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

Capítulo 334: Outside (3)

The silence lingered.

Not tense. Not threatening. Just still.

Like the world had finally exhaled.

The last of the distorted energy had faded minutes ago. The stone floor, once lit with fractured resonance lines and torn elemental threads, now lay cold and smooth beneath the observation deck. The only movement was the slow drift of residual vapor trailing up from Damien’s skin—thin curls of mist evaporating into the dome’s artificial air.

No more pulses. No more tremors. No system errors.

The dome, for the first time in hours, was quiet.

And then—

“Mana stream has stabilized,” the technician said, breath catching. “Readings are returning… slowly.”

Kael leaned closer to the glass. His arms were folded, jaw set, but his eyes were sharp—calculating.

“What are you seeing?” Dominic asked, not taking his eyes off his son.

The technician didn’t answer at first.

She was staring at her slate, brows furrowed. Several readouts were flickering—still calibrating—but the lines were solid. No distortions. No critical errors. The kind of output that only came from a living, synchronized Awakened.

“I think he… finalized it,” she whispered. “The mana’s flowing. Internally aligned. No backlash. No dissonance.”

Dominic nodded slightly, his posture still rigid. “So. He’s Awakened.”

“Fully,” the tech confirmed. “His core is active. Stabilized. We can’t get full detail from this distance, but—he’s not latent anymore.”

“Good,” Kael muttered. “That’s something.”

But even as he said it, his eyes narrowed further.

Because something didn’t add up.

The readings were returning—but they were strange. No sharp spikes, no flares, no excessive radiation… and no identifiable markers.

“Where are the elemental traces?” Kael asked.

The technician hesitated, then zoomed in on the current scan projection. A faint silhouette of Damien’s form—just a spectrogram of mana density—was rotating slowly on the display.

“There aren’t any. At least, not any clear ones,” she said. “Usually we can match affinity signatures by resonance bleed. A flare here, a flicker there—common attributes leave patterns. But this? It’s just… smooth.”

“Smooth?” Dominic asked.

The tech nodded. “It’s like… water over glass. No friction. No resonance spikes. Whatever attribute he has—it’s masked, or atypical. There’s no trace of wind, no stone markers, no electrostatic pulse.”

Kael’s brow twitched. “What about the primaries? Run a filter.”

She complied, flicking through the registry interface and enabling the universal baseline scan. The array cycled through thousands of resonance markers—elemental keys, legacy signatures, bloodline tracks—

Then—

Beep.

The screen froze for a second. Then shimmered.

“Fire,” she said softly. “That’s a fire attribute. A faint one, but definitely there.”

Kael raised a brow. “That’s what got through first?”

The tech nodded. “It’s not uncommon. Fire and lightning are the easiest to read. Their frequencies are aggressive, even at rest. They tend to leak through anything not sealed. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s his dominant… but it’s there.”

She adjusted the field again.

Beep.

“Water.”

Kael straightened. “Two attributes?”

“Looks like it,” she murmured. “The polarity’s shifting. The core pulse is adapting to ambient scan pressure. That shouldn’t happen unless…”

“…he’s got dual resonance,” Dominic finished for her.

The room went quiet again.

Dual-attribute Awakened were rare. Most people didn’t have the genetic structure or core stability to hold multiple elemental alignments without tearing themselves apart—or becoming unstable in combat. Even among those who managed, it usually meant diluted mastery in both.

Kael was still watching the spectrogram when the third reading flickered in.

Beep.

“Lightning,” the technician whispered. “Third attribute confirmed.”

Dominic exhaled—slow, deliberate.

Kael gave a low, short whistle. “Triple-typed core. I’ve only ever seen two that didn’t shatter.”

The tech tapped her slate to expand the readings. “It’s not bleeding. He’s not rejecting any of them. The resonance matrix is still stable—aligned, somehow, despite the load.”

“This shouldn’t be possible,” she added under her breath. “Not with that much raw input from the Cradle. Not without—”

And then she stopped.

All three of them looked up.

Because something changed.

Instantly.

The mana disappeared.

Not faded.

Gone.

The swirling densities, the delicate elemental threads, the passive heat and flicker of Damien’s aura—all of it vanished like it had never existed.

