Seeing her come tearing toward him, Thor hurriedly stepped back from Jörmungandr's skull to make room.
"Thanks—" Daisy gave him a quick nod, then flipped a switch. Chi erupted from her body in a shockwave that nearly knocked Thor head over heels.
Every last drop of chi surged to the surface. High above, the phantom of a fiery bird spread its wings and soared, its piercing cry ringing across the battlefield. Daisy threw her second punch.
"For Asgard!" She couldn't think of a better battle cry on the spot. Thor was right there, so she borrowed his.
Her voice was so loud it eclipsed every Asgardian war-shout on the field. The sound bounced between the mountains—For Asgard... Asgard...—until even the peaks, the sea, and the world itself seemed to be answering.
Daisy couldn't tell if it was just adrenaline, but her second punch was even slower than the first. It didn't matter. Jörmungandr had no room to dodge. The blow hammered into the side of his skull.
Fluid burst in every direction. Blood arced through the air. A fang 150 meters (492 feet) long—a structure the size of a small mountain—snapped off at the root, shattered into segments mid-flight, and carved a long arc before splashing down into the churning sea.
At the last instant, the serpent had twisted his head to avoid a direct frontal hit. But his right eye, tall as a skyscraper, still caught the seismic impact. A murky yellowish fluid leaked from the slit pupil. Even a body like his couldn't fully absorb that strike.
Daisy took a deep breath and handed the sword to Thor. "Hold this for me."
He took it without question.
She stared straight into Jörmungandr's damaged right eye. She knew he could still see her. In the span of two punches, she'd been upgraded in his threat assessment from "ant" to "mortal enemy." Her aggro was probably just a step below Odin's.
She tossed her hair back. Red strands caught the wind. Teeth pressing into her lower lip, she wrung every last ounce of strength from her body, meeting the serpent's gaze head-on.
No retreat. No evasion.
Fingers interlocked, both hands raised overhead in a double-fist hammer. Every fiber of power twisted into a single cable—Inhuman abilities, chi, and the Eternal genes buried deep within all channeled into this one strike.
"For every life you've taken!"
The distant mountains answered. The sea answered. And then, faintly, the dead themselves seemed to return. At the forefront stood Skadi—features still fine and sharp, still radiating that trademark aloofness. Behind her stretched an endless procession of phantoms: humans, Asgardians, Frost Giants, Dark Elves, and more. Through Daisy's fist, they gave voice to their silent fury.
The punch seemed to transcend physical distance. Thor felt himself freeze for seconds—maybe tens of seconds—before the blow finally landed.
The scales on Jörmungandr's forehead shattered on contact. Then the muscle. Then the impossibly dense skull. Air compressed violently outward. Scales, flesh, and bone disintegrated at the cellular level—no spray of gore, no splash of venom. Just a crater in the serpent's skull, as though a meteor had struck.
The punch drove Jörmungandr into a stupor. His brain reeled from the impact, and for a long, terrible moment, he forgot to fight back.
An ant had felled a dragon. Daisy accomplished the near-impossible before every Asgardian eye on the field.
The serpent—kilometers long, weight beyond reckoning—crashed to the ground with a wail, flattening countless buildings. His tail smashed into the sea, kicking up a tidal wave over a thousand meters (3,280 feet) high.
Only then did he come to.
"Ant!—" He was furious beyond reason. Mustering every ounce of strength in his body, he blasted a dense cloud of darkness at Daisy's position.
What little remained of his core power was thrown into the attack. The black cloud devoured the light, laced with enough acid to dissolve her to nothing.
But a certain someone had already teleported to Loki's side. Not by choice—Loki was the strongest person on the field besides Thor, and with Thor up close hammering away, Loki was the next best option.
She'd considered teleporting to Frigga, who was probably strong enough too. But the woman had been kind. Daisy didn't want to drag her into the crossfire.
Hands on her knees, gasping for air. The rapid cycling of chi and her powers, poured out in one explosive burst after another, had left her whole body aching worse than the worst cramps of her life.
What she had over Danny Rand was that while he could throw one Iron Fist punch, she could throw three. But the trade-off was the same: a period of near-total exhaustion afterward. She needed time to recover.
"You guys take over. I need a breather—give me twenty minutes and I'll be back!" she told the slack-jawed Asgardian warriors around her.
They had no idea she was a three-hit wonder. All they'd seen was an outsider—a woman, no less, a category their culture didn't rank particularly high—battering the World Serpent until it bled from every pore. If she could do that, what did any of them have to fear?
A tidal wave of warriors, screaming at the top of their lungs, charged.
It was at that precise moment that the Asgardian quartet—having sprinted from the Bifrost to the main island in what amounted to a full marathon—finally arrived at the battlefield.
Seeing morale sky-high, Volstagg didn't bother checking whether he could fly. The man was built like a wine barrel. He hefted his axe, launched himself into the air on sheer willpower, and brought it down on the serpent.
Every other warrior surged forward, each trying to outdo the rest—as though this wasn't some world-ending abomination but a walking, dispensing-honors target dummy.
Sif felt that Daisy had stolen her thunder. In the name of Asgardian womanhood, she charged without hesitation.
Nearly nine thousand warriors roared and threw themselves at the serpent, who was still thrashing, struggling to peel himself off the ground.
"For Asgard!" Thor loved this kind of fight. He abandoned all thought of self-preservation, and Mjolnir erupted with blinding arcs of lightning—bolts like divine swords plunging straight into the serpent's skull.
Daisy had already smashed a crater nearly 20 meters (66 feet) across into the forehead. Thor's energy control was crude at best, and he didn't bother looking for specific weak points—Daisy's crater was right there, and hitting it was a safe bet. He aimed every strike at that spot.
The crack of metal on flesh rang out in a relentless drumbeat through the lightning storm.
Jörmungandr's forehead had no scales left. As a divine creature, his blunt-force resistance was extraordinary, but stripped of skin and taking a hammer directly to the meat, no amount of toughness helped.
Thor was having the time of his life. A helpless punching bag this size? He could swing all day and never tire.
But without Mjolnir, he couldn't fly. Against the writhing, bucking serpent, all he could do was grip the Godslayer in his left hand, drive the blade into the serpent's hide for balance, and rain hammer blows with his right.
In truth, Thor was significantly stronger than Daisy across the board—physique, raw power, speed, all superior. He simply lacked a burst technique. Which meant that despite being objectively more powerful, all he could do right now was hammer away like a brute, one swing at a time.
Whenever Jörmungandr thrashed back, Thor dodged if he could. If he couldn't, he tanked it.