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

Capítulo 345: Impossible (2)

“Impossible.”

Dominic took another step back, one hand rising slightly—as if putting distance between himself and what he was sensing might make it more believable.

“This doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

Kael didn’t answer. He was still staring at Damien, brow furrowed, the lines around his eyes deeper now—not from age, but from calculation. Trying to fit this into any framework he knew. And failing.

Dominic turned to him. “Stabilizing a core in fifteen hours is already absurd. But this—”

He gestured toward Damien, toward the impossible truth humming beneath his skin.

“This is beyond that. His core isn’t just aligned—it’s full. It’s circulating. It’s flowing. That’s not stabilization anymore.”

Kael’s voice was quiet. “It’s cultivation.”

Dominic nodded grimly. “Exactly.”

Cultivation. The process after awakening. The real work.

Anyone could awaken, if they had the potential and were willing to pay the price. But cultivating that potential—drawing mana into the core, refining it, cycling it, and pushing the boundaries outward—that was where power came from. Where skill became threat. Where talent became legacy.

And it took time.

“You know how long it takes,” Dominic went on. “Even the best—those born with rare affinity, perfect lattice resonance, guided by First Tier elders—they still take days. A week, at minimum, before they can begin to properly circulate.”

“Because it’s not just about filling,” Kael added. “It’s about teaching the body how to draw mana. Holding it. Moving it without burning out. You don’t start with a full core. You build to it. You fail at it. Over and over until you stop rupturing flow lines.”

Dominic nodded. “And most don’t even get that far. They learn basic intake techniques. They sit in resonance chambers, slowly calibrating their thresholds. They’re lucky if they can generate even ten percent core saturation after the first week.”

Kael tilted his head slightly toward Damien. “And he’s sitting at one hundred.”

Not metaphorically. Not as a poetic overstatement.

Literally.

Dominic focused again, verifying what his senses still couldn’t quite believe.

No flux. No spillage. No overflow.

Just a full, stable, living mana core.

A core that shouldn’t be able to exist fifteen hours post-awakening.

He exhaled slowly, trying to piece it together. “Did you—”

“Train before?” Damien finished, as if already expecting the question. “No. Not with circulation. I didn’t even know how to sense mana before this.”

That landed like a blade between them.

Kael blinked. “Wait. You’re saying this is your first circulation?”

Damien nodded.

Silence followed. Again.

Kael’s fingers tightened slightly at his sides.

“All right,” he said, voice low. “Let’s stop dancing around it.”

Dominic stepped forward again, his gaze sharp but steady. “What happened to you in the Cradle, Damien?”

The question hung in the air. Heavy. It wasn’t an interrogation—but it was a demand for truth. One that came with too many implications to ignore.

Damien didn’t answer right away.

His eyes dropped slightly—not with shame, not with hesitation. More like someone flipping back through pages of a book only they could see.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than before.

“It’s… hard to put into words. Now that I think about it.”

Kael exchanged a glance with Dominic but said nothing. He could tell. Damien wasn’t stalling—he was genuinely reaching.

Dominic nodded slowly. “Try anyway.”

Damien looked up again.

“When I opened my eyes… it wasn’t the Cradle I’d imagined,” he said. “No golden halls, no divine welcome. Just cold stone under my cheek and a sky that wasn’t a sky at all. Gray. Dead. Watching. The place felt… tired. Like it had been holding its breath for centuries.”

He leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing in thought.

“The air was thin on mana—at least, compared to what I’m used to—but it was constant. A hum. Not hostile, not friendly. Just… there. Everywhere. I could feel it brushing at my skin, like it was waiting for something. For me to do something.”

Dominic said nothing. Kael’s gaze didn’t move.

“I started walking. Ruins in every direction, shadows that moved without wind. That hum followed me the whole time. And then…” His jaw flexed. “It wasn’t just the place watching me anymore. Something else was.”

He glanced between them.

“An attack came—clean, fast, precise. No warning. No movement to track. Just pain, over and over, until I was bleeding and barely on my feet. Hunger set in, thirst… the kind that scrapes your throat raw. But I kept moving.”

A corner of his mouth twitched—not a smile, but close.

“And then I caught it. The weapon. Mid-flight. Didn’t even think—my hand just closed around it. That was when everything changed. The haze I’d been seeing through? Gone. And suddenly the place wasn’t empty anymore.”

Kael’s brow creased slightly.

Damien went on, “Creatures. Insectoid, twisted things—had probably been there the whole time, but I couldn’t perceive them. Not until then. That’s when I realized the Cradle wasn’t about fighting what you could see. It was about surviving what you couldn’t.”

He drew in a slow breath.

“I don’t know how long I lasted after that. I was running on instinct. Eating what I killed. And then… something shifted. The hunger and thirst stopped feeling like they were killing me. My body… adapted. Stitched itself back together, muscle and mana working in tandem like they’d always done it.”

“And the colossus?” Dominic asked quietly. “Did you see a colossus that was mentioned?”

Damien’s eyes shifted—not evasively, but like a man catching the tail of a memory that had been sitting just out of reach.

“Ah… the colossus…”

His voice had dropped, almost thoughtful, as if the word itself pulled him somewhere else.

“That was the first thing,” he said slowly. “Before the attacks. Before the creatures. I’d been walking with no idea where I was going—just ruins, dead sky, and that hum in my bones. No landmarks. No sense of direction. Just… forward.”

He leaned back slightly, gaze turning inward.

“Then I saw it. At first, I thought it was a ridge in the distance. A shadow where the horizon bent wrong. But it moved—slow, dragging, like time had to catch up with each step. Flesh and black stone fused together, veins of light pulsing under its skin. And eyes… gods, the eyes. They didn’t open all at once. They rolled across its body in waves, blinking like they were waking up one by one.”

His fingers twitched faintly, as if recalling the tension in that moment.

“It wasn’t coming for me. Not then. But when one of those eyes found me… I felt it. Like a cord tightening between us. No sound, no words—just the certainty that it knew I was there. And that was enough to make the whole damn ground feel like it wanted to pull away from under my feet.”

He exhaled once, sharp and deliberate.

“It moved on. Didn’t change its pace, didn’t turn aside. Just… kept going. But the moment it passed out of sight, that’s when the Cradle really started. The strikes came. The invisible blades. The starvation. Everything.”

Damien’s smirk was thin, humorless.

“So, yes. I saw your colossus. And if you’re asking whether it matters to what happened to me down there…” His gaze cut between Dominic and Kael.

“Everything started the second it looked at me.”

Damien’s last words seemed to hang in the air.

Dominic’s eyes widened a fraction, a subtle flicker breaking through his normally iron control.

“Then… were those words true?” he murmured, almost to himself.

His gaze locked back on Damien, sharper now.

“That… when do you think that colossus saw you? Did you feel any change?”

Damien’s brow furrowed slightly, sifting through the memory. “…It was when I first sensed the thread,” he said slowly. “That… thread of mana. It wasn’t just around me—it was like it remembered me. Like it had been there before, but retreated. And the moment that eye found me… it came back.”

Kael’s expression shifted, the tension in his shoulders suddenly cutting into precision. Then—

Clap.

The sound was sharp in the still air.

“To think those words were true…”

Source: .com, updated by novlove.com