Transmigrated into Eroge as the Simp, but I Refuse This Fate - Chapter 224

Chapter 224: The man
The silence that followed was deeper than before.

Not peaceful.

Hollow.

Damien stood in it, chest rising and falling with ragged defiance, blood dripping from his ruined hand, his knuckles cracked open like fault lines. Every inch of his body screamed in protest, but none of it mattered.

Because the soldier—the Trial—was down.

And Damien was not.

He stood.

Not victorious like a champion in light and applause.

But still.

Breathing.

Bleeding.

Alive.

And that was all the Trial ever asked for.

Then—

The ground shook.

A low tremor. Subtle. Rhythmic. Like something ancient was stirring beneath it all.

Not seismic.

Symbolic.

And then—finally—after what felt like an eternity of pain, movement, and bone-deep silence…

A voice.

[So you have completed the Trial.]

It didn’t come from the sky this time.

It came from the side.

From the battlefield itself.

From a figure now walking forward—not the avatar from before, not the same soldier Damien had just dismantled—but someone more refined.

Still scarred.

Still human.

But robed now. Not in armor, but in a simple cloak—dusty, weather-worn, bound at the shoulder with a single iron clasp.

He moved without a weapon. Without tension.

Yet there was no mistaking the pressure rolling off him in waves.

Like gravity.

Not because he exerted power—

But because he no longer needed to.

He stopped five paces from Damien, gaze level. Not inspecting. Not appraising.

Simply meeting him.

“Congratulations,” the voice said again—deeper now, clearer. More like a man than a myth.

“But before reward comes recognition.”

He extended a hand—not glowing, not charged. Just offered.

“I am what remains of him,” the man said. “Before he became the Unbreakable One.”

Damien didn’t speak.

Didn’t nod.

Just stared at the hand for a second.

And slowly, painfully, lifted his own.

Blood-slicked. Shaking. But raised.

He clasped the hand.

The man’s grip was firm—not crushing, not warm. Just solid. Like a vow anchored in bone.

Damien didn’t let go.

He tilted his head slightly, blood still trickling from the edge of his jaw, and smirked.

“So,” he rasped, voice dry as gravel, “you’re his soul fragment? A piece left behind when he ascended?”

A flicker—subtle—crossed the figure’s face.

One brow arched.

Not in offense.

But in curiosity.

“You do know a lot,” the man said, releasing Damien’s hand. His tone didn’t shift, but the weight behind it did. “Interesting.”

He stepped back.

“Most simply call this an inheritance. A trial. A gift from the past.” He looked at Damien again—longer this time. “But few know enough to speak of fragments. Of what’s left behind when someone walks beyond the threshold and refuses to return.”

Damien just shrugged, shoulders still trembling under the effort.

“I had a good education.”

The man huffed once. It wasn’t quite a laugh. But it wasn’t dismissal either.

The man folded his arms behind his back, posture relaxed now—less judge, more witness.

“I went a little overboard with that one,” he said, nodding toward the battered battlefield where broken stone and blood still marked the ground. “From the start… the moment you stood your ground, took my blows, and countered with technique, not luck—you’d already met the threshold.”

He glanced down at Damien’s ruined hand.

“But then you kept going.”

Damien’s smirk didn’t falter. “Would’ve been rude to stop.”

The man’s lips twitched—not quite a smile. Something older. Approving.

“I was curious,” he said, tone quieter now. “You didn’t flinch when death came close. Didn’t beg. Didn’t scream. You even bled with precision.”

He took a slow step forward, circling Damien like an officer revisiting a soldier, not an opponent.

“Seeing how you moved… how you refused to break, I wanted to know just how far you’d push. What your limit looked like.”

He stopped beside him. Looked toward the horizonless sky.

“And you didn’t surprise me.”

The storm above had quieted. The thunder no longer roared.

But something in the air had thickened.

The man didn’t speak immediately. He just watched Damien—the ragged stance, the steady breath, the eyes that didn’t wander.

Then, quietly, he said, “You’re different.”

He stepped back from Damien now, just enough to see him fully.

“In this place… what is tested is not strength. Not skill. Those come later. No, here—what we test is the will to grasp. The drive to bleed for something that hasn’t yet revealed itself.”

His gaze flicked toward the shadows that had once held the battlefield.

“That’s why you heard them. The voices.”

He turned back to Damien.

“They weren’t projections. They weren’t illusions. They were reflections. Echoes of every false truth that failure has ever tried to wrap around you. Most candidates resist them. Try to shut them out. Deny them.”

His expression shifted—studying now, not weighing.

“But you didn’t do that. You didn’t ignore them. You looked at those voices and answered not with silence, but with spite. With proof.”

The wind stirred again, faint, curling around the hem of the man’s robe.

“You acted like a man who had already decided. As if your truth wasn’t up for discussion.”

He took another step forward, slower now.

“That kind of arrogance… that kind of pride—it can’t be taught. It lives in the bones. It’s a danger and a power, both.”

Damien tilted his head slightly. Blood had dried on his cheek. His shirt was ripped at the shoulder. His stance was battered. But the grin still sat sharp on his face.

“That’s just who I am.”

The man looked at him a long moment.

Then he smiled.

Not faintly.

Not wistfully.

Full.

Quiet. But real.

“You are indeed different,” he said, voice low now. “I can’t see through your fate at all.”

The man’s gaze didn’t drift. It didn’t soften.

It settled deeper.

Not through Damien, but into him. As if he were reading not just the body, not just the mind—but something beneath that. The rhythm between choices. The violence of belief.

“That is why,” the man said slowly, “you are the perfect suitor for this inheritance.”

His voice held no reverence. No ceremony.

Just fact.

“Whether this is another play of fate… or some twisted fracture of it, I don’t care.” His head tilted slightly, the smile still carved across his scarred face. “But it is ironic.”

The air around them pulsed.

Not with pressure.

With weightlessness.

Damien didn’t brace—but he felt it.

The shift.

The recognition.

And then the mana came.

Not as a torrent. Not as a storm.

It entered him like a tide beneath the skin—deep, layered, ancient. Not burning. Not cleansing. It moved with intent. With structure. It rewrote nothing, but it reinforced everything.

And as it did—

His wounds closed.

Not just the cuts. Not just the bruises.

The fractures in his wrist. The torn muscles in his leg. The pulped skin over his knuckles. All of it drew inward, rewove itself. Clean. Seamless.

His body straightened without command.

Strength didn’t surge.

It returned.

Refined.

Quiet.

Owned.

The man stepped back, his voice folding low.

“I leave it in your hands now,” he said. “This strength. This refusal.”

He turned then—cloak fluttering just enough to remind Damien that gravity still meant something.

“You know what it means,” he added, almost an afterthought. “To carry a name born not from power, but from persistence.”

He glanced back over his shoulder, and the shadows around him deepened.

“Don’t waste it.”

Then he was gone.

No sound. No flare. Just gone.

As if he’d never been there at all.

And Damien?

Damien stood alone once more—taller.

He breathed in.

No pain.

Just motion.