Transmigrated into Eroge as the Simp, but I Refuse This Fate - Chapter 364: Let us celebrate

Capítulo 364: Let us celebrate

Erin slowly lowered her hand.

The mana dispersed—not like a snapped string, but like a tide drawing back into the sea. Smooth. Controlled. Absolute.

But beneath that composure, something churned.

If what he says is true… then this doubt—this pain—it’s my fault.

Her gaze lingered on Damien—not as a Seer, not as a Valeheart, not even as a wielder of Mystery.

But as a grandmother.

And what she saw now… was a boy with fire in his eyes that did not belong to someone ordinary. Not just anger. Not just spite. But conviction. Direction. It was the kind of will that did not survive on its own—it was forged.

This child—no, this man—just walked out of Cradle… and already…

She narrowed her eyes, faintly. His core is nascent. Raw. The mana flow is unstable. He is a beginner, no doubt.

Yet the pressure he exuded…

The presence…

It whispered of someone older. Someone hardened.

And for the first time in decades, Erin Valeheart did not know what she wanted to do.

Part of her wanted to scold him—for the recklessness, the insolence, the danger.

Another part… wanted to step away. To give him space.

But before either side could act, Vivienne moved.

She crossed the floor in quick, hurried steps, eyes already brimming with tears.

She didn’t ask.

She didn’t hesitate.

She simply wrapped her arms around him.

Tightly. Fiercely.

“My son…” she whispered, her voice cracking. “You’ve endured so much.”

Damien didn’t react much. His body remained stiff at first. Alert. As if unsure whether it was truly safe to relax.

But slowly—his shoulders dropped. His breath evened out. His arms rose and wrapped around her, gently, like he wasn’t sure if he still deserved to.

And then—

A sudden shimmer of warmth, golden and translucent, spiraled around him like smoke.

His wounds—ripped veins, ruptured channels, hairline fractures in bone—all began to seal. The blood clotted and disappeared, the bruises faded, the skin knitted whole once more.

Damien blinked. Vivienne stepped back slightly, surprised.

He looked up toward Erin.

She was standing still.

But on her wrist—barely visible beneath the sleeve of her robes—a flicker of pale sigils danced. An old artifact. Bound directly to her life force.

She had activated it without a word.

She coughed once, not violently—but a crack of weariness, as if using the relic had sapped something vital.

Then, clearing her throat, she straightened her spine.

With perfect poise, Erin Valeheart looked across the silent room.

And for the first time that day, she smiled.

“Let us celebrate,” she said, her voice carrying to every corner of the chamber. “My grandson’s Awakening.”

It was not an apology.

It didn’t need to be.

It was acknowledgment.

And for a woman like Erin Valeheart—that was everything.

*****

The clatter of cutlery and the muted shuffle of attendants returned life to the chamber, though the air still carried the echo of what had just transpired. The feast, set long before Erin Valeheart revealed herself, was finally set into motion. Plates were filled, wine poured, candles trimmed. The tension had not dissolved—no, it hung like a second chandelier over their heads—but Erin’s command had been enough to shift the moment from confrontation into ritual.

Damien sat at the table, posture calm, smirk faint, as if the exchange hadn’t nearly torn his soul in half. But beneath the surface, his focus narrowed inward.

[Log access: granted.]

[Displaying last intrusion event.]

The system pulled back the curtain.

Lines of logs—flickered across his mind’s eye. Warnings layered like tripwires. Each one marked the moment Erin’s Mystery had brushed too close, pushing past his defenses, probing at seams where his presence in this world frayed.

[External influence: identified.]

[Classification: Non-standard interference / soul-based affinity.]

[Risk assessment: 93%.]

[Mitigation protocol: Partial deflection engaged.]

Damien’s jaw tightened faintly as he scrolled through the warnings. He had expected this day to come. He’d known—of course he’d known—that someone like Erin wouldn’t be fooled by a sudden miracle of self-improvement. Not forever. His changes had been too sharp, too brutal, too deliberate.

