"Fenris, I can't hold him!"
Without the slightest warning, Emma suddenly felt the resistance against her psychic power begin to expand without limit. In that instant, her enemy was no longer Loki, but a lonely planet that had never once seen the light of day since its birth, buried beneath merciless ice and snow for hundreds of millions of years.
Her formerly intangible psychic power seemed to have touched a boundless, desolate frozen world. Everywhere she looked, there was nothing but bleak, deathly solitude.
"Ah!"
An icy chill poured into her heart. The psychic power she had released earlier abruptly surged back against her. Pain stabbed through her mind, and Emma cried out sharply. Clutching her head in both hands, she collapsed to the ground without the slightest regard for appearances.
"Fenris, hurry—save Wanda!"
Though the pain was so intense she could barely open her eyes, Emma still struggled to point forward.
As though it had connected to a frostbound hell, piercing cold air, countless razor-sharp shards of ice, and an overwhelming blizzard of frost poured endlessly from the Casket of Ancient Winters.
The change had come far too suddenly, and Loki's target was Wanda, who was still sealed in ice and had no ability to resist.
For a moment, the temperature around them began to plummet wildly. Wherever the cold wind passed, solid ice grew at terrifying speed, and everything visible to the naked eye rapidly bloomed with magnificent frost flowers.
"Damn it!"
Fenris had detected Loki's change at the very first moment. Before Emma even managed to shout her warning, Fenris had already moved after the fact yet arrived first, appearing directly in front of Wanda.
He faced the frost storm head-on. Blinding blue light mixed with countless razor-edged shards of ice came howling toward him like a tsunami. Any creature swept into it would be shredded to pieces with ease.
"You only realized it now? Too late!"
Having finally borrowed the power of the Casket of Ancient Winters to break free from that swamp-like psychic restraint, Loki's face was almost entirely twisted with savagery.
Since birth, Loki's status as a son of Odin had brought him countless reverent gazes. On top of that, Queen Frigga's personal instruction had made his magical ability rise higher and higher.
For hundreds of years, even against Thor, Loki had never suffered such a humiliating loss.
He had never imagined that in this tiny Midgard, this insignificant mortal realm, he would actually be pinned to the ground and beaten senseless by some unknown, wet-behind-the-ears brat.
The mighty and arrogant God of Mischief had been wantonly invaded by a mortal woman as insignificant as dust, reduced under psychic control to a puppet that could only stumble around like a walking corpse.
Every humiliation was something the current Loki could not endure.
Unspeakable shame surged into his heart. At this moment, Loki's eyes held nothing but irrepressible humiliation and a chest full of fury.
"You and your two despicable little girlfriends can all have a proper taste of Jotunheim's frost hell!"
Blood vessels crept into Loki's eyes, and the blue glow of the Casket of Ancient Winters in his palms immediately brightened by several degrees.
"Whoosh—"
Bone-deep cold wind howled. Looking at the young Midgardian who actually dared stand directly before the Casket of Ancient Winters, Loki let out a pleased cold snort.
The frigid wind roared toward him. As Fenris felt the suffocating pressure before him, even his breathing instinctively stopped for an instant.
"Raaah!"
At the critical moment, the skin on his face suddenly began to grow rough and heavy at a speed visible to the naked eye.
After a high, furious roar, his eyes abruptly transformed into ferocious, icy vertical pupils.
The atomic furnace deep within his body began running at full power. The radiation buried in every cell gathered with rolling heat, eventually converging into a single point.
For a time, the surrounding magnetic field erupted along with the exponentially surging energy fluctuations. Even the visible light around Fenris seemed to twist.
A wave of heat rushed from his nostrils, carrying thick mist with it. Fenris opened his mouth wide, and a brilliant blue light suddenly lit within it.
"Bzz—"
"Bzz!"
Rolling heat flowed toward his throat. The energy fluctuations grew stronger and stronger. Low hums sounded one after another, becoming increasingly high-pitched, until the deafening resonance seemed to make even the heart vibrate with it.
The instant the blue in his mouth turned into a piercing blue-white—
"Boom!"
In his haste, Fenris drew upon all the power his body could unleash and released a blazing atomic breath through a human form. The surging atomic torrent carried an extreme heat that seemed capable of melting everything, crashing head-on into the overwhelming ice storm.
The instant two utterly opposing extreme forces collided, the moment scorching heat and absolute cold embraced each other, a massive explosion thundered almost to the heavens.
Countless shards of ice all around were annihilated in an instant, and the steam carrying terrifying heat hissed violently.
The huge shockwave produced by the collision spread outward. For a time, everything within several kilometers was brutally destroyed by that seemingly harmless impact, leaving the entire area in ruins.
The two forces remained locked in stalemate. Dazzling blue light scattered in every direction, almost making it impossible to open one's eyes.
The extreme cold pressed forward step by step. Fenris clenched his teeth, desperately mobilizing the energy inside his body. The high temperature brought by the continuous atomic breath granted him destructive power, but his body was also enduring immense pressure.
A human body's tolerance was ultimately no match for Godzilla's. Fenris's body temperature began rising rapidly. Veins bulged across his forehead, and as time passed, the vertical pupils in his eyes also lit with a piercing blue glow, making him look more and more savage.
Even so, under Loki's full-force output, Fenris did not retreat half a step. Instead, he forced himself forward by one step. The hum of the breath erupting from his mouth exploded louder, and the atomic torrent swelled several times larger.
Loki felt the pressure in his palms spike. This powerful artifact, which in Laufey's hands had once been enough to extinguish stars, now seemed somehow withered in his own grasp. The cold stream it released was certainly terrifying, but before this man, it was far from unleashing that apocalyptic pressure.
"Boom!"
Holding the Casket of Ancient Winters while facing that surging wave of heat directly, Loki stood amid bone-piercing cold, yet cold sweat uncontrollably beaded across his forehead.
"What in the Nine Realms is this Midgardian monster?"
Loki stared at the artifact in his hands, his face full of disbelief.
How could there possibly be anyone in the world capable of withstanding the Casket of Ancient Winters through his own strength?
Even Odin at his peak had been forced to avoid Laufey's edge when Laufey wielded the Casket of Ancient Winters. Was the gap between himself and this man truly that great?
Was his own strength really that poor?
A bad feeling rose in his heart. Looking at the monster in the distance—eyes flashing with blue light, features savage and terrifying, already no longer seeming human—Loki instinctively felt the urge to retreat.
The next moment, the Casket of Ancient Winters in his hand, glowing with soft blue light, abruptly scattered into points of light. In its place, a brilliant golden radiance gathered.
In the blink of an eye, a golden spear with an exposed edge and a sharp, cold gleam emerged.
(End of Chapter)
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