Odin stared at Gungnir.

This had never happened before.

The spear had fought beside him across the Nine Realms for thousands of years. No force had ever left a sustained corrosion on it. Not once.

He channeled his divine power immediately, throwing it against the strange ice flame.

The two forces collided inside the spear, using Gungnir itself as the battlefield. A piercing sizzle tore through the air. The shaft trembled violently. Thunder detonated within it, driving the Qian Blue Ice Flame back inch by inch.

Odin's brow locked tight.

Even through Gungnir, he could feel it, that absolute cold seeping into his divine power. Creeping toward the source. As if it meant to freeze him from the inside out.

"What terrifying flames."

He raised his hand without hesitation.

"Return!"

Gungnir became a streak of light, wrenching itself free and snapping back into his grip. The moment it landed, his divine power erupted, golden lightning cascaded down the shaft like a waterfall, scouring the ice flame off the metal.

Most of it.

At the spearhead, a tiny cluster of blue fire kept burning. Stubborn. Unyielding. He could suppress it, push it back, but he could not put it out.

Odin didn't waste another second. He flicked his wrist.

That small cluster of Qian Blue Ice Flame flew free of the spear and hit the ground.

The moment it landed, freed from the pressure of his divine power, it spread.

Fast.

The eerie blue fire exploded outward from the impact point in every direction. The temperature of the entire training ground plummeted. The metal floor groaned and cracked, fractures racing across the surface like spiderwebs. Frost swallowed the arena, half the field glazed over in the span of a breath.

Odin stepped back from the expanding edge without hesitation, clearing the frozen zone.

Thor's eyes were wide.

"Father was actually... forced back?"

His father. The man who had never retreated. Facing Hermione's attack, he had chosen to evade.

It didn't fit. It didn't make sense. It turned everything Thor thought he understood completely on its head.

---

At the center of the field, Odin stood at the boundary of the spreading ice flame. He looked at the frost blanketing the ground, then looked at Hermione across the ruined arena. Something complicated moved behind his single eye.

Shock. Admiration. And beneath both, faint, almost imperceptible: joy.

"The Ancient One truly did not misjudge you."

His voice carried through the cold.

"In just a few short years, you have grown to this."

Hermione didn't answer. She raised her wand.

"Again."

Her tone was calm. Her eyes were not.

Odin held her gaze for a long moment, then nodded.

"Alright."

He raised Gungnir.

This time he didn't throw it. He swept it through the air in a single arc.

Golden light blazed. Gungnir fractured into duplicates — one spear, two, ten, dozens, multiplying until over a hundred golden lances hung suspended in the air, surrounding Hermione on every side. Every spearhead aimed at her. Every one crackling with thunder, trailing golden arcs.

The sight alone was suffocating.

"Go!"

All of them launched at once.

They closed from every direction simultaneously, sealing off every possible retreat. The thunder wrapped around each shaft carved burning trails through the air.

Hermione took a slow breath. She didn't Apparate.

Purple light blazed around her.

The Super Shield Charm deployed, but it didn't hold its sphere. Under the pressure of her will, it shifted. Contracted. The barrier pulled tight to her body, conforming to her shape, becoming a second skin of invisible force rather than a dome.

The first Gungnir hit her shoulder.

CLANG!

The spearhead met the barrier and sent a ripple spreading across the surface. It pressed forward. And slowed. The closer it came to her skin, the thicker the resistance, until the gap between the tip and her body was measured in fractions of a millimeter. Then it stopped.

It was that close. Close enough that one more fraction of force should have broken through.

It didn't move.

Odin poured more divine power into it. Nothing.

The second spear hit. The third. The tenth.

One after another, over a hundred Gungnirs struck and were stopped, each one frozen at that same impossible distance, held there by the invisible field. The thunder clinging to the shafts never even had a chance to discharge. The Qian Blue Ice Flame coating the barrier met it first and snuffed it out.

Hermione stood in the middle of it all. Perfectly still.

Odin's expression broke.

His single eye, the eye that had watched empires rise and fall across thousands of years, showed something it rarely showed.

Genuine shock.

"How is this possible..."

If it were only the ice flame, that bizarre magic interfering with his power, he could have rationalized it. But what he was seeing now was different. Hermione was taking Gungnir's direct thrusts. With her body. Not deflecting them. Not countering them.

Enduring them.

Hermione looked up.

"My turn."

She raised her wand and flicked it. Lightly. Almost casually.

A bolt of crimson light shot out.

The Blasting Curse.

BOOM!

The explosion hit Odin square in the face before he'd fully registered what was happening. His divine power held, no real damage. But the golden armor, the armor worn by the All-Father, the armor that was itself a symbol of his dominion over the Nine Realms, now bore a massive, ugly scorch mark across the chest.

