The lizard creature kept its face pressed flat against the floor, its entire body trembling while the weight of the figure in the chair pressed down on it.

"We... we spotted humans," the lizard stammered, its voice barely a whisper in the massive room, "they have entered the domain, my king."

The figure in the chair did not move, just sitting there in the shadows while the silence in the room stretched out, growing thicker by the second.

’Why is it wasting my time with this?’ the king thought, his gaze dropping to the pathetic creature shaking on his floor.

Humans entered the domain all the time, wandering in from the outside world with no direction, and they never made it past the outer ruins. The sand worms and the stone guardians always tore them apart before they even got close to the village. There was absolutely no reason for him to be disturbed just because a few more adventurers had stumbled into the trap.

"Is that all," the king said, his voice flat and dangerous, "you interrupted me to say a few humans are going to die to the guards."

The lizard flinched, curling tighter against the dark floor.

"N-no, my king," the lizard stuttered, its voice cracking violently, "the... the guards are dead. All of them."

The silence that followed those words was total, the faint, sickly light pulsing from the walls freezing in place.

The king leaned forward slightly in his chair. The air inside the hut suddenly expanded outward, a heavy wave of pressure slamming into the floor to fill every inch of the massive room.

The lizard choked, its claws scraping frantically against the floor as the suffocating aura pressed the air right out of its lungs, its eyes bulging while it gasped for breath.

The king stared down at the struggling creature, feeling genuinely angry for the first time in cycles.

This had never happened before. The outer guards were not just mindless beasts, they were heavily reinforced anomalies that could easily crush most of the adventurers from the human kingdoms.

For an entire patrol route of guardians to be wiped out completely meant something entirely different had breached the gate.

’Could it be them?’ he thought, his eyes narrowing slightly in the dark.

If those two demons had finally returned to check on their creation, it would explain how the guardians had been butchered so easily.

They were the ones who had made this place and left him behind, and he had spent every cycle since then growing stronger just in case they ever came back.

But it did not matter.

"Tch," the king clicked his tongue, "it makes no difference."

He stood up from the chair, his massive frame standing tall in the dim light. The pressure in the room immediately shifted, centering around him.

Whether it was humans who had gotten lucky or his creators returning to claim their territory, they were going to learn exactly why he ruled this domain now. He would personally walk out there, find whoever had killed his guards, and crush them until there was nothing left to bury.

"Stay here," he said, stepping over the gasping lizard without a second glance.

He walked toward the entrance of the hut, the dark wood groaning as he passed, and stepped out into the village.

It was rare for him to leave his throne. The moment he stepped outside, the entire village went dead silent. The monsters and twisted anomalies all stopped what they were doing, dropping to their knees in absolute awe as they stared at him.

He did not look like the beasts that patrolled the outer ruins. His body was entirely humanoid, standing over seven feet tall with a sleek, heavy build that looked like dark metal fused straight into his skin.

Jagged, blood-red plating covered his chest and shoulders, with a thick crimson mane trailing down his back. His eyes glowed with a violent red light from under a featureless black visor covering the upper half of his face.

He let his mana flare just once, his deep red aura bleeding into the air around him, and began walking toward the edge of the village.

A dark smirk pulled at his mouth. ’I wonder how well they will hold up against my power,’ he thought.

He crouched low to the ground and pushed off with explosive force. His massive frame launched into the air, completely vanishing from sight.

Back in the ruins, Hajin kept walking near the front of the formation, his gaze shifting to the side where Juna and Loccy were trailing just a few steps behind him.

"When we get out of here," he said, keeping his voice low enough that the Captain wouldn’t overhear, "we are going to need to actually train together. Loccy, especially you."

She blinked, tilting her head slightly, "I am doing my best," she said, her tone innocent.

He looked at her for a second.

’Now that I think about it,’ he thought, his brow pulling together, ’how does she even know how to fight in the first place?’

She had originally been just a normal rabbit soul wandering around the Veil before the system reconstructed her into a humanoid beastkin.

She had extreme raw physical strength. He still remembered her casually catching his kick, but she shouldn’t have any actual combat instincts. There were so many weird things that just happened with his summons without any real explanation, but he decided it was better not to stress over it right now.

Whatever, it was working out so far.

He looked away, staring straight ahead at the crumbling path, and realized something else. It had been strangely quiet in his head for a while now.

’Oh, the viewers,’ he thought, his eyes widening slightly in realization.

No wonder he had not seen any scrolling text or complaints about his decisions lately. He had completely forgotten to turn the stream back on.

He tapped the interface to bring it back up. The window flickered to life, and the very first message that popped up was in all caps.

[CringeSlayer91:] WATCH OUT!

He did not even think, pushing off his back foot and threw himself backward purely on instinct.

A massive impact hit the exact spot he had just been standing on. The shockwave ripped through the ruins, throwing up a thick cloud of dirt and pushing the Captain and the rest of the formation back several steps.

Hajin hit the ground and slid to a halt. The dust slowly settled, revealing a massive crater in the middle of the path.

The king was crouching in the center of it, his armored fist pressed deep into the shattered stone. He slowly pulled his hand free and stood up, his dark metal frame towering over them.

He turned his black visor toward Hajin, and a dark smile pulled at his mouth.

"Not bad," the king said.