Thunder roared. Lightning raced in every direction, spreading like a vast net above the deep valley ringed by endless snow-covered mountains. Thor, God of Thunder, his pale figure seeming to merge completely with the lightning, clenched his heavy fists and struck again and again at the storm lance in Rovi's hands.
Step by step, he pressed forward, closing the cage of power around Rovi inch by inch.
From a distance, Rovi looked like a beast caught in a trap. He was still fierce, still moving, but in truth, his range of motion was shrinking little by little. It was as if his feet had sunk into a swamp, dragging him down by degrees.
Skadi saw it and could not help clenching her fists.
——Shouldn't you be happy?
Scathach's voice rang out again.
——If he dies, you can go back to Asgard, can't you?
I hate to admit it... but if he dies, I'll die too, Skadi answered inwardly at once.
——Oh my. Giving up already?
I haven't given up. I just don't want to die... specially such a pointless death. Skadi drew a deep breath.
Of course, she still did not want to yield to Rovi. After so many years, her sense of identity as one of the gods of Asgard was not something that could vanish so easily.
And she still had a chance. As long as she could reach Odin, she believed he would hear her explanation.
Not because she trusted Odin all that much. Simply because Odin was the wise God-King. He had once hung himself upside down from the World Tree for seven days and seven nights to obtain primordial wisdom. The Runes he created encompassed all things, and he would surely not be deceived by that King of the Wild Hunt who had dominated the giants and stolen their power.
But to meet Odin, she first had to keep Rovi alive.
Because if Rovi died...
She would die too.
Thor was exactly that kind of person. He had once treated her very well, almost like a younger sister. But once he turned against someone, once he divided friend from foe, he would never show mercy.
That was where his name as a war god came from.
So Rovi... could not die.
——Do you want to help him?
Helping him is helping myself.
——Then... throw your spear high into the air.
All right!
Without hesitation, the instant the thought crossed her mind, Skadi raised her hand. Her cloud-like long sleeve swept outward, and five pale, jade-white fingers lightly pinched a corner of the air. Shadow spread in the blink of an eye, turning into a crimson spear in her palm.
Gáe Bolg.
A copy of Gungnir, Odin's "meteor spear."
Skadi gripped it tight.
Then... hurled it forward.
BOOOM—At the same moment, Thor raised the heavy hammer in his hand, thunder gathering over its face into a vortex that churned like a river of stars.
His towering divine body leapt high.
Like a meteor, he smashed down toward Rovi, who had raised the storm lance.
The fur on Rovi's cloak shook loose and scattered like drifting smoke and dust. Behind the mask, his face was still, his eyes alternating between light and shadow.
The road lay ahead, but that road... how was he supposed to walk it?
A path he had never taken, with no clear direction—even the most immense computational power could do nothing.
He could only rely on his own human thoughts to think.
He already had an idea.
If nothing interfered, he could succeed.
What a shame.
Rovi let out a soft breath and had no choice but to meet the incoming Mjolnir with the lance in his hand.
He had already prepared to manifest his Machine God form.
And at that very instant, something tore through the air with a cold, sharp whistle, arriving in the blink of an eye. A dark-purple spear shot into the sky and struck the incoming Mjolnir.
Impact. Collision.
Rovi froze.
Of course he could tell it was the spear Skadi wielded.
At the same time, however, he saw a purple figure within that spear.
A valiant woman warrior, similar to Skadi yet utterly different.
Scathach? Rovi understood her identity at once.
The lightning stalled for an instant. The spear could only hold back Thor's attack for a single second.
But for Rovi, one second was enough.
In the blink of an eye, the lightning crashed down once more.
"Thanks," he said.
"You're welcome." From the spear smashed back down to earth, the faint, lithe purple figure seemed to let a voice echo out.
Rovi gripped his lance, held the shaft fast, and swept it into a spiral.
The momentum in that moment was different from before. Thor, gripping Mjolnir, frowned deeply. But the heavy hammer had already broken through the air and fallen, and now, naturally, he could not stop it. He could only accelerate the force driving it forward.
His hands and the blue cube before his chest shone with blazing light, as if aflame. Layer upon layer of thunder manifested at such immense density that it took on an almost pitch-black color.
Within it appeared the operating logic of a program built for destruction.
Lightning, the most terrifying power in nature that the human eye could observe, could naturally represent destruction.
Not even the God-King would dare meet this hammer head-on.
But Rovi only swept his lance along. He raised its tip, and storm gathered upon it—
In the blink of an eye, they collided.
BOOM—The sky shook without end, and the tremors of the earth grew even more violent. At the center where the divine weapons crossed, the boundary of the Age of Gods covering the planet's surface revealed layer upon layer of pitch-black cracks. Invisible ripples spread outward like the creases in paper that had been crumpled and flattened again. Lightning and storm both froze upon that paper surface.
