Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger

Chapter 432: EX 432. Three Paths To Power

Leon had arrived at that conclusion the moment he truly understood the shape of the world they now lived in.

This was a world where its strongest people had once held power, then had it ripped away. A world living on borrowed strength, running on fumes. If nothing changed, it was only a matter of time before they fell. Not because they lacked will, but because they lacked the means.

Leon could handle the threat, for now. That much he was confident in. But he was not arrogant enough to believe he could do everything alone.

His battles lay higher up the ladder. Against beings that sat at the very top. And he was not there yet.

By his own measure, Leon knew where he stood. Archduke level, give or take. Enough to crush lords, enough and make divine-stage experts wary. But emperors were another matter entirely. Against them, he did not yet trust his odds. Not fully.

He needed time.

Time to grow stronger.

Time to push his own limits.

Time he would not have if the demons overwhelmed this world while he was gone.

And that was the real problem.

His corrupt legion, powerful as it was, was finite. A limited number of origin-stage corrupted beings could not hold back endless waves of demons that adapted, multiplied, and evolved with every conflict. Even if Leon tore through base after base, there was no guarantee he could eradicate them faster than they grew.

So they would need help.

Not his help alone.

He intended to make the surviving trial takers strong enough to survive without him.

That was why he was here.

When a voice broke the tension, it was sharp with confusion rather than doubt.

"Origin?"

Leon’s gaze shifted toward the speaker, a trial taker who had clearly latched onto that single word.

"Yes," Leon said simply. "Origin."

He straightened slightly, his presence sharpening as his voice carried through the hall.

"Initially, our power as trial takers came from the trial world. Skills. Trials. Growth systems." His eyes swept across the gathered divine-stage experts. "But the trial world was flawed from the beginning."

A pause.

"Because the trial world was nothing more than a remnant of Pandora."

That single sentence sent a subtle ripple through the hall.

Leon continued calmly, almost patiently. "And since it was a remnant, the power it provided was also a remnant. Incomplete. A by-product, if you want to call it that. Useful, yes. Powerful, even. But never whole."

He lifted his gaze slightly, eyes burning with a quiet intensity.

"If you want true power," Leon said, each word deliberate, "then origin is the only path."

The fire in his eyes was not bravado. It was certainty.

Not hope.

Not belief.

But knowledge.

Leon did not rush the explanation. He let the silence stretch, long enough for every divine-stage existence in the hall to feel the weight of what he was about to say.

"Power, as this world understood it, had never been random. It has always been about connection."

Leon spoke calmly, his voice steady as his gaze swept across the gathered figures. He explained that there were paths to power, not countless ones as people liked to believe, but three. Three methods humanity and the trial races had walked, knowingly or not, all tied to how deeply one could touch origin.

The first was what Leon called the pseudo core method.

This had been the standard path in Pandora. When a professional mastered an art to the fifth form and reached the fifth rank, their body and soul would naturally condense a core.

But that core was never real. It was a vessel, nothing more. A false heart meant to hold a fraction of origin energy siphoned from the true Origin Core of the world itself.

That limitation was absolute. No matter how talented the individual, no matter how refined their technique, this path hard-capped its users at rank nine. Beyond that, the container could not endure.

It would fracture before true transcendence could ever be reached.

The second was the trial world method.

This was the path the trial takers had walked.

Even Leon himself had once relied on it. In this system, no core was formed at all. Power came through increasing mastery of one’s arts, which in turn strengthened the connection to the Trial World.

But that connection was hollow. A reflection of a reflection. The Trial World itself was only a remnant, and so the power it offered was incomplete.

That was why a trial taker, no matter how hard they trained, would definitely be weaker than true professionals from Pandora. Talent could bridge the gap, sometimes even shatter it, but the foundation itself was flawed.

Then Leon spoke of the third path.

The hall felt colder as he named it.

"The origin core method."

This path was direct and brutally honest. Instead of crafting a container to hold borrowed power, one created their own source. An origin core, forged within the self.

It did not rely on siphoning energy from a living world or clinging to the remains of a dead one. Origin was origin. Its purity did not change based on where it came from. If a world could birth it, then so could a being who understood its laws deeply enough.

Leon’s eyes burned faintly as he finished.

This was the path that led beyond ceilings. Beyond artificial limits. Beyond the fate the primordials had decided for them.

And for the first time since the shutdown, the divine-stage experts did not feel trapped inside a dying world.

They felt like there was a door.

Leon finished outlining the final path, before someone else took control of the silence.

It was the leader.

She leaned forward slightly in her seat, her single uncovered eye never leaving Leon. "So," she said, her voice rough yet steady, "you possess this origin core."

Leon nodded.

"Yes."

No embellishment. No pride. Just a statement of fact.

The leader studied him for a long moment. The hall waited with her. Then she asked the question everyone else had been circling around but had not dared to voice.

"Then what do we do to obtain it?"

Leon did not answer immediately.

He stood there, hands at his sides, eyes calm as if he were staring at something far beyond the hall, beyond Zion itself.

The divine experts felt it then, that quiet weight he carried, the kind that came not from arrogance but from responsibility.

"You don’t have to do anything," Leon finally said. "I’ll handle all of it. When I’m done, you’ll take over from there."

That was all.

No grand explanation. No demands. No conditions.

For a heartbeat, the leader simply stared at him.

Then, slowly, she rose from her seat. The light from above reflected off her bald head as she stepped forward and bowed deeply, lower than protocol demanded, lower than pride would normally allow.

"We are in your debt," she said.

The sound of movement followed immediately.

The twelve divine experts beneath her stood as one. Akira. Sarah. George. Ignatius. One by one, the SS-ranks rose as well. Selena and Darian stood beside Luke, their expressions heavy yet resolute. Across the hall, every S-rank followed suit.

All of them bowed.

"We are in your debt."

The words echoed through the chamber, not as submission, but as trust placed in a single man.

Leon watched them quietly. For a moment, he felt the weight of every life in Zion settle on his shoulders. Then he nodded once.

"Then let us begin."