Transmigrated into Eroge as the Simp, but I Refuse This Fate - Chapter 218

Chapter 218: Trial
Hidden in the folds of the canyon wall, where shadow wrapped around stone like old bandages, Elysia stood. Silent. Unmoving.

She had followed the command. Stepped away. Vanished from the battle.

But her eyes hadn’t left him.

Not once.

From the moment Damien raised his hand—flat, final—she knew something was different about this fight. Not in the level of the threat, but in how he wore it. How he walked into it with no aura, no technique, no visible power.

Just intent.

She watched as the creature lunged—watched as Damien moved.

And something inside her shifted.

‘This isn’t normal,’ she thought, breath steady, expression blank. ‘He is not normal.’

It should have been impossible. Not because of rank. Not because of strength. But because of everything else.

A month ago, this boy—this master of hers—was nothing more than excess. Soft. Lazy. All inherited status and no spine beneath it. She remembered his weight. His tone. The lazy arrogance that wasn’t earned, just performed.

And now?

She scanned the battlefield again.

No—the execution field.

There was no better word for it.

The body twitched once beneath Damien’s feet. Then stopped. Permanently.

She’d seen that movement before. In the deep hunts. In classified kill-zones. It was the kind of motion a body made when it didn’t die—it was ended.

By someone who understood what death meant.

And Damien… understood.

Far too well.

Her fingers curled slightly at her side.

He wasn’t Awakened. Not by system standards. No aura. No burst of power. No visible enhancement.

But still…

He’d fought something most nobles wouldn’t even approach without backup—and won.

Without mana. Without tools.

Just flesh. Bone. Precision.

Elysia’s gaze narrowed.

‘He destroyed his body for a month,’ she thought. ‘Broke it. Rebuilt it. Trained beyond reason. Seventy hours a week of physical labor. Spars until he couldn’t walk. Fasted, purged. Pushed limits I didn’t even think existed for non-Awakened.’

She remembered the scale.

The weight loss. Sixty kilos in four weeks. No alchemical aid. Just violence. Discipline. Obsession.

And yet that wasn’t the most remarkable thing.

It was his focus.

There was no madness in his eyes. No desperation. He wasn’t flailing against the world—he was cutting into it, one layer at a time.

Every strange request. Every bizarre errand. Every seemingly aimless task.

All of it led here.

Even today—when he stood before her with that usual confidence and said, “We’re heading out,” she didn’t question it. She followed. Just like always.

And when he requested a vehicle suitable for mountains—one with reinforced treads, hybrid mana-diesel suspension, and low-profile enchantment dampeners—she complied. Because that’s what she’d been trained to do.

But the moment they reached this canyon…

She felt it.

She had thought it was a whim at first.

Damien had those—random sparks of motion that came without warning. Sudden walks through markets. Midnight trips to training halls. One time, he made her wake the estate’s entire east wing because he wanted to feel the texture of a certain type of stone imported from the southern isles.

So when he said they were leaving that morning—with no explanation, no itinerary, no clear objective—Elysia assumed it was another one of those days.

Maybe he needed air.

Maybe he was chasing a mood.

Maybe he just wanted to see mountains.

After all, even geniuses needed moments to spiral.

She had seen it before. Obsession followed by collapse. Drive giving way to distraction. It was a common rhythm among prodigies—especially the broken kind.

But the moment they arrived at the canyon…

That theory died.

Damien wasn’t distracted.

He wasn’t idle.

He was quiet.

Too quiet.

And not with the silence of someone looking for calm. It was the silence of a blade before the draw. Still. Poised. Intentional.

The ride there had been long. Not one word wasted. His eyes tracked the terrain the entire time, not once turning to her unless necessary.

No idle commentary. No smirking quips.

Just focus.

So when he requested her to wait on the sidelines—

She knew.

Knew it wasn’t random. Knew it wasn’t whimsy.

But still…

It didn’t make sense.

‘Why?’ she thought, staring across the canyon floor at the empty space where he had once stood.

He had chosen to fight. Alone. No support. No glyphs. No suppression fields.

Against a living monster.

Even if it was weak—even if it was G-minus—that didn’t change the facts.

A non-Awakened, unarmored, unarmed, stepping into open combat with something that kills by instinct.

It wasn’t bravery.

It was recklessness.

It was suicide.

And yet… he had ordered it.

And more than that—he had meant it.

His voice when he told her not to interfere hadn’t wavered. It hadn’t even hardened. It had been precise. Like he wasn’t just telling her what to do—he was locking the world into place.

Even that final line—

“If I vanish… don’t panic.”

She hadn’t been able to respond.

Because some part of her—deep beneath training, beneath discipline—had wanted to panic.

Not from fear.

From dissonance.

Because everything about the situation screamed contradiction.

A noble with no awakening.

A battlefield with no backup.

And a command that made no logical sense.

But now…

Now he was gone.

And the air still echoed with something she didn’t have words for. A pulse without origin. Like the system itself had taken a breath and held it.

Elysia’s fingers twitched once.

‘Where did you go?’ she thought, eyes locked on the place where space had folded.

She had followed a thousand orders. Protected him across a hundred situations.

But this one?

This one was different.

Not because it was dangerous.

But because she wasn’t part of it.

Because whatever this was—

Damien had walked into it alone.

Showing that, he had wanted to.

*****

The fall wasn’t a fall.

There was no gravity. No lurch. No impact.

One moment Damien was in the canyon, the next—

Silence.

Not absence of sound.

The presence of silence.

Thick. Layered. Intentional.

His boots landed on something that felt like ground, though it didn’t look like any terrain. The space was dark—not pitch black, but low. Subdued. As if light itself had grown tired of illuminating the room and just settled.

Damien’s breath fogged faintly in the air.

The temperature wasn’t cold, but something about it made his skin prickle—like standing in a vacuum built from memory. A pressure he couldn’t quite place settled over his shoulders.

The space around him stretched infinitely… and not at all.

Walls? None he could see.

Horizon? Blank.

Ceiling? Maybe.

It wasn’t black—it was just without color.

Well that was what the black meant, but that is not the point.

And yet—he could see.

Just enough.

Just far enough.

He turned slowly, surveying the space.

Nothing.

No altar. No enemies. No dramatic statues or glowing glyphs like the fan-edits of the vault had imagined.

It looked exactly like it had in the grainy video footage.

Only now, it felt… different.

Worse.

The weight of it sat in his chest—not fear. Not awe.

But pressure.

Like he’d walked into someone else’s unfinished thought.

————

[System Notification Delayed]

[Error: Local Authority Restricted]

[Mainframe: Offline (External Synchronization Blocked)]

————-

The words drifted across his vision—not crisp and gold like before, but dimmer. More… subdued. As if the system itself was whispering.

Then a final line appeared.

[Trial Initiated]