Transmigrated into Eroge as the Simp, but I Refuse This Fate

Chapter 306: Friend ? (2)

Kael slowed his steps, casting a glance toward Dominic as they moved toward the inner corridor.

“I assume he’s gotten the briefing?” he asked.

Dominic nodded once. “Fully. I’ve also completed the preliminary preparations.”

“Hm…” Kael hummed, the sound quiet and unreadable. Then, without warning, he turned back toward Damien, eyes narrowing just slightly.

A pulse of mana flickered—silent, sharp.

It wasn’t aggressive. But it wasn’t soft either.

It brushed against Damien’s chest, crept across his arms, probed along the threads of his spiritual pathways—not entering, not forcing its way in, just… feeling.

Damien stiffened slightly at the sensation.

It wasn’t pain. But it was invasive. Like having cold fingers glide beneath the skin, tugging at nerves that weren’t meant to be touched. The mana carried a density Damien hadn’t felt before—not like his father’s controlled weight, not the pressure of Resonation. This one felt alive. Fluid. Tense.

Like it was waiting to coil.

The itching started next. Subtle, then rising—just beneath the surface of his skin, right along his veins. His breathing slowed. His body didn’t react, but his instincts bristled.

’This guy…’

It wasn’t just strength. It was structure. The control Kael had over his mana was almost unnatural. Balanced, shaped, tuned like a wire drawn taut.

Dominic watched with interest but didn’t interrupt.

Kael’s hand dropped a moment later, the test complete.

“Well,” he said at last, eyeing Damien with more scrutiny than before. “You weren’t lying. This one’s different.”

He exhaled quietly.

Dominic gave a low snort, folding his arms behind his back again. “Do you think I’d allow my son into the Cradle if he were normal?”

Kael’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but something faintly sardonic.

“Well,” he said, tone dry, “you certainly don’t seem like the type to throw away your lineage. I can at least respect that.”

Then, after a beat, he turned to Damien again. The lightness in his expression faded. His gaze sharpened, gaze like steel brushing against skin.

“Since you’re going to be entering,” he said, “let me warn you about some things.”

He started walking, motioning for Damien to follow.

“This won’t be like a simulation. Or even a structured Awakening ritual. The Cradle doesn’t accept structure. It doesn’t take instruction. It is what it is. And when you step in—everything else gets stripped away.”

The three of them moved down a narrow corridor lined with runic wards, deep into the compound. The air grew colder, tighter, like the mana itself was bracing for something.

Kael continued, voice low but deliberate. “The place you’ll enter—it’s not part of this world. Not truly. It’s a spillover zone. A breach fragment layered between mana flow and raw formation space. That’s why we call it a Cradle. Because it holds… something. A potential. But also something deeper.”

He stopped in front of a sealed chamber door. Runes glowed along the frame. The pressure here was different—stale, heavy. Not just mana, but density of history.

“When you go inside, you don’t bring your body with you. Not fully. Not like here. Your body gets mirrored—reflected into that space by a resonance we trigger.”

He then stepped aside from the sealed chamber door, one hand resting on the rune-etched handle. His eyes remained fixed on Damien, weighing his posture, his breath, the tension riding his spine like a barely-leashed blade.

“Is that clear?” Kael asked.

Damien nodded once. “Yes. But…” his voice didn’t waver, “what happens to the body?”

Kael gave a short exhale—more a shift of air than a sigh. “The body,” he said, “doesn’t go in. But it doesn’t stay free either.”

Damien’s eyes narrowed slightly. “So it’s held?”

“To maintain resonance,” Kael said, “we place it in a containment field. A stabilizer. You’ll be suspended in a sealed mana chamber. Submerged in an anchoring fluid with high-conductivity roots and neural linkage.”

“A special place,” Damien murmured.

Kael’s gaze hardened. “You don’t need to know more.”

A pause. Damien accepted the answer with a subtle nod.

“…I see.”

Kael tapped one of the runes on the door, letting the glyphs cycle through a slow pulse. The lights responded to his mana signature, but he didn’t open it yet.

“There’s something else,” he said. “If you die in there… that body? It doesn’t recover. No matter how intact it looks. No matter how well we’ve preserved it.”

Damien’s silence was answer enough.

“You’ll be alive, technically. But the soul will be unanchored. The brain will lose all spiritual response. You’ll breathe, your heart will beat, but you won’t be there. You’ll be gone. A corpse that hasn’t learned how to rot.”

He let that sit.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I do.”

Kael studied him for another long second—then nodded.

“Good.”

He turned slightly, gesturing toward a side alcove where a crystalline panel had begun to project holographic data. Lines of old scripture. Glyphs traced in erratic, spiral patterns. Notes half-lost to time.

“This is everything we’ve retained from previous ascended,” Kael said. “Not much survived. Most never returned. But a few… left something behind.”

Damien stepped closer.

“These are echoes. Partial impressions. Memories filtered through Authority—recorded not as words, but as imprints. Their language is fragmentary. Half-mad. But there are patterns.”

Kael raised a hand, pointing at the largest glyph.

“This one appeared three times. Different ascended. Different centuries.”

The symbol looked like a spiral being pulled apart at the edges—like something trying to become order, but still clinging to chaos.

“We’ve translated part of it. The word that keeps surfacing… is Hollowing.”

Damien said nothing.

Kael continued, tone colder. “One said it’s a place where voices live after their mouths have died. Another said it was the breath between lives. The third?” His jaw tightened. “He simply wrote, I forgot my name there.”

The silence stretched.

Kael’s gaze lingered on Damien with that same hard, probing weight. The kind of stare that wasn’t just trying to read a man—but trying to measure what would be left of him after pressure stripped everything else away.

Then he spoke. Quiet, final.

“Kid,” he said, “just to confirm—are you ready?”

Damien met his eyes without hesitation. “Yes.”

For a moment, Kael didn’t blink. Then the corner of his mouth curled up in a rough, dry smirk.

“Pretty arrogant,” he said. “But I like that.”

With a nod toward the door, he turned, and they exited the chamber together. The heavy rune-sealed door slid shut behind them, leaving the echoes of old glyphs and dead names in the dark.

They walked down a long, descending corridor—each step lit by a pale blue underglow. At the end of the passage, the space opened suddenly and fully.

And Damien stopped.

What lay beyond was not what he expected.

It was an open expanse—vast, sprawling, cratered earth surrounded by obsidian ramparts. The sky above was storm-slicked and low, sheets of rain falling in slow arcs, but the rain never touched the center of the clearing. A protective dome shimmered above the heart of the space, translucent and rippling like glass under tension.

Beneath it—machines. Massive pylons. Arcane engines whirring faintly with mana-fed cores. Strange metal constructs, angled like teeth, half-buried in the ground. There were sigils scorched into the terrain, linked by carved veins of crystal lattice that pulsed like a sleeping creature’s breath.

This wasn’t just a ritual zone.

It was a launch site.

A gate prepared to open somewhere that wasn’t here.

Dominic stepped forward, arms still folded behind his back.

“This is Kael’s outpost,” he said, voice low. “Off-grid. Technically under Volcara Pact’s jurisdiction… but only technically.”

Kael grinned, stretching his shoulders as he surveyed the site. “We’ve built this place over decades. Calibrated it to interact with spatial distortions and deeper mana currents. That Cradle you’re going to?” He tilted his head toward Damien.

“You can only enter from here undetected.”