The Emperor… could not believe it.
His eyes twitched. His lips parted, but no words came—only air, sharp and jagged. Two peasants—lowly, grubby, staff-fighting nobodies—had just insulted him. Not whispered behind closed doors. Not snuck a muttered curse under their breath. No. Right there. In public. Out loud.
And not just disrespect… open ridicule.
Groa's jaw clenched. His left eye twitched again.
He—whose name once made hardened generals wet themselves before a war council… He—whose mere presence once made scholars forget their alphabets and nobles drop to their knees mid-step… He was now just another street-side joke?
"Have I fallen so far?" he muttered, his voice a cracked whisper swallowed by his rage. "No honour… no reverence… not even fear?"
He couldn't take it anymore. The volcano in his chest erupted.
With the elegance of a drunk elephant on rollerblades, the Emperor stormed forward, yanked the sword from one of his stunned bodyguards—who clearly regretted coming to work that morning—and charged like a furious goat on a sugar high.
No warnings. No commands.
Just cold, metallic rage.
One clean swing—and swoosh! Merat's head shot into the air like a cork from a celebratory wine bottle. It bounced once on the stone pavement and rolled to a stop by a cabbage cart, startling a baby.
Blood sprayed the crowd like they were standing front-row at a slaughterhouse opera. Gasps, shrieks, and panicked wails filled the air.
Nenu barely had time to blink as his judgement came swiftly after...
Shing!
His head followed suit. Two for two.
The Emperor stood there, chest heaving, blood trickling down his cheek like dramatic war paint, the sword still humming from its kills. His posture was godlike. His eyes wild. His presence—terrifying.
Memories from his days as a hardened warrior surged back like a violent tide. The clash of steel, the screams of the fallen, the coppery scent of blood—they flooded his senses with brutal clarity. His fingers twitched involuntarily, aching for the familiar weight of a blade, while his head pounded with a dull, relentless throb—like the ghost of old battles refusing to stay buried. It wasn't just a headache… it was a war drum echoing from within.
His post traumatic war experiences flooded his mind relentlessly to the overflow for a second that he needed to breathe.
He exhaled.
"Still got it," he thought, as he flicked blood from the blade with an unnecessarily stylish spin...
Someone in the crowd screamed, "This low-budget imposter has gone mad!"
Chaos.
The crowd scattered like a kicked anthill. People screamed. Some tripped over stalls. Others dived into barrels. One old woman fainted into a pile of turnips.
They thought he was some deranged sword nut, cosplaying as the Emperor with a discount crown and a hunger for decapitations.
Groa's nostrils flared. His eye twitched again.
He wanted to chase them all down, grab every last one by the ears and demand recognition—but he didn't. Not because he couldn't. But because, in that moment, he realized something worse than rebellion:
He had become irrelevant.
There was another crowd around that slowly formed,, hesitant, cautious, like moths drawn to the edge of a flame.
They formed a wide circle, keeping their distance, too frightened to step any closer, yet too fascinated to turn away as they anticipated more drama on this day . Whispers rippled through them like wind across dry leaves as they stared, wide-eyed, at the blood-smeared figure in the center—the madman with a sword, who stood tall and still, like a storm waiting to break again.
Before the emperor could stew too long in that painful truth of being irrelevant, and reduced to a public joke, a group of law enforcers, wearing shiny helmets and the confidence of people who had not yet grasped the situation, marched into view.
Their leader pointed with righteous bravado, "You there! Killing civilians in broad daylight is prohibited! Drop your weapon and face punishment!"
The Emperor's eye finally stopped twitching. But it wasn't peace—it was the terrifying stillness that comes just before a storm breaks. He had crossed the threshold of rage, stepping into a realm beyond shouting or fury. It was a quiet, eerie kind of wrath, the kind that made even the wind feel nervous. So calm… it was unnatural. Uncanny. The kind of calm that only came when destruction was no longer a possibility, but a certainty.
His sword, however, did not.
Slice!
The enforcer's head detached with tragic punctuality, flipping in the air and landing neatly in a nearby rice sack.
Silence.
Then came the trembling.
The remaining officers took one hard look at the blood-slicked face, the regal stance, the thunder in those aging but still savage eyes… and collapsed to their knees like wet noodles.
"It's him…" one whispered, "It's really Emperor Groa…"
The others nodded furiously, foreheads pressed to the ground, some praying, some peeing a little. Respect came back like a lightning bolt.
But Groa… wasn't satisfied.
He had heard far too much about the Black Dragon—tales spreading like wildfire across every region, whispered in taverns, markets, and royal courts. At first, he dismissed it, hoping the fascination would fade with time, like a dandelion carried away on the wind—light, fleeting, forgotten. But today shattered that illusion.
Today, they didn't just fail to honour him… they didn't even recognize him.
Him.
An emperor—reduced to a mere commoner in their eyes. A shadow among shadows.
"Me… an emperor… mistaken for a commoner?"
The words echoed in his head, bitter and sharp.
His rage didn't explode; it simmered—quiet and deadly. Like a kettle just before it whistles, trembling on the edge. A dangerous boil beneath a lid that could no longer hold.
Then—an idiot.
From the crowd, a voice piped up, bold and very, very foolish:
"Officers! Arrest that imposter! He killed Merat and Nenu! He's just a madman, a deranged lunatic with a costume!"
A silence so thick you could slice it with a butterknife settled on the crowd.
Everyone turned slowly—slowly—to the source of the voice.
The man blinked.
One guard whispered, "He's dead."
And he was.
Groa flew at him like a vulture wearing rocket boots, a blur of fury and speed. His robes snapped like whips in the air as the earth beneath his feet cracked from the sheer force of his takeoff.
At his cultivation level—Ocean Flooding Realm—the distance meant nothing. Space bent to his will, and time itself seemed to pause in fear.
The unfortunate commoner didn't even have the luxury of hope. He blinked, and Groa was already upon him.
Slice.
Another head soared like a lopsided balloon.
Word of the "Sword-Swinging Madman Who Thinks He's the Emperor" spread through the capital like wildfire. People whispered from balconies. Shopkeepers closed early. Temple bells rang with prayers for the unwise.
Some families added a new line to their evening advice:
"If you see a sweaty man in silk robes holding a bloodied sword… don't ask questions. Just run."
And so the legend of Emperor Groa's Very Bad Day began.