Gates were appearing across the world with mounting frequency—like a plague that just wouldn't stop spreading—stoking panic worldwide.
For countries without a National Level Hunter to anchor their defenses, the fear ran deeper. If a black S-Rank Gate opened inside their borders, they wouldn't even know who to turn to. The National Level Hunters of the great powers had territories of their own to protect; they couldn't stay on permanent standby as the world's rescue squad. The thought left smaller nations profoundly unsettled, convinced their governments couldn't guarantee the safety of their people—or their families.
And yet, the constant emergence of Gates also meant a flood of mana pouring into Earth. More and more people awakened, becoming Hunters.
A man strode down the street with his chin tilted nearly parallel to the ground, arrogance rolling off him in waves.
He'd once been the most exploited cog at the bottom of a corporate ladder—working himself past the point of exhaustion every day for the faint hope of promotion, taking the lowest pay in the department while shouldering the heaviest load. At the worst of it, he'd been the only one left holding the entire team together, dragging a department on the verge of collapse back to life through sheer willpower.
Then the newcomers came, one after another. He'd thought his suffering was finally paying off—promotion, a raise, the whole package.
Fate answered with a cruelty that bordered on comedy.
His name ended up on the layoff list. His company replaced him with a new hire who'd joined after him.
Finding another job? A joke. Years of overtime had left him with chronic health problems that required ongoing treatment, and the savings he'd scraped together evaporated the moment he became unemployed. Just as he was ready to howl at the heavens about how unfair the world was—
A miracle happened.
He awakened. Not only that—he awakened as an A-Rank.
From that moment on, his entire demeanor flipped. He became loud, overbearing, drunk on his own importance.
I'm an A-Rank Hunter. Practically a noble. A rising star every major guild would be desperate to snatch up.
So immersed was he in his new world that he didn't watch where he was going—and slammed into someone.
"S-s…"
His body moved on instinct, about to bend and apologize. The word died in his throat.
He realized, as if waking from a dream, that he wasn't that office drone anymore—the one who had to fawn over his bosses and still get ignored by his juniors.
He was an A-Rank Hunter now. Even in a top guild, that meant you were valued—key manpower, a pillar. He didn't need to bow and smile and scrape like before.
"Hey! You blind or what?" He snapped his spine straight, forcing his expression into something fierce. "You don't watch where you're walking—"
Only then did he notice.
…Why was this guy so tall? What did he eat growing up?
People were already stopping to watch, their attention turning toward the brewing confrontation.
"Huh? What's going on? Are they about to fight?"
"Whoa… that guy's huge."
"Weird outfit. Is he a Hunter? There are more and more Hunters in the city these days."
"Hey! Are you deaf?" The man's voice climbed higher, the other's silence dredging up old memories of being treated like dirt at work. "You run into someone and can't even apologize? Did your parents never teach you how to—"
He didn't get to finish.
The Monarch of Fangs—draped in beast pelts—split his maw wide, fangs bared, and lunged to bite the man's chattering head clean off.
At the last possible instant, a fist shot in like a blur and slammed into the Fang Monarch's jaw, sending him flying.
"Are you okay? Can you move?"
Sung Jinwoo had appeared just in time. He flicked a glance at the man collapsed on the ground. The survivor nodded woodenly at Jinwoo's question, his face blank with shock, his legs still trembling uncontrollably.
"If you can move, run," Jinwoo said, dark violet mana surging around him, urgency in his voice that brooked no argument. "As far as you can. This is about to get very dangerous."
A host of shadow soldiers had already slipped soundlessly to the edges of the crowd. Before the onlookers even understood what they'd witnessed, they were ushered away—swiftly, methodically—pulled out of the soon-to-be battlefield.
The Monarch of Fangs returned quickly. Jinwoo's punch hadn't done him much real damage.
And he wasn't alone.
Two more presences stepped into Jinwoo's view—each radiating pressure no weaker than the The Monarch of Fangs's.
The Monarch of Frost.
And the Monarch of the Iron Body.
"So you really did come," the Monarch of Frost said, a mocking, contemptuous smile curling his lips. "The human who inherited the Shadow Monarch's power. Turns out using humans as bait makes it easy to draw you out. Ashborn wouldn't have fallen for a cheap trick like this."
