Some people say size is power.
If giants a hundred meters tall truly existed, then for them to move as freely as humans, their muscle density would have to be terrifying—enough to support that colossal weight. After all, even ordinary humans start having trouble supporting their own bodies once they grow past two meters; their muscles and bones simply can't keep up.
Take the Stage V Gastrea from that other world—so they wouldn't collapse under their own mass, they evolved skeletons and muscles capable of resisting most human weapons.
The giants Scáthach's group saw inside the Dungeon were monstrous beyond reason. Their towering bodies were like moving mountain ranges. Even a curled toe was taller than an adult man. Wrinkled gray-purple skin, lit by torchfire, looked like a dried riverbed. When these behemoths took a step, the air itself trembled, and their shadows were enough to swallow the entire Hunter team whole.
No wonder the palace corridors were built this tall—otherwise there'd be no way to fit giants like these.
BOOM!
A giant fell with the force of a landslide, its chest pierced by a black trident. Purple blood burst out like a breached dam, spraying into the air.
"Kekekekekek!"
One of Sung Jinwoo's shadow soldiers—the S-Rank sea demon king he'd named "Sesame"—had already swollen to match the giant's size. It gripped the trident with both hands, ignoring the thunderous roars, throwing its full weight into pinning down the struggling giant beneath it.
Elsewhere, another giant had been swarmed by countless flying ants.
They landed on its shoulders, chest, waist, arms, feet—then crawled into its mouth, its eyes, its ears. Razor mouthparts tore at living flesh in a frenzy.
The giant howled in agony, slamming its huge hands against its own body. Each strike crushed dozens of ants—but the swarm seemed endless. Any gap it cleared was filled in an instant by a fresh black wave. Slowly, the giant's struggles weakened. Its roaring turned into a wet, muffled choking sound… and then it went still, swallowed by the writhing black ocean.
Turns out, enough ants really can bring down an elephant.
A terrifying giant that required multiple S-Rank Hunters working together to kill… looked almost fragile against Sung Jinwoo's undead army. It was jaw-dropping.
And in that black tide, a streak of crimson moved like lightning, darting freely across the battlefield. Whenever the shadow soldiers caught sight of it, they instinctively gave it a wide berth.
Like a meteor skimming the earth, it severed a giant's ankle in an instant. The slender figure was gone before the purple blood could even spray, leaving only a red line carved across the ground.
"RAAAARGH—!!"
The giant screamed, furious, trying to catch the "bug" skittering around its feet. Its palm slammed down with a thunderous crash, splitting the ground into spreading fractures as shockwaves kicked up clouds of dust.
In the next moment, all five fingers exploded into minced flesh.
Scáthach appeared—clean, not a speck of dust on her. She sprinted up the giant's arm and, in a blink, reached its upper body.
"RAAAARGH—!!"
The giant unleashed a roar that shook the world, whipping its arm to fling the "bug" away. Scáthach spun through the air like a gymnast, flipped lightly—then landed upside down on the ceiling.
Then she kicked off.
A vermilion bolt cleaved down from above. The giant tried to swing an arm to swat her out of the sky—only for Scáthach to twist in midair, as if the laws of physics were optional. The lethal spear-light punched through the giant's throat with unstoppable force.
She didn't even look back at the giant collapsing behind her.
Using the momentum of her thrust, Scáthach skimmed along the wall for a stretch, then tapped a toe and sprang away. In the next second, a massive hand wrapped in gale-force wind smashed down where she'd been. The wall exploded, rubble pouring like a storm in the shockwave's wake. When the dust thinned, all that remained was a savage palm-print cratered into the stone.
A one-eyed giant.
It whipped its neck wildly, searching for Scáthach—and a cold rebuke rang right beside its ear.
"Too slow. Where are you looking?!"
A crimson spearflash cut through the air like a comet. The one-eyed giant was robbed of its sight in an instant—along with a ripping, soul-deep pain that detonated from its eye.
"RAAAARGH—!!"
It shrieked, clawing at the blood-gushing socket. Its massive body staggered back in agony, each step making the ground quiver.
In a blink, Scáthach was behind it again. The vermilion blade swept with a chill gleam, slicing cleanly through the tendon behind its thick leg.
Its legs buckled.
No longer able to support that colossal weight, the one-eyed giant slammed to the ground. Amid flying grit and stone dust, the sea-demon-bone spear drew a blood-red crescent and cut across its neck.
Then Scáthach kicked upward.
At the instant her heel struck the giant's jaw, a ring-shaped shockwave burst outward—
BANG!
The one-eyed giant's enormous head was launched clean off its neck, a geyser of blood spraying as it flew into the air.
"My blood's singing!" Scáthach laughed, wild and free. "It's been so long since I fought giants. Even in the Age of Gods, giants weren't exactly something you could find wherever you pleased."
The battle-lust that had slept within this body for far too long finally had room to breathe. She scanned the field, impatiently searching for the next opponent worth killing.
"But… it's not enough. Not enough!" Her smile sharpened, hungry. "How can it end like this? I'm not satisfied—not even close. Surely you've got more than this, don't you? Show me more, giants. Show me more power!"
Scáthach's performance left Japan's Hunters staring blankly.
"Um… is that really Hunter Scáthach?"
The person carving through giants like that… was she truly the same Scáthach they knew—gentle, polite, considerate, elegant, always wearing a warm smile?
The gap was ridiculous.
The chilling killing intent rolling off her made several Japanese Hunters think of the vicious demons from their own folklore.
