Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger

Chapter 434: EX 434. The Network

Leon lifted his gaze and spoke a single word.

"Sit."

The command was calm, almost casual, yet it carried a weight that pressed down on the hall. In the next moment, every divine stage expert obeyed without hesitation.

One by one, they lowered themselves into lotus positions, backs straight, eyes closed. Their auras did not relax. Instead, their senses sharpened, all of them locked onto Leon as if he were the center of their world.

Leon watched them for a brief moment, committing the sight to memory. Then he mirrored them.

He sat, crossed his legs, rested his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes.

This was not his first time doing something like this. He had already given origin energy before.

Elizabeth had been the first, her awakening tied to her three core physique. But that had been for one person. This was different. This was dozens of divine existences, beings who once stood at the peak of their worlds and had been cut off from the very source that allowed them to climb higher.

There was no danger in scarcity. Origin energy was infinite. What mattered was purity.

Leon knew his limits well. His origin core had stabilized at ninety two percent quality. No matter how much he refined it, no matter how deeply he pushed, it refused to rise further.

He had accepted that fact for now. Ninety two percent was not perfect, but it was more than enough for what he intended to do today.

The world around him faded.

Leon turned inward, his consciousness sinking past false flesh and bone, past aura and will, until he arrived at a familiar place.

The space of his origin core.

It was a vast emptiness, a void untouched by light. Yet the darkness never dared to approach the core itself. Suspended before him was the origin core, radiant and steady, emitting a soft but absolute glow that pushed the void back on all sides. It did not pulse wildly. It did not rage. It simply existed, eternal and complete.

Leon stood before it in silence.

He studied it the way he always did, not with awe, but with focus. This was his foundation. His defiance against a world designed to fail.

Slowly, deliberately, Leon reached out with his will.

The origin core responded. Threads of pure origin energy stirred, awakening at his command, ready to move.

Leon had never intended to simply hand power to them.

Standing before his origin core, he shaped his intent with care. This was not about stopping their growth or replacing it with his own. What he wanted was connection. A network. Something that could endure even when he was gone.

He had done something similar once before with the dowager, but that had been corruption, guided and constrained so it would not consume Pandora outright.

This was different. This was origin itself, barely pure and tainted. Instead of a single node, Leon planned to weave many.

Each divine-stage expert gathered in Zion would receive a direct link to his origin core. From there, they would be able to extend that link outward, sharing it with others.

The secondary connections would be weaker, diluted by distance and intermediaries, but that was unavoidable. The divine-stage experts were few, but they were the pillars. Through them, the remaining trial takers would gain access to something they had lost when the Trial World fell.

Leon exhaled slowly.

Before him, the origin core responded.

Tendrils of light began to form, peeling away from the core like strands of living fire.

Each one carried a fragment of Leon’s will, his understanding of origin, his refusal to let this world collapse quietly.

The process was taxing. Even for him, controlling so many threads at once strained the edges of his perception. His brow tightened, but he did not stop.

In the real world, Leon sat unmoving in a lotus position, eyes closed.

A pressure descended on the hall.

It was not violent, but it was overwhelming, like standing beneath the sky as it pressed downward.

Every divine-stage expert felt it settle over them, heavy and absolute. Their instincts screamed, urging them to react, to defend, to open their eyes.

None of them did.

They trusted him.

Then, in the next moment, something warm and vast surged forward.

Origin energy flowed into their chests.

Not as an invasion, but as an invitation.

Each divine expert felt it differently. Some felt heat, others light, others an indescribable sense of completeness, as if something missing had quietly returned. Deep within them, a new pathway formed, anchoring itself to a source far greater than the hollow remnants they had relied on since the Trial World’s destruction.

The connection settled.

The pressure faded.

And in the silence that followed, something fundamental had changed.

Leon intended it that way.

The divine stage experts did not resist in the slightest. The moment the origin energy reached them, they opened themselves completely, instinct overriding pride, survival overriding caution. Leon felt it immediately. Each connection settled cleanly, smoothly, like roots sinking into fertile soil. No rejection. No turbulence.

’That wasn’t so hard,’ he thought, a flicker of relief passing through him.

Then the change began.

For those gathered, what they experienced defied comparison. It was like surviving an entire lifetime drinking stagnant, scalding water under a merciless sun, only to be handed a cup of ice-cold clarity.

The difference was brutal. Overwhelming. Their bodies trembled as dormant potential awakened, tearing through limits they had been pressed against for years.

Power surged.

Divine experts who had been burning their last fumes felt their foundations thicken and stabilize. Barriers they once thought eternal shattered quietly, almost gently. Some ascended in that very instant, their presence deepening, sharpening, becoming something heavier and more absolute.

Those who had once been hailed as SSS-rank trial takers, Akira, Ignatius, the leader, and several others crossed a line none of them had expected to reach so soon.

They stepped into the Origin Stage, not by force, but by inevitability.

Leon’s parents surged to the peak of SSS rank, their ascent stopping just shy of the same threshold, close enough that even breathing felt different.

Luke and Diana reached that same precipice, standing at the edge of something vast and waiting.

Sandra Feran, Rebecca Feran, Rebecca Sky, and Raven Stone all broke into the entry stage of SSS rank, their growth explosive compared to where they had stood mere moments ago.

But that wasn’t the most unsettling part.

They could feel it.

If they focused, if they refined their connection, if they truly tried, they could go further. The path was no longer sealed. It stretched forward, open and waiting.

A miracle, born from a single man.

The hall remained silent, heavy with disbelief and awe.

Every single person there understood the truth without it being spoken. Their ceiling had been shattered. Their future rewritten. And the one responsible sat quietly before them.

Selena turned toward Leon.

He was still seated in a lotus position, unmoving, eyes closed, expression calm to the point of eeriness.

Confusion crept into her voice.

"Leon?"