Ulk had never imagined that the young adventurer before him, with black hair and sharp features, could accomplish something like this.
For this Sacrifice Ritual, the Shahua Mermen had made far more preparations than anyone on the field could have imagined.
They had deliberately launched their attack early to disrupt Dodd's plans, conducted an initial probing assault to gauge the strength of the adventurers on the island, and even stationed large numbers of murlocs in the waters around Stodd Island to observe passing ships and personnel, ensuring that no Transcendent or even higher-level Professionals were involved.
Ulk could be certain that among the adventurers on the shore, there was not even one Transcendent powerhouse with a Profession Level above Level 10—not even anyone remotely close.
At most, they were around Level 7 or Level 8, still far from the threshold of Transcendence.
Not to mention that after being weakened by Dodd's Secret Realm ritual, the adventurers' strength had been further diminished.
With the guard force the Shahua Mermen had deployed for this Sacrifice Ritual, these adventurers might inflict some casualties on the army as a whole, but their chances of achieving ultimate victory were minuscule.
And in fact, judging solely from the battlefield on the shore, things had indeed developed as Ulk had anticipated.
The weakened adventurers fought desperately in their respective squads beneath the murlocs' encirclement. Although an occasional powerful individual put on a dazzling performance, the overall situation was gradually tilting toward the murlocs.
The two sides remained fiercely entangled until the Sacrifice Ritual was completed and the envoy from the Divine Realm entered the battlefield, ending the battle after an overwhelmingly destructive sweep.
But when that black-haired adventurer was sent flying by the envoy's punch into the deep waters among the murloc forces, far from shore—
The