I am Thalos, Odin's older brother

Ishtar wasn't sure whether the Aesir goddess she'd seen—or more accurately, the god-king standing behind her—truly possessed absolute confidence, or whether this was just an elaborate bluff.

The events unfolding in Niflheim were still being live-broadcast to the dungeon, right before the eyes of the two sister goddesses.

Ishtar glanced at Ereshkigal, then back at the mind projection. At long last, her usual fury cooled.

She crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks, legs folded, floating lazily in her watery confinement, pouting as she sulkily observed the developments.

Gullveig cast a glance at Scáthach. There was a significant difference in height between them, but Gullveig knew Scáthach held Thalos's favor.

There was no friction, but also little intimacy. She simply asked, "Are you returning to Helheim?"

"No need. If Hel needs reinforcements, she'll call."

"Then stay here for now." Gullveig, being a giantess in stature to the two Sumerian goddesses, couldn't intervene too forcefully—lest she snap Ishtar like a porcelain doll.

"Alright."

Meanwhile, as Thalos led his host toward the Bifröst, he didn't idly let Enlil use divine power to claim Ginnungagap's surrounding atmosphere.

As Enlil worked, a strange sound surged from the opposing world—a noise like a comet crashing from beyond the stars, an ear-splitting howl of atmospheric rupture.

Then, with a deafening shriek, something massive fell—no divine sensing was even needed to notice it.

Enlil's eyes widened at the sight: a colossal stone, coated in nauseating chaotic aura and enveloped in vast torrents of water, plummeting toward the junction between the two worlds.

"Another one of those damn 'salty sea water' things!" The Sumerian gods liked calling chaos "salty sea water," and Enlil was no exception.

The irritable god-king was now borderline manic. He truly could not comprehend—was that Aesir god-king of order, or a servant of chaos? How could he love using chaotic materials as weapons so much?

The cosmos had no real up or down, but from Ginnungagap's structure, the treetop was "up," and the roots were "down."

This chaos meteor—originally salvaged from the Celtic world—naturally fell from high to low under gravity's pull.

High ground attacks crush idiots. That was the rule.

And under gravity, this meteor—roughly the size of one percent of Great Britain—possessed enough destructive power to make even Enlil, god of wind, feel sheer disbelief.

Once again, he faced two poisoned chalices:

He could either reopen Sumer's world shield, severing connection with Ginnungagap. The meteor might then miss its mark. But doing so would waste the hard-earned "boarding action" he had painstakingly orchestrated. Who knew if another opportunity to ram Sumer into the enemy would ever come?

Or, he could keep the contact open and attempt to block the meteor with brute force.

"Damn it—DAMN IT!" Enlil cursed with a scream.

He ultimately gathered every ounce of his divine might and unleashed it against the incoming chaotic rock.

For massive, solid projectiles like this, wind had always been a suboptimal countermeasure.

But Enlil was, after all, the Wind God.

He unleashed an extinction-level hurricane—one powerful enough to tear apart an entire small world.

"WHOOOOSH!"

The roaring storm formed a massive, continent-spanning grinder, slicing into the meteor, shredding the water that clung to it, forcibly dissipating its chaotic aura, and pouring into every fissure and flaw in the stone.

Finally, after half a minute of direct struggle, the meteor cracked.

Like a shattered walnut, fragments began falling away—then got torn apart further by the gale.

Even someone as mighty as Enlil could only manage damage control.

He prevented the meteor from crashing directly into his now-shell-less, exposed Sumerian world. That was the limit of his power.

"Watch out!" called out the god of wisdom and water, Enki, trailing far behind. He'd barely finished speaking before the chaotic meteor's massive debris shower came crashing down.

Like a hellish meteor storm, the fragments obliterated everything in their path. Most divine attendants who lacked god-level strength were instantly blown away by the shockwave of stone and wind.

Only shields of divine power could hope to resist this onslaught.

The apocalyptic downpour of debris pierced Sumer's sky and fell upon the mortal world, creating scenes of absolute devastation.

No one knew how long the crashing and dust clouds lasted.

When things finally quieted and survivors rose to their feet, they were met with horror.

The once-fertile plains were now covered in pockmarked craters of every size. Even though Enlil had purged much of the chaos from the meteor, the physical impact alone had permanently altered the terrain of several city-states.

Especially those cities that had lost their patron gods.

Despair took root among the mortals.

"Can our King Enlil really protect our world?"

"Damn him. If he hadn't launched that attack on the Ginnungagap world, we wouldn't be suffering like this."

"Exactly! Enlil never gave a damn about us mortals!"

Thanks to the soul-spy Thalos had planted, this resentment toward Enlil began to rapidly spread…

In the sky, Enlil couldn't afford to care about the mortals.

That ruthless meteor strike had shattered his effort to push back Ginnungagap's air invasion.

He needed time to recover—yet just then, the opponents he'd long anticipated arrived.

The still-intact portion of Niflheim's landmass lit up with a blinding rainbow aurora.

Seven-colored radiance swept across the forward land, and one by one, divine silhouettes appeared—each larger and more imposing than Enlil.

His eyes locked instinctively onto one figure in golden armor.

Even among gods, this man shone like a beacon in the night.

For the first time, Enlil finally laid eyes on his true opponent.

Thalos gazed down at this Sumerian god-king—this arrogant ruler who had tried to annihilate humanity three times—and felt a sudden pang of… mild disappointment.

Still, decorum must be upheld.

"I am Thalos Borson, King of the Aesir. You must be Enlil, the one who invaded my world without a word, yes?"

Geographically, Niflheim occupied the high ground.

In terms of world size, Ginnungagap was the larger realm.

Even in physical form, Thalos towered over Enlil.

The result? No matter how Thalos spoke, he naturally came across as lofty and commanding.

So Thalos simply released his full kingly aura, gazing upon this country-bumpkin god-king from the insignificant world of Sumer with cold, imperial disdain.

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