A single sharp point held back the incoming heavy hammer.
Thor froze.
Not because Rovi had blocked his attack head-on, nor because in that instant, the force, angle, and timing of his thrust had all been perfect enough to pierce the encirclement Thor had formed with the thunder he unleashed.
Force breaking skill.
Skill breaking force.
The way Rovi swung the lance upward did not look like using a spear. It looked more like using a hammer.
Using Mjolnir.
"I've already mastered your technique, Thor, God of Thunder!" Behind the mask, Rovi's eyes blazed like fire, his low voice echoing through the air.
He retreated several steps, his long robes snapping, his cloak flying. The knight's lance, angled toward the ground once more, coiled with layers of storm, gathering... as though condensing into a long hammer.
"This move—"
"[STRIKE AIR]!"
HAMMER OF THE WIND KING
It was a martial art that copied Thor's power, then added Rovi's own understanding and ultimately took form.
The currents spinning over its surface were just like the lightning gathering over the face of Mjolnir. They seemed chaotic, but every strand had its own function—some to attack, some to seal—and all were ordered with precision.
Yes. Thor's fighting seemed wild, but the skills he possessed had always been hidden within those tiny details, details that appeared insignificant when compared to the grandeur of his might.
The Norse were rough. The Norse gods revered freedom. But that did not mean they knew nothing of adaptation.
Thor's hammer strike had, in truth, been tempered through tens of millions of repetitions.
And Rovi's spear strike was the same.
With his own understanding, he gathered his immense computational power and truly reached a state where his will became his action, and his action followed his will.
This was...
"Now that's more like it!" Thor was not angered. On the contrary, he was delighted. "A fight of brute strength alone is nothing but beasts brawling. A barbaric contest of force alone is nothing but the way of bulls!"
"You as you are now—now you have the right to be my opponent, King of the Wild Hunt!"
Thor, God of Thunder, was a madman of battle.
He was a war god, and a maniac for martial skill.
Delighted at finding worthy prey, with his fighting spirit rising ever higher, the thunder coiling around his body naturally grew even more turbulent and explosive.
The god rejoiced, and the god also raged.
"Come, King of the Wild Hunt! Let us continue!" With a loud roar, Thor once more lifted the heavy hammer named Mjolnir.
The hammer face separated from the lance tip. Thor took the initiative to put distance between himself and Rovi, but it was not because he wanted to retreat. It was to build up even greater power, to display an even mightier heavenly authority of lightning.
He swung fiercely again, stirring up an even more majestic radiance of thunder and lightning.
Strands of silver-white light gathered around him in an instant, turning into a vast sea of thunder suspended in the sky.
That ocean of thunder shattered everything within its range: dust, floating clouds, air currents, even the very concept of the sky on which he stood. The shattered concepts turned into pure energy and were absorbed by the azure cube on Thor's body, converted into pure divine power, driving him to produce still more, still stronger lightning.
Inside and outside fed into each other, seemingly inexhaustible, and the range covered by the thunderlight grew wider and wider.
This was...
"[MJOLNIR]!"
THUNDER GOD'S STORM OF TEN THOUSAND CRASHING BOLTS
Thor raised the heavy hammer high. Behind his armored helm, his eyes also transformed into dazzling bolts of thunder and lightning.
Rovi's face turned solemn.
Grave and austere.
He knew Thor had begun to reveal his strongest power. This was the union of "force" and "skill" belonging to the strongest war god of the Norse, the ultimate strength by which he had never been defeated.
And so, amid the incoming impact, in that sliver of time when his robes billowed and his armor reflected the radiance of the countless bolts descending from the thunder god, he gripped the storm lance tightly and turned it ever so slightly.
Behind the mask, his eyes closed softly.
The slightly raised spear tip pointed straight toward the vault of the sky where he stood. A gentle breeze spread invisible ripples, faintly swaying...
As that faint current circled, Rovi's consciousness gradually emptied. In his identity as King of Storms, he sensed the breath of the world's own existence and the rotation of the planet itself.
With the primordial "Rupture" he possessed, he drew close to this plane covered by myth.
At least in this moment, his battle with Thor, God of Thunder, contained no schemes, no plots, no outside forces brought to bear. There was only a pure clash of force and skill. In that case, Rovi would respond with every realization he had gained over this period, and within this battle.
This was respect. More than that, it was an opportunity.
Only under heavy pressure could there be transformation. And even to this day, only Thor, the war god, could bring this kind of pressure upon Rovi in human form through his own power and martial skill.
Then what should his so-called strongest be?
If he stripped away the power of the Machine Gods of Atlantis, stripped away the star-fortress machine body he had seized from the Greek Kronos...
What should be his strongest?
His identity as the Chains of Heaven? The manifestation of the primordial planetary rotational force, Sword of Rupture, Ea? Or perhaps Gilgamesh's collection in the Gate of Babylon, which could be called inexhaustible?
