Marvel x Genshin: Mavuika, The Sun Goddess Rules Asgard — Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Laufey

The power of the Casket of Ancient Winters erupted like a primordial tsunami. The blizzard that had been momentarily dispersed by Mavuika’s fire re-condensed with a vengeance, becoming impossibly more violent.

The falling snowflakes sharpened into razor-edged blades, the howling cold wind thickened until it felt as viscous as glue, and even the fabric of space itself began to freeze, groaning as it grew brittle.

“Laufey is going all out,” Odin observed from afar, his single eye narrowed to a slit. “He intends to use the very source power of the Casket of Ancient Winters to rewrite the climate of Jotunheim itself.”

Down on the battlefield below, Mavuika and Hela felt the pressure surge in an instant.

Mavuika’s domain of fire began to buckle under the immense pressure, the ambient temperature dropping precipitously. The golden sphere of warmth visibly shrank, its radiant boundary being forced back from a hundred meters to seventy, then fifty… The Casket of Ancient Winters was exerting its absolute authority, its power like an invisible, colossal hand attempting to crush the defiant sun she had brought to this frozen wasteland.

A piercing, grating hiss echoed at the boundary where fire met ice—a raw, visceral sound born from the collision of two fundamental laws of the universe.

Hela fared even worse. Although her Death Divine Power was formidable, it possessed few direct counters to the encroaching, absolute cold. The Casket of Ancient Winters was a force of entropy, an artifact that froze *everything*, including concepts.

The swing of her night-black sword became sluggish, as if moving through hardening tar. Even the crackling lightning that wreathed Mjolnir’s head began to weaken, the arcs flickering and dimming.

“Sister!” Hela shouted, a rare note of anxiety sharpening her voice. “This damned thing is freezing my divine power! We must end this quickly!”

Mavuika’s gaze lifted, sweeping past the chaos to fixate on the highest point of the Royal Court.

Laufey stood there, a grim monarch holding the fully opened Casket of Ancient Winters with both hands. What poured from the artifact was no longer a mere pillar of frigid light, but a substantive, flowing “coldness”—a conceptualized absolute zero, the very origin of the phenomenon of “ice.”

“I will deal with him,” Mavuika stated, her voice calm and steady amidst the storm. “Hela, you clear the battlefield. Don’t let anyone else interfere with me.”

“By yourself?” Hela frowned, her grip tightening on Mjolnir’s handle.

“Trust me.” Mavuika offered her a slight smile, a sliver of warmth that shone like sunlight breaking through dark, storm-tossed clouds.

She then did the unexpected. Instead of expanding her domain, she retracted it, drawing every last wisp of divine fire back into her own body. The runes etched along the blade of the Sun-Blaze of a Thousand Suns began to glow with an incandescent, blinding light. The entire greatsword started to turn translucent, appearing as if it were forged not from metal, but from solidified, crystalline flame.

Then, she moved.

With every step Mavuika took, an Everburning Golden Lotus bloomed upon the frozen ground beneath her feet, instantly melting the ice before vanishing in a puff of golden steam. Her long, crimson hair no longer fluttered in the wind; instead, it blazed upward like a living pyre, the tips transforming into dancing tongues of ethereal fire.

She charged directly toward the Royal Court, toward Laufey, and toward the source of the endless winter itself.

Frost Giants along her path roared and attempted to block her advance, but their efforts were futile. Within a hundred meters of her radiant form, their thick ice armor began to melt and slough off in hissing streams. Their weapons drooped and dripped like melting icicles. Their very bodies, beings born of frost, began to spontaneously combust.

She became a living star, a humanoid singularity of pure heat and light. With every step, she carved a molten path of defiance through the world of absolute zero, an incandescent streak against a canvas of endless, stygian frost.

Laufey saw her coming.

“Arrogant!” the Frost King roared, his voice a crackle of breaking glaciers. He aimed the mouth of the Casket of Ancient Winters directly at Mavuika.

A torrent of pure azure energy gushed from the box—it wasn’t ice or snow, but “coldness” made manifest. Where this torrent passed, space fractured into fragile, crystalline shards, the flow of time visibly slowed, and even light itself seemed to bend and freeze into curved, silent icicles.

Mavuika did not dodge. She gripped her greatsword with both hands, raising the Sun-Blaze of a Thousand Suns high above her head.

A fire so brilliant it was almost blinding ignited from the sword’s blade. After a brief, silent flicker, it surged skyward with the unrestrained fury of a solar flare eruption. Mavuika’s entire body tensed, muscles coiling like steel springs as she gripped the hilt and swung down with ferocious, divine force.

The golden-red sword light collided with the cerulean torrent of absolute cold.

There was no sound.