Jinwoo snorted. "Are you sure you lured me out… and not the other way around?"
"…You're bluffing," the Monarch of Frost said coldly. "In the end, you're nothing but a lowly human."
"Then I'm curious," Jinwoo replied, tightening his grip on his dagger. In the same instant, his gaze sharpened into a blade—and his voice turned merciless. "What's a 'great Monarch' like you doing right now, if not running your mouth? Or was that you farting instead of talking?"
Crack.
Crack.
A glossy sheet of ice spread across the ground like it was alive, racing outward. A wind packed with ice crystals and snow screamed down the street. The temperature plunged at an absurd speed—cars along the roadside frosting over in an eyeblink, building windows spiderwebbing and bursting under the cold.
The Monarch of Frost's robes snapped and flared in the blizzard, silver-white hair whipping like an enraged waterfall of snow. Furious now, he bellowed, "Brat! I'll kill you! Die in this endless cold!"
"Bring it on!"
Jinwoo launched forward, his body a blade cleaving through storm and snow, charging straight at the three Monarchs without a hint of fear. As he sprinted, the shadow beneath him swelled, expanding and spreading.
Beru, Igris, Fang, Kaisel, Water Tiger, Sesame…
Countless shadow soldiers surged behind their liege like layered black tides, throwing themselves forward without hesitation as they followed the Monarch they swore loyalty to.
The Monarchs' trap had been carefully laid: once the human who'd inherited the Shadow's power showed himself, Antares would personally lead his army down to Earth, wiping out the Shadow Monarch and the Rulers' vessels before the Rulers even noticed.
But when Antares passed through the Gate the Monarch of Transfiguration had prepared for him, the world on the other side looked nothing like Earth.
Sky and ground alike seemed drowned beneath shadow year-round. Deathly miasma soaked the air, turning the place into a forbidden zone for all life—like the underworld from some far-off myth.
And then there was the figure waiting not far away, as though she'd been standing there all along.
Antares' eyes widened.
"It's you…"
"Long time no see, Antares, King of Dragons." Scáthach watched him with a smile that wasn't quite a smile, her demeanor relaxed. "Sorry, but my disciples are fighting their hearts out. If I let you go to them, it'll be troublesome… so you'll have to stay here and keep me company."
"…You didn't die?"
"As you can see, I didn't." Scáthach shrugged lightly. "Seems death doesn't like me. It simply refused to take me in."
Antares released his mana in silence. That single action sent the temperature around him skyrocketing. The ashen hardpan beneath his feet melted in an instant into surging gold-red magma, and even the damp, death-laden air seemed ready to ignite under the pressure of his power.
His slit pupils—fully draconic now—locked onto Scáthach. In the crimson depths of his eyes, something like molten corefire churned.
"Laughable. My flames can burn even death to nothing." His voice rumbled, heavy with contempt. "I don't know how you crawled back by sheer luck, and I don't care. But since you dare to stand before me again—"
The King of Dragons' low growl carried overwhelming draconic might. In the blink of an eye, it rolled across the Land of Shadows, blanketing it. The slow-flowing lava trembled, then boiled and burst as his words fell.
"Then this time, I'll destroy you completely!"
The moment he finished speaking, apocalyptic energy gathered wildly inside Antares' open maw. When the Breath of Destruction erupted, it was as if the world had reached its end.
Where that blazing white pillar passed, even the most basic structure of matter broke apart. Even formless concepts seemed to be shredded. Ancient shadow-realm rock—layer upon layer that should never melt—vaporized the instant it touched the beam, roaring upward into steam. The ground was plowed into bottomless trenches of molten ruin, and the scattered shockwaves flattened distant mountains into nothing.
The power contained in that Breath of Destruction felt like it could smelt even stars into void.
And yet, even flames that terrible still had something they could not melt.
Biting cold spread against the heat-haze. At the far end of the magma trench stood a wall of ice like a crystalline mountain range—deep, haunting blue, countless rotating runes frozen inside it. Every jagged spike refracted a magic-light that made the heart clench.
Antares' brow drew down.
What is that ice? How is it blocking my Breath of Destruction?
