Chapter 1 The Battlefield Ruins

Vivian summoned a large swarm of bats and surveyed the surrounding terrain from high above, quickly locating the area that had appeared on the surveillance footage. It was a battlefield ruin located on the riverbank, some distance from the main battlefield on the Wigrit Plain, but no less horrific. Vivian believed this was the opening battlefield of Ragnarok: frost giants, fire giants, and various demons and monsters from other dimensions had stormed into Asgard through the Bifrost here.

The valiant Heimdall had fought desperately against the invaders here, but the gatekeeper had ultimately perished alongside Loki.

This small battlefield was situated between two massive tentacles, forming a triangular shape as if cradled by two small mountain ranges. The surveillance footage seen in Valhalla perfectly matched the characteristics of this area, but Hao Ren found no signs of human activity here.

"No scent," Lily reported after sniffing around on the ground, "I'm sure no one's been here for at least three months. But there are traces of human activity, some of the equipment on the corpses has been taken, and some things have fresh and old cut marks."

"Sounds like 'battlefield scavengers'," Iza muttered, "Two thousand years, could so many people really have survived?"

"I can't believe they survived the deadly arcane radiation to this day," Vivian said, shaking her head. Then her gaze was suddenly drawn to something not far away, and she looked up at it in a daze.

Hao Ren followed her gaze and saw a massive tentacle emerging from the end of the earth in front of him, extending all the way into the sky. The tentacle was covered with a layer of fragmented, colorful crystals, and at the end of the crystals was a ring-shaped crystal gate. The gate rotated constantly, leaking unstable light: these must be the legendary Bifrost.

Before this fragmented crystal bridge, a particularly tall figure stood proudly against the light.

This was an Asgardian warrior with a thick beard and hair, wearing the alloy armor unique to the Aesir. He was covered in scars, and the armor on his chest was deeply dented: that was where his fatal wound was. The warrior stood facing the Bifrost, leaning forward slightly, as if preparing to pounce, and he had not turned around until the moment of his death. Behind him, a broken spear propped against his lower back: in his last moments, he had probably used this method to keep himself standing.

Two thousand years had also severely weathered the warrior's appearance, but incredibly, his corpse had not completely rotted. He had simply turned into a mummy in the wind, as if the mission of guarding the bridge still weighed on his shoulders, allowing him to withstand the grinding of time.

"Heimdall... all of Asgard has fallen, and you still haven't fallen," Vivian said softly as she approached the warrior, feeling somewhat emotional.

"Admirable." Galarondra spread his hands on either side of his body, leaning his upper body slightly forward, paying tribute to the warrior as a Dragon King. He didn't know who Heimdall was, but as a martial Gold Dragon, he expressed respect for the other's fighting spirit.

Vivian pointed to another direction: "And over there is Loki, his death was not a pretty one, the poor guy."

A rather large male corpse lay in front of Heimdall. His bones were unusually large, and his size completely exceeded that of a normal Aesir. The corpse was separated from its head, its torso lying ten meters away, while its head rolled at Heimdall's feet.

"Loki was a descendant of the Frost Giants. At first, he wasn't so evil, but later he became more and more extreme. Some people thought that it was his evil blood from the giants gradually awakening in his body, but I now suspect that he went mad after coming into contact with the World Tree sap from the Nibelungen region. The black dragon Nidhogg has been gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil in the underworld for years, and the eldest son's source blood has contaminated a third of Helheim and permeated the mountains, seeping into the water source of Nibelungen. Loki went to investigate the water source problem in Nibelungen, and he was a little abnormal after he came back."

"You were pretty familiar with Heimdall?" Hao Ren asked curiously.

Vivian shook her head: "Not very familiar, but he left a deep impression on me. Heimdall was a dull guy, and particularly rigid. He was meticulous when guarding the gate, and even though I was a friend of Odin, this blockhead stopped me in front of the Bifrost more than once. But apart from that, his courage and loyalty were unmatched in the Nine Realms."

Lily scratched her head: "How come I suddenly feel like these Norse aliens have become the good guys, and the demon hunters who liberate all mankind have become the villains?"

