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

Capítulo 341: Different

“…His core’s different.”

Kael didn’t disagree.

He set his glass down on the armrest and leaned forward slightly, elbows on knees. For a long second, he didn’t say anything.

Then:

“I noticed.”

Dominic glanced at him, quiet.

Kael continued, voice low but steady. “I’m ranked above ninety-five percent of the active registry. You’re not far behind. Between the two of us, we should’ve read that kid’s mana flow like a report.”

Dominic nodded once. “But we couldn’t.”

“No,” Kael said. “We couldn’t.”

He didn’t say it like an accusation. Just a fact.

And that was what made it more unsettling.

“It wasn’t just dense,” Kael went on. “It wasn’t locked either. It was… obscured. The way he holds it—there’s no resonance leak. No projection. It doesn’t spill out like most Awakened. It folds in.”

Dominic swirled the liquid in his glass, watching the way the amber curved against the crystal.

“Origin.”

Kael glanced sideways. “You’re sure?”

“Felt it before. Once. A long time ago.”

Kael raised a brow. “Where?”

Dominic’s voice dropped a notch.

“Ardent Field. During the Purge Operations. One of the anomalies we cleared—we found traces of an Origin-burned leyline. Half a mile of land eaten clean. No survivors. No records. The mana there didn’t fade. It sank.”

Kael’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You think this is the same?”

“No.” Dominic paused. “But it’s from the same root. Damien’s core isn’t just using Origin mana. It’s built from it.”

Kael sat back again, thoughtful now. “That’s not supposed to be possible. Origin doesn’t bind. It destroys or elevates.”

Dominic exhaled through his nose. “Apparently, it adapts.”

Kael let that hang in the air for a moment, then finally muttered, “Of course it does.”

They both went quiet again.

Then Kael spoke, more seriously this time.

“So you didn’t bring him here just to delay Vivienne.”

“No.”

“You brought him here because you weren’t sure what would happen.”

Dominic nodded slowly. “If his core destabilized mid-transit, we wouldn’t have made it home in one piece. That kind of resonance misfire could tear a gate open, rupture containment, maybe even corrupt the anchor layer.”

Kael leaned forward. “And you think the estate would’ve held up to that?”

“Not with him still learning how to breathe through it.”

Kael blew out a breath, then reached for his drink again.

“I’ve seen Awakened tear themselves apart before stabilizing. Bad guidance. Core too wild. Mana backlash.”

“So have I.”

“But Damien…” Kael’s voice dropped. “He’s not wild.”

“No,” Dominic said. “He’s precise.”

“That’s the strange part,” Kael murmured. “The unfamiliar core type I can accept. But the control?”

Dominic didn’t answer. Not immediately.

He didn’t need to.

Because they’d both seen it.

When Damien first came out of the Cradle—chest heaving, skin slick with sweat, eyes faintly dilated—it wasn’t the disheveled look that stood out. That part was expected. Any soul slingshot through a high-density dimension and slammed back into flesh would look like they’d fought gravity itself.

But the moment he stood?

Everything stilled.

Not his surroundings. Him.

It wasn’t just calm. It was calibrated. He hadn’t been steadying himself by instinct—he had aligned. Breathing, posture, mana flow. Every gesture folded back into the body like it belonged.

Like he’d done it a hundred times.

“His eyes were different,” Kael said, after a moment.

Dominic looked over. “You saw it too?”

“Not just calm. Not shock. That wasn’t a boy dragged through trauma.” Kael’s voice thinned. “That was someone who’d completed something. Like he finished a loop that none of us even knew was open.”

Dominic’s jaw tightened. Just slightly.

“And the mana control,” Kael added. “Don’t pretend you didn’t notice. His body wasn’t just stable—it was cycling. Even unconscious. Subdermal flow was already moving in rhythm.”

Dominic didn’t deny it.

He’d seen the same thing. Felt it, actually—the faint resonance pulsing off Damien’s skin, barely there, not leaking like most unstable cores. It wasn’t wild. It wasn’t sealed.

It was working.

On its own.

“I’ve never seen that,” Kael said finally. “I’ve pulled twenty-five rookies out of Cradles. Some sobbed. Some screamed. One tried to kill herself. But none of them came out already processing mana like it was breathwork.”

Dominic looked toward the far wall. His reflection met him faintly in the window’s false twilight.

“We don’t know what happened in there.”

Kael nodded slowly, gaze distant. “Then we need to ask him.”

Dominic gave no answer, but his silence wasn’t disagreement.

Kael leaned back, fingers steepling. “There were records, you know. Sparse. Fragmented. Most of them scrubbed by the higher seats. But some of the Ascended left impressions. Not messages. Not logs. Just… descriptions. Etched into mana. Encoded into high-density script.”

Dominic raised a brow. “What kind?”

“Vague.” Kael’s tone went dry. “Poetic. Useless, mostly. ‘The Cradle reflects the soul.’ ‘No two entries are alike.’ That sort of crap.”

Dominic grunted.

“But they all had one thing in common,” Kael added. “They remembered.”

A beat.

“Even the one who vanished in the Inner Fold and returned three decades later—half her body gone, half her memories crystallized into static—she remembered. Said it wasn’t a dream. Said it was too real to be a metaphor.”

Dominic took another sip, slower this time. “And the last record?”

Kael’s eyes sharpened. “Five hundred years ago.”

“And since then?”

“Nothing. Just low-grade awakenings. Natural. Guided. Soft-touch progression models.”

Dominic didn’t say it, but he didn’t need to.

They had made awakening safer. Easier. Streamlined.

And in the process, they had sterilized it.

The Cradle hadn’t been used in over a century—not officially. The risks were too high, the returns too volatile. Even the Ascended had stopped speaking of it in more than myth.

Which made Damien’s survival more than a statistical outlier.

It made him the first in five hundred years to walk back with clarity still in his eyes.

Kael finally broke the thread, voice lighter.

“Do you remember your own?”

Dominic blinked once. Then gave a dry laugh. “You mean my awakening?”

Kael nodded. “Yeah.”

“Of course.”

“No Cradle, though?”

“Hell no.” Dominic swirled his drink again. “It was clean. Standard one.”

Kael raised a brow. “Boring.”

Dominic didn’t argue. “Compared to this? Sure. But the training after?”

His tone shifted.

“It wasn’t gentle.”

Kael laughed.

It wasn’t mocking. It wasn’t light.

It was the kind of laugh that only came from someone who understood.

“Yeah,” he said. “I remember.”

Dominic gave him a side glance, but Kael was already reaching for the bottle again, topping off both glasses.

“Sir Luthor made sure of it, didn’t he?”

Dominic’s expression didn’t change, but his fingers curled slightly around the glass.

“Three days after I stabilized,” he said, voice flat. “He broke six ribs and shattered my thigh. Called it ‘calibration.’”

Kael gave a low whistle.

“Didn’t even wait a week.”

Dominic exhaled. “He said waiting breeds softness.”

“Sounds like him.”

Kael lifted his glass toward the ceiling, as if offering a silent toast to the mad old warlord who still held one of the twelve seats of the High Council.

“Your father,” Kael murmured, “the Iron Fang of Elford. The one man I’ve seen walk through an Etherquake without armor or shielding.”

Dominic didn’t react.

Kael’s tone turned amused again. “So that’s where Damien gets it.”

“He gets it from both sides,” Dominic said.

Kael tilted his head slightly, conceding the point. “True. Vivienne’s not exactly gentle either. But Elric?”

His smile was all teeth now.

“You were lucky you survived.”

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