Puchi! Cough!
Another violent tremor shook the Blue Hammer King's chest, and with it, a fresh mouthful of blood splattered from his lips. The deep crimson stained the dirt beneath him like spilled wine on parchment.
He looked up at Damien—his eyes bloodshot, rimmed with disbelief and something close to humiliation. It was the look of a man who felt fate itself had wronged him.
"I refuse to believe this..."
The scream echoed in his heart.
No, he thought, there's no way. There's no way this so-called Crown Prince Damien is just an Iron ranker.
Everything—his instincts, his combat sense, his decades of battlefield experience—told him otherwise. This was not someone from the lower ranks. This… this was a Domain Manifestation expert in disguise.
He has to be.
There was no other explanation. No Iron ranker—no matter how monstrous—should be capable of reducing a Channel Forging Realm expert like him to a broken husk with a single punch.