Violent Negotiation (Part 2): Valhalla of the Dead

Asgard was a society with rigid class divisions. The difference between nobles and commoners was nearly that of two separate species. Whether in lifespan or strength, nobles with more divine blood held the advantage. Ordinary Asgardians lived an average of only five hundred years, while nobles measured their lives in millennia. So-called "equality" simply did not exist in this world. Perhaps some nobles who had lived long enough still remembered the days when the great god Odin conquered the Nine Realms, but they all kept silent about it. It was precisely because they had remained silent back then that they survived the bloody purges and preserved their ten-thousand-year-old families to this day.

Those nobles still remembered Odin's brutal methods.

Countless ancient families that had existed since the reigns of Odin's father Borr and Borr's father Bli were uprooted. The hooves of the eight-legged steed Sleipnir passed over the corpses of countless men, women, elders, and children, entering the resplendent Longhouses that served as family halls. Every book concerning that person was burned. Every supporter of that person was killed. Every statue and stele praising great deeds was smashed. Every bard had their tongue cut out. The smoke from the burning corpses once even obscured the magnificent spires of the Golden Palace—the great Valkyries, the powerful Valkyries, the invincible Valkyries. Cruel Odin had erased without hesitation the honor of the warriors who had once fought and died for him. The One-Eyed King upon the throne extinguished the flames of rebellion with cold lies. Blades, axes, and blood became excuses for forgetting. The old tavern tales of the Valkyries were twisted and altered. Newborn Asgardians grew up listening to lies, and amid the revelry of mead and feasts, truth was no more.

Everything was connected to that damned prophecy.

Yet they knew