Watching the sadness on Hela's face deepen, Heisenberg sighed and patted the display pedestal holding the Infinity Gauntlet.
"Hela!"
His voice pulled Hela momentarily from her sorrow, and she looked toward Heisenberg and the gauntlet.
Heisenberg continued, "When you have the time, come and look at this Infinity Gauntlet more often. The reason Odin placed it in the most prominent spot is that every time he saw it, he would remember the choice he once faced, and he would remember you, too."
"Maybe," Hela nodded vaguely, then gave Heisenberg a deep look. Missing her father had finally made her realize that the man who killed her father was standing right in front of her! Yet reason kept reminding her that she had no grounds whatsoever to hate Heisenberg. If five thousand years ago she had been stronger than Odin, then she herself would have been her own father's killer. And Heisenberg had, after all, freed her from five millennia of imprisonment... well, confinement was a better word. He had finally released her from that confinement.
Most importantly... Father, your daughter is truly no match for this man... If she were stronger than Heisenberg, she would of course kill him to reignite Asgard's glory, just as if Earthlings were stronger than Heisenberg, they would immediately slice him up for research.
"Ah..." She sighed softly, turned, and said as she walked on, "What's past is past. Let me revive the Einherjar legion first."
With that, she approached the Eternal Flame and reached her hand into the fire that burned forever. "Surtur's Eternal Flame, the supreme flame of eternity and vitality. If Surtur were to reclaim this flame and combine it with his Twilight Blade... To be honest, if Surtur accomplished that, Ragnarok might truly arrive. Back then, even Odin had to fight with everything he had just to barely wrest the Eternal Flame from Surtur's grasp!"
Having said this, Hela smiled and glanced at Heisenberg. "But this flame suits Your Majesty quite well. You are the Sun God, right?"
"Indeed, but I already have the sun. Why would I linger over a mere flame?" Heisenberg replied with a smile.
Hearing this, Hela shook her head. She grasped a small flame with her right hand and pulled it out of the Eternal Flame. A tiny, beautiful flame burned in her palm, and holding it, she said to Heisenberg, "Although Your Majesty is the sun, the Eternal Flame is no ordinary fire. If it were forged into a divine artifact, you would gain not only the power of destruction but also the power of revival, representing life itself!"
She carried the small flame to a more open area in the treasure vault. Then she lifted her foot and tapped the floor lightly. "Your Majesty, could you please break this open? I will show you the revival power contained within the Eternal Flame."
"Mm." Heisenberg nodded, and heat vision shot from his eyes. In an instant, a large enough hole appeared at Hela's feet, and she promptly jumped down into it.
Heisenberg followed her underground and immediately saw over a hundred thousand corpses lying in rows. All the bodies were clad in exquisite armor and held various weapons.
At that moment, Hela, holding the Eternal Flame, walked desolately to the largest giant wolf corpse. She stroked her beloved pet with her left hand, sighed, and shook her head. "Poor Fenrir, what have they done to you?"
It was merely a soliloquy; she didn't expect the wolf to answer. She released Fenrir and then slammed the Eternal Flame fiercely onto the ground!
The boundless flames transformed into a green wave that spread out, sweeping across all the corpses. Immediately after, all the corpses, starting with Fenrir, uniformly opened their eyes! Or rather, an eerie green light blazed within their eye sockets!
FWOOM!
The giant wolf Fenrir leaped up, lowered its head, and nuzzled Hela gently. Then, the wolf suddenly left Hela's side, stood in front of Heisenberg, and bared its sharp fangs at him!
"Tsk, this little thing is rather cute."
Looking at the ferocious Fenrir, Heisenberg smiled slightly and appeared right in front of the wolf in the blink of an eye. Before Fenrir could retaliate, Heisenberg directly grabbed its snout.
"Doesn't look like it's been dead for thousands of years at all." Holding Fenrir's fangs, Heisenberg teased, causing the wolf to struggle with intense displeasure.
It first bit fiercely at Heisenberg's hand, but even though it could bite through the Hulk's skin, it couldn't harm Heisenberg in the slightest. Seeing its bites had no effect, Fenrir immediately tried to leap and break free by jumping repeatedly. However... it clearly overestimated its own strength. The result of its hind legs suddenly exerting force was that its butt and tail popped up alone, while its head remained suspended at the height where Heisenberg held it...
"Haha, stop it. Let him play by himself for a while. He's been asleep too long!" Hela laughed, pulling Heisenberg's hand to make him release Fenrir.
The clever Fenrir understood the relationship between his mistress and Heisenberg, so he could only tuck his tail and run off to the side to play, feeling completely wronged.
Meanwhile, Hela waved her right hand lightly, and a massive stone spike erupted from the ground, gradually morphing into a staircase that connected the corpse storage area to the treasure vault.
The moment the stairs appeared, Fenrir hurriedly ran up them and dashed straight out of the palace to frolic. The Einherjar warriors silently assembled before the palace, motionless.
As for the Asgardian civilians, they were truly frightened by the Einherjar and Fenrir. With an average lifespan of only two thousand years, almost none of them had ever seen Asgard's elite legions from five thousand years ago. Fortunately, Heimdall and some retired old berserkers among the civilians stepped forward to calm the populace, so they weren't so scared by the giant wolf and the dead that they couldn't work.