Or rather, any sound that might have been produced was instantly annihilated by the two opposing extremes of power the moment it was born. All that remained was a silent, stark confrontation of pure light against dark, heat against cold, life against stasis.

Centered on the point of impact, the battlefield was cleaved neatly in two.

To the left was Mavuika’s Fire Realm. The ancient ice surface melted, boiled, and churned. Steam rose in thick plumes to form clouds, and from these clouds, warm raindrops fell, blooming into short-lived flowers of fire upon striking the ground. The air was filled with a shimmering, oppressive heat, so intense that space itself seemed to warp and distort.

To the right was Laufey’s Frost Hell. Everything was frozen solid. Time stood still. Even the falling snowflakes were suspended in mid-air, transformed into eternal ice sculptures. Several unfortunate Frost Giants caught in the crossfire remained locked in their charging postures, turned into crystalline ice statues. Their startled, furious expressions were perfectly preserved within their frozen forms. It was a zone of absolute silence, where even creatures born of the cold were themselves rendered inert.

The two domains pushed against each other, a constant war of mutual corrosion, squeezing and swallowing one another. A distorted, shimmering barrier formed at the boundary where fire and ice transformed frantically. A snowflake would fall, be instantly vaporized into steam; the steam would immediately flash-freeze into an ice crystal, and the crystal would vaporize again in an endless, violent cycle.

Hela stood at the very edge of this chaotic barrier, her expression solemn. She desperately wanted to rush in to aid her sister, but the moment she took a single step forward, she felt her Death Divine Power grow sluggish, as if it were being dragged into a mire. The Casket’s power specifically froze all concepts of “activity,” and death, being the ultimate cessation of life’s activity, was likewise suppressed and held in check.

“Damn it…” she gritted her teeth, slamming the head of Mjolnir into the ground in frustration. The impact created a fissure that stretched for a hundred meters, but the crack came to a dead stop the instant it touched the shimmering barrier, unable to penetrate the warped reality within.

She could only watch. She could only bear witness as her sister faced the Frost King and his ancient, terrible artifact alone.

In the center of the clashing domains, Mavuika and Laufey faced off, separated by a hundred meters. This distance, vast to a mortal, was functionally face-to-face for beings of their caliber.

Veins bulged on Laufey’s massive hands as the Casket of Ancient Winters hovered before his chest, continuously and mercilessly draining his life force to convert it into absolute cold. His ice-blue skin turned a deathly pale at a visible rate as a network of fine, ice-like cracks began to appear across his face—the backlash of overusing the relic was manifesting.

“Odin’s daughter…” he panted, his glacial eyes staring fixedly at Mavuika. “You are indeed strong… but the Casket of Ancient Winters is a primordial relic of Jotunheim! Its power is infinite! And you—how long can your fire burn? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? When your strength is finally exhausted—”

“You will defeat me?” Mavuika finished his sentence, her tone unnervingly calm. “Perhaps. But Laufey, look around you.” She tilted her head slightly, gesturing outside their dueling ground.

Laufey followed her gaze. Through the distorted, shimmering barrier, he saw the utter collapse of the Frost Giant battle lines. Although Hela could not intervene in their duel, she had unleashed an even more efficient and brutal carnage upon the periphery. The Death Guard and the Valkyrie Legion followed in her wake like a storm of steel and shadow, harvesting the Frost Giants—who had lost the empowering aura of the Casket—in massive swaths.

Further in the distance, Asgard’s Golden Fleet had shattered the final line of defense and had begun bombarding the Royal Court itself. Immense walls of ice collapsed under the searing energy blasts, ancient palaces were set ablaze, and countless Frost Giant civilians could be seen fleeing in terror.

“Your people are dying,” Mavuika’s voice was as warm as the heart of a star, but her words were as cold and sharp as ice picks. “Even if you defeat me here, Jotunheim has already lost this war.”

Laufey’s face contorted in a mask of rage and despair. He knew Mavuika was speaking the truth. Even if he struck her down, the Frost Giant defensive lines had already crumbled. War was never a contest between individuals, and besides, Asgard still had its most powerful warrior, Odin, who had yet to even make his move.

Laufey fell silent for a long moment, his chest heaving. Then, with a guttural roar, he began to drive the Casket of Ancient Winters even more frantically. He was the King of the Frost Giants, the sovereign Master of Jotunheim. How could he possibly admit defeat like this?

Mavuika clearly felt Laufey’s desperation manifest as a sudden, crushing surge of pressure. The Frost Hell began to expand, pushing her Fire Realm back.

But it was no longer possible to retreat. Mavuika understood that if she showed even the slightest hint of withdrawal, the overwhelming power of the Casket of Ancient Winters would immediately extinguish her fire.

Thus, Mavuika did not dodge. Instead, she too began to fully mobilize the divine power burning within her body.