Transmigrated into Eroge as the Simp, but I Refuse This Fate - Chapter 354

Capítulo 354: Grandmother

What can possibly be the worst thing for a transmigrator?

It isn’t enemies. Enemies can be beaten.

It isn’t betrayal. Betrayal can be expected.

It isn’t even death. Death already happened once, and you’ve walked past it.

No, the real nightmare is subtler.

– Someone who can see through the mask.

– Someone who can hear the thoughts you keep buried under a dozen rehearsed smirks.

– Someone who can reach past your body, past the new flesh, and touch the thing you carried over: your soul.

Because what is a transmigrator if not an intruder? An exception. A glitch stitched into another man’s skin. Everything depends on playing the role, walking the tightrope, keeping the illusion intact long enough to bend the world around you instead of being crushed by it.

But against someone who can peel back that disguise?

Who can strip away the layers until only the wrongness underneath remains?

That’s the endgame. The hard wall. The one thing no clever word, no system trick, no controlled smirk can fully prepare you for.

Even if the future shifts, even if the threads of fate twist into something unrecognizable, a transmigrator still holds leverage. You lose some of the advantages—the knowledge of events, the ability to exploit foreshadowed outcomes—but there’s still control. Still the edge of an outside perspective, of a mind sharper because it doesn’t belong.

But this?

This is not the same.

Is it?

This was the one wall Damien had hoped never to test. The one encounter he had no script for.

Because there was always one person he didn’t want to meet.

And now she was here.

The reason the Elford family rose as fast as they did in the Dominion wasn’t just strength. Not just money. Not just political claws honed sharp in endless noble games. On their own, the Elfords were formidable. But dominance of this scale? Influence so wide and deep it bent entire regions?

That had never been theirs alone.

Because in truth, they were not a single power.

The Elfords had blood-tied allies. A lineage whose roots sank just as deep, whose whispers carried just as far.

And the marriage had sealed it. An alliance carved not only on parchment and ceremony, but in blood.

Vivienne’s blood.

Her family.

The Valeheart family.

A name spoken softly, yet never lightly. A family with their own seat at the highest tables, their own legacy of power veined not in steel and commerce, but in something older, stranger.

The Valeheart family was not like the Elfords.

The Elford name was a fortress built on steel and certainty, on unyielding strength honed sharp across generations. The reason they held their place among the Dominion’s Seat Holders was simple: power, pure and undeniable. Dominic’s father—Damien’s grandfather—was not merely an Awakened. He was one of the strongest beings alive.

An SSS-rank. Near the pinnacle of human strength itself. A man whose very existence warped the balance of nations. His fist alone had been enough to shatter dynasties, his presence enough to make rival lords bow their heads before words were ever exchanged.

That was the foundation of the Elford family’s prestige: overwhelming strength.

But the Valehearts?

They were something else entirely.

Their Seat Holder did not bear the crushing strength of an SSS-rank. Not even close. By the blunt metrics of raw Awakening, the Valeheart Matriarch would have seemed “lesser.” To those who only measured the world by force, she would have appeared almost unremarkable.

And yet—no one, not even the most arrogant of warlords or the most iron-willed of dominion lords—dared to call her weak.

Because power is not measured by muscle alone. Not by the violent glow of mana or the scale of destruction one can unleash.

Power is also knowledge.

It is information.

It is mysticism, the unseen threads that bind the world together while the ignorant call it chaos.

And the Valehearts had built their legacy upon that.

Whispers said they traced back their bloodline to those who first touched the foundation stones of the Dominion. Not builders, not conquerors—but readers. Seers. Those who could pluck the hidden truth from the marrow of existence.

Their arts were not the steel of the Elford blade, but the soul.

Soul arts.

The quiet terror of being seen not for what you pretend to be, but for what you are.

They could step past masks, past lies, past the illusions men cloak themselves in, and strip a person down to their essence. To the flaws buried so deep that not even the bearer wished to admit them. To the truths so raw that even the strongest shuddered to hear them spoken aloud.

That was what made them fearsome.

Not the weight of a blade, not the crushing force of raw mana, but the way they could see. The way they could strip a person bare without ever lifting a hand. It was power that could not be countered by armor, by skill, or by discipline. A glance, a whisper, a single breath in their presence could unravel men who had faced armies without flinching.

And that was why the woman before Damien, though officially recorded only as an S-rank Awakened, was counted among the most dreaded people in the entire world.

Because being in her presence wasn’t just dangerous in combat—it was dangerous to the soul.

Every second beneath her pale eyes was a gamble. Every breath risked exposure. A single slip, and the illusion that shielded him could fracture.

Her name was spoken rarely, and never without weight.

Erin Valeheart.

Damien’s grandmother.

Matriarch of the Valeheart Family.

Bearer of Soul Arts.

The Black Seer.

11th Seat Holder of the Dominion Council.

Her title had not been taken, but given. Born of her affinity with black mana, the rarest and most reviled of affinities—mana that corroded, concealed, and unraveled the truths others sought to hide. In her hands, it was not destruction, but revelation.

Darkness that did not blind, but illuminated what the world wanted hidden.

In fact, Damien knew the truth.

The world called it black mana.

A convenient label. A color they could box her into, something they could point to and whisper about, like children warning each other of shadows at night. They saw the hue of her aura, the way it swallowed light, and they assumed it was corruption. Darkness. Curses.

But that was just the color.

Her affinity was not “black magic” at all.

It was something far more dangerous. Far more difficult to put into words.

Her affinity was Mystery.

And her ability was….

And her ability was… something worse than any blade, curse, or spell.

She could see. Not in the way the ordinary Awakened did—not through mana sense, aura perception, or battlefield instinct. Hers was deeper. Harsher. Inescapable.

She could gaze into the threads of fate themselves, tugging at the unseen tapestry that bound a person to the world. She could trace the lines of their past, the weight of their choices, the cracks in their soul. And if she focused hard enough, with the full intensity of her will, she could brush against their memories—dragging the unspoken, the hidden, and the forbidden into the open.

It wasn’t reading thoughts. Thoughts could lie.

It wasn’t perception of aura. Aura could be masked.

It was soul sight. A vision that didn’t stop at the surface, but cut to the very core of what someone was.

They called it the Eyes of Revelation.

Pale, glinting like cut gemstones, they stripped men bare whether they wished it or not. Generals had crumbled beneath them. Kings had offered concessions just to avoid that silent scrutiny. Even the most steadfast Seat Holders on the Dominion Council avoided meeting them directly.

Because to be seen by those eyes was to be known.

And Damien…

Damien stood now under that gaze.

The chill of it wasn’t physical. It was existential. A pressure that slid beneath his skin, tugging at the seams where his soul didn’t quite fit this body, brushing against the fracture that marked him as an intruder.

A transmigrator’s worst fear.

The Eyes of Revelation were open.