Chapter 139: Thor, the God of Thunder
The lightning that fell from the heavens was the authority of a god.
The heavy hammer riding that lightning was the famed Mjolnir of Norse myth.
Thor.
The God of Thunder, the strongest among the Aesir, second only to Odin.
And he poured that immense, primal force down, not at Rowe, but at Skaði.
At the Snow Mountain Goddess, the pure maiden of Asgard, now branded a traitor, now branded corrupted by the Wild Hunt.
The pressure of Thor's descent was absolute. Brilliant electric light flooded the world, bleaching Skaði's delicate face of all color. She tried to retreat, but her body felt pinned under the weight of Asgard's endless snowy mountains. She could only struggle in place, forced motion shaking her frame as if the storm itself had hands on her.
Boom.
A spiraling spear appeared before her in an instant, storm winding around its shaft like a living drill. The rotating spearhead met the incoming hammer head on, and storm and lightning tangled together, exploding outward in layers like overlapping whirlpools.
Snow evaporated.
The ground collapsed.
Cracks raced through the earth.
The area where Rowe and Skaði stood was vaporized in a heartbeat, leaving a crater several km deep, a brutal gouge driven into Midgard's skin. When the dust thinned, an enormous arc shaped pit lay exposed, raw and smoking.
A faint wash of light slipped down from the sky.
Skaði, still trembling, stared ahead through the haze.
"Killing someone in front of me."
Rowe's voice was low, calm, almost amused.
"Are you looking down on me, the Wild Hunt?"
He had already donned the machina god's armor. A cold mask hid his face. The words carried a smile, yet that smile was steeped in death, like frost forming over a grave.
That chill had not changed.
But to Skaði, in this moment, it was inexplicably reassuring.
For an instant, she had truly believed she would die.
That lightning was not something a goddess of snow mountains and snow boots could endure. In all of Asgard, there were not many gods who could block a single strike from Thor.
Thor was arrogant.
Thor was impulsive.
And Thor tolerated betrayal least of all.
Skaði should have realized it earlier. The idea of clearing her name might have been a delusion from the beginning.
Her face remained pale. Even the anxious murmurs of the other self in her mind felt distant and useless.
The hammer withdrew after the collision, and then fell neatly into the hand of the figure hovering in the sky, fur cloak snapping in the wind.
Rowe did not look back at Skaði. He did not respond to the tight, tangled emotions behind him. He only raised his head, gaze fixed on Thor.
Silver white armor.
A towering silhouette.
Dark blue cubes moving endlessly across his chest and the backs of his hands, as if some inner engine never stopped calculating.
For a moment, he resembled the source that birthed the World Tree itself.
The Star Hunter called Lucifer.
They had met once, if only for an instant. Rowe was not surprised by Thor's appearance, nor by what that appearance implied. The source of Thor's power, like the World Tree, came from Lucifer.
That was why he was terrifying.
That was why he was an opponent Rowe had to treat with full vigilance.
Thor.
An existence with the stature to rival the Greek king of gods.
Or rather, an existence who also bore the rank of a god king.
Mythologies overlapped and bled into one another. There were even tales that equated Thor with Zeus, the ruler of the Greek pantheon.
He was strong.
Strong enough that Rowe did not dare underestimate him.
Unless Rowe activated the machina god fully, he had no confidence he could suppress Thor completely.
If it were before, dying by Thor's hand would not have been a bad ending.
Unfortunately, the current Rowe was already dead.
He had to find a way to live first.
Only then would he choose how to die.
From within Thor's heavy armor, his voice rolled out, deep and humming, like lightning given language.
"Usurper of Odin's power. Arrogant King of Giants."
"I have no intention of being your enemy."
"Hand over the traitor of Asgard, and I will leave immediately."
That terrifying pressure made Skaði instinctively draw her head back, as if a word too loud might summon another bolt.
Rowe simply adjusted his mask. Through the narrow slits, golden and fiery eyes stared upward, and his will bled through like heat through steel.
"Are you worthy?"
"She is not a traitor now."
"She is my subordinate."
Skaði's breath caught.
Even she could tell what he was doing.
