Their opponents were a "Traditional Martial Arts Team" from Africa—bare-chested warriors hailing from a primal tribe, masters of the wild.
Everyone had expected this to be a battle of titans.
Instead, it was a massacre.
"Match, begin!"
The referee's voice had barely faded when Crown Prince An'un made his move—if you could call it that. He didn't even deign to glance at his opponent.
He simply raised his right hand.
A wave of Absolute Domain exploded from his body like a tsunami, saturated with an aura of imperial majesty and... something darker. Something ominous.
That power had reached a staggering Absolute Domain 60%!!!
"Wh-what?!"
"Another 60% monster?!"
Shockwaves of disbelief rippled through the crowd, though by now, the audience was growing numb to the parade of impossibilities.
His opponent—a hunter from the African savanna, a man who had wrestled lions and speared charging rhinos—crumpled under that overwhelming pressure. His legs buckled. He couldn't even stand.
"Kneel."
An'un spoke the word as if granting a benediction.
And somehow, impossibly, the African warrior's body obeyed. He dropped to his knees with a heavy thud.
"Trash."
An'un's contemptuous snort dismissed him entirely. He couldn't even be bothered to finish the man himself.
His two "palace masters"—the elite bodyguards flanking him—moved like ghosts. In the blink of an eye, they materialized before the other two African fighters.
THWAM!
THWAM!
Two muffled impacts. Both warriors—men revered as grandmasters in their homeland—collapsed without so much as a twitch of resistance. They were dragged off the stage like dead dogs.
Domination.
Complete and utter domination, dripping with arrogance and cruelty.
The Iron Fist Team had won their debut in the most humiliating fashion imaginable.
Only after his victory was assured did Crown Prince An'un slowly turn around.
Those dark, imperious eyes cut through the crowd and locked onto a specific figure—the man lounging in the VIP sponsor's seat with an amused smirk plastered across his face.
Cloud.
Then, slowly and deliberately, An'un raised his right hand.
And made a gesture that needed no translation.
He drew his thumb across his throat.
The entire stadium fell deathly silent.
Every eye followed An'un's gaze to the two-time King of Fighters champion, who sat there looking utterly unbothered—as if the whole spectacle were merely entertaining background noise.
They knew... things were about to get interesting.
Cloud regarded the chuuni prince preening on stage with his "ominous dark lord" energy and smiled. A warm, friendly smile.
He slowly removed his sunglasses.
Then, facing the fool who clearly had a death wish, he offered his own response—
He raised his middle finger.
And silently mouthed three words:
"The fuck you looking at?"
When that gesture—radiating pure, distilled contempt—was broadcast in crystal-clear HD across every camera in the Tokyo Dome and projected onto the massive holographic screen at the arena's center, the atmosphere... froze.
Tens of thousands of spectators and media personnel from around the world sat there slack-jawed, eyes bulging, brains short-circuiting.
What... what did they just witness?
They saw...
The two-time King of Fighters. The man hailed as "The Myth of the Fighting World"...
Flip off the Crown Prince of Japan.
On live television.
In front of the entire goddamn planet.
Holy shit.
This wasn't just provocation anymore!
This was... this was slapping the Japanese Imperial Family across the face with both hands, over and over, on the world's biggest stage!
After a heartbeat of stunned silence, the crowd erupted.
"Holy—! Did I see that right?! Cloud just... he actually..."
"He's insane! Absolutely insane! Doesn't he know who he's dealing with?!"
"THAT WAS AWESOME! This is what a real man looks like! Crown Prince? So what? If you're pissed, throw hands! I hereby declare myself Cloud's biggest simp!"
The audience fractured into two camps instantly.
Half thought Cloud was arrogant and suicidal.
The other half thought he was a legendary gigachad.
Up on stage, Crown Prince An'un stared at the screen—at that middle finger, magnified hundreds of times over, at that openly mocking expression—
His handsome face, usually so cold and haughty, flushed the color of raw liver.
A wave of humiliation unlike anything he'd ever experienced erupted from his core like a volcano.
In his entire life, no one had ever dared to insult him like this!
"Cloud..."
He ground the name out from between clenched teeth, his eyes burning with enough venom to melt steel.
But our protagonist?
Cloud didn't give a single solitary damn.
He casually slid his sunglasses back on, crossed his legs, picked up his wine glass, and took a leisurely sip.
Cool as a cucumber. As if the guy who'd just committed an international incident wasn't him at all.
Please.
Crown Prince?
Son of the Emperor?
To a transmigrator from the twenty-first century—someone who'd completed nine years of mandatory materialist education—the so-called "Emperor" was no different from Old Wang, the retired guy who swept leaves in the park back home.
Actually, Old Wang was probably better company. At least he shared juicy gossip about the neighborhood aunties' love triangles.
Imperial authority? Against him?
Sorry, pal. Where Cloud came from, they had a saying: "Are kings and nobles born to their stations?"
That whole "divine right of kings" bullshit?
Doesn't work on me.
Besides, Cloud had never had much love for the Japanese Imperial Family in the first place—
...
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