Laufey's Warning

"Drip..."

"Drip..."

Blood dripped from his fingertips onto the ground.

Across the deathly silent plain, it spread into glass after glass of bloody Marys—assuming anyone was willing to drink them.

With one foot planted on the last Frost Giant's corpse, Beckett shook his hand after finishing the slaughter, then turned to look at Hela, who stood behind him with a massive iron hammer in hand. The killing intent still lingering in his eyes made Hela instinctively raise Mjolnir and assume a guarded stance.

They were not close comrades. They had merely formed a temporary alliance because of the Frost Giants' appearance.

Now that the Frost Giants, their common enemy, had fallen, their unspoken alliance naturally came apart as well.

"How much longer can you hold out?"

Beckett looked at her with interest. In all his years of fighting, Hela was the only woman whose combat strength came close to his.

Moreover, from what he had seen so far, Hela was even stronger than Proxima Midnight, the only female commander among the Black Order under his adoptive father Thanos.

"What do you think?"

Holding Mjolnir, Hela secretly gathered the little energy she had recovered. The Odin magic within Mjolnir was her trump card, one she would only reveal at the very end. And there was also...

"Heimdall."

Holding Mjolnir, Hela tried once again to contact her father Odin's loyal subordinate. Thunder and lightning suddenly filled the skies above the Bloodtype Plain, and the overwhelming pressure brought a smile to Hela's face. She did not know why Heimdall had failed to respond earlier, but now—

"You will pay the heaviest price for your arrogance, Heimdall!"

The furious roar coming from the Bifrost gradually wiped the smile from Hela's face. The not-yet-fully-opened Bifrost closed again amid the surging dark energy. Clearly, Heimdall, who controlled the Bifrost, had failed to withstand the attacker's assault.

Dark Elves.

Hela, who had once led an army against the elves in Svartalfheim, immediately recognized the owner of that voice.

Malekith, the new king of the Dark Elves, was an ambitious ruler. The Dark Elf Legion under his command was one of the main forces preventing Asgard from conquering the Nine Realms.

But...

"How was that possible?"

No matter how hard Hela thought about it, she could not understand how Malekith had slipped into Asgard without Odin noticing. Asgard was currently on wartime alert, and the defenses at every checkpoint were airtight.

Not to mention the Bifrost, the most crucial point of all. Logically speaking, the Dark Elves should never have had the opportunity to appear in Asgard.

Unless there was a traitor in Asgard, and her father Odin was away at war rather than in Asgard.

That was the only possibility Hela could think of.

Hela's expression darkened at the thought, especially when she saw Beckett walking toward her step by step. Her face became even uglier.

"It seems you have no rescue coming." Rubbing his right wrist with his left hand, Beckett walked up to Hela step by step and reached out to seize her throat. He moved so quickly that the heavily wounded Hela could not react at all.

Thud!

Beckett's movement halted. Under the force of an external power, he crashed into Hela in front of him, and the two of them rolled across the ground three times.

"Who?!"

Using Hela beneath him as a human sandbag to cushion the impact, Beckett sprang to his feet and warily stared at the empty plain before him.

The densely packed corpses vanished beneath the setting sun. Blue ice crystals spread over the plain at a visible speed, and a phantom seated upon a throne appeared before Beckett through the mutual refraction of the crystals. The snowy phantom and the sunset staining the horizon red reflected one another, creating a unique scene of ice and fire.

"This is merely a warning. Do not meddle in my affairs, Son of Thanos."

"For your father's sake, I can overlook what you have done. Now, return to your own world." The figure seated upon the throne opened his eyes, his majestic gaze seeming to cross the barriers of space and fall upon Beckett. After delivering his warning, the phantom disappeared together with the Frost Giant corpses on the plain.

"A warning... for me?"

Beckett narrowed his eyes and stared at the once again empty, blood-red sky.

"Laufey, king of the Frost Giants." Hela rose to her feet and wiped the blood from her face. It had been left there when Beckett used her as a human sandbag.

"Oh, so he was Laufey?" Beckett recalled Milner, whom he had crushed to death with a single stomp. He remembered Milner saying before he died that Laufey would not let him go.

But now, the Laufey in whom Milner had placed such high hopes did not seem as great as he had imagined.

"Follow me."

Beckett fixed his gaze on Hela again and gave the order. Hela, who had never been ordered around by anyone other than her father Odin, naturally had no intention of obeying.

But things did not go as she wished.

Her heavily wounded body was utterly incapable of escaping Beckett's restraint. He directly hoisted Hela over his shoulder and carried her toward the warship.

"Welcome back, His Highness Beckett."

"Woz, inject this woman with a sedative and tie her up."

Beckett tossed Hela onto the ground like a sack and issued the command.

"His Highness Beckett, Hela Odinsdottir possesses Asgardian blood. Our sedatives will not affect her." A mechanical rope shot out from beneath Hela's feet and immediately bound her where she lay.

"You will regret this."

Bound tightly by the brown mechanical rope and deprived of room to move, Hela lifted her head, gritting her teeth in hatred. In all these years, when had she ever suffered such humiliation?

The moment her words fell, Hela's vision blurred. Beckett's right hand had already seized her chin, lifted her from the ground, and slammed her against one of the warship's pillars.

"I never do anything I'll regret. What makes you think you'll be an exception?"

Cold killing intent filled his frigid gaze as Beckett threw Hela to the ground once more.

"Woz, melt those ice sculptures outside."

"His Highness Beckett, Woz cannot use magic."

"You don't need to know how. She does." Beckett looked down at Hela beneath his feet. That was the true reason he had carried her back.

"Yes, His Highness Beckett." Unfamiliar characters continuously flashed across the azure screen. A few seconds later, a complete unsealing plan appeared before Beckett.

Or rather, before Hela.

"Hela Odinsdottir, please follow the instructions written here."

Hela merely glanced at the azure screen. "Untie the ropes. Otherwise, there's nothing I can do either."

"You only need to recite the incantation and channel your magic into your hands. I can handle the rest." Eight mechanical arms appeared in an instant and directly placed Hela into the warship's magic container, without seeking her consent at all...

"After the seal is removed, locate Frost Giant King Laufey." Before stepping into the Nutrient Pod, Beckett gave his final command.

I want to evolve into a twice-a-day update beast too, but there's been a problem with the engineering design these past two days, and I need to work things out with the workers as soon as possible...

I'll be working overtime again tonight. Yeah...

Maybe my Children's Day gift will be getting through this little hurdle smoothly~

Hope I can catch the last subway train tonight...