Sensing their Monarch's wrath, the insect swarm turned fanatical in an instant. The buzzing of countless wings fused into a death hymn as a black tide surged like boiling asphalt, heaving in stacked waves. Tens of thousands of compound eyes glittered in the dark, forming a suffocating net that rushed Scáthach from every direction.
Querehsha didn't lift a finger herself. With an elegant flick of her newly formed insect limbs, the swarm flooded forward like a black sea. In her eyes, having a Monarch personally descend to deal with a mere human would be beneath her station. If word got out, the other Monarchs would laugh about it over tea for a hundred years.
"I did say I wanted the Land of Shadows to be livelier."
Watching the sky get blotted out by insects, Scáthach let out a quiet sigh. "But I'll pass on the racket. I'd like to sleep."
Her composure irritated Querehsha to no end. The insect Monarch fixed her stare on Scáthach's calm, unhurried face, blood-red eyes glittering with savage light—she wanted, desperately, to see fear and despair there, not this effortless ease.
"Once I tear you to pieces and let my children chew your flesh, we'll see if you can still keep that face!"
The swarm fell like an endless storm cloud. Countless legs and wings rasped together with a sound that made teeth ache. Driven by raw hunger for flesh and absolute devotion to their Monarch, they surged in wave after wave—like a black tsunami swallowing a reef—until Scáthach's figure vanished completely beneath the roiling tide.
"…Strange. Why isn't she screaming?" Querehsha frowned, puzzled for only a moment before settling on an answer. "She must've died before she could. Humans really are weak—so easy to kill… How boring."
She lifted her gaze and studied her surroundings, thinking.
"Where is this place? It isn't Earth. It feels more like the Shadow Monarch's domain… the stench of death is so thick."
With the exception of the Monarch of Destruction—unable to descend to Earth for lack of a vessel—the other surviving Monarchs had all come to Earth, hoping to kill the vessels chosen by the Rulers before the war began.
While Querehsha searched for those vessels, she sensed something on Jeju Island: a powerful insect-type monster being born. Unlike the Monarchs who treated their subordinates with cold indifference, Querehsha regarded all insect-type monsters as her children. She'd gone to Jeju Island to see this child with her own eyes.
And then Scáthach dragged her into the Land of Shadows.
Querehsha had been calculating how to return to Earth when she suddenly sensed countless powerful mana signatures saturating this land. As the Monarch of Plagues, she was born with the ability to command insect swarms to inhabit corpses… That discovery made her shelve her return for the moment. Perhaps she could take every monster here for herself.
In the instant her attention slipped, the insect tide behind her erupted into flame. A scorching shockwave surged out like a volcanic blast. Tens of thousands of insects shrieked as they died, then turned to drifting ash in the fire.
And within that blaze, a composed voice spoke.
"Has no one ever taught you… that you must never turn your back to your enemy on the battlefield?"
A crimson streak tore through the firestorm. With a shriek that broke the sound barrier, a spear shot forward like a falling star and drove straight through Querehsha's chest.
"AAAAAAAH—!!"
The insect Monarch stared down in disbelief at the vermilion spear that had pierced her. Her scream split the sky—pain and fury tangled together.
She was Querehsha, the Monarch of Plagues!
And she'd been wounded by a human?!
It was humiliation beyond words.
Scáthach moved like a phantom through the black waves of the swarm. Her spearpoint drew dazzling arcs, as if she were painting with ink—every turn carried an almost poetic leisure. The dense insects couldn't so much as brush her sleeves.
In her hands, the vermilion spear became a living brush. With a faint tremor of the tip, it sketched several shimmering mana runes in midair. The instant they formed, they detonated—becoming blazing fireballs that screamed into the swarm. Wherever they passed, only drifting ash remained.
Scáthach didn't particularly like using rune magecraft in battle—at least, not when fighting people. But against a swarm like this, stabbing them one by one with a spear would take all day.
A gigantic hand condensed from ghostly green mana manifested abruptly, swatting down at Scáthach like someone batting a mosquito. Her gaze sharpened. The spearpoint carved four rune symbols in a flash, anchoring the four directions, and a deep-blue barrier snapped open.
