The roar of his father left Thor frozen for a heartbeat.
It had been so long since he had seen his father so full of battle lust. In Thor's eyes, Odin's graying hair and beard seemed to shed their pallor, blazing into the same brilliant gold as his own. The aging king he remembered transformed before him into a mighty god-king in his prime, brimming with endless ambition and the hunger for war.
But no matter how magnificent his father was, it could not hide the blood that drenched his body, nor the gaping hole in his chest. Blood still poured from his heart. Asgardians did not heal like Heisenberg, who could regenerate the moment he had energy.
Staring at the wound, Thor clenched his jaw and raised his hammer, shouting at his father once more.
"But you're too badly hurt! You said it yourself, Father—that was your last thunder! Let me take over, Father. Trust me! I will defeat Heisenberg. I will make sure the sanctity and glory of Asgard never fade—"
BANG!
Before Thor could finish, Odin lunged forward, seized Thor's shocked face with his right hand, and slammed the naive thunder god onto the ground. Thor thrashed, his face grinding against the soil of Asgard, but no matter how he struggled, he could not break Odin's iron grip.
As he pinned Thor down, Odin bellowed.
"Tell me, Thor! If you were me, would you be content to die a god-king mouldering on a sickbed?"
Without waiting for an answer, Odin pressed on.
"If not, then do not challenge my will! Respect my final battle, my fight with Heisenberg. This is a clash of the strong, a final exchange between victor and vanquished. There is no assassination here, no scheme, no ambush, no trickery. This is the most primal, most sacred form of combat, and both of us are full of honor! One against one, until death!"
With that, Odin grabbed Thor by the hair with his blood-soaked hand and forced the disheveled prince to face him. Gritting his teeth, Odin roared at his son.
"And you, Thor! With your pitiful strength and naive thoughts, you keep trying to obstruct this sacred battle. Do you truly believe you could stand against me, or against Heisenberg, for even a single second? I showed you my final thunder so you would understand how vast the path ahead of you can be, not so you could charge in recklessly, blind to your own weakness and insignificance!"
Boom!
Odin hurled Thor away. Despite his efforts to stop himself, Thor tumbled across the ground for a dozen rolls before he could rise. When he got back to his feet, he saw his father standing there, bold and unrestrained, shouting at him with savage joy.
"What's more, never underestimate the final cards of an Asgardian god-king in his twilight years! Never!"
Then, before the stunned eyes of countless Asgardians, Odin's right hand shot up and clawed at his last remaining eye. Gritting his teeth against the agony, he tore out his final eye with his own fingers.
Blood streamed from the hollow socket. Odin clutched the eye in his right hand and raised it high.
"World Tree!"
At his roar, an intangible, illusory light descended and linked with the eye in his hand.
"I offer my last eye in sacrifice, to gain my final strength! I demand this battle! I demand to fight to the end!"
Crack!
Odin crushed the eye in his grip, but it instantly crumbled to ash, leaving no trace behind. In the same moment, violent thunder surged from within his body. The lightning gathered first at the bloody hole in his chest, then spread across every wound. Finally, even his empty eye sockets blazed with infinite lightning.
In that instant, even the thunder inside Thor began to tremble uncontrollably. He felt as if he could no longer answer the call of the storm. Not because his power was gone, but because lightning itself now had a true king. By sacrificing his last eye on the brink of death, Odin had claimed the power of the true King of Thunder!
Wreathed in lightning, Odin fixed his hollow gaze on the distant Heisenberg. He began to walk, each step sending waves of thunder crashing outward like a stormy sea.
"Heisenberg!"
With a great shout, Odin broke into a run, charging straight at his enemy.
"I am already doomed! But you will experience the true might of the Aesir! You can take victory and honor from me, but you will respect my race, respect our strength! Come! Fight me! I have little time! Come!"
Boom!
With the final word, Odin pounded the ground and launched himself into the air. He crossed hundreds of meters in a single bound, crashing toward the distant throne of Asgard.
Heisenberg rose from the throne with a solemn expression, stomping the floor so hard that the surrounding flagstones shattered like ripples spreading across a calm lake. Using the force, he shot forward at a speed no Asgardian could follow and collided with the charging Odin.
CRASH!