The spectrogram blinked to blank.

The readings dropped to zero.

No pulse. No feedback. No resistance from the dome walls. Not a trace of elemental pressure.

“What—?” the tech started.

“Did it fail?” Kael asked sharply. “Check the sensor loop.”

“I—no. Everything’s functioning. We were just reading him a second ago. It’s like…”

Her voice trembled slightly. “It’s like he never Awakened at all.”

Dominic’s brow furrowed. “No. That’s not right.”

Kael stepped back from the glass. “Could it be cloaking? Internal suppression?”

“Not possible at this stage,” the tech replied. “You can’t cloak elemental mana flow unless you’ve already refined your core. He’s still in stabilization phase.”

The silence grew heavier.

Dominic said nothing, but his eyes sharpened.

Watching.

Waiting.

Then it happened.

BOOM.

A wave.

This one didn’t carry chaos.

It carried finality.

The air around Damien shifted—barely visible—but enough that the mana sensors jolted alive, spitting out erratic data.

The technician’s hands flew over her console. “New surge detected!”

This one wasn’t fire. It wasn’t water. It wasn’t lightning.

It was all of them.

Not fused.

Not layered.

Integrated.

The pulse swept out from Damien’s body like a ring of invisible pressure, and with it came a snap of containment energy, like the dome itself recognizing something complete—something anchored.

Kael blinked once.

Then smiled—thin, crooked, impressed.

“Well. Congratulations, Dominic. I guess you did get another monster in your family.”

Dominic’s gaze didn’t soften, but there was a faint breath beneath it. A silent shift.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he stepped toward the sanctum access gate.

The technician turned in her chair, voice clipped but clear. “Mana pressure normalized. Containment stable. Authorization sequence green.”

Kael followed behind Dominic, already rolling his shoulders. “Open the door.”

The technician nodded once and tapped the rune key.

With a low, metallic groan, the sanctum’s reinforced seal hissed, then split—slowly, steadily—until the heavy gates parted to reveal the inner chamber.

And for the first time since Damien had gone under, the path to him was clear.

Kael stepped forward, his voice wry.

“Let’s see what kind of creature your son’s decided to become.”

The gate fully opened with a final hiss of depressurization.

Cool air met the inner sanctum—dry, faintly metallic, tinged with the residue of scorched mana and overwritten laws. The chamber lay in a kind of hush not born from silence, but from aftermath. The kind of stillness that came after something immense had passed through.

And in the center of it stood Damien.

Naked. Unarmed. Uncloaked.

But upright.

His bare feet touched the stone as if it remembered him. His breath was slow—calm, almost serene. Steam still rose faintly from his skin, but his posture held no pain. His eyes, half-lidded, had a weight behind them—like he’d seen something that hadn’t quite let go yet.

His body wasn’t glowing.

It didn’t need to be.

He radiated completion.

Kael stopped just inside the doorway.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t blink.

Because what he saw next struck harder than any mana surge could’ve.

“Damien,” Dominic breathed.

And Kael turned—just in time to catch it.

The look.

The expression he never thought he’d see on this man’s face.

Dominic Elford—calmest strategist in three Dominions, a man who had ordered executions with a sip of wine, who’d spoken to Cradle-groomed murderers without a tremor—looked undone.

Not shattered.

Not weak.

But exposed.

The kind of raw that could only come from fear finally passing. From hope being proven right when it had no business surviving.

His eyes widened—not from alarm, but from something deeper. His chest rose, the motion too fast to be controlled. And on his face—

Kael saw it.

A constellation of emotions crashing through polished composure: concern, relief, disbelief, joy, pride, love—real, bone-deep love—all in the same breathless second.

And he said it again.

“Damien.”

The name wasn’t a command. Not a greeting.

It was a release.

Damien’s gaze lifted. His eyes locked with his father’s.

For just a breath, neither spoke.

And Kael, of all people—Kael Blackwood, who had stood over dying kings and laughed through rebellion—felt his chest go tight.

Because he’d seen Awakening.

He’d seen monsters, saints, disasters.

But he had never, in his entire life, seen Dominic Elford look human.

And now he had.

Because his son had stood up.

‘Damn….’