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

Capítulo 333: Outside (2)

The air split.

Not with light, not with sound—but with a feeling. A crack in pressure. A twist in the axis of sensation, as if the world itself had flinched and hadn’t recovered.

From the edge of the sanctum, the energies bled faster now.

Mana threads weren’t just reacting—they were separating.

Not dispersed, not merging. Fracturing. One line scorched hot with pure combustion, another spiraled into freezing mist, another pulsed like a heartbeat made of thunder. Wind coiled into itself and turned sharp, slicing invisible lines through the observation layer. At least four different energy types—possibly more—were orbiting Damien’s body in erratic, asynchronous patterns.

The technician’s voice broke through, choked. “That’s… that’s incompatible. That’s impossible.”

Kael didn’t answer.

He was already pulling his glove off, jamming two fingers to the stabilizer’s override node embedded in the side panel. The ward glyphs along the wall flared instantly—reactive. Too reactive.

“Stop,” Dominic barked.

Kael froze, fingers still pressed to the console. His eyes cut sideways. “You want to wait until he unravels?”

“If we open containment while those streams are still desynchronized, you won’t get a body back.”

Kael’s jaw tightened, his mana flaring involuntarily in his arm. “And if we don’t, he might rupture from the inside out.”

“I’m aware.”

They both turned back to the dome.

And there—finally—Damien moved.

Barely.

A flicker of breath. A twitch of one finger against the stone.

But the mana didn’t stabilize.

It reacted.

All at once, like a beast sensing prey—or a core finding ignition—the orbiting energies collapsed inward.

“Get back!” Kael shouted.

The technician barely ducked in time.

BOOM.

A detonation—soundless, but felt. The entire platform shook. Runes along the sanctum flared red for the first time since installation, lines distorting as elemental threads spiked into one another. Not fusing—competing.

Flame clashed with frost.

Gravity warped against wind.

Lightning split the stone floor, and from the center, mana surged in reverse—not away from Damien, but toward him. Feeding him.

The readings snapped off.

Screens cut to static.

Runes dimmed to null.

And for a single breath, everything went still.

Then—

Screaming.

Not from Damien.

Not from anyone.

From the mana itself.

The elemental streams twisted in violent rebellion, howling in their own frequency bands, each rejecting the others. Sparks flared. Pressure built. The barrier groaned.

The technician turned, face pale. “This is exactly what

The technician turned, face pale.

“This is exactly what was recorded in the last Cradle rupture,” she whispered. “Seventy-three cycles ago. Sector Nine. Subject: Taran Veleth. The resonance collapsed in the same pattern—fractal elemental bleed, followed by self-feeding inversion. And then…”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

She didn’t have to.

Everyone in the room knew what had happened to Taran Veleth.

There had been no recovery. No trace. Not even a corpse. The mana had simply consumed itself—and him with it—until all systems flatlined.

Kael’s lips pressed into a hard line. “That record was buried.”

Dominic’s voice came low. Calm. “Not buried. Classified.”

A long breath passed between them.

No alarms. No alerts. Just the hollow, ambient thrum of containment systems fighting for traction they no longer had.

Dominic exhaled slowly. His hand lowered from the override terminal.

“There’s nothing we can do now,” he said.

Kael didn’t argue. He just nodded once, jaw tense.

Because it was true.

The Cradle wasn’t a chamber. It wasn’t a device. It was a threshold. And once crossed, those inside it belonged to its rules—not the Dominion’s, not the system’s, not even the gods’.

They could only watch.

Inside the sanctum, something shifted.

Not visibly.

Not even aurally.

But intrinsically.

The reading slates blinked—once, twice—and then failed to refresh.

Every data stream froze. Every mana tracer stopped calculating.

“What now?” Kael muttered.

The technician leaned in again, fingers trembling as she rerouted the system diagnostics through a secondary loop.

And then she gasped.

“…Hostile mana signature detected.”

