"You've consumed the power of the sun and moon for countless ages."
"This is to prepare for this moment."
Nidhogg's shadow spread massive wings.
Wings that could shroud the world stirred a colossal storm.
Sköll was annihilated in the tempest.
Its divine soul was refined by Nidhogg.
Surging divine power roiled.
The Black Dragon King's might.
The entire Nine Realms quaked.
"What's that?"
The gods of Asgard and Vanaheim, briefly elated, sensed an anomaly.
The rampant lunar and coronal essences, laced with endless deathly aura, were eroding the sun and moon.
The once-rising celestial bodies dimmed instantly.
"What's going on?"
Kaiser had just returned to Midgard from Muspelheim.
The battle in Muspelheim had stirred many of the fire realm's demons.
Had Surtr not lost the Eternal Flame and still been unreborn, Kaiser's escape from Muspelheim would've been unlikely.
But upon reaching Midgard, he sensed something wrong.
The sun and moon were fading.
He had slain the Moon-Hunting Wolf and crippled the Sun-Chaser.
By all accounts, Sköll should lack the strength to pursue the solar chariot.
Yet the situation defied Kaiser's expectations.
"Kaiser, are you okay?"
Brünhild sensed his Cosmo and rushed to his side.
After such a battle, she doubted he was in good shape.
Seeing him, his condition was worse than she feared.
His aura was noticeably weak.
"What's happening?"
Kaiser turned to Brünhild.
"The Sun-Chasing Wolf Sköll has fallen."
"I don't know the details."
"But this is likely tied to Nidhogg."
Brünhild's expression was grim.
Kaiser had fought an unimaginable battle to kill the Moon-Hunting Wolf.
To learn it was all for naught... who could accept that?
Nidhogg's wings stirred a deathly aura.
Lunar and coronal essences gathered within them.
Two orbs, pale and golden, were forming.
Closer inspection revealed Nidhogg drawing power from the sun and moon.
"No chance!"
Odin, silent for ages, roared in fury.
Kaiser's slaying of Hati and wounding of Sköll had given him an edge.
If Nidhogg destroyed the sun and moon now, Asgard's gods would seem utterly incompetent.
"Buzz!"
The Norse God-King unleashed his might.
The opportunity he sought for eons had emerged under Kaiser's Libra sacred sword.
"Odin!"
Nidhogg glared at the God-King high in the sky, roaring.
"Boom!"
Thunder cracked as Mjölnir fell from the heavens.
The deathly aura was pierced by lightning.
The Asgardian army arrayed in the sky.
They wouldn't let Nidhogg destroy the sun and moon.
Vanir gods had mustered their forces.
The elves of Alfheim and dwarves of Svartalfheim were preparing for war.
"Is the divine war starting early?"
"Ragnarök's conditions aren't met."
"The sun and moon remain, and the World Tree's roots aren't fully severed."
"If war breaks now, the advantage lies with the Asgardians."
Kaiser assessed the sky, thinking silently.
"Buzz!"
Endless darkness surged upward.
Another deathly realm stirred.
Helheim's undead took flight in the sky.
Nidhogg's deathly aura grew stronger.
Divine power clashed with deathly energy, shaking the Nine Realms.
"Tap… tap… tap…"
Soft footsteps echoed.
From the endless deathly aura, a graceful figure emerged.
"Hela…"
The Asgardian gods' gazes hardened.
Loki's daughter, bearer of the death divinity, sole ruler of the endless deathly realm.
Her power was terrifying.
Half her face was elegant and beautiful, captivating all.
The other half was decayed and grotesque, horrifying to behold.
She was an angel and demon combined, a goddess straddling life and death.
In Norse myth, she completed Balder's death, the final link.
She opened Ragnarök's prelude.
The only Loki spawn whose fate in Ragnarök remained unclear.
"Hela, you dare show yourself?"
Frigg, behind, raged.
Runes began to coil around her.
"Heh, wasn't it your other son, Höðr, who killed Balder?"
"What's that got to do with me?"
"Ragnarök is a fated prophecy."
"You can't resist it."