Odin looked down at it.

Silence.

Several long seconds passed.

Then he laughed.

"Hahahaha!"

The sound rang out across the training grounds, full and unrestrained. He looked up at Hermione, and his single eye was bright with something that had no trace of shame in it.

"I concede."

The arena went silent.

Nobody moved.

"What?"

Thor stepped forward. "Father, you haven't lost! That strike didn't even hurt you — you still have everything left to play! How can you concede to an Earth wizard?"

In his mind it was simple: Odin's clothes were a little scorched. That was all. The King of Asgard, ruler of the Nine Realms, surrendering to a girl who hadn't even finished growing up?

Odin turned to look at his son. He sighed.

"Thor. Look carefully."

"My strongest attack could not break her defense."

"She already stands in an unassailable position."

Thor opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

"And that last strike — she pulled it. Deliberately."

Odin's tone shifted. Heavier now.

"If she had used that ice flame instead. Or that green killing magic she's so fond of..." He paused. "Even with divine power protecting me, I wouldn't have walked away clean today. If I was lucky enough to walk away at all."

A loss was a loss.

The All-Father didn't make excuses for himself.

Thor stood rigid, jaw hanging. He turned to stare at Hermione. His eyes said everything, that this was impossible, that none of this should have been real.

Frigga. Loki. Banner. All of them, in that same moment, felt the word Witch rewrite itself in their minds. They had known she was strong. Knowing it and watching it were two entirely different things.

This was a figure who had ruled the Nine Realms for thousands of years.

Defeated by a girl not yet twenty.

---

At the edge of the arena, the Archbishops of Sin stood with varying expressions.

Agatha exhaled slowly.

She had thought the Dark Dimension energy had changed her. A qualitative leap, not just growth, and if she couldn't match the Prophesied Witch, she had at least told herself the gap wasn't humiliating.

She'd been wrong.

Back in the palace hall, when Odin had praised her, she'd felt pleased with herself. Quietly smug.

Reality had just finished slapping that out of her.

Odin's strongest attack. If Agatha had been standing in Hermione's place, burning through everything she had, she still wasn't certain she would have survived it.

Just what kind of monster is she.

Agatha turned the thought over in her head, and felt the last of certain quiet ambitions quietly die.

Wanda, across from her, was in a completely different world.

She hadn't followed most of the mechanics. But the light show had been extraordinary, and the ending had been deeply, thoroughly satisfying.

➤ Next: Armament Haki

Chapter 380 - Armament Haki

"Lady Witch is so cool!"

Wanda pumped her fist, stars dancing in her eyes, bursting with secondhand pride.

Tom Riddle stayed expressionless, gave a single shrug, and felt absolutely nothing.

His face said: obviously.

From the first time he met Hermione and got ground into the dirt, he had accepted reality. After that, he'd watched her pull off one impossible trick after another. As proud as Little Voldy was, he couldn't pretend otherwise. He was nowhere near her level.

Stay flat on the ground and you won't get hurt.

A brief silence settled over the room.

"Your Majesty is far too modest."

Hermione put away her wand, let the Qian Blue Ice Flame dissolve from her hand, and smiled.

"In terms of raw power, I'm genuinely no match for you. Just now I simply found an opening. I've had some new insights into magic lately and stumbled onto a new application. That's all."

That wasn't false modesty. It was the truth.

Her magic level really was below Odin's. During the exchange, she'd gotten a rough read on him — peak Tier 7. In a straight war of attrition, her Tier 6 magic would burn out long before his did.

The only reasons she'd been able to hold her own were the level boost from the Qian Blue Ice Flame and a defensive method she'd improvised on the spot.

Facing Gungnir's thrust, she'd realized instantly that Elementalization was useless. The spear never missed, and it came with a spatial lock. There was no dodging it.

The only option was to push her defense beyond its current ceiling.

In that split second, her mind landed on the Power Stone.

In the Marvel universe, the Power Stone's presence elevated her Ancient Magic by one full tier above her baseline magic level, putting it on par with the Qian Blue Ice Flame.

The idea hit her all at once. She took that Tier 7 power and used it to forcibly compress the Tier 6 Super Shield Charm, pressing it flush against the surface of her skin until the defensive density was absolute. Then she layered an invisible repulsion field over it.

The closer Gungnir got, the stronger the pushback became.

Stacked on top of the Super Shield Charm's defense, the combination had stopped a divine artifact dead at a distance that barely cleared her skin.

It worked far better than she'd expected.

Physical defense: permanently maxed out.

