A deal. A deal, huh…
In all my life, I’ve never seen a human propose something like a deal to me.
She looks like an ordinary human… Still, since she says she came to make a deal, shall I at least hear her out?
“So, what exactly are you saying you’ll use to make a deal with me?”
“…”
“Hmm?”
“Nidhogg! I came to make a deal!”
“Huh?”
“Nidhogg! I came to make a deal!”
The woman repeated the same words like a broken radio.
Now that I looked, her pupils were unfocused too; she didn’t seem to be in her right mind.
Unable to watch any longer, Ratatoskr smacked the back of my head again.
“You stupid lizard. There’s no way an ordinary human could stay sane in front of you, is there?”
“What?”
That’s ridiculous.
Then what about all the humans I’ve seen up until now?
For a moment, I recalled the humans I had met in the distant past.
A human clad in bulging muscles and beast hides.
“Val-hal-laaa!!”
A human carrying armor and a greatsword.
“I shall slay the wicked dragon here and now—!!”
They had all charged at me with tremendous war cries.
“They were perfectly fine, though?”
“Oh, come on! In what world are those ordinary humans?!”
“The humans I saw were about average.”
“I’m telling you, they weren’t!”
Smack, smack!!
I pondered in time with the rhythm of her palm striking my head, but from my perspective, I really couldn’t tell the difference.
Was it because I had spent far too long as a dragon?
Aside from gender, I couldn’t see how those humans were any different from this female human.
“Sigh. I’ll treat her, so you just keep that power of yours under control.”
“Fine. I’ll leave it to you.”
I entrusted the nameless woman, who looked to be in poor condition, to Ratatoskr, and focused on reducing the power leaking out of me.
Perhaps because it was something I didn’t usually do, I had quite a hard time gathering my power.
At first, it was difficult just to hold it in place, but as I kept at it, before I knew it, I was able to contain the power that had been spreading outward.
After somehow succeeding in gathering my power and opening my eyes, I saw that Ratatoskr had climbed down from my head at some point and was laying the half-conscious woman on the ground, tending to her.
“Is she all right?”
“She just lost consciousness after being crushed by your power. She’ll come to soon.”
I was worried she might die like this, but thankfully, it seemed I wouldn’t have to dispose of a corpse.
At the very least, if she was going to die, she ought to tell me what kind of deal she had come to make before doing so.
As we waited for the woman to wake up, a question occurred to me.
“This is unusual. You’re helping a human.”
“What?”
“You don’t like humans, do you?”
“……”
Perhaps I had hit the mark, because Ratatoskr gave no answer.
She possessed the ability to freely travel between the many worlds connected to Yggdrasil.
Because of that, she had always traveled freely through other worlds, and whenever she came to visit me at the bottom of Niflheim, she would always tell me stories of those travels.
There were few opportunities for me to hear about other worlds, so I had listened to her stories with interest, and even now I remembered most of what she had told me.
And in the stories she told, humans appeared every single time without fail, and in most of those stories, humans were greedy, selfish beings.
But look at her now.
Was she not personally treating the very humans she hated so much, and nursing this one until she woke?
“…It’s not as if I hate all humans.”
“For someone who says that, haven’t you always badmouthed humans?”
“Hmph. What I hate are greedy, selfish humans. Not humans like this one, who are so weak yet desperate enough to stand before you prepared to die.”
“Hmm…”
Leaving aside whether standing before me was really such an impressive thing, if Ratatoskr was saying that much, perhaps I could have some expectations.
With nothing else to do, we sat quietly and waited for the woman to regain consciousness, and just as Ratatoskr had said, she came to not long after.
“Where am I…”
The woman, holding her forehead as though her head hurt, sat up and looked around, only to meet the eyes of us, who had been waiting for her to wake.
“Ni-Nidhogg!”
“Oh, seeing how energetic you are, you look a bit more normal now.”
“Of course she does. Who do you think treated her?”
At first, it seemed she was flustered to see me right in front of her as soon as she opened her eyes, but she quickly composed herself and spoke with a resolute expression.
“Nidhogg! I have come to make a deal!”
“Good. I’m starting to get curious about that deal myself. I’ll hear you out, so go ahead and tell me.”
I truly wanted to know what she planned to use to make a deal with me, and what she intended to take in return.
Perhaps thinking she had received permission, she hid her tension and conveyed her terms to me.
“Right now, this world is under threat from countless beings. So to protect the world… no, even if only the land where I live, I need great power.”
“And that would be me?”