The shockwave flattened more than thirty percent of the Asgardians to the ground. Countless walls and buildings collapsed. Neither Heisenberg nor Odin blocked. Their fists smashed into each other's faces.
Odin was hurled backward, but this time Heisenberg did not pursue, because Heisenberg flew even farther back than Odin. Odin's divine thunder easily tore through Heisenberg's skin, leaving two streaks of blood across his face, while Heisenberg's punch knocked out two of Odin's teeth.
No one had time to process the scene before the two grappled again. The onlookers could no longer track their movements. They could only guess their locations from the constant shockwaves that boomed through the air.
The shockwaves moved farther and farther away, from the sprawling city into the distant mountain range. Within minutes, mountains crumbled, rivers flowed backward. Blazing currents erupted into the far-off sky, only to be followed by dazzling crimson light. Frozen mountain ruins sparkled with crystalline shards, while molten lava trickled down shattered peaks. Then, in the next heartbeat, half a mountain range was hurled into the air, crashing straight at the figure blazing with lightning.
Thor watched with frantic anxiety, but the more he saw, the more he realized that the martial might he had always been so proud of was nothing but a child's fist. Compared to Odin and Heisenberg, he truly could not last a single second.
Beside Frigga, Loki's eyes were also wide with shock. "Fath... Father is that strong?"
"No," Frigga replied, still breathing heavily with awe. "You should be asking how Heisenberg can be that strong! I have only seen Odin enter that ancestral king state, where he draws on the very source of Asgard's power, three times. Once when he warred against us Vanir and killed my father Njord. That was when he took me, and I became his queen. The second time was three thousand seven hundred years ago, when the World Devourer invaded the Nine Realms. A weakened Galactus was driven back by a single spear from Odin. And the last time is right now. For the first time, I am seeing him unable to win in this state. Loki, my son, tell me: what kind of being is that Midgardian god? How can he possess such boundless, almost limitless power?"
Loki swallowed hard and shook his head helplessly. "I... I don't know," he said, hesitating. "I only went to Midgard intending to rule that world and force Odin into conflict with me. Now, of course, I'm very glad I failed. If I had faced Odin in this state, I would have died by his hand for sure. In any case, there on Midgard I... I was beaten badly by Heisenberg. I was truly seconds from death. But he let me go, and I surrendered. At the time, though, I never imagined the distance between them and me could be this vast."
He turned to Frigga, her breathtaking beauty as the goddess of love and the white feathers woven into her golden hair marking her as the goddess of wisdom unable to ease his heavy heart. "Mother, do you know what Odin's final power really is? Ever since he sacrificed his eye, his strength seems enough to make the universe tremble."
"I do not know," Frigga admitted with a sigh. "I am Vanir. Though my station as Queen grants me knowledge of many secrets of the Aesir, Odin would never share everything with me. And it seems neither you nor Thor have been told this secret either. I suspect that only one woman knows."
"One woman?!" Loki was stunned. He hesitated, glancing at Frigga, and whispered, "I never heard that Odin had another woman after you."
"No, not a woman in that sense. His firstborn daughter. Hela."
"Daughter?! I have an older sister?" Loki was completely dumbfounded. He stared blankly at Frigga. "Are you certain Odin had other children besides Balder and Tyr?"
"Yes, from a time long ago. Before my beloved Balder was even born, before he died. Before I myself came to Odin. Hela was the princess of death, the sovereign of the dead across the Nine Realms, the inheritor of Asgard's legacy, the sharpest blade of the Aesir, the destroyer of the Valkyrie legions, the goddess of rebellion, and the child Odin sealed away with his own hands."
Frigga shook her head gravely. "Perhaps only she knows what power Odin is using now. But if I were to guess, I would name it the Rune King. For the moment he sacrificed his final eye, I felt the runes of love and wisdom Odin bestowed upon me tremble in fear. Through sacrifice, he seems to have seized supreme authority over thunder itself. At this moment, I believe Odin has the power to war against the manipulators of fate, the Celestials themselves."
She gently rubbed Loki's head and let out a restless sigh. "Yet no matter how strong he is now, he has already lost. This state cannot last long. In a few more minutes at most, his divine power and lifespan, already fading fast, will strip him of the strength to fight. And his opponent... that human god-king from Earth, blazing like a sun... He can probably keep fighting for three more days and nights."
/-\
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