Chapter 736

"By Frigga, give me wings! This power is unbelievable!"

Sif hovered in the air, staring at the magnificent wings extending from her back. Even she could hardly believe what she was capable of now.

For whatever reason, she hadn’t experienced the same transformation as Frigga when they drank the fel blood together. Perhaps her bloodline wasn’t as exceptional. Perhaps the difference lay in their mindsets, or perhaps fate had simply chosen different paths for them.

Whatever the explanation, Sif hadn’t achieved the same harmonious fusion with fel energy that had allowed Frigga to transcend her former limitations.

There might have been some minor changes, but nothing particularly remarkable.

Fortunately, Frigga had her own reasons for wanting Sif to possess the same power she did. Finding a way to grant it to her hadn’t been especially difficult.

After all, people might instinctively think of Loki whenever someone mentioned Asgard’s greatest practitioner of magic, but that reputation overlooked one important detail. Loki had learned his sorcery from Frigga.

She was the true master.

And now, Sif wasn’t merely sporting a pair of wings. Her entire body had undergone a dramatic transformation, turning her into a genuine giantess.

Thor stared up at her, trying to estimate the difference in their sizes.

He suspected that, standing beside her, the top of his head would barely reach her chest.

Her equipment had changed along with her body.

That was only sensible. Armor and weapons designed for her former size would be useless if they didn’t grow with her. Yet the transformation had done considerably more than enlarge her old gear.

For starters, Sif had apparently discovered the concept of a proper helmet.

Her new helmet protected both her head and neck, and a retractable faceplate could be lowered over her face to shield her eyes and nose, leaving only her mouth exposed.

Her armor had undergone an even more dramatic overhaul.

Gone was the impractical outfit she’d worn before, with its exposed arms and legs and its questionable commitment to protecting the person inside it. In its place was a suit of heavy plate armor dominated by red, covering her from head to toe.

Even the backs of her hands and the tops of her feet were protected by thick plates. The armor still followed the contours of her upper body, but it looked considerably sturdier than her previous attire.

Her lower body received even more protection. Beneath her leg armor hung a layered skirt of overlapping plates, resembling a metal ball gown designed by someone who had developed an unhealthy obsession with battlefield survival.

It was, in short, exceptionally well protected.

Her weapons were equally practical.

She held a long, wickedly sharp spear in her right hand and a round infantry shield in her left. The shield was large enough to protect her from the chest down to her thighs, and a spare shortsword hung at her waist.

She was armed for both offense and defense.

The Cursed Warrior watched her transformation with growing unease.

This fight was going to be considerably more difficult than he’d anticipated.

It wasn’t simply Sif’s sudden increase in size. He couldn’t sense the changes in the energy flowing through her body, so her newfound magical power wasn’t what concerned him most.

No, the problem was much simpler.

She could fly.

Sif gave her wings a gentle beat and rose effortlessly into the air.

The sight was nothing short of majestic. The newly transformed goddess hovered above the battlefield, her crimson armor gleaming as her wings spread wide.

A Valkyrie in the heavens. A warrior queen whose presence commanded the battlefield.

And somewhere down below, a very unhappy Dark Elf was beginning to question several of his people’s technological priorities.

The Dark Elves had been developing their technology for thousands upon thousands of years. They possessed spaceships and could perform spatial jumps across the cosmos.

So why, exactly, had nobody thought to invent a personal flight system?

The Cursed Warrior was supposed to be the pinnacle of Dark Elf military engineering, the ultimate product of their civilization’s weapons research.

Yet here he was, stuck on the ground while his opponent floated out of reach.

What was he supposed to do? Throw rocks at her?

He hadn’t spent his entire existence becoming the Dark Elves’ most terrifying weapon just to discover that his greatest weakness was a lack of an anti-aircraft department.

Unfortunately for him, Sif had no intention of giving him time to contemplate the shortcomings of his people’s research and development.

She raised her right hand.

The spear lifted from her palm, hovering in the air as green energy gathered around its shaft. The longer she held it aloft, the more power accumulated. Light enveloped the weapon, making it appear both larger and more magnificent.

The Cursed Warrior’s expression darkened.

A flying opponent with a ranged attack.

Wonderful.

He wasn’t particularly agile to begin with, and now he’d found himself facing an enemy who could attack him from the sky without ever entering his reach.

Still, he wasn’t entirely without options.

His gaze settled on the spear, which was now aimed directly at him.

If he could get his hands on it, things might become considerably more interesting.

The energy gathering around Sif’s weapon reached its peak.

Her expression hardened.

She drew the spear back, then hurled it forward with all her strength.

Desperate Throw!

The spear shot through the air like a bolt of lightning.

Before the Cursed Warrior could react, it punched straight through his abdomen.

The attack’s magical force amplified the damage, tearing an enormous hole through his torso. The wound was roughly the size of a bowl, far more devastating than the neat puncture a conventional spear might have left behind.

An ordinary warrior would have collapsed on the spot.