And the truth was, it had been an oversight.

He had let his rage blind him. His disgust for “Righteous_One,” his burning need to prove himself better, sharper, faster—he had indulged it. Driven by spite, by anger, by that sick hunger to show just how much stronger he was than the boy he’d replaced.

So he’d gone too fast. Too far.

To him, it was natural. He knew he could burn fat, sharpen reflexes, and break through the Elford boy’s decay with enough force of will. He knew because he had always known he could.

But to anyone else? It was impossible. Suspicious. A red flag glowing against the darkness.

Especially to a woman like Erin Valeheart.

Damien lifted his cup, the dark wine catching light in fractured sparks. Outwardly, his expression was the picture of control. Inwardly, his mind turned, weighing, calculating.

‘The answer always lay in her own powers… or rather, in the Valeheart bloodline itself.’

Because that was the flaw. The gap. The opening.

Their powers weren’t neatly structured like Awakening ranks or mana affinities. They weren’t measured in strength of fire or weight of steel. They were Mystery—abstract, formless, whispered about more than understood. Even within the Council, theories abounded, but none had been absolute.

To most of the world, the Valehearts’ power was just… speculation.

The Valehearts themselves were as much a mystery as the powers they wielded. Even within their own halls, the “rules” of their affinity were more tradition than science. No codex. No system to measure it. Not even Erin herself had ever pretended it was simple.

Their bloodline reached back to a time before the Dominion had seats or councils—before mana was neatly sorted into schools and ranks. They didn’t cast Mystery so much as witness it, channel it, obey its strange restrictions. And of all its gifts, none was more whispered about than its glimpses of the future.

Damien knew this.

He knew it from the fragments of memory he’d inherited from Damien Elford—the old boy’s awe, the whispered family rumors, the hushed lessons Vivienne had refused to repeat. He also knew it from the game. From that cursed route buried deep in the second arc—”Shackles of Fate.” The event where a Valeheart Seer’s prophecy rewrote the entire course of the war.

In “Shackles of Fate” the truth was laid bare: the Valehearts could see possibilities, but never absolutes. Threads, not roads. Glimpses, not guarantees. Every vision was a map made of sand, shifting the moment it was spoken aloud.

And that was the limit.

Damien swirled his wine slowly, the surface reflecting a pale flicker of candlelight.

He’d thought about this moment long before Cradle. Long before his body hardened and his will sharpened. In the quiet hours after training, after planning, he’d asked himself: What happens when I meet Erin Valeheart?

If she could read his “threads”—if she could trace the soul beneath his skin—she would see it instantly. Not a boy reshaped, but an intruder. A foreign presence. All her doubts would harden into truth. And then things would get very, very dangerous.

That was the worst-case scenario.

Because once she knew, she wouldn’t just suspect possession—she would prove it. And a Valeheart with proof was not someone you could bluff. She wouldn’t hesitate to bind him, dissect him, strip his soul bare to try and salvage whatever remained of her grandson.

But what if she couldn’t?

What if his own traits—the system, his will, the anomaly that had brought him here—were enough to shield him? To make her power stumble?

That was the opening.

‘If she can’t read me,’ Damien thought, eyes half-lidded, ‘then everything changes. Her entire logic collapses. She’s forced to speculate, and speculation breeds doubt. And doubt is poison to someone like her.’

That’s why he’d walked into this with his chin up and his smirk sharp. That’s why he’d provoked her instead of cowering. Because every second she pressed without seeing the truth, every moment her power failed to give her a clear answer, the scales tipped in his favor.

‘And if the Valeheart Mystery is speculation even to the Valehearts themselves,’ Damien thought, setting his cup down lightly, ‘then Erin Valeheart—the Black Seer herself—isn’t untouchable. She’s just another player at a table she thinks she built.’

He looked across the table, past Vivienne’s worried eyes, past Dominic’s silent study, to his grandmother.

She sat poised, but the faintest tremor of her fingers on her glass told him enough.

‘I guess I was right…’

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