Hela's voice was cold.
"Where's Loki?"
"Too cowardly to face me?"
Odin gripped Gungnir, suppressing boundless rage.
His brother had incited Höðr to kill Balder during his blessing by the gods.
An unforgivable act.
"My father has his own path, nothing to do with me."
Hela replied indifferently.
"The sun and moon must not be destroyed."
"If you persist, it's war."
"Let's see if, without Ragnarök's conditions, you can defeat the gods."
Odin's Cosmo boiled.
The Tenth Sense, the God-King's oppressive aura, was fully unleashed.
"Looking for me, are you?"
Loki appeared with a host of giants on the battlefield.
Facing him were the gods of Asgard and Vanaheim.
Enemies met with burning hatred, the battlefield's tension peaking.
"Then we fight!"
With Loki's arrival, Hela's confidence surged.
She stepped forward, endless deathly aura pouring from Helheim.
Crimson eyes gleamed in the darkness.
The Nine Realms trembled.
As if a colossal creature stirred.
"The World-Encircling Serpent… Jörmungandr."
Thor and the Asgardian gods bore heavy expressions.
Jörmungandr's venom was something even gods couldn't withstand.
Compared to the Hydra, Jörmungandr was far stronger.
Its power rivaled a first-tier god.
Incredibly formidable.
In Ragnarök, it was destined to perish alongside Thor, the God of Thunder.
"This power?"
In Midgard, Kaiser sensed Jörmungandr's might.
"It's that thing."
"That serpent…"
When Kaiser fought Hati, his Ultimate Justice could have shattered the channel between Hati and Sköll.
But a powerful force had protected it.
A force rivaling a first-tier god. Kaiser had considered many candidates.
He hadn't expected Jörmungandr.
By all accounts, the serpent should still be slumbering.
"It seems the Ragnarök war is starting early."
"The World Tree's seed is the last hope."
"My arrival has indeed shifted this fated destiny."
Recalling Hati's dying words, Kaiser smirked.
What fated destiny?
Hadn't it already veered off course?
"The divine war is finally erupting?"
Brünhild was tense.
Such a war would upend the Nine Realms' balance.
Though the World Tree's roots remained intact, still drawing from the three sacred springs, a battle of this scale could break it.
The Nine Realms would surely be left in ruins.
"We can't let Nidhogg free Fenrir!"
"Charge!"
Odin's roar, like a horn heralding the end, echoed through the Nine Realms.
Asgard's Valhalla war drums thundered. Valkyries on winged steeds became silver streaks tearing through the deathly aura.
The Vanir fleet rose from ocean depths, sails woven of starlight, prows pulsing with primal tidal force.
Elven arrows rained like emerald meteors, and dwarven-forged divine cannons in Svartalfheim lit up with piercing rune glow.
The divine war, delayed for eons but hastened by Kaiser's arrival, had begun... the prelude to Ragnarök, now unavoidable!
"For Asgard! For the glory of the Nine Realms!"
Thor bellowed, Mjölnir wreathed in thunder capable of splitting stars.
His massive form, a golden lightning bolt, charged the colossal shadow looming in the deathly aura.
The World-Encircling Serpent, Jörmungandr!
As Thor's hammer met the serpent's body, space seemed to tear, shrieking metal and explosive energy sweeping all directions, vaporizing nearby undead instantly.
Frigg's runes wove a massive defensive barrier, blocking Hela's deathly torrent.
The furious goddess wielded radiant spears of life and protection, each throw piercing the cores of Hela's summoned undead lords.
Hela stood at the heart of Helheim's deathly vortex, her half-beautiful, half-decayed face bearing cold mockery.
With a wave of her hand, endless undead hordes poured from her realm.
They wailed silently, carrying soul-freezing chill, rushing at the Asgardian-Vanir alliance.
Vanir gods skilled in water and wind fought back, frost freezing undead, storms shredding them, but the undead seemed infinite.
Yet the battlefield's core, its deadliest focus, remained Nidhogg, coiled between the sun and moon, siphoning cosmic essence!
Its wings stirred a deathly storm, not just shrouding the world but greedily draining the sun and moon's power.
