Shooting out of the Gate, Thomas slammed into a dense stone forest like a cannonball.
The razor-sharp gray spires couldn't scratch muscles harder than steel. Instead, the stone cones Thomas collided with shattered into powder.
He rose at once—Scáthach's earlier brutal punch had barely caused him damage.
"That just now… was that the Purple Gate that's appeared all over the world recently?"
Thomas swept his gaze around, assessing the terrain.
He'd previously entered the Purple Gate in the United States and cleared the S-Rank monster inside alone. That dungeon had been underground, nothing like this open stone forest—but Thomas still recognized it immediately.
This place was within that same Dungeon.
Only here could the air feel this unnatural… Even without doing anything, the deathly miasma hanging in the atmosphere seeped through pores, wormed into organs, and gradually drained vitality away.
No matter what creature you were, the longer you stayed here, the closer you crept toward death.
"To open this special Purple Gate at will… just what exactly are you?"
As he spoke, Thomas's golden eyes locked onto Scáthach as she stepped out of the Gate.
Scáthach rolled her wrist, loosening it. "Why? Is that important?"
"…No. It isn't." Thomas laughed mockingly at himself. He removed his sunglasses—now cracked—and crushed them into fragments with a squeeze of his fingers.
A worthy opponent stood right in front of him.
Compared to that, everything else was irrelevant.
He needed only one thing now—
To focus everything on the enemy before him.
And then… fight until he felt alive.
BOOM!
His surging aura and the storm it birthed shot upward, grinding nearby stone spires into dust so fine the eye couldn't even perceive it.
The spot where Thomas stood became a crater of rubble—and at that same instant, Thomas appeared directly in front of Scáthach.
A dazzling golden blaze wrapped his fist as he struck down at her. The air, compressed to its limit, let out a thin, tearing scream.
Before, Scáthach had avoided the brunt and struck at a weak point.
This time, she didn't move an inch.
She met that massive fist head-on—driving her own punch forward at full strength.
THOOM!
Shockwaves around their fists collided first. Their raw violence was so intense that even the wind from their strikes could split mountains and cleave stone.
In the next heartbeat, the shockwaves exploded—
And their fists crashed together.
BOOM!
A muffled thunderclap detonated.
Thomas's shoes were obliterated in the aftermath. His bare feet scraped across the ground as he fought to stabilize himself. Feeling his heart hammer powerfully in his chest, he couldn't suppress the surge of exhilaration.
"Yes! This is it!"
Some agile opponents could give him a taste of battle's joy—but nothing satisfied like this. Fist-to-fist. Meat and bone.
His already towering frame seemed to rise even further. The brilliant golden patterns on his body looked like fissures, as if his flesh might burst open at any moment.
At that instant, a dirt-yellow drake suddenly barged onto the battlefield.
Its nap disturbed by Thomas, it lunged furiously, jaws wide and teeth bared, trying to bite Thomas in half.
The aura rolling off it was terrifying—stronger than the current Sung Jinwoo, around the absolute limit of S-Rank.
"Don't get in the way!"
Thomas roared. A simple, brutal knife-hand flashed out—
And in one stroke, he cleaved through the drake's teeth, skull, and body, cleanly splitting it apart.
With the nuisance gone, Thomas whipped his head around. His sharp gaze urgently sought Scáthach—
Only to realize it was pointless.
That purple figure had already become a meteor ripping through space, fist clenched, charging straight at him in the most direct, violent line.
"Good!"
Thomas didn't fear it—he thrilled at it, roaring in pure exhilaration. The golden aura around him responded to his will, funneling wildly into his right fist, wrapping that mountain-splitting knuckle in brilliance as he threw a heavy, straightforward punch.
The strike hadn't even landed, yet its momentum arrived first. The gale kicked up by the punch alone carried destructive force far surpassing an ordinary Hunter's full-power blow, carving a deep trench through the ground.
BOOM!
Two fists, utterly mismatched in size—like twin meteors colliding head-on—met without the slightest hint of evasion.
The impact erupted. A visible ring-shaped storm blasted outward, brutally evacuating the air in an instant and creating a brief vacuum where neither sound nor wind existed.
This time, neither of them took a single step back.
Their feet rooted into the earth like driven stakes. Only their upper bodies tilted slightly under the recoil. They stared into each other's eyes—both burning with identical battle intent.
No hesitation.
Almost simultaneously, they raised their fists again—power enough to shake mountains—and slammed them into each other's next attacks with even greater ferocity.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The earth quaked. The roaring never ceased. An onlooker might think some ancient beast or gigantic dragon had gone berserk.
But the truth was simpler—
Two people were trading blows in the most primal, savage way possible.
Scáthach's heavy punch was blocked by Thomas's crossed forearms.
Thomas's heavy punch was stopped by Scáthach's raised arm.
That heart-pounding exchange of offense and defense played out dozens of times within mere breaths, each collision emitting deafening booms.
If nothing else, Thomas had genuine reason to take pride in his strength. To surpass him in raw power, you'd probably need someone like Heracles—Scáthach, with her B-ranked Strength, couldn't do it.
But don't forget...
Scáthach was a true master in every field.
She didn't just excel with every weapon. She also wielded the Primordial Rune—knowledge Odin himself had paid for with an eye.
With the Primordial Rune and the Holy Grail's amplification backing her, no matter how much power Thomas poured into his fists, Scáthach could match it perfectly—down to the smallest fraction—and nullify it completely.