And those giants—monsters that required multiple S-Ranks to barely bring down, that even Goto Ryuji could only fight one at a time—were being harvested like stalks of wheat in front of Scáthach.
"Feels like… Hunter Scáthach doesn't need our protection at all," one battered Japanese Hunter muttered.
Thinking back to their earlier vow—even if we have to give our lives, we'll protect her—they lowered their heads one by one, all of them quietly taking psychic damage.
"It's my first time seeing Shishō this excited…" Sung Jinwoo watched Scáthach's side of the battlefield with his hands in his pockets, tone faintly wary. The Shadow Monarch's black-violet mana flowed around him like breath, staining the light that fell on him with an ominous hue. A mountain-sized giant corpse lay at his feet, dark purple blood steadily spilling and soaking into the shattered floor.
If you've gotten your fill, you won't come beat me up later, right… He really wanted to say it to her.
"…I should warn Iron and the others to stay farther from Shishō." Jinwoo's gaze flicked over the shadows. "If Shishō thinks they're trying to steal her kills, the shadow soldiers getting punished is one thing—they can't die anyway. But if she takes it out on me, I'm screwed."
Remembering that Iron had a habit of snatching kills, Sung Jinwoo suddenly felt even more uneasy.
These Dungeon giants were strong. Not on Beru's level, but enough to give Goto Ryuji trouble. Killing them would grant Sung Jinwoo a lot of experience.
But if Scáthach killed them all, that mountain of experience wouldn't be his. And he didn't have the guts to offer advice to a teacher who was riding a kill-high—doing that would be begging to die.
"Still… it's not like I get nothing."
Sung Jinwoo looked down at the giant corpse beside him. Purple light ignited in his eyes.
"[ARISE]."
The fallen dead heard their Monarch's call. An enormous silhouette rose in burning black flames, crawling back into the world as a shadow. It knelt, offering loyalty to the Shadow Monarch.
Even if he didn't gain experience, converting these giants—stronger than ordinary S-Ranks—into shadow soldiers would still greatly increase his power.
The battle paused for the moment. Every giant that had revealed itself was defeated, and no new enemies appeared.
Scáthach, now calmer, returned to the team and let out a soft sigh.
"My apologies. I got a little carried away." She spoke as if truly regretful. "I was meant to hold the perimeter, and instead I stole your chance to shine. To think I could be this immature… I'm ashamed."
…She's back to normal.
Scáthach in battle and Scáthach outside of battle were like two different people—almost like she had a split personality.
But Japan's Hunters accepted it surprisingly quickly, because among them was Atsushi Kumamoto, a similar case. In his normal state, he was timid and hesitant in fights—but when angered, he became indiscriminate and brutally cruel. He couldn't even team up with others, and despite being S-Rank he'd only ever cleared B-Rank Dungeons alone.
They just hadn't expected Hunter Scáthach to be that type too.
"Hunter Scáthach…" Goto Ryuji opened his mouth, choosing his words carefully. "So… you're really this strong?"
"Hm… yes." Scáthach sighed toward the ceiling, wearing a look of genuine trouble. "And that's exactly what's so frustrating. I'm too strong—there are hardly any opponents that force me to show what I can really do. If I want to truly enjoy a fight, I have to suppress myself…" She let out another long sigh. "It's such a pain…"
"…"
Is she… seriously humblebragging?
Who complains about being too strong?!
What kind of luxurious suffering is that? If you hate that monster-like strength so much, why not give it to us? We actually want to get stronger!
The Japanese Hunters didn't know how to respond. One by one, they turned their heads and looked at Sung Jinwoo with strange expressions.
After all, he was Scáthach's disciple. Surely he'd know how to deal with her.
Sung Jinwoo, as if reading the confusion in their eyes, simply shook his head.
At times like this, silence was best… at least, that was always his policy.
Stepping over a battlefield littered with giant remains, Scáthach led them deeper along the impossibly wide corridor. The walls on both sides were pocked with cracks and craters from the earlier fighting.
The corridor stretched endlessly into the dark. In the dead silence, only footsteps echoed through the grand arches.
Goto Ryuji and the others couldn't judge enemy distance or numbers by mana signatures. The entire hallway was saturated with suffocating mana; trying to pick out anything specific was like trying to hear raindrops in the middle of thunder.
"It's coming!"
The floor began to quake again. Everyone tightened their grip and braced. A colossal foot stepped out from the corner first, crushing stone tiles into fragments—and then a giant in bone-heavy armor emerged, its blood-red pupils locking onto them instantly.
After seeing Scáthach slaughter so many giants, Japan's Hunters were far less tense than at the start. This one giant didn't feel like much pressure.
But Sung Jinwoo's face changed sharply, like he'd sensed something.
"No—!"
Right in front of them, the giant that had just stepped out was suddenly hurled away.
Then a giant far larger than anything Scáthach had killed appeared—wearing a grotesque smile.
For ordinary giants, a single thumb was larger than an adult human.
Compared to this monster, those giants were merely knee-high children.
And that mana pressure—so heavy it seemed to twist the atmosphere, like the entire sky had collapsed onto their shoulders—
This thing… wasn't in the same league.
Even Sung Jinwoo was shaken by that overwhelming mana. His reason screamed at him to get as far away from it as possible—to never face it head-on.
"This is pissing me off…" he muttered, voice low. "How can something this dangerous even exist?"
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T/N: ermm jinwoo don't look behind you... there's something even more dangerous!