The pale lunar and blazing coronal orbs beneath its wings held energy that made the Nine Realms' space wail and tremble, as if ready to burst.
The sun and moon dimmed visibly.
In Midgard, day turned to eerie twilight, night deepened to ink, and panic spread among mortals.
"Stop it! We must disrupt its ritual!"
Odin, hair and beard bristling, unleashed his God-King aura without restraint.
On his eight-legged steed Sleipnir, he shattered the void. Gungnir, the Eternal Spear, blazed with unprecedented light!
Not mere divine power, but the faith of Asgard's realm amassed over ages.
"Gungnir! Pierce through!"
Odin hurled his spear of fate!
"Buzz!"
Gungnir became a golden streak, defying all laws, aimed at Nidhogg's shadowy heart!
Where it passed, space smoothed, chaotic deathly aura was purified, and time seemed to freeze along its path.
A God-King's full strike, bearing late Tenth Sense Cosmo, capable of threatening any first-tier god!
Nidhogg's massive dragon eyes, burning with nether flames, flashed with gravity.
Its true body leaped from Niflheim, breaching all world barriers.
The Black Dragon King revealed its form to the Nine Realms.
A colossal being, each scale imbued with endless deathly power.
A sky-shrouding dragon claw met the deadly golden light!
The claw bore the corrupt divine power of eons spent gnawing the World Tree's roots.
"Boom!!"
An indescribable explosion rocked the Nine Realms!
Billions of times fiercer than colliding stars!
Golden God-King power and black corrupt force tangled, tore, and annihilated!
An energy singularity, devouring light and sound, formed and swelled into a destructive orb spanning realms.
Asgard's divine barriers shook, Vanaheim's seas churned with apocalyptic tsunamis.
Alfheim's forests turned to dust, Svartalfheim's mountains collapsed.
Even distant Midgard felt the cataclysmic tremors and energy waves.
"Pfft…"
Kaiser grunted, his weakened body jolted by the shockwave, spilling golden-red divine blood.
Brünhild raised a divine shield before him, but her face paled instantly.
"This is… main god-level power?"
Kaiser stared at the apocalyptic scene, awestruck.
Slaying Hati had drained him, yet this collision's mere ripples left him breathless.
On the front lines, even with second-tier god strength, he wouldn't survive.
The destructive orb faded, revealing the scene.
Odin's Gungnir was clutched by Nidhogg's decay-scaled claw!
The spear's tip was inches from Nidhogg's shadowy heart, unable to advance!
Divine light on the spear clashed with the claw's deathly aura and sun-moon power.
A grating sizzle sounded as space fractured and reformed at their contact.
"Odin! Your era is over!"
Nidhogg's soul-shattering roar echoed as its claw tightened, threatening to crush Gungnir!
Simultaneously, its shadowy claw gripped, and the two orbs of immense sun-moon power beneath its wings wavered.
Radiating apocalyptic force.
It aimed to face Odin while forcibly detonating the sun-moon power, destroying both celestial bodies.
To single-handedly force Ragnarök's advance.
"No!"
All gods sensed the lethal threat.
If those orbs detonated, not only would the sun and moon vanish, but the blast could devastate half the Nine Realms!
With the sun and moon gone, Fenrir would be freed.
Their fates would be grim.
"Nidhogg is this strong?"
Kaiser was surprised.
In Norse myth, Nidhogg didn't fight directly.
It played a supporting role, gnawing the World Tree's roots, then spreading despair and darkness over the battlefield.
Now, to push Ragnarök, Nidhogg was battling Odin directly.
And it seemed Nidhogg's power slightly surpassed Odin's.
Though not fated foes, Nidhogg was undeniably suppressing the God-King.
"Athena, it's our turn."
Kaiser smiled.
"Are you insane?"
"In your condition, you want to fight?"
"Do you think you're some savior?"
Athena's voice rang in Kaiser's mind, laced with anger.
What place did he have in such a battlefield?
"Don't I have you?"
Kaiser smiled.
"And I think I've sensed the World Tree's will…"
***
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