On his supreme throne, even the divine king Odin was shaken. Over the millennia, his brow had gained a few more lines of age, his once salt-and-pepper beard now nearly all white. He opened his single eye in astonishment, that eye which could pierce through all things gazing down from the pinnacle of the Nine Worlds at the source of the tremors below.
There, in the northern realm of fog, Niflheim, that world perpetually shrouded in dense mist, as silent as the realm of the dead, believed to be devoid of any living creatures, now, as the entire World Tree tilted, those impenetrable mists gradually dispersed, revealing the massive black dragon with giant wings within the Realm of Fog.
That black dragon was hideous and terrifying, its skeletal frame exuding an aura of profound evil. And beneath this black dragon was something incomprehensibly vast, like a continent, so immense that one could not take in its full scope at a glance, only vaguely discerning that it seemed to be something like the roots of a tree.
But what tree could have roots so enormous, as thick as a continent, as expansive as an ocean?
It was the World Tree.
And this black dragon, Odin even recognized it…
"The black dragon Nidhogg."
Odin's face darkened as he stared at the black dragon, his teeth clenched in anger.
In the hundreds of thousands of years since the birth of heaven and earth, those omens of world destruction that had once startled Odin awake had occurred more than once. Just as with that unprecedented great war between the Aesir gods and the Vanir gods, or the progenitor of the fire giants, Surtr, and Loki's three children, even the clashes between the Frost Giants and the gods, and…
This venomous black dragon Nidhogg.
To vanquish this black dragon, Odin had once joined forces with Loki, Thor and the other gods to cast this inherently evil black dragon directly into the underworld. He had thought that this black dragon would forever wail resentfully in the underworld with those departed ancient gods. Who would have thought that this black dragon would actually crawl back from the underworld and even secretly hide in the Realm of Fog to gnaw at the roots of the World Tree, intending to take revenge on the gods.
And now, this black dragon was roaring at the broken root of the World Tree before it, revealing its uncontrollable glee to the entire universe.
Even if the roots of the World Tree were massive and tenacious, under this black dragon's ceaseless gnawing for tens of thousands of years, eroded by the virulent saliva in the venomous dragon's mouth, even the rapidly regenerating roots of the World Tree had finally snapped completely.
One of the three roots supporting the universe had broken, and the World Tree inevitably began to tilt.
And below that root, the black dragon raised its head and let out a long howl.
"ROAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
The black dragon's shrill, thunderous roar echoed through the entire universe, reaching all Nine Worlds, allowing all the monsters and giants dissatisfied with the gods, all the evil forces, to hear it.
This roar was like a battle horn, proclaiming to the entire universe the arrival of the final battle of doom.
The divine king Odin's face turned ashen. He knew that this would be the greatest crisis the gods had ever faced among all the crises they had encountered.
…
The black dragon's shrill roar spread through the Nine Worlds, reaching even the ears of the Frost Giants in Jotunheim.
Those restless, eager Frost Giants, seeking revenge against the gods, realized that this was an unprecedented opportunity for them. Roaring, they launched the first and final great war since the Four Divine Wars, led by a Frost Giant leader named Iosuragna.
The ultimate decisive battle had begun.
This time, these mountain-sized giants marched with ground-shaking footsteps, forming the most massive army ever seen since the birth of the universe. Where they passed, winter descended, rivers ran dry, seas froze over, and a bone-chilling cold enveloped the entire world.
The terrible winter arrived in this world, accompanied by the piercingly cold north wind. Snow fell without cease, ice covered the ground.
The giants roared, hoisting mountains from the earth and hurling those majestic peaks at the divine realm of Asgard in the sky. These fearless Frost Giants declared the coming of war to those lofty gods who looked down upon the entire universe.
And in the Iron Forest of the underworld, the three wolf cubs secretly hidden away by the giantess Angrboda, who had birthed the three siblings, fed and raised on the bones of murderers and evildoers, had now grown up.
Skoll (Mockery), Hati (Hate), and Managarm (Gluttony) - their father, the demon wolf Fenrir, had been imprisoned by the treacherous gods, enduring the pain of blades piercing his throat and the torment of being bound by chains for tens of thousands of years. When they were young, they could only hide in the underworld of the death goddess Hel to avoid being discovered by the gods. But now, his offspring would be the first to avenge their father.
The three ferocious giant wolves, their savagery no less than their father Fenrir, howled as they raced towards the sky. Skoll chased the sun chariot of the sun goddess Sol, Hati pursued the moon chariot of the moon god Mani, while Managarm's greed surpassed even his two elder brothers as he ravenously opened his gaping, blood-red jaws, intending to devour the stars in the sky.
The sun goddess Sol dared not clash with the demon wolf behind her, thinking only of escape. The moon god Mani also lost his smile, quaking with dread as he drove his moon chariot across the sky, occasionally glancing back at the demon wolf Hati about to overtake him.
Many ancient monsters also awakened. The chains and seals the gods had once used to bind them could not suppress their desire to take revenge on the gods. Deep within the earth, they struggled and roared, intending to join this unprecedented final battle.
And at the same time, the great serpent that had slumbered for so long in the depths of the sea, its body long merged with the deep seabed, finally awakened.
Hearing the black dragon's roar beside it, the serpent raised its head. From the Nano City on its head came the faint cries of countless living beings. And looking at this restless universe, its cold, vertical serpent pupils revealed a deep monstrosity and irrepressible wild joy.
Ten thousand years.
It had been sealed at the bottom of the sea by the gods for over ten thousand years. The opportunity it had bided its time for and waited for so long had finally arrived!
On its body, those pure gold chains still rendered it unable to move, but over these ten thousand years, this great serpent had never stopped growing. Now, just how immense its strength had become, perhaps no one could imagine.
"Humph…"
The serpent exhaled heavily, stirring massive disturbances in the seawater, shaking even the old sea god Aegir's undersea palace thousands of miles away. The startled old sea god hurried over, only to see before him that giant serpent, which had not budged for more than ten thousand years, now beginning to struggle.