The green hand slammed into the barrier with a deafening boom. The barrier shattered—yet the mana hand also dispersed, breaking into a spray of light.
"I'llkillyouI'llkillyouI'llkillyouI'llkillyou…!" Querehsha raved, frothing with fury. "A filthy little human dares to wound me! Who gave you the nerve—who allowed you to lay hands on Querehsha, Monarch of Plagues?!"
To a Monarch-level existence, a pierced heart was a small wound. And though Querehsha ranked near the bottom among the Monarchs in raw strength, her vitality was the toughest of them all. Even when injured, she could have her swarm patch her body back together.
Querehsha looked down at Scáthach from above. More and more insects sacrificed themselves, fusing into her form. By now she had changed completely—like an immense black fog barely maintaining a humanoid shape. Towering like a mountain, she could seize Scáthach in one hand and toy with her at leisure.
For some reason, an image flashed through Scáthach's mind—a certain demonic bodhisattva who loved hugging the Earth.
"Hm… so the Monarch of Plagues is only capable of this much." Scáthach met Querehsha's eyes without the slightest fear. Her gaze grew sharper, colder. "All bark… If it were me, the enemy would already be dead before I ever said 'I'll kill you.'"
"AAAAAAAH—!!"
Scáthach's casual words lit Querehsha's rage like oil on flame.
Green giant hands fell from the heavens like meteorites. The earth cracked and collapsed under thunderous impacts; even the insects chasing Scáthach were pulverized in the indiscriminate barrage.
But Querehsha only smashed Scáthach's afterimages. The real Scáthach had already flashed into the air as if teleporting. With a twist of her waist, the vermilion spear drew a crescent arc. Where the cold light passed, a green giant hand snapped apart and dissolved into drifting motes.
Those scattered motes gathered again around Scáthach, condensing into countless ghostly green light arrows. As if guided by an unseen will, they turned in midair and ripped through the air at her from every angle.
Facing the airtight rain of arrows, Scáthach stayed calm. The vermilion spear spun like a windmill, red afterimages weaving a shield in front of her. Every incoming arrow shattered with sharp clangs, each one struck down with perfect precision.
"Kekekekek—!!"
A flock of mantis-like monsters beat membranous wings as they dove at Scáthach. Each one was the size of a grown adult, scythe-like forelimbs flashing with a chilling sheen.
Scáthach moved with her spear, as if the two were one. The naked eye could barely catch the fleeting glints of her thrusts, never her body. When she appeared again, every mantis monster blocking her path had already been cut down. Limbs and carcasses fell like autumn leaves.
Then two giant hands struck from left and right, trying to crush her between them. In the next instant, both hands exploded—shattered by a violent force. The vermilion spear punched through layers of sonic booms, a spiral gale wrapped around it as it tore across the sky and shattered Querehsha's head in a single, precise strike. The shockwave rippled outward in rings through the air.
"AAAAAH! Damn it! Why—why can't I kill you?!"
With the swarm's help, Querehsha's head regenerated at a speed visible to the naked eye. She roared hysterically, unable to understand why a mere human was so hard to put down.
"Who knows?" Scáthach smiled—a smile that made Querehsha's blood boil. "Honestly, I'm puzzled too. Why is it that, to this day, no one's been able to take my life?" Her eyes curved with maddening cheer. "Try harder. Maybe if you try just a little harder, you'll finally kill me."
"Then stand still and let me kill you!"
A violent torrent of mana erupted around Querehsha. One of her arms suddenly mutated into a massive centipede, opening a maw packed with venom fangs as it lunged at Scáthach. She slipped aside lightly, and at the same time the vermilion spear shot out like a viper from its hole, skewering the centipede's head.
"How dull would that be?" Scáthach flicked her wrist, shaking off the viscous fluid from the spear. "What I long for is to be defeated in a fair fight—by an opponent stronger than me…" A soft laugh escaped her. "Maybe that wish can never be fulfilled. Heh."
Scáthach always said she wanted to be killed in a satisfying battle by someone stronger than herself, but Cú Chulainn had once laid bare her true wish.
"That woman… might not be seeking death at all. What she truly craves is a battle she cannot win—only to overturn it at the last moment and kill the opponent stronger than her. She wants to prove that, once again, she broke past her limits—so far that she could sever even a fixed fate with her own hands."