Hermione gave the technique a name in her head.

Armament Haki.

Odin watched her. Something complicated moved through his single eye.

"Lady Witch." His voice was heavy. "Your strength is already formidable, but there is something I must tell you." He paused. "Hela has plundered most of Asgard's origin. Her current power — it does not fall short of mine. It surpasses it."

Hermione's pupils shrank.

Stronger than Odin?

That put her at Tier 8.

Tier 8. Even in a universe stuffed with monsters and gods, that was something that walked through walls without slowing down.

She ran the numbers fast.

Agatha, Tom Riddle, Wanda, add them all up, and a Tier 8 Hela still swatted them aside. The gap between levels was simply too wide.

Odin had held on this long at peak Tier 7 because of Thor and Banner's help, yes, but also because of thousands of years spent deeply bonded to Asgard's origin. That bond was his edge. And it was eroding. Once Hela absorbed the origin completely, he had no path to victory.

There was only one answer. She had to get her own magic to Tier 7.

At Tier 7, with the Qian Blue Ice Flame, the Power Stone, and Armament Haki stacked together, combined with Odin and the others, she'd have a genuine shot at facing Hela head-on.

But pushing to Tier 7 meant an enormous amount of Soul Energy.

And speaking of enormous quantities of Soul Energy...

Something clicked.

She actually knew a way. The fastest, most direct source on Earth. One kill and she'd have everything she needed.

The problem was that the fallout from killing it might be a bit much to deal with.

She weighed it for a moment. Thought of Death, in the other world.

Then decided to take the risk.

"Thank you for the warning, Your Majesty." Hermione nodded. "I understand."

She turned to face the Witch Cult. "Stay here and assist the God-King with the defense. Work out the specifics with Tom Riddle and His Majesty."

"I'm heading back to Earth."

Tom Riddle frowned. "Where exactly?"

"To find something that can speed up my advancement." Her tone was even. "I'll be back soon."

Odin didn't press her. He simply nodded. "We can hold a while longer. Go."

Hermione boarded the ship. Before leaving, she made one stop — the border of Helheim.

Green netherfire danced across cracked, dead ground.

She reached out. Her magic condensed into an invisible vessel and gathered a cluster of the flame into it.

She'd analyze Hela's power on the way back. Know your enemy.

The Space Stone was still with Thanos. Without it, she couldn't open a direct portal to Earth. She was stuck taking the ship the long way.

If only the Ancient One were still around.

There wasn't even anyone left to watch her back.

Ancient One. What am I supposed to do without you? Ancient One!

The ship fired up and punched through Asgard's atmosphere into the jump lane.

A few minutes later, over New York.

It touched down on the roof of Stark Tower.

Hermione called for Doubao.

A female figure appeared in front of her immediately.

"Master."

"Doubao, scan global geological data. Help me find a location." Hermione thought for a moment. "Somewhere with a lot of adamantium buried underground."

"And... probably a large number of powered individuals in the vicinity, but ones who have never surfaced publicly."

"Some who can fly and shoot lasers from their eyes. Some with superhuman speed. Some who can shape energy into weapons. A whole crowd of strange people."

"Understood."

Data streams flickered through Doubao's eyes. The Mind Stone on her forehead pulsed with quiet light.

Under 3 seconds later, she opened her eyes.

"South-central Indian Ocean. There is an uninhabited volcanic island in the area, permanently screened by dense cloud cover. Recent satellite data detected extremely powerful, high-frequency energy pulses deep underground. The surface rock structure also shows signs of unnatural uplift."

A string of coordinates materialized in the air.

Hermione grabbed Doubao. Magic surged. Apparition snapped into motion.

Space folded.

The next instant, they were hovering in midair above open ocean. Below them, the sea stretched out in every direction.

The unnamed volcanic island.

Sea wind tore across the water. Black reefs disappeared under walls of crashing surf.

The island's center was dominated by a dead volcano. But right now, the entire island was slowly rising, the ground bulging like something enormous was waking up beneath it.

"This is it."

Every drop of Tier 6 magic Hermione had came pouring out at once. She pulled on the Power Stone's enhancement alongside it.

"Chibaku Tensei!"

Purple light detonated.

BOOM!

The sky went dark. Invisible gravity tore at the cloud layers and ripped them into a massive spiral vortex.

Hermione drove both hands upward.

"Rise."

The crust split. Rock shattered.

Under the crushing gravitational pull of Tier 7 Chibaku Tensei, the island's surface came apart in layers.

The entire island cracked open from the center. Fissures shot outward in every direction, spreading across the rock like a spiderweb.

➤ Next: Celestial, Tiamut! — Words Unspoken