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

Chapter 314: The World (2)

Sleep had taken him like a drug—heavy, primal, absolute.

No dreams. No whispers. No pain.

Just a void where breath came slow and even, and the blood in his veins remembered how to flow without screaming.

And when he finally stirred, it wasn’t abrupt.

It was a slow reclamation.

First, the feel of his own limbs—dull weight easing into awareness.

Then the breath—cool, deep, no longer ragged, no longer catching on splintered ribs or seared nerves. His lungs pulled in air and it felt like nourishment. Not just oxygen—but mana, too. Whatever had happened during that madness… it had left something behind.

Something permanent.

Damien’s eyes opened.

And the world welcomed him.

Not gently. Not kindly.

But clearly.

The haze that once blurred everything into bleeding silhouettes was gone. The colors had returned—washed-out greys, muted ochres, the black shine of insect blood dried into the cracks of the stone around him. He lay on a field of carnage, a sprawl of monster corpses stretching in every direction like some ancient battlefield recently disturbed.

His hand twitched beside him, fingers brushing against the dried husk of one of the creatures—split thorax still steaming faintly in the morning-like chill.

He sat up slowly, no longer groaning, no longer shaking. His wounds had sealed—not by any miraculous regeneration spell, but through something slower, grittier. His body had stitched itself together with mana and will and meat. Raw materials. Brutal efficiency.

He took stock.

Muscles—stiff, but whole.

Joints—sore, but responsive.

Breath—steady. Strong.

Damien rolled his shoulder once, testing the range, and nodded to himself.

Whatever that collapse had been—whatever that connection had become—it worked.

He was still alive.

Still him.

But not the same.

Not anymore.

His gaze moved over the field. Flies, or things pretending to be flies, buzzed lazily over the corpses. The ground had absorbed much of the blood. In places, the ichor had crystallized into black-veined patches, like the earth didn’t know what to do with it.

And the creatures?

Gone.

Not all of them. Some still lay dead, carved or crushed. But the rest—the ones who had sensed the shift, who had seen him laugh in the face of starvation and eat what hunted him—they had retreated. Back into their holes. Back into whatever half-realm they’d crawled from.

They weren’t waiting to strike again.

They were staying away.

He exhaled, slow and steady. A long, weighted breath that emptied more than his lungs.

Damien sat there for a moment, letting the wind crawl over him. It wasn’t biting anymore. Still cold, but not cruel. It moved through the dead field, rustling through cracked stone and desiccated wings, brushing against his skin like it had finally acknowledged him as something more than prey.

He tilted his head upward, eyes scanning the horizon.

And this time—he saw.

Not just ruins.

Not just empty sky and twisted relics of a civilization that had long since stopped dreaming.

Now, he saw depth.

Far beyond the carnage, beyond the corpse-littered battlefield, there were shapes. Subtle at first—but unmistakable. The outline of distant trees, their trunks thin and gnarled like they’d grown under pressure. Mountains too—not towering, but jagged, hunched against the horizon like broken knuckles raised from the earth.

There was movement, too.

Not close. Not threatening.

Just… life.

Crawling along the edge of vision. Four-legged beasts, bulbous and horned, trotting in pairs or groups. One of them bent low to the ground, tearing at something beneath it with serrated tusks. A smaller creature bolted away, disappearing into tall brush Damien hadn’t even realized was brush before.

’So it wasn’t empty,’ he thought, eyes narrowing. ’I was blind.’

It made sense now.

This place—this plateau—it had been veiled to him. Not by fog or darkness, but by lack. Lack of connection. Lack of awareness. He hadn’t tuned into the world properly. Not until now.

He turned, slowly surveying the edges.

Behind him, the world dropped away.

A sharp descent, hidden before by the sheer scale of the place. The entire stretch he’d been crossing was elevated—flat, high, and deceptively featureless until now. A cradle, maybe. Or a proving ground. Or a prison with no walls.

Ahead, the land finally shifted.

Downhill. Slightly. Enough that the wind moved with more direction now. It carried scent—distant rot, old bark, faint traces of something sweet and sharp like crushed herbs.

He stood.

Tested the weight on his legs. It held.

’That direction,’ he thought, eyes narrowing as he looked where the plateau narrowed and curved.

It wasn’t a path, not exactly. But it was less pathless.

And after everything?

That was enough.

He started walking—slowly, deliberately—his boots grinding against stone and dried ichor, his steps echoing just faintly enough to remind him how silent this place still was. But each step was stronger than the last, smoother. There was no longer hesitation in his joints, no longer the stagger of a body held together by grit and defiance alone.

And as he moved, something tugged at the edge of his awareness.

Not pain.

Not a threat.

Something… flowing.

He stopped and looked down at his arm, flexing the fingers. His veins didn’t bulge unnaturally, but there was a shimmer under the skin—a soft pulse. And in the air around him, barely visible to the naked eye unless he focused just right, were motes. Flecks of faint color and glimmer, drawn toward him.

Drawn into him.

He blinked.

Raised a hand, fingers open.

The motes obeyed. They drifted, slow and curious, sliding into his palm and disappearing into the skin without resistance, without heat, without sting.

Not particles.

Not dust.

’Mana,’ he realized.

Not just in theory. Not abstract anymore.

He could feel it. See it. The subtle signature of energy flowing into his body, not as fire or wind or lightning, but as a hum—like warmth stretching through sinew and bone. Not rushing. Not explosive.

But constant.

And aligned.

He took another breath and could tell: the air was saturated. This plateau, this realm—it wasn’t dead. It was brimming. Just hidden. Just waiting for those who could listen.

He looked at his other hand, then down at his torso.

Scars that had torn across his flesh were faded now, not healed but sealed—closed by something older than medicine. Muscles had returned their volume. Strength buzzed faintly along his spine like the low thrum of a distant engine.

’So that’s what happened,’ he thought.

He didn’t remember all of it.

Only flashes—pain, blood, the scream of wind, the weight of madness on his thoughts.

But the result was clear.

He hadn’t just survived.

He’d changed.

’This must be mana,’ he said aloud, voice hushed, eyes still fixed on the drifting motes. ’Real mana.’

He stood still as the motes moved. His body no longer seized up with each twitch of sensation, no longer flinched from every pulse of foreign energy. The mana entered him like breath—natural, slow, ambient.

But he couldn’t control it.

Not yet.

It moved on its own terms, not his. Slid through his flesh, followed the curves of his veins, pooled somewhere deep and unseen. There was no handle. No switch. No lever he could grip to harness it.

Just the flow.

He narrowed his eyes, lips tightening into something between frustration and focus.

’Not enough to feel it,’ he thought. ’Need to connect.’

He dropped to one knee, then sank fully down, crossing his legs against the warm, scarred stone. The ground was quiet beneath him now—still humming, still charged, but not hostile. Not like before.

He closed his eyes.

Slowed his breathing.

Tried to remember how it felt—how his body had synced with the world, not through will but by falling past it. Past thought. Past language. Into something feral, raw, stripped.

And there it was.

Faint.

A shimmer of something familiar.

A thread.

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