Yes.
She was doing it deliberately.
Whether strength or speed, Scáthach intentionally limited herself to Thomas's level, purely to savor the fight.
A heavy punch from Scáthach landed right into Thomas's grip—caught dead. Simultaneously, Thomas's punch was seized by Scáthach at the wrist, held firmly.
Neither released.
They locked into a raw contest of strength—and it was dead even.
A savage glint flashed in Thomas's eyes. He broke the stalemate first.
He sank his shoulder, stepping closer, and drove his forehead forward like a warhammer—aiming to end the deadlock with a brutal headbutt.
But before his brow could connect, Scáthach moved faster by a fraction.
Her waist twisted feline-fast. One leg anchored solidly like bedrock; the other snapped upward in a blur. Her foot slammed into Thomas's chin.
THUD!
A solid, vicious strike. Thomas's head snapped back, interrupting his headbutt mid-motion. He staggered a step.
The instant her foot touched down, Scáthach exploded forward like a compressed spring. She darted in, palms gripping Thomas's head on either side. Using forward momentum and core strength, she drove her right knee upward like a cannon shot—air shrieking as it smashed into his face.
Then her body arched like a drawn bow, flowing into a sharp forward flip. Her hands—steel shackles—never released his neck. Channeling her rotation and full-body strength into the throw—
Like a catapult launching a boulder, she hurled Thomas's massive body straight ahead.
Thomas tore through the stone forest like a wrecking ball, crushing countless jagged spires before slamming into a steep cliff face in the distance.
The rock wall collapsed inward, forming a shocking crater. Cracks spread in a frantic web, as if the entire cliff were about to collapse.
But a National-Level Hunter wouldn't fall so easily.
When Scáthach crossed the stone forest, closing in on where Thomas had crashed, an immensely powerful, invisible force suddenly seized her—like an unseen giant hand halting her stride.
"I am… a National-Level Hunter—Thomas Andre!"
With a thunderous roar, a torrent of golden aura erupted from the cliff crater like a volcanic blast, pulverizing the rock imprisoning him.
Thomas strode out through smoke and shattered stone, golden hair blazing wildly over his shoulders like a furious lion's mane—every strand pulsing with power.
"Don't underestimate a National-Level Hunter!"
He raised one arm, fingers curled into a claw as if gripping something unseen.
Clearly visible now was a beam of condensed golden energy extending from his palm—its opposite end latched firmly onto Scáthach.
That eerie, sudden pull restricting her movements came from this threadlike golden beam, akin to a strand of fate.
"This… is the Rulers' Authority?"
Scáthach's gaze sharpened as she looked at the golden tether binding her.
It exerted physical influence without needing direct contact—in short, telekinesis.
In this universe, only the Rulers possessed that ability, earning it the name Rulers' Hand, or Rulers' Authority.
Sung Jinwoo had the same skill. Even though his power derived entirely from the Shadow Monarch, the Shadow Monarch—like the original Rulers—had first been an incarnation of fragments of light, not a being forged from fragments of darkness like other Monarchs.
Thus, the Shadow Monarch could wield the Rulers' power as well.
Under pressure from Scáthach, Thomas didn't hesitate to activate the Rulers' Authority. The invisible force didn't just bind—it yanked fiercely, pulling her straight toward him.
Simultaneously, his other fist gathered golden aura strong enough to shatter mountains. As Scáthach was dragged in—exposed for a split second—he threw a punch like a surging flood of destruction.
The golden blaze erupted, condensing into a brilliant aurora pillar tearing through the air, shooting toward the dim gray sky as if to punch a hole clean through it.
Then Thomas's expression twisted into disbelief—
Because that punch carried no feeling of impact at all.
In that lightning instant, Scáthach no longer felt like solid flesh and blood.
She felt like dandelion fluff—light enough to be blown away.
Before his fist could even reach her, the violent wind wrapped around it dispersed her silhouette. She slipped aside with nimbleness defying physics, barely evading the lethal blow.
"Since you abandoned our pure contest of strength first…" Scáthach said, "…don't blame me for bullying you with technique."
Thomas's fist swept past her waist, its gale barely flicking her hem. In eyes widening with shock and disbelief, Scáthach's fist drove in—hard—directly into his face.
THUD!
A bone-rattling impact. The force traveled cleanly through him.
"You think that's the end?" Scáthach's cool voice echoed in his ear.
Before Thomas could react, Scáthach's hands blurred into motion.
Fist, palm, finger, claw—she poured strikes down like a storm across his body: throat, sternum, abdomen, back, waist, joints…
Each strike precisely targeted the body's weakest points or key nodes of force, producing a rapid series of heavy, frightening impacts.
This wasn't blind brawling.
It was the surgical dismantling of the human body—every hit intended to break his guard, disrupt his balance, and sever his flow of power.
Realizing he'd lose all ability to fight if this continued, Thomas threw his head back and roared—shaking the battlefield.
The golden aura around him abruptly contracted inward, then exploded outward as a solid ring of light.
A violent shockwave surged like a tsunami, forcibly interrupting Scáthach's flowing combo and blasting her back—sending her sliding over ten meters.
"No one's ever pushed me this far… Good!"
"Then let me show you—my full power!"
The golden aura around Thomas burned and surged with unprecedented intensity, climbing wildly as if limitless.
Then it enveloped his massive body completely—hardening into armor that looked as if forged by the gods themselves.