Myth: The Ruler of Spirituality

“Now!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Laine noticed that Erebus’s figure had disappeared without a trace, and he stepped closer to the fragment he had chosen. The divine authority of Death once again transformed into the Black Sword, which he grasped tightly with both hands, summoning the power of the Spirit Realm to strike fiercely on the surface of the fragment.

In silence, a barely noticeable crack appeared and then healed. But when it reverted to its original state, Laine’s figure had also vanished without a trace.

Thus, in the void beyond this world, the past silence was restored once more.

…

Lights and shadows flashed before him, and illusions ebbed and flowed. The moment he stepped into the fragment, time seemed to stretch into infinity, and scenes from days gone by unfolded one after another before Laine.

That seemed to be the ‘memory’ of the world, containing its desires before destruction. In the visions, Laine seemed to see ice and fire clearly delineating and then converging at the junction, within a void spanning the chasm on both sides.

From the original spring in the northern land of ice and mist, twelve rivers extended, flowing southward into the territory of the Kingdom of Flames. The river water cycled eternally between the domains of ice and fire, solidifying into glaciers and evaporating into mist.

Ultimately, in this perpetual cycle, the first life, the Titans, were born…

“Step—”

The illusion dissipated, and when Laine came back to his senses, he found himself inside the world of the fragment.

Unlike what he saw from the outside, there was no golden light here—only a landscape of deathly stillness.

The sky was dim, the ground cracked, and a sense of decay and ruin permeated the surroundings, without any sign of life.

On the ground, with the vision of a deity, one could occasionally spot distant ruins of buildings or dried-up riverbeds, all seeming to prove that in the past, a race with intelligence had once existed here.

And looking at all this, Laine’s speculations were finally confirmed.

“Asgard, the highest of the Nine Realms, the domain ruled by the Aesir Tribe, is indeed this place.”

“Who would have thought, I just picked a name at random, and it would actually summon its rightful owner?”

Laine felt somewhat emotional. Without a doubt, the predecessor of this broken world was indeed another world recorded in later myths.

Unlike Chaos, although this present world was somewhat isolated from the exterior, also forming interfaces like the Underworld that almost claimed to be a realm in itself, Chaos as a whole was still integral, which was not the case here.

In the days when this world was whole, a World Tree stood tall among the realms, with the nine great nations each suspended in different positions of the tree, together constituting this fantastic and magnificent mythic world.

The ‘Midcourt’ that Laine previously named for the fifth layer of Hell was located right in the center of the Nine Realms, also known as Midgard, the world where mortals dwelled.

As for ‘Asgard’, where he was currently, it was the highest of the Nine Realms, the domain of the Aesir Tribe, ruled by the famed Divine King Odin in later times.

“If I remember correctly, in the records of the Scandinavian mythology, one of the three roots extending from the World Tree reaches here, taking root next to the Well of Urd.”

“I wonder what, if anything, is left of them now.”

Standing mid-air, Laine looked into the distance. The potential remnants of Divine King Odin, the possibly destroyed Well of Urd, the legendary ‘Rune Symbols,’ and the roots of the World Tree, these were the reasons Laine chose this world.

Although it was highly probable that not all of them remained, finding just one would make him feel that his journey was worthwhile.