What was the Norse world like?
Blowing snow was the norm. People lived between ice and sea, and sky and earth were always bleak and vast.
That was Rovi's first impression after taking that step.
The massive Machine God reined in most of its functions. It engaged its stealth systems, masking all external signals and cutting off every possible avenue of detection.
Having arrived in an unfamiliar world, Rovi's first priority was still reconnaissance.
This time, he had come for life. Though he sought life for the sake of death and had no need to act with excessive caution, he still had to stay on guard.
He had not forgotten that Ereshkigal was in the Norse world too.
He did not know why.
But he had to find her.
And so, the moment he entered, what greeted him was a world swallowed by wind and snow. In the distance, it looked as though great sheets of flowing light were pouring down across the earth. Far above, he could just make out the enormous trunk of a tree piercing heaven and earth, its shadow nearly blanketing the entire world.
Its trunk was pale and slender, like the long, powerful limb of a living body. And near the points where it branched out high above, there seemed to be exposed hollows containing dim blue cubes rotating in place.
That was the World Tree of Norse cosmology.
And this was the very middle of the nine worlds divided by its trunk.
Midgard, where humanity lived.
Though he would have liked to head straight beneath the World Tree's roots, to the realm where the giants dwelled—one of the three lowest worlds of the Nine Realms—it was obvious that while Tiamat had been able to pinpoint a region on the surface, she could not narrow it down to the exact "boundary" within that region.
Even so, this was already good enough.
Rovi vented a plume of furnace-hot vapor, scattering and melting the snow and wind falling toward him.
The gears within his body turned as he focused his attention on the Tartaros inside him and called out, 'Tiamat?'
But no reply came.
Rovi paused, then could not help giving a wry smile.
From the image transmitted by his internal sensors, he saw that within the lava-churning abyss, the primordial mother goddess was quietly leaning against a pillar of cooled magma. Her long hair spilled over her like water, framing a peaceful, delicate sleeping face.
Perhaps because the environment was so "comfortable," Tiamat had fallen asleep on the spot.
To her, the environment from the stars' earliest age had always been the safest, most reassuring place of all.
"Good night."
Rovi projected his human image inside. Bending slightly, he draped a coverlet woven from the power of the primordial stars over Tiamat.
Not that she actually needed it.
But it would make her a little more comfortable.
He would likely still need this goddess's help many times in the future.
Rovi's image vanished.
"Mmh..." Tiamat's lashes trembled faintly as she hugged the coverlet tighter.
Outside, the massive Machine God gradually shrank and disappeared as well. In that world drowned in blank white, only a single figure remained in the next instant, incomparably smaller than before.
His linen robe billowed beneath the falling snow. Rovi brushed the snow from his shoulder and looked ahead.
Fishing lights bobbed in the distance.
In that vast, desolate world, signs of human life were rare.
First, I need to find people.
With that thought, Rovi slowly started forward.
Without invoking Mystery. Without working miracles. He simply walked forward one step at a time, like an ordinary man.
To draw close to the world in a mortal body.
To feel the difference in this world in a mortal body.
Awoooo—!
The howl of wolves rose through the air, mingling with the whispering north wind like a horn being sounded.
A broad-shouldered hunter in a beast-fur coat came racing over on a sled pulled by hyenas.
The brush on both sides shuddered, and arrows burning with magical light shot through the gaps in the branches, striking a running snow wolf with perfect accuracy.
The snow wolf gave a cry of pain and collapsed, its blood mingling with the snow in an instant.
Clutching his bow, the hunter let out an excited roar.
"Lord Odin above!" he bellowed, his beard dusted white with snow quivering as he shouted. "In this hunting rite for the snow-mountain goddess, I'll take first place for sure!"
But the moment the words left his mouth, he suddenly grew wary again.
The rough-featured middle-aged hunter turned toward a patch of brush to one side.
Footsteps were approaching from there.
One long stride at a time, robes swaying, a figure drew near.
An inexplicable, suffocating stillness of death welled up in the hunter's chest, and all his earlier excitement vanished without a trace.
Did I just run into some powerful undead? I haven't heard of any mighty warrior dying around here...
By Odin above.
I mean no offense!
The hunter parted his lips, only to see the newcomer raise his head and reveal a remarkably youthful, handsome face.
It was the face of a boy.
Yet his beauty was utterly unlike that of the Norse.
The hunter said nothing. He did his best to make himself small, not daring to give offense.
The boy—Rovi—paid him no mind at all. He merely walked to the fallen wolf's side and bent down to inspect it.
The spilled blood glittered with a translucent sheen, and within it he could faintly make out flecks of white crystal.
The same color as the World Tree.
So that's it.
Rovi understood at once.
The Sea of Imaginary Numbers was a dimension independent of the world, but when one entered a world, the point of anchoring was determined by one's own senses.
Rovi had fallen back into the Sea of Imaginary Numbers at the dawn of the Fourth Greek Age of Gods.