The rune symbols gathered at the spear's tip suddenly bloomed, turning into a wildfire that rolled outward. Scorching air surged in waves. The earlier sky-filling black insect tide crackled and shrieked as it burned, melting away like snow under a blazing sun. Querehsha's followers were thinning by the second.
"Compared to flame, I actually prefer ice-and-snow rune magecraft," Scáthach said with a small smile, watching the swarm writhe in the fire. "But if you want to exterminate insects, you really do need fire. I haven't played little games like 'burn the bugs' since I grew up… It's oddly nostalgic."
When she was young, she'd truly been mischievous. She'd nearly set the bedsheets alight once—thinking back on it still made her shudder. After the time she almost lit her own hair on fire, she'd never dared touch flame again. Once burned, ten years shy.
Even during New Year's, when everyone else lit fireworks with a lighter, she'd only dare use the kind of incense meant for offerings. She wouldn't even burn paper offerings at grave-sweeping; the moment the yellow joss paper caught, she'd fling it away in a panic.
Still—she had burned insects, despite not daring fire. Back home there used to be a lot of mosquitoes, and she'd run around with an electric swatter. Every time it hit one, it would go pop. But once, a mosquito got stuck on the mesh—after that, every time she switched the swatter on, it crackled nonstop, sparks flashing, smoke rising, the air reeking of something scorched. She remembered it clearly. She'd thought it was fun.
Watching her swarm's numbers plummet while her enemy showed no fatigue—only growing fiercer—Querehsha finally felt a sharp spike of panic.
Yes, her vitality was the toughest among the nine Monarchs… but if all her followers were wiped out, what would she use to repair her wounded body?
And aside from vitality, Querehsha's pride was the lethal poison carried in her mana. In the past, countless Rulers had died to that poison.
But it was useless against Scáthach. All-purpose rune symbols could easily dissolve the toxins she spread into the air.
With every method failing, Querehsha finally hardened her heart and released all the mana she'd been hoarding, without holding back.
In an instant, an eerie green pillar of light pierced heaven and earth. Violent energy churned the sky into chaos. The ground convulsed with a mournful tremor. The dim heavens were stained a sickly green, and the whole world looked as if it were sliding into an end-of-days abyss.
"I never would've dreamed… that a human could push me this far!" Querehsha roared. "But I won't give you another chance! I'll crush you completely with all my mana!"
Querehsha abandoned the human vessel she'd struggled so hard to obtain on Earth and revealed her true form. Only now was she the complete Querehsha, Monarch of Plagues.
Mana vast as an ocean became crushing weight—pressing down directly onto Scáthach. The air wailed beneath that terrifying pressure. The ground under her feet—and the earth around her—crumbled inch by inch, ground to dust under the force.
"See? Do you see it? This is a Monarch's power! You were so good at dancing around—go on, keep dancing for me! Hahahaha! Hahahahahaha!"
Watching Scáthach strain under the crushing pressure, Querehsha burst into exhilarated laughter. The stifling frustration of never being able to kill her finally poured out. In the surging torrent of mana, she felt she'd reclaimed the dignity and pride of the Monarch of Plagues.
Feeling that weight on her shoulders, Scáthach suddenly laughed.
"So this is your last trick? I'll admit it—when the gap in power is absolute, technique can only do so much…"
She exhaled hard and spoke in a low, steady voice.
"Fine. Then watch closely…"
"I'll show you the full power I've never once shown anyone."
The moment the words fell, mana even more terrifying—far vaster than Querehsha's—erupted from Scáthach's slender body. In a blink, the flood of power tore Querehsha's mana pillar apart and swept across every corner of the Land of Shadows like an overwhelming tide.
Sky and earth, space and time—everything shook violently beneath that incomparable mana.
This was the power Scáthach possessed—Scáthach, who held five Holy Grails.
Querehsha was still drunk on the illusion of dominance, still unable to comprehend why her opponent—on the verge of defeat—could suddenly erupt with such horrific power.
In the next second, an irresistible weight slammed her into the ground.
She couldn't move.
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T/N: EXPLOSIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN or maybe not apparently its something she hasn't shown anyone also verge of defeat? okay buddy