the answer he would give. They did not interrupt. They did not need to.

At last, Leon spoke.

"I came back because my family is here," he said, his voice steady. "And if living in a world where the future is ’guaranteed’ means watching them die somewhere else, then I’d rather fight fate than accept it."

The words settled heavily over the hall.

In that moment, the divine experts saw him differently. There was a clear divide between power held for its own sake and power burdened with something to protect. The first could retreat. The second could not. Someone with nothing to lose might choose survival. Someone with everything to lose would always choose resistance.

It was obvious that if Leon’s family and those he cared for were safe elsewhere, he might never have returned. But they were not.

A beat passed.

Then another divine-stage expert rose to speak, this one from the beastmen race, his voice rough but earnest.

"But do you have a way to help?"

Leon met the beast man’s gaze without offense. The question hadn’t come from doubt, nor from a need to belittle him. If anything, it carried weight.

After the reports they had all read, it was obvious Leon Kael was no existence that could be measured by ordinary standards. But the demons he described were no ordinary enemies either. They were born of corruption, a force that never stayed still, never remained satisfied. It adapted. It learned. It grew.

The very fact that demons beyond SSS rank existed, ranks once believed to be the absolute ceiling, was proof of that truth.

Yes, Leon possessed power that could rival them, perhaps even surpass them. But he was still only one man.

He could destroy bases, slaughter lords, carve a path through demon territory. But what if they grew faster than he could kill them? What if new ranks emerged before he could reach them? What if the true monsters were still waiting on their homeworld, far beyond what they had seen so far?

The beast man’s concern was not fear. It was realism.

Leon didn’t look away.

"That," he said calmly, wasting no time, "is why I came here."

A ripple of confusion passed through the gathered divine experts. A way?

Leon continued, his voice steady but carrying weight.

"Since the trial world was destroyed, your source of power was cut off completely. Your growth stagnated. Your ability to face the ever-increasing strength of the demons was crippled."

He paused, letting that sink in.

"But the trial world was flawed from the beginning."

A sharp light burned in Leon’s eyes as he spoke the next words, clear and absolute.

"The only path to true power is through origin."

*****

Author’s Note

Please send power stones or golden tickets. Our current numbers are quite discouraging, so every bit helps. Thank you for reading!