The Cursed Warrior remained standing.

Sif watched him through the narrow opening in her faceplate, puzzled.

His durability wasn’t what surprised her. She already knew he was exceptionally tough.

It was his complete lack of movement.

Even if he had recognized that he couldn’t dodge the spear in time, surely his body should have responded instinctively. A flinch, a twist of the torso, anything.

Instead, he’d stood perfectly still and allowed the weapon to pierce him.

As though he’d wanted it to happen.

Her suspicion was confirmed a moment later.

The Cursed Warrior brought his hands together and clamped them around the spear, trapping it inside his own body.

If he couldn’t defend himself against a ranged attack, he would simply prevent his opponent from making another one.

Now the spear was his.

What could Sif do about it? Without her weapon, she would have to remain in the air and watch helplessly. And if she came down to retrieve it, she’d be walking straight into his reach.

It was a crude strategy, but it had a certain appeal.

Unfortunately for him, Sif saw through it immediately.

She raised her right hand, curled her fingers into a claw, and pulled backward.

The spear shuddered.

The Cursed Warrior felt it trying to tear itself free, as though some invisible force were summoning it back to its owner.

He dug in his heels and tightened his grip.

For a moment, the two forces seemed evenly matched.

Then Sif’s summoning magic began to overpower him.

His boots scraped across the ground as the spear dragged him forward. He leaned back, fighting to hold his position, but the pull was simply too strong.

He was about to lose his footing when he drove both feet into the earth with a tremendous effort.

The ground cracked beneath him. His boots gouged out deep furrows before he finally came to a stop.

And all the while, his body was healing.

The Cursed Warrior’s regenerative abilities were so powerful that the enormous wound in his abdomen had already closed.

Unfortunately, the spear was still lodged straight through him.

His flesh had healed around the shaft, trapping it in a solid mass of regenerated muscle.

Removing it would now be even more difficult.

Yet rather than cry out in pain, the Cursed Warrior seemed to relish the sensation. The agony only made him more ferocious, and his grip tightened until his knuckles strained against the weapon.

Sif sighed.

So much for retrieving her spear from a safe distance.

She abandoned the summoning attempt and extended a hand toward him.

A magic circle materialized beneath the Cursed Warrior’s feet.

It detonated instantly.

Fire erupted from the ground, accompanied by a violent blast that swallowed him in flames and smoke.

At the same moment, Sif beat her wings and dove.

She descended rapidly, landing near the spot where the Cursed Warrior had been standing. Without hesitation, she thrust her arm into the burning cloud.

The explosion had looked impressive, but she knew better than to expect much from it. The attack was mostly for show, intended to obscure her opponent’s vision and distract him long enough for her to recover her weapon.

Her fingers closed around the spear.

She pulled.

Nothing happened.

Sif’s expression darkened.

Damn it. He was still holding on.

Then the flames erupted outward.

The Cursed Warrior had been waiting for precisely this moment. Though the smoke and fire obscured his vision, he had felt the spear shift when Sif grabbed it.

He roared and charged straight through the flames.

His fists came flying at her from point-blank range in a wild, relentless barrage.

Sif retreated, but the attack failed to accomplish much.

Her shield was still in her left hand, and its broad surface protected everything from her chest to her thighs. No matter where the Cursed Warrior aimed his punches, she needed only to make small adjustments to intercept them.

He could try attacking her legs instead, perhaps sweeping them out from under her.

That would be difficult, too.

Sif was wearing heavy armor, and her lower body was protected by two overlapping layers of defense. A few punches or a sweeping kick weren’t going to accomplish much against that much metal.

Nevertheless, the situation had become awkward.

The Cursed Warrior had finally released the spear, so she should have been able to retrieve it. But a spear was a long weapon, and half of it remained buried inside his body.

They were standing far too close together.

There simply wasn’t enough room to pull it free.

Whenever Sif tried to retreat and create some distance, the Cursed Warrior immediately surged forward with another flurry of punches. Their movements canceled each other out, leaving them effectively in the same position.

His attacks weren’t getting through her defenses, but he had succeeded in keeping her on the defensive.

Sif had had enough.

With a furious shout, she stopped retreating.

Instead, she used the Cursed Warrior’s forward momentum against him, thrusting her right hand forward and driving the spear deeper into his body.

Only a short section of the weapon remained outside his torso.

Then she raised her leg and kicked the butt of the spear.

The weapon shot forward with a sharp hiss, tearing completely through the Cursed Warrior’s body and carrying a trail of blood with it.

Sif immediately beat her wings and soared over his head.

She twisted in midair, caught the flying spear, and finally reclaimed her weapon.

At last.

But she hadn’t even managed to climb back into the sky when a sudden rush of air warned her that something was approaching from behind.

She barely had time to turn.

The Cursed Warrior slammed into her with his chest thrust forward, deliberately impaling himself on the spear a second time.

He didn’t even slow down.