Hela and Heisenberg followed the Einherjar to the main hall of the palace. Before Heisenberg could speak, Hela proactively suggested, "The Einherjar are not just warriors. Each of them was an elite of the ancient Aesir, a versatile talent proficient in countless specialties. I will have them participate in the repair of the Bifrost. I expect the Rainbow Bridge can be rebuilt in less than half a month!"
While speaking, Hela glanced discontentedly at the broken Bifrost. "I really don't know what kind of disaster befell Asgard for the Rainbow Bridge to be severed right at our doorstep! Your Majesty, this wasn't your handiwork, was it?"
"No."
"Good, otherwise I would truly feel sorry for Asgard. Your appearance has already destroyed Asgard's distant mountains and great rivers; the Bifrost cannot withstand your torment anymore!"
Hela joked, then gave Heisenberg a serious salute.
After that, Hela left without looking back, leading her Einherjar warriors and immediately launching intense repair work on the Bifrost.
With this, Asgard's internal affairs temporarily returned to normal, only waiting for Sigmund's berserker legion to return and for the Bifrost to be repaired. At that point, Heisenberg could strengthen the training of the Asgardian warriors. In the future, Heisenberg would use the Asgardians as humanity's spearhead, the Skrulls as humanity's eyes and ears, and finally, the humans themselves—the most numerous, fastest-reproducing, and shortest-lived race—as his primary tool for conquering the universe!
Heisenberg's gaze shifted from the urban area of Asgard to the vast starry sea. His future goal was drawing closer, but he still needed to handle the matters at hand first! He clenched his right hand, and the Bifrost instantly transported him back to Earth.
...
By Lake Sherchak, near Denver, the Earthlings and the Asgardian legion commanders were gathered, drinking and exchanging stories of their own.
At this moment, Hill was drinking heartily like a heroine, regaling the surrounding legion commanders with tales of the war between her SHIELD and Hydra.
Thor and Jane were cuddling nearby, their sweet intimacy stuffing Sif full of dog food, and for once, Sif actually felt the buzz of alcohol. At that moment, Sif felt as though every glance directed at her was mocking her!
Fortunately, Natasha and Jessica were sitting next to Sif, and the three of them clinked glasses while discussing the topic of stinky men. Natasha's understanding and Jessica's insight made Sif feel she had met kindred spirits, even mentors in love...
Not far away, Sigmund had great conversations with the Stark couple. Stark had managed to pry almost everything about Asgardian traditions and the various stories of the Asgardian legions from Sigmund.
Captain America arm-wrestled with Fandral and the other two. Strangely, even though Volstagg was clearly far stronger than Hogun, whether Cap arm-wrestled Volstagg or Hogun, he always managed to make it a close match. This made Hogun think his own strength had recently grown to the point where he could rival someone like Volstagg, who swung a giant axe...
Bullseye, Hawkeye, and Loki sat together in a daze. As they chatted, they went from drinking buddies one second to fighting enemies the next! It couldn't be helped: Hawkeye simply couldn't stomach the philosophies of Loki and Bullseye. No matter what topic Hawkeye brought up—like how New York's gangs had mostly fled to other cities, making nearby areas less safe, or how the U.S. military's suppression of SHIELD was growing worse—no matter what Hawkeye talked about, the advice from Loki and Bullseye was always "kill the bastards...!!!"
This was clearly not very superhero-like, and the conversation nearly drove Hawkeye to total shutdown.
Amid this bizarre, lively atmosphere, the light of the Bifrost suddenly flashed. However, the Bifrost didn't land at Lake Sherchak; it landed in downtown Denver, over a dozen kilometers away.
Seeing the light descending from the sky in the distance, the seemingly drunken crowd of over two hundred thousand Asgardians uniformly stood up. One second they were drunkenly playing drinking games and reciting verses, and the next, they transformed into stern soldiers.
Beside Stark, Sigmund suddenly drew his longsword. "Everyone on alert! It's likely His Majesty or Princess Hela has come to Midgard!"
As soon as he spoke, the Asgardian warriors all pounded their chest plates in unison. The synchronized sound immediately made the Earthlings, who had looked down on their military discipline, blush with shame.
The people from SHIELD and the Justice League had originally thought they were dealing with a bunch of Asgardian barbarians. Even though these barbarians were very powerful, they had assumed they were just like ancient Norse pirates—undisciplined and lax. There was no helping it; the Asgardians' love of alcohol made it all too easy to misjudge them.
But what the Earthlings, including Hill, never expected was that although these people loved to drink, they had been drinking for over a thousand years on average, each a supreme god of alcohol capable of swimming through barrels of wine. You thought they were drunk, but they were merely enjoying the pleasure of a slight buzz.
If there was a reason to draw their swords, no matter how much they had drunk, they could immediately draw their weapons and form ranks. With millennia of combat and training, how could their military quality be compared to Earthlings who had only trained for a dozen years?
Earthlings need to learn humility, especially Americans! It's time to curb your arrogance!
/-\
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