Odin did not answer; he simply continued to apply the seal, golden runes branding themselves onto Hela’s body layer after layer.
Those runes sizzled as they touched her skin, and her deep green divine power was suppressed back into her body bit by bit, like a Beast trapped in a cage gradually quietening down.
“No—!” Hela began to struggle, her body twisting violently within the confinement of the golden runes, the pain of her severed arm completely forgotten at this moment.
The final, unwilling flames burned in her deep green eyes as she reached out toward Odin with her intact hand, her fingertips gathering the last vestige of her divine power.
But it was too late.
The seal was complete.
The moment the final layer of golden runes descended, Hela’s body grew translucent, as if being stripped from the real World by some invisible force.
Her voice grew more and more distant, her figure became increasingly blurry, and her struggles grew weaker and weaker.
“You will regret this, Father…” These were Hela’s final words, a voice as soft as a whisper, yet carrying something heavier and deeper than a curse.
“You will regret today’s decision…”
Before her voice could fade, her figure completely dissipated.
At the top of the Golden Palace, only a faint trace of deep green light and the massive gap blasted open remained, proving that this duel had indeed taken place.
At the same time, Fenrir at the other end of the battlefield suddenly let out a sky-shaking howl of grief.
The giant wolf was hunting down the last few Valkyries, but the moment Hela disappeared, it stopped abruptly in its tracks, a nearly human sadness welling up in its amber beastly eyes.
“Awoo—”
Fenrir howled to the heavens, a cry filled with endless grief and rage.
It turned and sprinted toward the Golden Palace, but a barrier of golden runes blocked its path, stopping it dead in its tracks.
Odin looked at the giant wolf, a trace of complex emotion flashing in his right eye.
He raised his hand, and another sealing rune descended from the sky, branding itself precisely onto Fenrir’s massive body.
The giant wolf struggled and roared, but its body, like Hela’s, began to turn translucent, completely vanishing from the battlefield amidst a shrill, long howl.
“Fenrir shall be exiled to the same Underworld,” Odin’s voice echoed across the empty battlefield, “imprisoned together with Hela.”
Odin stood where he was, the Eternal Spear slung low at his side.
His single eye reflected the empty ground and the closed rift.
Only after a very long time did he slowly and heavily exhale a breath.
That breath carried all of his strength.
As his golden divine power exhaled from his body, he seemed to age a thousand years in that instant, his straight back slouching slightly.
But the war was not entirely over.
The slaughter between the Nine Realms Allied Forces and the remaining forces of Asgard continued.
Although the Death Legion had lost its unified command after Hela’s exile and began fighting individually, they still retained their instincts for battle.
Within that massive undead army, the most dangerous part had yet to be completely wiped out.
Those Void Rangers.
Asat Pramad stood on the eaves, shifting his gaze away from Odin and back toward the chaotic battlefield.
The movements of the Death Legion’s Undead Warriors had clearly slowed down after losing Hela’s command.
Their attacks were no longer as fierce and coordinated as before, reverting instead to a mechanical style of combat driven solely by instinct.
The soldiers of Asgard and the Nine Realms Allied Forces seized this opportunity to launch a massive counteroffensive, slaying, purifying, and sealing the leaderless undead one by one.
But the situation with the Void Rangers was entirely different.
These creations of the Antimatter Legion had never relied on Hela’s orders to act in the first place.
Asat Pramad had injected independent combat logic into them; even if their commander disappeared, they would still continue to fight according to their preset tactical patterns until they were completely annihilated.
Even more troublesome was that once the Void Rangers sensed Hela’s presence vanish, they automatically entered a third mode—the Skirmish Indiscriminate Annihilation Mode.
In this mode, the Void Rangers abandoned all formations and coordination.
Every single individual became an entirely independent hunter.
No longer concentrating their attacks on a single line of defense, they dispersed and infiltrated every corner of the battlefield—emerging from rooftops, shadows, wall crevices, and even underground—to launch surprise attacks on any non-Void Ranger targets.
This skirmish mode threw the newly reformed Asgardian army back into chaos.
An Asgardian archer had just drawn his longbow to aim at a distant undead when a pitch-black hand suddenly reached out from the shadow beneath his feet, grabbing his ankle.
The moment he looked down and saw that hand, his ankle and foot had already vanished.
He lost his balance and fell to the ground, and then the hand pressed against his abdomen.
Everything ended in silence.
Two Vanir mages were working together to cast an area-of-effect sealing spell, golden runes spreading across the ground.
Suddenly, the wall they were leaning against back-to-back split open silently, and two Void Rangers reached out from the crack simultaneously, slashing at the back of their necks from left and right.
Before those two figures could even make a sound, their heads vanished in a spine-chilling manner, leaving only their bodies standing in their spellcasting poses for a brief moment before slowly collapsing.
Even the medical clinic treating the wounded at the edge of the battlefield was not spared.
A Void Ranger had somehow breached the outer defensive lines, appearing like a black ghost behind the Asgardian female medics who were bandaging wounds.
A flash of annihilating light flickered, and two wounded soldiers and a female medic vanished into thin air simultaneously.
The remaining medics screamed and scattered in panic, and the entire medical clinic fell into complete collapse within seconds.
The Nine Realms Allied Forces paid a far heavier price in this skirmish hunt than they had on the frontal battlefield.
They had originally thought that repelling the main force of the Death Legion head-on would count as a victory, completely failing to anticipate that these pitch-black monsters would become even more terrifying after losing their commander.
The Frost Giants’ unit was attacked from all sides simultaneously by a group of Void Rangers.
The massive bodies of these blue giants became unavoidable targets in the indoor environment, and the Void Rangers climbed up the Frost Giants’ legs like a swarm of ants.
Large swathes of ice vanished wherever they passed, and the Frost Giants’ bodies were shaved away layer by layer in the annihilation, finally collapsing with a crash like rotten wood hollowed out by termites.
The fate of the Fire Giants was even more tragic.
Although their lava bodies could burn continuously, the Void Rangers’ annihilation effect could erase even magma.
One Fire Giant’s right arm was grabbed by two Void Rangers simultaneously, and its entire lava arm from shoulder to fingertips vanished completely within a fraction of a second.
The Fire Giant let out a deafening roar, slamming a fireball from its left hand toward the two Void Rangers.