That meant the time he emerged could not have been any earlier than that point.
In other words, the era of gods and humans mingling had already long passed. Greece had only been able to continue because of the special nature of its gods as machine beings.
And yet the Norse land was still rich in Mystery.
The reason was probably the World Tree.
"The World Tree... a cornerstone modeled after the Vanguard of the Umbral Star, meant to support and prolong the Age of Gods?"
Rovi withdrew his hand from the wolf's blood and rose to his feet.
Light flickered in his eyes—the workings of information itself.
Even in a foreign land, Athena's blessing still functioned, letting him see through everything.
No wonder it had felt familiar before.
That pale trunk, those exposed "cubes" within the hollows—weren't they exactly like the Vanguard of the Umbral Star that had attacked the surface ten thousand years ago?
The gods really could not be underestimated.
The Vanguard of the Umbral Star had punched through the very foundation of the gods' existence, causing Mystery to leak away without cease. And yet reality proved that the gods had their own methods of response.
Mesopotamia had pinned its hopes on reforging faith between gods and men through the "wedge" to prolong the Age of Gods. It had failed, but only because it ran into Gilgamesh. In truth, their use of faith had already reached the extreme.
The Greek gods had gone even further, directly creating bodies in the present world that they could fully inhabit, succeeding in lodging divine bodies within human vessels.
But compared to them, the method the Norse were using now was even more direct.
They had acquired part of the Vanguard of the Umbral Star's remains and turned it into the "World Tree."
By relying on that power—its ability to counter planetary civilization, endlessly consume foreign energy, and grow without limit—they had replenished the "Mystery" constantly draining away from the earth.
The World Tree was the divine object supporting the continuation of the Norse Age of Gods to this day.
As long as the World Tree did not collapse, the Norse gods could still pass through it into the present world and maintain the rule of the Age of Gods.
Of course, because of the World Tree's influence, the gods and living things of this land had inevitably developed these white crystals within them as well.
Perhaps this should be called "Norse Divinity"?
Rovi closed his eyes and classified all the information in an instant.
Beneath the World Tree, the Norse gods might well be even more troublesome than the Greek ones.
It looked like he would need to confirm a few more things.
In that case...
"So right now, this place is holding its annual hunting rite in honor of the snow-mountain goddess?"
Rovi opened his eyes and looked toward the hunter—who had just been about to flee while Rovi's eyes were closed, only to freeze stiff the instant they opened.
But the question had not been directed at him.
It had been directed at...
"The Goddess of Ice and Snow, Skadi?"
His gaze shifted slightly toward the figure that had appeared at some point off to the side—
Skadi.
No, wait.
That was...
"Skadi... Scathach?!"
With a sharp, ringing clang, Rovi's outstretched hand transformed partway into a Machine God form, and the palm of that extraterrestrial steel caught the dark violet spear lunging toward him.
The collision of magical power twisted the surrounding air at once, blasting away the snow and wind in every direction and turning them into hazy vapor.
The hunter scrambled away.
Rovi merely turned and looked at the figure who had appeared so suddenly.
She looked like a young girl. Long purple hair flowed loose down her back, and a thorned tiara bound her hair atop her head. Strands across her forehead framed a pair of equally dark-violet eyes, vivid and beautiful. Below that was an exquisitely lovely face, and when her red lips curved, they carried an easy, amused smile.
She wore a long purple dress. Black angel-down draped over her shoulders. Pale, delicate skin lay exposed at her chest above fabric drawn tight over the full curves of her breasts. The lower half of the gown hugged her rounded hips, and the legs extending below it were lush and full beneath black stockings.
There was no doubt about it—this was a goddess.
Just as Rovi had said, her identity was exactly that.
She was the cherished darling of the gods upon the World Tree, one Odin regarded almost as a daughter, a goddess doted on by all the gods together.
The Ski Goddess, Skadi.
Rovi did know of this goddess, at least to some extent, from before he had crossed over. But the one he knew was not the pure Skadi—and even less the Skadi before his eyes now—but the mature goddess who, in a certain timeline after Ragnarok, upheld the Norse world by herself.
They were not the same, but they were of the same origin.
And yet the Skadi of the present should have been young and innocent.
As the Ski Goddess, she should not have been skilled in close combat at all.
And yet...
The Norse Skadi standing before Rovi at this moment was unmistakably holding a spear.
Rovi slanted his gaze toward the gleaming point caught in his hand.
At this moment, Skadi held a staff in one hand and a spear in the other.
A pure Skadi ought to be a goddess better suited to magecraft.
Normally, close-quarters combat should not have been her strength.
Unless she wasn't pure.
Was this before the Lostbelt's point of divergence? Or was it a parallel world?
Ignoring the tangle of thoughts in Rovi's mind, Skadi herself only stared for a moment at the hand he had turned to steel—or rather, into a Machine God hand. Then her red lips curled, and a smile full of interest appeared on her pretty face.
"Hm? So even a dead one from the realm of death can wield this kind of power?"