No. None of those.
His strongest should be the path he had walked, those great feats marked by the fading of the gods, those mighty deeds written with the end of former myths as their final stroke.
Special effectiveness against mythology, against eras.
That was his strongest, most flourishing power.
Rovi opened his eyes. At the same time, the gentle yet long-reaching breeze contracted and gathered over his body.
In that moment, he sensed the world.
He sensed the membrane of the mythological domain.
And at that exact same moment, ten thousand bolts roared, and the heavy hammer spun.
Thor's power had accumulated to its limit.
"King of the Wild Hunt, let me—Thor, God of Thunder—verify whether you possess the power to bear that name!"
Thor hurled the heavy hammer far out.
Thunder and lightning filled the sky, pouring down like a mountain flood bursting its banks, drowning Rovi's figure from above.
Before that heavenly might, his shadow looked utterly small.
On the earth, below the earth, and in the sky.
Countless gods had long since been watching from the distant heavens, observing this clash between king and king, a sight rare even across nearly ten thousand years.
The vault of heaven shook more violently, and the earth's wail grew harsher.
Facing that impact like ten thousand galloping horses, Rovi merely tightened his grip on the lance. At its tip, a single stream of storm light bloomed.
No longer the crimson primordial storm.
No longer the power of the Sword of Rupture.
But a new "storm" he had comprehended in that very instant.
It spiraled and spread.
At its expanding boundary, spatial folds appeared, then shattered. The sky after shattering was still the sky, yet it seemed no longer the same as before.
That was the planet's original face beneath the covering of the Age of Gods.
This spear thrust was a single line of radiance, yet no dazzling brilliance could be seen.
This spear thrust did not possess the kind of heaven-shaking spectacle Thor, God of Thunder, could produce.
But this spear could end any myth.
This was—
THE LANCE THAT SHINES TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Rhongomyniad.
Rovi named it after the "Holy Lance" he knew.
It was the "wind" of the planet's original face, drawn out after he comprehended the storm of the present world.
Its intent was lofty and distant.
It showed no dazzling splendor, yet could shine in any era.
As he raised it, the spiral bloomed.
The entire world was covered by it—a portion of heaven and earth, at the same time, collided with the sea of ten thousand bolts.
The world was enveloped in the scattered radiance. Everything seemed to fall into the palette of a master painter, its colors precisely wiped away until only simple lines and planes remained...
He had clashed with the thunder god.
He had forced Thor, who had become stronger after experiencing death once, to reveal his full strength.
No matter what Rovi's true identity was, from this moment onward, he would be engraved into myth.
Not because of his identity.
But because of his name—
"What is your name?" As the final collision arrived, Thor stood in the very center of the sea of thunder, gazing from afar at the shadow holding the radiant Holy Lance aloft.
Rovi lowered his eyes. The fur of his cloak flew wildly, and a trace of deep thought appeared in his gold-and-flame eyes.
"Rovi."
He was Rovi.
A radiant one illuminated by light, a recorder of myths who had walked across heaven and earth.
Thor bared his teeth in a grin. "I'll remember it!"
"My name is Thor, God of Thunder!"
"Eldest son of Odin, Norse war god, wielder of thunder, and guardian god of farmers!"
Those were the final words that echoed through heaven and earth.
They were also words engraved into the chapter of myth.
...
In the ancient Nibelungen poems, the King of the Wild Hunt once called himself 'Rovi.' Later generations investigated the origin of this name, and after many comparisons and verifications, ultimately reached a consistent conclusion: the King of the Wild Hunt had a certain connection to the sage who appeared in Mesopotamian and Greek myths—perhaps he was even the man himself.
Perhaps this was only coincidence. Or perhaps, in that distant Age of Gods, there truly was such a person who walked to every corner of that ancient world, leaving different deeds behind him, and was therefore regarded as myth.
—Studies in World Mythology
...
"Rovi...?"
The Ski Goddess caught the falling crimson spear and stared fixedly at the incredible battle high in the sky. She could not help tightening her grip around the shaft.
She remembered the name that echoed between heaven and earth.
Though she was unwilling to admit it, she was in fact very clear on one thing: at least in name, this battle between Rovi and Thor was being fought to protect her.
There were many things Skadi understood very well. She knew Rovi only treated her as a tool. She knew that the reason he protected her was absolutely not out of concern for her, but because he did not want to lose the "knowledge base" that understood the Norse world and the secrets of the Norse gods.
The snowy mountains were pure and flawless, but they were not stupid.
She knew.
And yet, inexplicable thoughts... still rose in her against her will.
That strange emotion of seeing another person "fight hard" for her, seeing another person "strain himself to the limit" in order to protect her.
She could not suppress it.
Because this was "humanity."
The human character that a god, to maintain the existence of their personality, could never lack.
---
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