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

Chapter 316: Another one (2)

The ground roared beneath his heels, a chasm chasing him like a living thing with hunger in its breath.

Damien ran.

Harder than he ever had. The wind tore at his face. Each step jarred his joints. His lungs burned. His heart slammed against his ribs like a war drum, trying to force blood into muscles that had already begun to seize.

The plateau behind him collapsed in sheets.

Stone crumbled like sand as the rupture widened—lava boiling up from the depths, casting a hellish glow that painted the sky in orange and red. The very air shimmered with heat, sucking moisture from his skin, his breath, his bones.

Every nerve screamed.

But he didn’t stop.

’Faster.’

The word pounded through his skull, over and over, a single note of defiance.

’Faster. Faster. FASTER.’

His legs felt like fire, muscles tearing with each lunge. His calves locked. His knees threatened to give out.

Still, he ran.

Because the drop was too close. Too deep.

And he wasn’t going to end here. Not like this. Not after everything. Not after carving through madness and monsters, not after surviving with nothing but his will.

’FUCKING FASTER—’

The cliff edge ahead was rising. He was gaining on it—but the crack was gaining on him, too. One more step. Another. His vision blurred. Heat warped the light around him. Lava licked at the air behind his heels.

He didn’t feel the pain anymore. The wounds that bloodied him just minutes ago had sealed shut, but new heat seared his heels and calves—each step through molten atmosphere a betrayal. Beneath him, the chasm roared closer, its light smearing the edges of his vision. Lava filled the abyss, an endless furnace reflecting on his sweat-slick skin.

Yet he ran. Every fiber of his being screamed for relief. His lungs burned. His heart hammered as if trying to break free. His calves shook with each stride, gasping for respite, but still—

“Faster,” he raged into the scorching wind.

Boots slapped against the blistered stone. Each step carved away strength. Each gasp of breath felt stolen—taken by the roaring heat, eaten by the hungry air. Sweat boiled into acid, dripping into his eyes where grit flared like fire.

Behind him, the world collapsed. The crack stretched like living metal, pushing closer with wild intent. Rock tore itself loose and dropped into flame. His ears rang with the sound—KRAAAK—KSHHH—like the world itself ripping from its spine.

He glanced back. The gap was closing. Too fast. The edge was less than ten strides away, but his legs were giving out. He stumbled twice. Each fall risked everything. Lava hissed around him, ready to claim him whole.

What could he do? The world demanded something he didn’t know how to give. His body needed more. The motes—those shimmering motes of mana—danced just beyond reach, swirling in air thick with embers. He could feel them. Could sense the rhythm. But he didn’t know how to use them. They hovered like stars he couldn’t grasp.

“Feels….” His mind whispered. Not think. Feel.

He needed to go beyond exertion. Beyond defiance.

It was do or die.

He wouldn’t die here.

He had lived through starvation, madness, slaughter. He’d tasted the edge more times than he could count. He wasn’t a man. He was a thing carved from primal will.

But the crack wasn’t listening. It devoured everything in its path.

The voices rose again—soft, mocking, laced with emptiness. “You can’t—” “Endless…” “It will swallow you…”

They stabbed at his mind, but now they were background noise. Noise he didn’t have time for. He clamped down, forced the haze of exhaustion away.

He clenched his fists. Felt the mana motes brush against his fingertips, rub against his skin. Just touch them. Feel them. That was all. Connection, not control.

The ground shivered beneath him, the edge leapt up again.

He forced a breath. Pulled every ounce of life into every fiber of his body, even the ones he thought had given out. He let the weight of his will descend into his legs, through his bones, into his flesh… and he ran again.

Every step was screaming agony.

Every breath tasted of molten stone.

But somewhere in the hiss of heat and heartbreak of feet, he felt something shift.

A tiny tug. A whisper of alignment as one mote of mana brushed his forearm and slipped through the skin. Not enough to change much—but enough to spark a flicker.

Enough to dread hope.

He won’t die.

He’d find the thread again.

He would grasp it.

And he would survive.

Because dying was not an option.

Not here.

Not now.

Damien’s foot skidded over molten stone, cracks spreading like veins of fire beneath him. The air roared—a furnace gale that screamed for his surrender. Yet within the chaos, his awareness flickered, guided by that faint pull.

He slowed. Every muscle trembled with fatigue, muscle-fire, molten sweat—and something else: intention. His chest burned with refusal. His lungs pulled shallow, savage breaths. He felt the thread again—slender, almost transparent, dancing just before the edge of collapse.

In desperation, he reached.

Fingers stretched through sweat and ash, grasping—snapping—that wisp of mana. It shivered in his grip, a flicker of living light tangled in his veins. Time slowed, the heat dimmed—not gone, but drowned in that single pulse of connection.

Then—FOOOSH!

A burst of lava gushed over his back, searing flesh and armor alike. Damien screamed—ragged, broken—but more: alive. Agony ripped through him like brandished steel, fire lancing up his spine, hammering his breath to pieces.

He stumbled.

Vision blurred into molten reds and yellows.

Heat more than heat—it was existence reshaping itself. His knees buckled. He fell to his hands.

And there, in that crucible of agony, everything ground to stillness.

No sound. No movement. Just the presence of being.

He saw the thread again.

Weak, but there. It shimmered under his palm, tethered to the plateau, to the world, to his self. Against the roar, the crack, the lava—

He held it.

A flicker of calm spread through him. His senses sharpened around it: the hum in his bones, the breath in his lungs, the thunder of two colossi above. A whisper of balance in the center of chaos.

One… two… three heartbeats later he whispered:

’Here.’

And he squeezed.

The moment his fingers curled tight around that thread, something broke open inside him—not a wall, not a gate, but a silence. And from it came a flood.

Mana.

It rushed over him—not a wave, but a tide, slow and absolute. He could feel it in the ground, in the heated air, in the wind curling from the impact of distant titans. Every speck of dust held some. Every tremor carried it. It was not a rare thing. It was the world.

’The mana is everywhere.’

The realization wasn’t a revelation—it was recognition. Like a word spoken in a dream, remembered only upon waking. And with it came another voice, clearer now, ghosted from memory:

“The world is full. All you have to do is feel it.”

His father’s voice.

And Damien finally understood.

He took a breath—not forced, not desperate. A breath of intent. The air moved into him like a living thing. Not oxygen. Not heat.

Mana.

It flowed toward his chest, spiraled toward his lungs, down into his gut, coiling in a perfect loop around his ribs like a belt of light—and his body drank it in.

The thread in his palm didn’t vanish.

It fed.

Grew.

And the pull intensified.

His skin shimmered—dim at first, then brighter, lines of pale azure light tracing through his veins like glowing ink. Not painful. Not sharp. Just real.

And within moments, he felt it—circulation. Not something he forced. Something that responded to his will, subtle as breath. The mana spiraled inside him—his core acting like a tidepool, drawing in every drop.

’So this is it…’ he whispered.

The body had learned.

The thread had been claimed.

And Damien was no longer on the edge.

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