"Because everyone has flesh and blood, and no matter whether they are good or bad, there will always be brave people, and courage doesn't distinguish camps," Vivian shook her head gently, "Here you will sigh at the courage, fearlessness, and tenacious struggle of the Norse gods in the past, but if you go back to that era and look at the living environment of human beings at that time, you will sigh at the cold-bloodedness, ruthlessness, selfishness and tyranny of Odin and his followers. After all, the war of extinction between races does not distinguish between good and evil. The entire mythological era has been ups and downs, and the final result is that human beings and aliens have exchanged living space. And human beings are the true aborigines of the earth, and aliens are just a group of otherworlders living off their parents, so this world will eventually belong to human beings. In this whole process, whether the demon hunters are willing or not, they have played the role of 'liberating mankind', so from the perspective of human beings, they have become the 'righteous' army."

Nangong Sanba walked around Heimdall's remains and suddenly found something: "Hey, come and take a look at this!"

Hao Ren went over to check the situation. It turned out that Nangong Sanba had found a pile of small ritual offerings: just a few meters away from Heimdall, several stones were stacked together in a regular pattern, and patterned pottery pots and rusty spearheads were placed on the stones. These inconspicuous things were almost indistinguishable from the surrounding battlefield ruins, and it was only through careful observation that one could see that it was a small altar.

The data terminal immediately flew over to check: "The last record... is a hundred years ago."

"Someone is offering sacrifices to Heimdall," Hao Ren exchanged glances with Vivian, "It's definitely not that crazy Valkyrie."

"I'm afraid it's those 'battlefield scavengers'," Iza looked up at the Bifrost, "They came through this gate."

After leaving some more monitoring probes on the battlefield ruins, Hao Ren and his party stepped onto the unusually thick tentacle of the eldest son (or rather, the branch of the "World Tree"), and the Bifrost stretched out under their feet.

In ancient Norse mythology, the "Bifrost" was a long bridge of light extending from Asgard. The Aesir gods used cloud rainbows and incredible divine power to build this bridge, using it to connect the roads between the human world and the divine kingdom. But in fact, the space cracks connecting various alien spaces were things that had been attached to the branches of Yggdrasil before Asgard was established. The Bifrost was just a stabilizing device used to solidify these space cracks and artificially control their opening and closing: the Aesir gods used this method to establish the closure and inviolability of their "divine kingdom", and also to restrain the order of the Nine Realms.

On the day of Ragnarok, the giant and monster army forcibly attacked the Bifrost entrance at the Asgard end, and Loki, acting in coordination from within, destroyed the restrainer that was originally used to protect the teleportation gate. As a result, after a serious overload, the Bifrost was destroyed, the crystal walkway broke into hundreds of pieces, and the teleportation gate at the end of the bridge could no longer be closed, becoming a permanent half-open state.

The ring-shaped teleportation gate at the end of the crystal walkway was very large, and it seemed that even a large passenger plane could easily enter and exit. A large number of components of the teleportation gate were constantly running in the air, making rumbling noises. Vivian came to the gate, casually threw a small bat in, and explained to the people around her at the same time: "There is only one Bifrost in Asgard, but it can lead to all the other eight alien spaces. By changing the rotation mode of this ring, the gate can be mapped to the paths of the other kingdoms. And if the guardian of the Bifrost—that is, Heimdall—dies, the mapping relationship of the Bifrost will be immediately disrupted and solidified."

Hao Ren frowned: "That is to say, we can't determine which kingdom is on the other side of the teleportation gate now, and we can't determine the specific location of any kingdom?"

Vivian sighed: "Odin has a gemstone embedded in his left eye. This gemstone can reflect the real paths of the Nine Realms, and can also restore control of the Bifrost after Heimdall's death. Originally, what I wanted to do was to find Odin's body first after arriving here, and then use the power of the gemstone to explore the other alien spaces one by one and find Mimir's spaceship. But now Odin's whereabouts are unknown, so we can only search for them kingdom by kingdom."

At this time, a wisp of blood mist floated out of the teleportation gate, and re-condensed into the shape of a small bat in Vivian's hand.

"The situation on the other side is not good," she frowned, "I don't think there can be any survivors there."