Ex-Rank Awakening: My Attacks Make Me Stronger-Chapter 96: EX . Loosing Control

In every demonic stronghold, the rules were absolute, etched into the very essence of the creatures that served within.

No matter the circumstance...

The Commander. Never. Moves.

It was an unwavering law of the demon race. No matter how many invaders breached the outer defenses or how many soldiers fell, the Commander’s duty was singular: to protect the Demon Core. So long as the Core remained intact, the stronghold could be rebuilt, revived, reborn.

But the moment an intruder dared to approach the core with intent to destroy...

That was when the Commander was permitted to act.

And it did.

Now, the epicenter had become a warzone.

Leon had lunged first, dashing toward the towering figure like a flash of blue lightning. His blade was low, his body coiled with precision and strength.

But before he could close the gap,

The demon’s four crimson eyes snapped open in unison and glowed with searing light.

Leon barely had time to register the buildup before a beam of pure energy shot out, searing and precise, cutting across the air like a divine executioner’s blade.

"That’s a first," Leon muttered, pivoting sharply to the right as the beam exploded past him, vaporizing the ground.

But he wasn’t safe.

The moment he moved, the beam curved, tracking his movements like a serpent chasing prey.

His eyes widened.

"It’s following me?"

Another blast erupted, then another, until Leon was weaving, flipping, and twisting through the crumbling chamber. The air crackled around him as streams of molten light shredded the stone where he once stood. The demon wasn’t just attacking.

It was hunting.

Leon’s mind raced as he barely avoided another blast that disintegrated a jagged column beside him.

"This must be an affinity."

There were two kinds of affinities in the world of trial takers.

Talent Affinities were static, locked within the structure of a trial taker’s unique talent. If your skill had fire affinity, then you could manipulate fire only as the talent allowed.

But a true affinity, a normal affinity, was a different beast entirely. When awakened, usually around Rank C, it granted free reign over the element or force. Fire, wind, shadows, lightning, or in this case...

Laser.

It wasn’t a skill. It was raw power shaped by will.

Demons didn’t awaken talents, but some of them, like this one, could evolve affinities through raw strength and bloodline mutation.

Which meant one thing.

This demon was at least Rank C.

Leon’s movements sharpened, sweat slicking down his back as he narrowly avoided another streak of condensed light that blew a crater into the wall behind him. He’d danced through battle before, but never like this. The entire epicenter was now a deadly maze of energy beams, each one faster and smarter than the last.

His expression darkened as he flipped behind a jagged pillar that exploded a second later from another laser.

"If this keeps up... I’ll be toast."

But then, he grinned.

"No choice, then."

All the way through the epicenter, on his ruthless path of destruction, he had been silently racking up Attack Points. Every attack had added to the tally. He had been saving them.

But now?

He needed power.

And he needed it now.

As the lasers converged and boxed him in from every direction

Leon’s aura shifted.

His eyes glowed faintly, and his presence exploded, pressure rippling out like a tsunami.

[Attack Points: 10,000/10,000]

In a heartbeat, he burned 2000 attack points, not for strength, not for speed, not for vitality... but for Aura.

His stat screen blinked wildly.

[Aura: 701 > 20,701]

A surge of pure energy erupted from him, distorting the air with rippling waves. His decision might’ve seemed unorthodox, even insane, most trial takers would’ve funneled their points into raw speed or power, but Leon wasn’t like them.

He had long stopped following normal logic.

There was a reason for his choice:

Phantom Edge – First Form: Flicker Fang, was

a burst technique that converted aura into pure, untraceable speed for a single attack.

Leon used to scoff at such techniques, preferring brute force and stat, enhanced dashes, because no art, no matter how evolved, could outpace a high-level stat boost.

Or so he believed.

But everything changed in his battle against Cerberus.

That fight taught him something terrifying, something wonderful:

His stats didn’t just break limits.

They broke the limits of his very skills.

