"Is it... dawn?"
Loki could feel the immense cold gathering wildly in Laufey's hand behind him. Yet as the seconds passed, the pain he expected never came. Instead, a blue light began to shine, growing more brilliant by the moment.
The dazzling radiance easily pierced Loki's tightly shut eyelids.
A searing pain stabbed through his eyes. He instinctively raised a hand to shield them while forcing his eyelids open a fraction and looking toward the source of the light.
"What is that?"
Loki's pupils abruptly widened.
Far above the distant battlefield, an exceptionally bright point of deep blue light rose high into the air. When it reached a height of several dozen meters, it began to expand rapidly.
"Vmmm..."
The light grew increasingly dazzling as a low hum came from the distance, steadily rising until it became high-pitched and piercing.
At last, when the gathered power reached a critical threshold, the high-frequency sound exceeded the limits of human hearing. The deafening noise that had echoed across the battlefield instantly vanished, leaving behind utter silence.
Loki's vision blurred. In the next instant, that rising sun seemed to pause for a fraction of a second before suddenly plunging toward him without warning.
That familiar prelude...
"No!"
Loki knew this sight down to his very bones. The instant the sound disappeared, his heart leaped into his throat and every muscle in his body tensed.
That was no sun.
Boom!
Loki had no strength left to evade. Almost the instant the realization flashed through his mind, the distant point of light rapidly expanded before his eyes.
Accompanied by an earthshaking roar, an atomic torrent nearly ten meters thick tore across the sky. It crossed thousands of meters in an instant and thundered directly over Loki and Frigga's heads.
The scorching current unleashed a violent wave of heat, whipping their tattered clothing wildly in the wind.
"Look out!"
Frigga had no time to think. She abruptly pulled Loki into her arms and shielded him with her body. The sudden wave of heat merely swept past them, yet it instantly burned every inch of her exposed skin bright red.
Agonizing pain tore through her. Frigga clenched her teeth, trembling uncontrollably, but refused to release him.
Boom!
An instant later, another tremendous explosion rang out as the atomic breath struck the arctic storm released by the Casket of Ancient Winters with flawless precision.
The moment the ultimate heat collided with the ultimate cold, everything around them seemed to freeze.
A violent pressure wave built for only an instant before erupting with a deafening blast. The two diametrically opposed forces produced an impact so fierce that it became visible to the naked eye.
The surrounding air was compressed to its absolute limit before rebounding. A towering hurricane instantly took shape, connecting earth and sky. The scorching wind carried by the atomic breath rapidly dispersed all the surrounding cold, causing the freezing temperature that had enveloped the world to vanish.
This sudden interception exceeded everyone's expectations. Even someone as powerful as Laufey failed to react at first.
Only when the atomic breath arrived and blocked his execution strike from thousands of meters away, saving Loki and Frigga, did Laufey finally realize what had happened.
"Impossible!"
"How can you still be alive?!"
He looked toward the distant battlefield.
At its center, the colossal ice sculpture that had stood nearly fifty meters tall had vanished. At some point, the thick layers of ice had melted into billowing steam.
Within the dense mist, the indistinct outline of an enormous creature could be seen, its back glowing with deep blue light.
In the next instant, Laufey found himself staring into a pair of cold, vertical pupils.
Those eyes had been utterly lifeless only moments ago, without the slightest trace of vitality. Now they once again shone with a brilliant blue light beneath the radiance of the atomic breath.
The creature's biofield, which had previously shrunk until it was nearly nonexistent, had somehow begun pulsing once more, bursting with incomparable vitality.
"Fenris!"
Elsewhere, Loki and Frigga were already completely exhausted. Both had reached the end of their strength and no longer possessed even the slightest ability to resist.
During the sudden eruption of force, they had been helpless against the unexpected hurricane and the extreme temperatures of fire and ice. Their bodies were effortlessly thrown through the air.
The two were swept high above the ground, then slammed down heavily when the violent winds abruptly dissipated.
The repeated impacts pushed their critically wounded bodies past the point of collapse. The physically frailer Frigga lost consciousness without even making a sound, only gradually coming to her senses several moments later.
Supported by Gungnir, Loki was the first to recover.
He followed the familiar stream of atomic breath spanning the sky. When he saw that blurred yet unmistakable figure in the distance, miraculously freed from the ice, Loki's eyes instantly lit up.
Moments ago, he had been utterly consumed by despair, silently awaiting death. Now that he had once again escaped certain doom, his withered body seemed to fill with new life. Had the bones throughout his body not been shattered beyond recognition, he might have leaped into the air.
"Yes! I knew it!"
"Fenris!"
Loki's joy was matched only by Laufey's frustration.
"I truly underestimated you..."
Sensing that powerful and familiar life force in the distance, Laufey gritted his teeth. His clenched fist tightened and relaxed repeatedly, while his chest rose and fell rapidly. Despite his best efforts, he could not conceal the trace of unease in his eyes.
Laufey considered himself exceptionally experienced, yet in his hundreds of thousands of years of life, he had never encountered a creature that could be completely killed by the power of the Casket of Ancient Winters, remain dormant for a time, and then return to life in such an unbelievable manner.
Forget this human. Even someone as powerful as Laufey himself, or even Odin, could never have survived under those circumstances...
"But so what?"
Laufey's gaze sharpened as the power within him abruptly surged.
"Even if you have returned to life, you are still nothing more than an insect I can crush whenever I please!"
"Die!"
A raging torrent of cold erupted from the exquisitely crafted Casket. The white beam that had been suppressed by the atomic breath and briefly forced into a disadvantage instantly swelled in intensity, severing the thick atomic torrent by brute force.
Boom!
After effortlessly devouring the atomic breath, the white light expanded even further.
It was not as thick, nor did it possess the same overwhelming momentum as the atomic breath. It did not appear nearly as earthshaking, yet it contained such terrifying cold that no one would dare approach it.
The white light streaked across the sky without slowing and hurtled viciously toward the distant Fenris.
"No!"
The elation on Loki's face did not last more than a few seconds.
This attack appeared identical to the one Laufey had casually unleashed against a completely defenseless Loki, but from this short distance, Loki could clearly sense the vast difference in the energy contained within the two attacks.
This was nearly the full extent of Laufey's current power.
"Fenris, watch out!"
(End of Chapter)
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