All the gods looked at the newcomer with contempt.
More than a hundred years ago, when Odin was fighting Thjazi, a mountain giant of the Vanir, he had been surrounded and was on the verge of dying on the spot. Yet a god of the Vanir had suddenly turned against his own side, killed Thjazi, and saved Odin's life. Because of this, that Vanir god had been accepted into Asgard, becoming a member of the Aesir and addressing Odin as brother.
That god was the one before them now. His name: Loki.
However, Loki acted perversely and was extremely arrogant, so the gods had never liked him to begin with. On top of that, he was a traitor who had betrayed his own divine race, and many gods of the Aesir saw him as a despicable wretch. They looked down on him all the more.
"Loki!" Thor, the god of thunder, looked at him. "You still dare come back?!"
Previously, Loki had challenged Thor, and in the middle of their battle, Loki had actually used a dagger to slice off all the golden hair of Thor's wife—Sif, the goddess of youth. Thor had nearly been so furious that he wanted to tear him to pieces. Loki had probably realized things were going badly, and had hurriedly promised that he could find skilled craftsmen to make Sif a head of golden hair that could grow like real hair, then fled without a trace.
Now that he had returned, Thor naturally had to demand an explanation.
"No hurry, Nephew Thor," Loki said. "This time, I brought back quite a few good things from the dwarves."
As he spoke, he suddenly hurled the long spear in his hand. The golden spear shot toward Odin like a meteor. All the gods turned pale with