He was no longer bound by the world’s rules.

So now, as the laser beams zeroed in on him, burning through stone and space,

Leon whispered, calm and cold:

"Flicker Fang."

The moment Leon activated Flicker Fang, the surge of aura he’d force-fed into his stat ignited like a supernova within his veins.

The skill responded like a beast unleashed, hungry, wild and unbounded.

In a blink, the entire battlefield changed.

One moment, the lasers were mere inches from vaporizing him,

The next, he became a blur, too fast for even sound to follow.

BOOM!!

The lasers struck empty ground, carving craters into the floor with blinding fury, but Leon was already gone.

He reappeared directly in front of the demon, sword raised, his killing intent sharp enough to tear through dimensions.

But just as he brought his blade down for the finishing blow,

SCHLK—

A fifth eye snapped open on the demon’s forehead, glowing with eerie power,

ZZZZRAAKK!!

A blinding laser fired point-blank at Leon.

As the beam tore through him,

or so it seemed.

Because in the next second...

His body disintegrated into motes of shimmering light.

Mirror Split.

A perfect clone, sacrificed in the blink between flashes.

The real Leon was already above.

Crouched on the ceiling, balanced like a predator, eyes locked onto the demon’s vulnerable spine.

No tricks. No escape. Just raw, devastating power. freёwebnoѵel.com

He launched.

FWOOOOOM!!

The ceiling split as Leon rocketed downward, all his boosted strength behind a single, perfect vertical slash.

The air cracked as he delivered the devastating blow.

KA-BOOM!!!

A sonic boom shattered the silence as Leon landed with his sword pointed down, aura trailing behind him like ribbons of lightning.

Behind him, the demon froze.

Its five eyes wide.

Then,

CRRRAAACKKK!!

A perfect split formed from the crown of its skull, running cleanly down between its eyes, through its jaw, chest, and groin.

As its body fell apart, neatly halved, like a slab of meat under a divine butcher’s blade.

The corpse crashed to the ground with a heavy thud.

Blood sprayed. Silence returned.

But Leon didn’t move.

He stood amidst the aftermath, sword humming softly, his expression blank, save for the flicker of mild dissatisfaction in his eyes.

Leon clenched the hilt of his sword tightly, the leather grip groaning under the pressure of his fingers. His cold blue eyes lingered on the bisected corpse of the demon commander, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

"The slash wasn’t perfect..." he muttered under his breath.

The uneven rupture. The slight mistiming. The splash of blood that came too soon.

It wasn’t enough to change the outcome, but it was enough to bother him.

Leon exhaled slowly, pushing the frustration down. He shut his eyes for a moment, centering himself as the roaring pressure in his limbs cooled.

Then, without another word, he turned toward the Core.

It floated in the air like a void given shape, pitch-black, smooth as obsidian, humming with low menace. Its very presence twisted the atmosphere, made the walls whisper, made the blood in your body feel like it ran in the wrong direction.

Leon walked up to it calmly.

Then in one clean swing

SHRRRRRNG!!

He slashed the core into pieces.

No dramatic explosion. No echoing boom. Just a quiet, final hum as the pieces shimmered once, before falling to the ground like broken glass.

And in the next instant...

Silence.

A strange peace swept through the stronghold.

The air lightened. The tension vanished. Even the walls, once pulsing with demonic energy, now sat dead and cold.

Leon stared at the fallen shards of the core for a moment, then crouched to gather them. He swept the broken fragments into his inventory, evidence of a job done.

He stood up, cracked his neck once, then muttered:

"Twenty-nine more to go."

With that, he turned on his heel and began walking back, retracing his steps through the ruined halls of the stronghold, back to the place where he’d left his squad.

****

A/N: I just wanted to talk about Leon’s personality. The reason he doesn’t boost his stats as soon as a fight starts is because a temporary boost can’t compare to a permanent one, so he tries not to expend his attack points unnecessarily.

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