He drove himself farther onto the weapon while swinging his fists at Sif in another savage barrage.

Sif’s temper flared.

She had fought her way through an entire sequence of increasingly ridiculous maneuvers just to recover her spear, and now she was right back where she’d started.

The bastard was exploiting his own regenerative abilities to turn himself into a living battering ram.

He was literally throwing himself onto her weapon.

Did he have some kind of pathological need to get stabbed?

This couldn’t continue.

Sif gritted her teeth, roared, and activated another ability.

Unhallowed Impulse Shield!

The shield in her left hand erupted with energy.

A brilliant green barrier spread across its surface, followed by a tremendous directional shock wave. The force struck the Cursed Warrior at close range and hurled his enormous body backward.

He flew through the air like a siege engine that had suddenly been fired in the wrong direction.

But the moment Sif unleashed the ability, her own body faltered.

She staggered violently and had to plant the butt of her spear against the ground to keep herself upright.

Her breathing grew ragged.

She wasn’t Frigga.

Under normal circumstances, Sif shouldn’t have possessed this level of power at all. Her current strength was the result of Frigga’s subsequent purification ritual, which had forcibly elevated her abilities beyond their natural limits.

The transformation placed an enormous burden on her body.

She couldn’t maintain it indefinitely, and every powerful ability she used shortened the time she had left.

Both Desperate Throw and Unhallowed Impulse Shield were particularly expensive techniques.

She had already spent a significant portion of her reserves.

Sif drew several heavy breaths, then raised her spear and examined it.

Blood covered the shaft and blade. A sizable chunk of flesh remained caught on its viciously barbed head.

The weapon had clearly been designed to inflict the greatest possible damage.

Its head had a three-sided, blood-grooved design, with rows of backward-facing barbs lining every edge like a shark’s teeth. Near the base, a pair of hooked projections curved inward like tiger fangs, while even the short section of shaft immediately behind the head bristled with smaller, canine-like barbs.

Getting impaled by such a weapon was bad enough.

Trying to pull it back out was a considerably worse proposition.

Sif made no attempt to wipe away the blood or remove the scraps of flesh clinging to the blade.

Instead, she simply watched.

Then something strange happened.

A red glow spread across the spear.

The blood and flesh coating its surface began to disappear, not falling away but dissolving into the weapon itself. The spear was consuming them, absorbing the remains of its victim as though they were nourishment.

At the same time, some of the pallor faded from Sif’s face.

Her breathing gradually steadied, and a little color returned to her cheeks.

She had found a solution to her problem.

Combat was all about exploiting one’s strengths while compensating for one’s weaknesses. She knew her transformation couldn’t last forever, and she knew that using her more powerful abilities accelerated its decline.

Ignoring that limitation and hoping for the best would have been a fine way to get herself killed.

Sif had survived too many battles to make such a mistake.

Her spear possessed a peculiar property. Whenever it pierced an enemy and returned to her hand, it consumed the blood and flesh clinging to its surface, converting them into energy that flowed back into her.

The process wouldn’t eliminate the strain of her transformation, but it could replenish some of the power she spent and significantly extend the time she could remain in this form.

It was an elegant solution.

A horrifying one, perhaps, but an elegant solution nonetheless.

Sif had a name for her new weapon.

Bloodfall.

Before the Cursed Warrior could return, she beat her wings and rose into the sky.

She looked down at the spear in her hand, her expression complicated.

Bloodfall hadn’t been forged by a blacksmith. It had materialized when she transformed, born directly from her own mind.

It was a physical manifestation of something buried deep within her.

She had wanted a way to extend the duration of her transformation. Somehow, that desire had produced a weapon that sustained her by devouring the flesh of her enemies.

She gave a quiet, humorless laugh.

So this is what I’m really like beneath the surface.

She had never considered herself particularly cruel, much less evil. Yet her own power had answered her needs with something so vicious.

Perhaps there was a darker side to her than she had ever cared to acknowledge.

A faint, ruthless smile touched her lips.

"All right," she murmured. "Let’s finish this."

Sif raised Bloodfall once more.

Below her, the Cursed Warrior climbed out of the rubble. He roared at her, pounding his chest with both fists in an unmistakable challenge.

Come on!

He was practically begging her to stab him again.

Go on, then! If you’ve got the nerve, put that spear through me!

Sif answered with a cold laugh.

"Hmph."

This time, she poured a tremendous amount of energy into Bloodfall, but she didn’t throw it.

Instead, the spear began to spin.

Faster and faster, its shaft blurred until the weapon resembled the rotor of a helicopter. Green energy swirled around it, transforming the spinning spear into a deadly projectile.

Piercing Spear of the Undying Rakshasa!

Sif thrust her arm forward.

She didn’t need to hurl Bloodfall with all her strength. She merely guided it toward its target.

The spinning weapon shot through the air, darting left and right along an erratic trajectory as it hurtled toward the Cursed Warrior.

And this time, Sif had no intention of letting him keep it.