"Just as I thought," Scáthach said calmly. "[Primordial Runes] cannot only cancel Surtr's flames that burn down the World Tree… it can also stop your breath."
The ice wall shattered with a roar. Stardust ice crystals whirled around Scáthach as she stepped through, a crimson spear in each hand. Dozens of shining [Primordial Runes] floated around her, throbbing like living things as they interwove into an intricate thaumaturgical formation.
"Right now, I'm not merely Scáthach," she said, her eyes narrowing. "So… to defeat you, I'll use everything I have. Prepare yourself. In modern terms…"
Her smile sharpened.
"I'm going all out."
"You've only managed to block a single blast of my dragonfire," Antares snarled. "Nothing changes. You're fated to be destroyed by my flames!"
The sea of magma beneath them erupted. Antares became a streak of red lightning, ripping through the air. His right arm swelled violently, tearing through armor as a savage dragon claw emerged—covered in crimson scales, each talon like a divine weapon from myth. The pressure of its swing alone split the ice mountains and the ground beneath them.
Whether it was the star-scorching dragonfire from before or this earth-rending claw strike now, Scáthach couldn't afford to take even one hit head-on. One direct impact, and she would lose this fight.
Defense, speed, strength, mana—Antares was, beyond dispute, the strongest in every attribute. That bone-plated giant from earlier hadn't even been worthy of comparison.
By all logic, Scáthach had struggled just to break that giant's defenses. So cracking the dragon scales on Antares should've been impossible.
Pshk—
In the instant that crimson spear-light bloomed, Antares' palm was pierced clean through.
The wound wasn't large, but the pain that burst from it was bone-boring, corrosive agony—and Antares wasn't surprised.
The [Wisdom of Dún Scáith A+] apart from exclusive skills, it allowed Scáthach to grasp nearly any technique—a proof of the supreme wisdom she'd gained by existing beyond the world.
And on top of that, the wisdom Odin had bought with one of his eyes—[Primordial Runes].
Before the battle even began, Scáthach had already layered herself in enough advantages to make a single thrust both pierce defenses and linger in pain: defense-ignoring, anti-demonic, anti-dragon, anti-humanoid, anti-evil, anti-chaos…
With that many stacked, one spear didn't just break through—it made Antares hurt for a long, long time.
As if reenacting a battle out of myth, one side was a meteor-streak of crimson spear-light, the other a deep red claw strike that looked ready to tear stars apart. The two interlaced figures moved too fast for the naked eye to follow.
The lethal spear-light stabbed at Antares' skin from the moment it locked onto him, a constant, punishing ache. Roaring in fury, he slashed. Dark red claw-marks tore through the air like lightning ripping open the sky, crushing the incoming meteor-bright spear-light into a storm of glittering fragments.
Antares snapped his jaws wide. Destructive energy condensed in his throat into a blinding orb. At the instant the world-ending Breath of Destruction was about to detonate, Scáthach became a violet afterimage—then her kick slammed into his lower jaw with savage force.
The precision and speed caught the King of Dragons completely off guard. The breath, aimed forward, was forced off-course. The white pillar shot into the heavens like festival fireworks, burning a grotesque gash across the Land of Shadows' eternal night.
The moment she landed the hit, Scáthach pulled back. In the heartbeat between breaths, Antares' tail whipped in like a steel lash. The ten layers of protective barriers she'd laid down exploded one after another, crystalline shards of magic scattering like stars—
But they bought her the time she needed to slip away.
While retreating, she flicked her wrist and threw a spear.
Antares swept a claw across, perfectly batting the crimson shaft aside. At the same time, a terrifying white blaze gathered in his throat again. The ruinous breath was already formed, shaping into a white-hot fire pillar that speared straight through the earth.
The battle raged like a living myth. Scáthach moved with ghostly agility, weaving and turning; then, in the next breath, built defenses with ever-shifting spellwork. It was like dancing on a wire ten thousand meters in the air—dissolving every one of Antares' attacks at the last possible moment.
And those cursed crimson spears—like venomous snakes lying in wait—always found the most unexpected angles, striking when Antares least anticipated it, carving fresh wounds into him again and again
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T/N: skadi :o oh and heres antares i guess
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