“Hmm? Mmm? Hm…”
Baekyeon wore a puzzled expression as she looked up at the sky.
“What’s wrong?”
“At first, I wasn’t sure… but I can sense a power similar to Miss Shin Sua’s from above.”
“A similar power?”
“Yes. It feels similar to when Miss Shin Sua wore the armor she received from Lord Nidhogg.”
A feeling similar to when she wore the Valkyrie armor, huh.
I raised my head and looked up at the sky as well.
When I enhanced my eyesight and peered into the distance, I could sense the distinctive power of a Valkyrie.
The Valkyrie’s power was covering a certain area—or perhaps an individual—and acting as a concealment.
Why hadn’t I noticed this until now?
Even if I was only a clone, had my instincts dulled that much?
To approach the hidden being, I got down from Shin Sua’s shoulder and flapped my wings.
The other party was most likely a Valkyrie.
Since I didn’t know how skilled she was, it would be best to assume she possessed power on the level of the strongest Valkyrie I had seen so far.
And the strongest Valkyrie I had seen so far was a Valkyrie named Thrud.
As Thor’s daughter, I remembered her being fairly powerful, just as one would expect from that guy’s child.
Boom—!!
Flapping my wings at the greatest speed I could manage in my current clone state, I shot up into the sky, and the ground instantly receded as I arrived right in front of my destination.
When I used my own power to forcibly push aside the rune power covering the one I suspected to be a Valkyrie, her hidden form was revealed.
A woman with loose red hair, wearing standard-issue Valkyrie armor, was floating in the sky.
“What the hell. It really is a Valkyrie?”
“?!”
The startled Valkyrie reflexively pulled a long spear from the air and swung it at me.
The spear she used was also the same kind used by the Valkyries I was familiar with.
I made no reaction whatsoever to the attack that came right up to my nose.
Kang—!
Even though I did nothing, the spear struck my hard scales and bounced away, and despair settled over the Valkyrie’s face at the sight of my scales without so much as a scratch.
Did she really think an attack of that level would work?
“Let’s head down for now.”
Since I already knew her attacks wouldn’t work, I ignored them, approached, grabbed the Valkyrie’s armor with my foreleg, and descended toward the ground.
The Valkyrie seemed to suffer from the descent, which was as fast as my ascent, but I paid it no mind and flew on, soon landing on the ground.
Kwaang!!
Or not? Maybe it would be more accurate to say we crashed.
“Cough…!”
I waited a moment until the Valkyrie, coughing up spit along with her pain, calmed down, then asked.
“Why is a Valkyrie here? No, more importantly, why were you watching me?”
“Kh…! I won’t tell you.”
“Oh, really?”
I grabbed the Valkyrie’s leg once more and gave her a round of ultra-high-speed flight.
This time, she flew while hanging upside down, so she’d be even dizzier than before.
“Ugh… I-I can’t say.”
“Let’s see how long you last.”
By the time the third flight ended, the Valkyrie’s face had gone pale.
“N-no!”
“One more time.”
“N-nooo.”
“One more.”
“Gueeeeeek. W-wait…”
“Ask, and double it.”
“W-wait! I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Please let me talk!”
Only after I showed her the sky a few more times did the Valkyrie’s stubbornly sealed mouth finally open.
Honestly. Making a dragon go through all this trouble.
“If you were going to do this, you should’ve opened your mouth sooner.”
“Ugh… y-you lunatic. You didn’t even let me talk…”
Lunatic? Looks like she still hadn’t come to her senses.
When I grabbed her leg again, the Valkyrie clung on desperately.
“W-wait! Just a moment! I’m sorry! I was wrong!”
“I’m kidding, kidding. Now then, tell me why you were watching me.”
“T-that’s…”
“One more time?”
“L-Lord Odin and Lady Freyja ordered me to keep watch!”
“Odin?”
Valkyries basically only obey Odin or Freyja, so I had thought it might be possible, but I didn’t expect that name to actually come out.
I’d realized the corpse back then was fake, but had Odin crossed over to this place as well?
Ratatoskr had said this world was the closest to the one we used to live in, and it seemed it was close enough for the others to cross over too.
Considering the personality of that gloomy old geezer, I didn’t have a good feeling about why he’d had a Valkyrie watch me.
“Where is Odin now?”
“He is inside a Gate in a country the humans of this world call North Korea.”
“What is he doing inside the Gate?”
“He is creating a new Asgard to replace the one that was destroyed.”
Well, the Nine Worlds had been destroyed, and we weren’t the only ones who had lost our home, so they must be making a new place to live as well.
Considering the magic ability I had personally seen from Odin, and Freyja’s magic ability as someone who was also called a god of magic, it wouldn’t be strange even if they truly created a second Asgard.
“I understand where Odin is and what he’s doing. Then do you know why Odin had you watch me?”