He did not mind speaking pleasantly when it benefited him, and he did not mind being vicious when it was time to curse. It was a contradiction that suited him far too well.
Yet it was not only calculation.
Rowe's nature would not allow him to sell out someone beside him, even if she was useful, even if she was difficult, even if she would rather run back to Asgard the moment she found an opening.
So Thor's expression shifted.
Anger, yes.
But more than anger, it was excitement.
He had come to judge a traitor. That alone did not violate Odin's will. The thunder that delivered divine punishment was authority Odin had granted him.
If his punishment was blocked, if it was countered, then the fault was not Thor's.
The fault belonged to Rowe.
Even if Odin intervened, Thor would have room to argue.
So now, he wanted what he always wanted.
A good fight.
A contest to decide supremacy.
"King of the Wild Hunt."
Thor raised Mjolnir.
The sky answered.
Thunder gathered.
Brilliant lightning wrapped his silver armor in a second shell of radiance.
"Let me see your capability!"
Rowe tightened his grip on his spear. He stepped forward.
A crimson storm erupted from him, spreading with him as its center, cold and desolate and absolute.
The King of the Wild Hunt entered the battlefield against a god.
Like an arrow released from the bow, he was there in an instant, spear thrust already before Thor. The spiraling spear tip unleashed weight and terror, a drilling force meant to break the world by insisting it should.
Thor lifted his hammer to meet it.
Storm and lightning collided again.
The sky shook.
The earth groaned.
Snow covered mountains shattered and collapsed in the blink of an eye.
Deep in the valley, something screamed.
Fafnir.
The ultimate evil dragon, hiding in the depths, jolted in panic only to find the heavens sealed by the clash of god and god. There was nowhere to flee, nowhere to bury himself.
Skaði stared at the battlefield.
He was protecting her.
The Snow Mountain Goddess was not dull. She knew why Rowe protected her.
And yet, her thoughts were still tangled, still hard to name.
Especially now.
Thor's killing intent toward her was undisguised. Thor, who had once treated her like a younger sister, had brought lightning and fury down to erase her existence.
The one who should have been an enemy was shielding her.
The one who should have protected her was trying to kill her.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Hammer and spear collided again and again.
Thor's hammer struck viciously. Rowe twisted his wrist, snapping the motion like a whip, forcing Mjolnir back by a single inch.
That inch became an opening.
Thor seized it.
Power exploded outward in an instant.
Cracks appeared in the air itself, as if the atmosphere had been struck and split.
Behind Rowe's mask, his face remained subtly serene.
This was the first truly meaningful battle since he arrived in the North.
An even match.
A brutal confrontation.
And with it came a feeling he had not tasted in a long time.
Thor was undoubtedly powerful. His body was Lucifer's body. He absorbed shattered concepts through lightning, turning them into fuel, into inexhaustible strength. The longer the fight, the more fearless he became, the more his momentum grew.
And in terms of technique, his strikes were crude, yet frighteningly simple.
Each hammer blow naturally found the weak points and flaws in Rowe's spear line. Each attack instinctively interfered, disrupted, denied.
If Scathach's martial skill barely reached the divine realm, then Thor's method had already climbed to the peak of that realm.
Rowe could use vast computation to calculate. He could use it to refine movement, to choose the lowest cost path to victory.
But calculation took time.
Thor did not need time.
It was formed naturally, released spontaneously.
A different kind of calculation.
Not the same as Rowe's.
With strength comparable but technique superior, Rowe's spear was gradually suppressed. The storm was gradually enveloped, constrained, drowned beneath lightning.
Unless he manifested the machina god's body in full and crushed the gap through overwhelming specification, Rowe had no clear path to victory.
Yet the more the pressure rose, the calmer he became.
Methods of applying power mattered.
Even if one day he ascended to the Throne of Heroes and retrieved the strength he had once carried, a strength he could not even measure from his current state, technique would still be the blade that let that strength cut cleanly.
So he learned.
He comprehended.
He watched Thor's martial art, watched the natural shape of those attacks, and let them carve themselves into his understanding.
Even while being suppressed, Rowe's golden and fiery eyes grew brighter with each collision.
He could feel it.
His path was right there.
Only one step.
Just a little more.
And he could step onto it.
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