The Fall of Jormungandr?

Gasps filled the Presidential Palace conference room, but none of it affected the man a thousand miles away.

Carrying Longinus, he leaped into the sea and raced across the waves as though they were solid ground, charging straight toward Jormungandr.

With a sweep of his hand, Longinus, the golden-glowing Godslayer Spear, vanished. In its place appeared a cold, gleaming weapon shaped like an oversized dagger.

"Sword of Vengeance, Fragarach!" In the Presidential Palace conference room, an elderly man standing behind Denmark's president, Jitson Andrew, watched everything unfold, then leaned close and whispered, "Mr. President, it seems the Sword of Vengeance, Fragarach, also possesses mysterious powers... Once this is over, we should take it back, then find an excuse not to return it to the Queen of the Setting Sun."

Jitson Andrew nodded. He had been thinking the same thing.

The man raised the Sword of Vengeance, Fragarach, and drove it down at Jormungandr.

Rrrip!

Fragarach's sharp point pierced Jormungandr's black scales, hard as mountains, as effortlessly as a knife sinking into butter.

ROAR!

Jormungandr suddenly let out a deafening shriek of pain. Its enormous body, like an undersea mountain range, thrashed across the ocean, whipping up fierce winds and towering waves.

The Aegir open-ocean patrol ship rocked in the gale.

A moment later, a huge wave struck. The Aegir was swallowed like a tiny boat in the surging water. By the time the wave had passed, it had been pushed away from the battlefield.

In the Icelandic Presidential Palace conference room, the people watching the screen without blinking grew frustrated. The wave that hit the Aegir had, by sheer bad luck, smashed every camera mounted on it.

"Notify the commodore. Have him send the Bod open-ocean patrol ship over there. I want to know what's happening," Anderson Streicher ordered at once.

He had plenty of confidence in that man, but being left blind to the battle still made him uneasy.

"No need. Just connect to our feed," Alexander said.

The dark screen soon lit up again.

The image was blurry and shaky, but it still showed the two inhuman beings fighting.

Out on the ocean, Jormungandr's colossal body rising from the depths filled the drone camera's entire field of view. Its immense strength churned the waves, flinging vast quantities of seawater into the sky before they fell again like pouring rain.

The fierce winds raised by its movements mingled with the rain, forming one enormous whirlpool after another. The whole ocean heaved as though caught in a Category 5 hurricane.

Yet faced with Jormungandr's cataclysmic power, the man showed no fear. He raised Longinus, the Godslayer Spear, and fought it.

Watching that inhuman battle, Alexander turned his head and asked in a low voice, "Major General Fyodorovich, if we bring the Northern Fleet here now, could you work with that man to defeat the giant serpent?"

Fyodorovich: "..."

Help that man defeat the giant serpent?

Mr. President, are you joking?

Fyodorovich looked at the president, thought for a moment, and replied as tactfully as he could. "Mr. President, judging by the myths, the Norsemen place tremendous importance on honor. Interfering in their battle without invitation might offend them, so we should stay out of it."

Alexander had already guessed the answer, but hearing what the major general was implying still left him under immense pressure.

Given the power these extraordinary beings had displayed, conventional human weapons would be almost useless. Only nuclear bombs could harm them.

For hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years, extraordinary beings had apparently followed the principle of "render unto God what is God's, and unto Caesar what is Caesar's." They had never revealed themselves to ordinary people. Even when wars broke out, they kept ordinary people from knowing. Extraordinary powers like the Papal State had been humiliated by mortal nations, yet no extraordinary being had ever appeared to retaliate.

As a result, even he, a president, had never known that a force powerful enough to overturn the existing order had been lurking in this world all along.

But as president, he could not entrust his country's safety to someone else's policy of noninterference.

His expression darkened slightly. Suppressing his thoughts, Alexander turned and asked, "Petrov, you've studied Norse Mythology extensively. Do you think that man can win?"

I've studied the folk culture surrounding Norse Mythology.

I haven't studied the fighting strength of the gods in Norse Mythology.

Besides, that man isn't a god. I've never even seen him before.

Petrov grumbled to himself, then thought it over and said, "Judging by the battle, that man has the upper hand. He's wounded the giant serpent with both Gungnir, the Eternal Spear, and the Sword of Vengeance, Fragarach."

"Gungnir, the Eternal Spear, was Odin's weapon. According to myth, when war broke out between the Aesir and the Vanir, Odin made the first strike by hurling it, killing members of the Vanir. That man may not be a god and may be unable to draw out Gungnir's full power, but judging by Jormungandr's roars, it has definitely suffered a serious wound."

"And the Sword of Vengeance, Fragarach, causes wounds that never stop bleeding. Even a god cannot recover after being stabbed by Fragarach. You can tell that from Jormungandr's shrieks as well."

Petrov offered a lengthy analysis without ever directly answering the president's question.

Out on the ocean, golden blood gushed from multiple wounds in the serpent's body. It poured into the sea, turning the surface a glittering gold.

Jormungandr, which had stirred the sea with the force of a natural disaster, seemed to be weakening from blood loss. Its enormous body could no longer make the ocean erupt, and its movements grew sluggish.

"It's time."

The man murmured the words, gripped the Godslayer Spear, Longinus, and became a blazing sun that slammed into Jormungandr. A brilliant golden beam shot from the sun and struck the serpent's head, piercing straight through its massive skull. A column of golden blood burst out after it before vanishing from sight.

The next moment, Jormungandr, which had just churned the sea and unleashed a catastrophe, came crashing down. Towering waves surged up, as though the ocean itself were mourning it.