Dominic’s gaze snapped to her. “Repeat that.”

“There’s—” she licked her lips, trying to speak clearly, “—a new resonance. Unfamiliar strain. Not elemental. Not natural. It’s… It’s attacking.”

Kael stepped toward the glass. “Attacking who?”

A second pulse blinked across the platform. But it wasn’t like the others—no elemental signature, no known formation shape. The sensors around the sanctum tried to classify it—

—and failed.

“No structure,” the tech said, voice rising, “no root, no phase tier—it’s like it’s not even from this lattice. It’s unreadable.”

Then the air inside the sanctum began to twist.

Not violently.

Not with force.

But with intent.

From the shadows of the surrounding storm, the hostile mana began to gather—cold, oily, slick. A suffocating pressure, unnatural in its directionality, formed a coiling shape above Damien’s body. Like a vine tightening. Like a net preparing to drop.

Kael’s hands sparked with restrained energy. “If that touches him—”

Dominic didn’t move.

“Wait.”

The black mana shuddered.

Then lunged.

Straight for Damien.

And just before it struck—

Another energy hit it head-on.

The two energies collided.

Not with explosion—but with consumption.

Light and dark pressed together like oil against flame—one viscous, the other searing. The black mana rippled violently as the golden force surged into it, not repelling it, but sinking into it, spreading like veins through tar.

The sanctum pulsed once—then again, harder.

The viewing glass warped.

The technician stumbled back from her console as a new reading forced itself across the main slate, jagged and stuttering, as if even the system didn’t know how to describe what it was seeing.

“Mana stream is… fighting itself,” she whispered. “There’s no classification. They’re burning each other out.”

“No,” Kael corrected, his voice low. “They’re consuming each other.”

Inside the sanctum, Damien hadn’t moved.

Still flat on the stone, surrounded by chaos—and yet, untouched. Not shielded. Not glowing with power. Just… there. Still at the eye of it all.

The black mana shrieked. Not sound—but resonance. A deep, soul-humming noise that made the air itself throb. And the gold flared brighter in response, threads of it shooting out in unpredictable arcs that grounded themselves into the dome’s crystalline walls, splintering the edges like ice under pressure.

Cracks formed.

Not physical.

Dimensional.

Hairline fractures across space itself, barely perceptible, traced in thin glowing lines like spiderwebs drawn across the dome’s inner lattice.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the technician murmured.

“Good,” Kael muttered. “Means you’re still sane.”

A tremor rippled through the floor.

Then another.

And another.

Pulses, now—steadier, stronger, faster. Not destabilization. Rhythm. Something was trying to synchronize. Like a failing heartbeat finding pace.

Then—

Flash.

A burst of pressure knocked everyone back half a step. The sanctum flared white for an instant, then dropped—hard—into black.

No light. No sound. No pressure.

For a full three seconds, it was as if the entire dome had ceased to exist.

Then—

BOOM.

A shockwave. Pure. Absolute.

Not concussive, not fiery—empty. A vacuum burst of cleared energy, wiping the sanctum clean like a board reset mid-equation.

The glass de-polarized.

The screens rebooted.

The readings returned.

And everything inside was still.

The elements had vanished.

The lightning. The fire. The cold. The wind. Gone.

No more orbiting threads. No swirling pressure. No hostile presence.

Just… silence.

Damien still lay in the center of the sanctum, his body limp, steam trailing faintly from his fingertips. No glow. No surge. No signs of strain or struggle.

It was as if nothing had happened.

Except everything had.

The only trace left behind was a shallow impression scorched into the stone beneath him—a perfect circle, barely a meter wide, lined with tiny filament scars burned into the mineral. Not a formation. Not a glyph.

Just evidence.

That something ancient had moved through this place.

And left him behind.

Kael’s voice broke the silence first, low and grim.

“…Did he win that?”

Dominic didn’t respond.

His eyes hadn’t left the boy.