“No. I am not so shameless as to ask you to protect the land I live in, nor do I have the ability to pay a price equal to that.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I know that you possess many rare treasures.”
No, how did she know that?
Just as she said, I did have treasures I had gathered from a dying world before crossing over into this one.
But that was information no one should know except Eagle Auntie or Ratatoskr, so the fact that she knew it somehow gave off the scent of a famous fraud.
Those who saw the future or made prophecies tended to give off exactly this sort of air… Did this woman have that kind of ability too?
For that, she didn’t look particularly clever.
Perhaps having read the suspicion in my eyes, she swallowed with an even more nervous expression and continued.
“Are you not curious how I know that fact?”
“Don’t tell me you’re a prophet?”
“I am not.”
“Then how do you know I have treasures?”
I asked while looking at the woman with sharp eyes and a solemn expression, but inside, curiosity was surging up endlessly as to how on earth she knew.
“If you are curious…”
“If I am?”
“Make a deal with me.”
“Wait, you’re twisting it like this?”
I was impressed by the completely unexpected development and her skill.
What a fucking way to negotiate.
While I was silently showering her with praise so she couldn’t hear, she instead made an offer.
“If you make a deal now, I will tell you everything in exchange for one full set of Valkyrie standard-issue equipment.”
“Don’t tell me you even know everything I have?”
“Of course, I will tell you that after the deal as well.”
“Wow… Seriously. Fine. I lose.”
She had reeked strongly of fraud, but her negotiating skills were no joke.
In the end, unable to overcome my curiosity, I opened my magic pouch and took out the Valkyrie standard-issue equipment.
The armor, a mix of silver and gold, was clearly no ordinary item even from its outward appearance alone.
From the moment I took out the armor, the woman stared at the standard-issue armor as if she were a beast with prey before her eyes, almost drooling at any second. As soon as I handed it to her, she drew a sword, lightly pricked her thumb, and let a drop of blood fall onto the armor.
“You even knew how to use it?”
“If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have asked for it.”
The armor upon which the drop of blood had fallen shone brightly, then turned into particles of light and disappeared into her body.
The ownership ritual was complete.
Now, the armor from moments ago would remain with her until the moment she died.
“Good. I’ve given you the armor, so now it’s your turn to tell me how you knew such a thing.”
“Wait. Before that, you still haven’t given me the weapon.”
“I’ll give you the weapon after you tell me your story.”
“…Understood. Since you have conceded this much, I will tell you the truth as well.”
And afterward, the truth that came from her mouth was something truly beyond imagination.
***
Sin Sua.
She was a regressor.
She did not know why she had regressed, nor how she had regressed, but she had returned from the future ten years from now.
And in the future ten years later from which she had returned, humanity was advancing toward extinction so terrible that even the word “miserable” was insufficient.
The monsters that had always threatened humanity.
The gods who regarded humans as little more than toys.
The wars that broke out between human and human.
Each and every one of them drove humanity into crisis.
Before her regression, she had been on the verge of death.
And that, at the hands of Nidhogg, with whom she had just been making a deal.
One day, along with a sudden Gate fluctuation, an immeasurable Gate appeared.
The Association forbade entry into the Gate, but human greed was, by nature, endless.
After several guilds pressured the Association, the Gate was opened, and the guilds that had pressured the Association pooled their strength to form an expedition.
Thus began the first expedition.
The expedition was able to return without a single death.
On top of that, though no one knew where the leak had come from, information about a dragon friendly to humanity called “Nidhogg” began to spread by word of mouth.
Not long after, the Association and the guilds prepared a second expedition.
The second expedition was incomparably more splendid than the first.
From Association branch heads to guild executives.
Famous people whose names alone were enough to recognize them entered the Gate.
And three days later, the second expedition returned and held a press conference to announce their great achievements.
They publicly announced that they had met a dragon called “Nidhogg” and, through trade, had obtained all sorts of rare equipment and treasures, and because of that, the world’s attention turned to the Republic of Korea.
Countless overseas guilds sent inquiries saying they wanted to enter the Gate as well, but the guilds of the Republic of Korea, having already tasted the sweetness of the so-called Nidhogg Gate, banded tightly together to block the entry of foreign guilds.
For five years after that, the Association and guilds of the Republic of Korea reaped enormous profits through the Nidhogg Gate, and the Republic of Korea was reborn as an undeniable awakened powerhouse.
But nothing lasts forever.
In the sixth year after the Nidhogg Gate appeared.
As always, an expedition entered the Gate carrying goods for trade.
One week later.
A Gate Break occurred.