Mind-controlling a god was no easy task, even when he was in a state of extreme weakness.
As the God of Mischief, Loki was already skilled in illusions, and his mental strength was several degrees stronger than Thor's current state.
Emma's brows drew tight as her psychic power surged wildly. Only after a few moments, when she finally sensed Loki's resistance gradually weakening, did she let out a breath of relief.
"Go. Undo Wanda's ice."
Under the powerful psychic suggestion, Loki's eyes went vacant. Like a puppet on strings, he walked toward Wanda without a word.
Fenris released Loki and followed beside him without hesitation.
"Bzz—"
Once they reached the solid ice, Loki took a deep breath. After a brief pause, he raised both hands as though cradling something empty, and a light hum gradually sounded from between his palms.
A pure ice-blue glow slowly lit up. At first, it was tiny, like a small blue sphere, but very quickly the blue light flared and transformed at a speed visible to the naked eye into an exquisite ice casket.
The instant Loki gripped the casket in both hands, a blast of biting, extreme cold suddenly radiated from the box, which looked almost like a work of art.
Blue light mixed with scattered flecks of ice lit up, silently sinking into the block of ice trapping Wanda.
Less than a breath later, signs of melting had already appeared on the solid ice, which was so cold that even Fenris felt it biting into his bones.
Emma's eyes brightened. "It's working."
Beside her.
The moment the Casket of Ancient Winters appeared in Loki's hands, the small blue box seemed to carry an innate, fatal attraction, drawing Fenris's gaze firmly toward it.
Deep within his consciousness, the ancient illustrated tome that had been silent for so long suddenly began to tremble faintly.
Its heavy pages turned on their own. After flipping past the first three pages, which had already been fully opened, the corner of the fourth page quietly lifted.
A pure blue-white radiance flashed across it and vanished. Fenris only felt his vision blur before every anomaly disappeared, as though everything just now had been nothing more than an illusion.
"Scylla?"
"Or... Shimo?"
The Titan Bestiary's movement had first shown signs of stirring when Fenris personally saw the Bifrost for the first time. Only now, with the appearance of the Casket of Ancient Winters, did the guess in Fenris's heart finally settle into place.
Any Titan drawn by the artifact known as the Casket of Ancient Winters would inevitably be highly compatible with the powers of extreme cold, ice, and snow.
Scylla, who shared a name with the sea monster from Greek mythology, was a Titan as ancient as Godzilla. She had six long, slender legs, a strange body structure, an octopus-like head, and a tail resembling a nautilus shell.
Most importantly, Scylla possessed the ability to breathe extreme cold and supercooled liquid nitrogen. Her powerful freezing ability allowed her to seal vast stretches of ocean in ice with ease.
The influence Titan Scylla exerted on the surrounding environment was not as domineering as Godzilla's, but she could still easily repair melting glaciers and mitigate the global impact caused by rising sea levels.
The only flaw was that, compared to the three super-Titans Fenris had unlocked at this stage, Scylla, as a regional guardian, was not particularly outstanding in terms of combat power.
"But if it's Shimo..."
Shimo, the primordial Titan, one of the oldest Titans.
Compared to those ancient Titans that easily measured thousands or even tens of thousands of meters, Shimo, who stood only a hundred meters tall and had yet to fully display her complete growth potential, already possessed the power to freeze an entire planet. Her "unstoppable freezing breath, powerful enough to easily destroy the world," could even drag a planet back into an Ice Age where all life withered.
With a formidable physique in no way inferior to Godzilla's normal state, combined with that utterly unreasonable freezing breath, Shimo's combat strength was naturally positioned at the very peak of the super-Titans. She was an unquestionable top-tier king Titan.
But no matter who had caused the anomaly triggered by the Casket of Ancient Winters, a Titan was still a Titan. Even the weakest Titan could produce a terrifying impact. For an ordinary person, obtaining even one thousandth or one ten-thousandth of any Titan's power would already be an immense fortune.
As a favored child of heaven and earth, a Titan's uniquely blessed talent and formidable strength were both critical and absolutely indispensable forms of powerful support for Fenris.
"Huff—"
After taking a deep breath, once that familiar sensation disappeared, Fenris let his gaze linger on the Casket of Ancient Winters for only an instant before turning back to the melting ice.
Through several meters of thick ice, Wanda's frozen eyes suddenly moved almost imperceptibly, and a hard-to-hide trace of joy flickered in them.
Loki remained expressionless, loyally following the psychic suggestion's command. Blue light continued shooting from the Casket of Ancient Winters in his hands, and everything seemed to be going exceptionally smoothly.
But the smoother it went, the more uneasy Fenris felt.
Although he had never met Loki before, Loki's reputation preceded him. With Wanda's safety involved, there was no such thing as being too careful.
Fenris stared fixedly at Wanda inside the ice, then pressed his lips together. Wanda's gaze was somewhat blank, yet it somehow seemed as though she was staring at him.
After several breaths of silence, Fenris was the first to move his gaze away. Looking toward the obedient Loki, he could not help warning Emma again, "Emma, be careful. Don't give him any chance to break free."
"I know."
A bean-sized drop of sweat slid uncontrollably from Emma's forehead. She gritted her teeth and once again increased the output of her psychic power.
For some reason, as the blue light from the Casket of Ancient Winters grew brighter and brighter, Emma felt the pressure coming from Loki growing heavier and heavier.
But Fenris had clearly beaten him into that state just now...
Emma's eyes sharpened, and she pressed her slightly trembling fingers against her temple.
"Bzz—"
Psychic ripples that ordinary people could not perceive spread outward, and Loki's whole body visibly shuddered.
The solid ice slowly melted. Dense cold mist drifted out, and before anyone realized it, a bone-deep chill had spread through the air.
"Something's wrong!"
Fenris's tightly strung nerves did not dare relax in the slightest. The instant the cold air changed, his keen senses detected it in the next moment, and a terrible feeling surged into his heart.
Fenris moved sharply, his gaze locking onto the source of the abnormality.
Beside him, the mechanical Loki still stood there steadily. However, at some unknown point, his skin had quietly turned a slightly murky shade of blue.
Just as he had said, it was a trait unique to the Frost Giants.
Under the stimulation of the Casket of Ancient Winters, a trace of clarity suddenly surfaced from the depths of Loki's eyes.
"You dare control me!"
The instant his consciousness returned, Loki's face filled with fury.
Without the slightest hesitation, he moved both hands, and the blue light shooting from the Casket of Ancient Winters in his palms abruptly changed.
"Boom!"
(End of Chapter)
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