"But it's useless, you know?"
"The spear I carry is a copy of Gungnir bestowed by the great god Odin. I may be the Ski Goddess, but every day I step into a mysterious magic mirror and learn quite a few things from another 'me.' Because of that, the great god Odin entrusted me with the duty of guiding the dead."
"The dead should return to the land of the dead. That is the rule the gods established."
That was why Skadi was here.
But Rovi was not a simple dead man.
And he had even less desire to be sent into Helheim, the Norse realm of the dead.
Still, the information hidden in Skadi's words made him think. Another "me"—did she mean Scathach, the other being who shared her origin?
Was Scathach in the Norse world too? Had she even met Skadi?
And then Skadi added, "Don't worry. I won't hurt you. I'll only send you to Helheim, the realm of the dead."
"And trade me for something while you're at it? Maybe the countless treasures piled up in the underworld?" Rovi casually finished the thought for her. "After all, a dead soul as thick with deathly aura as mine doesn't come along every day. I'm sure you could get a great price from Hel, who's been searching everywhere for dead warriors."
"Am I right?"
Skadi's expression stiffened slightly. "Y-you... how do you know that? No, wait—I wasn't thinking that at all!"
But that was exactly what she had been thinking.
The underworld was the resting place of the dead, but also the place where everything settled after fading away. As with every other mythology, the place where the most treasure had accumulated in Norse myth was also the netherworld where the dead returned.
She really had wanted to haul Rovi there and exchange him for treasure.
Preferably jewels she could use to decorate her dress...
Only, she had merely thought it.
She had not said it.
How did this guy know?
"I'm not especially fond of having people point spears at me. But since you don't have any killing intent toward me, I'll spare your life."
The moment Rovi said that, the snowshoe goddess suddenly felt the resistance at the spear point vanish, and Rovi—who had been gripping it—vanished as well.
"Where did he go?"
In the instant Skadi froze, a gale struck from behind, whipping up her purple hair. The goddess spun around at once, dark-violet spear sweeping out with her, and collided head-on with the incoming fist.
With a crisp clang, the expanding magical shock twisted the surrounding air.
The spear-wielding goddess was driven back several steps in an instant, her chest and hips swaying with the force.
But even then, she whipped the spear forward again.
A thousand strikes in a blink, points of light bursting like stars.
Fast, precise, ruthless.
Spearcraft that had reached the realm of the gods.
But Rovi merely raised the arm he had transformed into the steel of a Machine God, increased his output ever so slightly, and in the next instant caught the incoming spearhead between two fingers.
Then he flicked it.
The spear was knocked away.
So strong...
Skadi's expression turned serious again.
And yet, influenced by that other being who shared her origin, she felt an inexplicable thrill rise in her instead.
"So you really were a battle-hardened powerhouse in life!" Skadi gripped her dark-violet spear and gave it a light spin with a twist of her wrist. "Come to think of it, isn't today also the Snow Mountain Hunting Rite I preside over as the Goddess of Ice and Snow?"
"Hunting the strong doesn't sound bad at all!"
"The loser belongs to the winner!"
Skadi was full of confidence.
"Indeed." Rovi nodded and smiled. "In that case—"
Before he could finish, a gale rushed against his face.
Skadi made the first move. Twisting at the waist, she drove the spear in her hand straight forward in a single thrust, a point of brilliance streaking like a meteor. Even as Rovi turned aside to evade it, she tightened her grip on the shaft and snapped it from side to side.
Rovi frowned and stamped a foot down, launching himself straight into the air.
But the snowshoe goddess turned the spear like a serpent lifting its head, following him upward without pause.
Now that he thought about it, most of Rovi's battles until today had relied on force, Authorities, and strategy.
This kind of agile, technical fighting style was something he had never faced before.
Not that she could hurt him anyway. Even if he stood there and let her attack, Skadi's spear could not pierce even his outer robe.
And somehow, Rovi suddenly found it interesting.
So...
He stamped down hard with his foot, stepping directly on the spear and bending it slightly out of shape. Then, using the force of it springing back to normal, he shot himself straight at Skadi.
Borrow her force, and strike her in return.
It was faster than lightning, yet driven entirely by Skadi's own power.
Skadi's eyes widened, but even so, instinct made her yank the spear back at once. At the same time, her other hand swung her staff, drawing down a skyful of wind and snow in an attempt to obstruct him.
Magecraft and martial skill, fused as one.
But Rovi only moved forward.
One hand scattered the wind and snow. In the next few steps—almost like teleportation—his other hand was at Skadi's throat, driving her to the ground.
"I win."
"By your own words, that makes you my spoils now."
"Goddess of Ice and Snow—"
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T/N: yes skadi is also known as the Ski Goddess
"Skadi is also called Öndurguð (Ski God) as well as Öndurdís (Ski Goddess). She was a master of hunting in the mountains and was also told to be a master of skiing" -from Skadi type-moon wiki