“That’s… I’m only a low-ranking Valkyrie, so why he gave such an order is…”
After hearing the Valkyrie’s answer, I turned my head toward Baekyeon.
Baekyeon shook her head.
That meant the Valkyrie had just lied.
Even though I’d given her a chance, she dared to tell a lie.
“You clearly still haven’t come to your senses.”
I grabbed her leg again and showed her the sky.
“Geh…”
“I’ll ask one last time. For what reason did Odin watch me?”
“I-I can’t say…”
Even in a dizzy state, the Valkyrie firmly refused. I was about to show her the sky once more, but Shin Sua stopped me.
“Lord Nidhogg! Don’t do this here. Let’s take her home first!”
“That’s right. Since this place is too exposed, we have to worry about other people watching. A quiet location would be better.”
“Should we?”
It wasn’t a bad suggestion.
Because I’d been flying through the sky at ultra-high speeds since a while ago, more and more people were starting to gather nearby. So we quickly stripped off the Valkyrie’s armor, tied her up tightly so she couldn’t struggle, and loaded her into the car while no one was watching.
Perhaps she had decided that resisting was useless, because the Valkyrie obediently followed our instructions. We sat her in the back seat with Shin Sua, and the place we headed to was somewhere I had never seen before.
Baekyeon drove out of the city and into a mountain where no people could be seen, then stopped the car in front of a building that looked like a warehouse.
“What is this place?”
“It’s a place I use for training and experiments.”
Following Baekyeon, who led the way, into the building, the interior was revealed just as she had said, with various monster materials and several spears on display.
“They look fairly sturdy.”
“Yes. I deliberately bring in the hard parts of monsters and experiment on how to kill them more comfortably and quickly.”
“Huh…”
Shin Sua set the Valkyrie down on what looked like an experiment table.
Right next to the table were all sorts of tools, starting with a chainsaw, as well as hammers, awls, knives, and more. Perhaps imagining something ominous, the Valkyrie began trembling.
“H-hii…”
With the trembling Valkyrie before her, Baekyeon put on translucent white gloves and stroked the tools as she asked.
“What shall we start with?”
As expected, this bitch really was insane.
***
Meanwhile, Freyja was slowly putting the finishing touches on the reconstruction of Asgard.
It was not as majestic or enormous as the previous Asgard, but all the necessary buildings had been erected, and she intended to decorate the interiors gradually, so one could say that for now, only the framework had been completed.
The only remaining work was the magic she and Odin had to bestow, so Freyja dismissed the Valkyries a little earlier than usual.
“Thank you, Lady Freyja!”
“Yahoo! Tonight’s dinner is mead!”
“Ah, is there no warrior out there to soothe my lonely heart?”
Leaving behind the Valkyries as they quickly dispersed, Freyja entered the palace where Odin resided.
In the audience chamber inside the palace, as always, Odin was half-sprawled on the throne, tinkering with magic.
“Why are you here?”
“The framework is up. Now we just have to complete the barrier that will wrap around Asgard with magic.”
“If it’s the magic, I’ve already finished it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It was the only thing I had to do here.”
“Good. Let’s take a look.”
Speaking like a strict workplace superior, Freyja examined the barrier magic Odin had completed.
After meticulously checking whether there were any sloppy parts, Freyja nodded in satisfaction.
“There are no problems. We can proceed as is.”
“Good. Have all the catalysts been planted?”
“Yes. I planted them all in the locations we designated beforehand.”
“Good. Then leave now. Ah, right. Come to think of it, what about the Valkyrie watching Nidhogg?”
“You mean Linnea? Hmm… normally, she should have come to report by now.”
They realized that Linnea, who usually came to report around the time work ended, still had not arrived, but neither of them was particularly worried.
Reports were not made at the exact same time every day, and since the distance was what it was, they figured she could be a little late.
“Still, it would be good to check where she is first.”
A complex magic circle appeared in front of Freyja’s finger.
It was tracking magic placed on all Valkyries who went out on external reconnaissance missions.
Freyja activated the magic toward Linnea.
Pachink!
But the magic misfired.
The magic circle, which had been giving off a faint light, scattered and vanished like shards of broken glass.
“……”
“……”
An awkward silence flowed between Odin and Freyja.
Because there was only one thing the failure of the magic indicated.
“…She got caught.”
“…She got caught, didn’t she.”
The two reached the same conclusion at the same time.
“What do we do now? Since Linnea has been captured, there’s a high chance Nidhogg has noticed our existence too.”
“That’s obvious. What matters now isn’t that, but how much of our plan Nidhogg has learned.”
There was a possibility she had been caught and killed the moment they met, but in the worst-case scenario, it was also possible he had learned that Odin and Freyja were targeting Nidhogg.
And Odin, who had liked to assume the worst-case scenario even in the previous world, came to a conclusion in an instant.
“Abandon her.”
They would abandon Linnea.