I am Thalos, Odin's older brother

Too cruel.

So brutal that King Arthur and the other commanders could hardly bear to watch.

Most human infantry units were suffering devastating loss ratios against the giants.

It wasn't a matter of giants being twice a human's height and needing two men to match one giant.

These monstrous humanoid beasts swung weapons the size of entire tree trunks—sometimes twice or even three times their own height. A single sweeping blow could clear a ten-meter radius, leaving no survivors. Those struck were launched through the air, broken and mangled.

And with the frequency of these brute giants' attacks, ordinary soldiers had almost no chance to counter.

The only hope for human pikemen lay in support from their own longbowmen. The price the giants paid for towering so high was that they were easy targets for volleys of arrows.

Though the serpentine water-element barriers coiling around the Fomorian sea giants could somewhat block fireballs or deflect arrows, they were not true magical defenses.

When the giants were distracted or staggered in pain, that was the human infantry's cue to strike.

Even with divine blessings and all manner of support, the allied mortal army was still bleeding hard—often sacrificing over a dozen lives to bring down just one giant.

And that was with mages, archers, and knights holding the line as their backbone.

Meanwhile, reports of fallen knights from all fronts were pouring in to the commanders.

Each lord felt as if their heart was bleeding.

These were the elite troops they'd spent years building up!

What they didn't know was that as bitter as they were, Odin was even more furious.

"Damn it! What kind of trash engagement is this?!" Odin fumed. His Fomorian giants weren't infinite—maybe three to four thousand in total.

At this rate of exchange, he'd suffer catastrophic losses.

Without those giants, forget ruling the Four Isles—even holding Emerald Isle might become impossible.

To make matters worse, Odin had just felt a chill of dread.

He now knew his stronghold had been raided.

He wasn't sure if it had been deliberate or incidental, but he had to admit—the mysterious and powerful woman responsible had executed it perfectly. Rumor said she was Cú Chulainn's master?

Letting all those Tuatha Dé Danann gods escape pained him, yes—but not enough to make him rush back to put down the fugitives.

First, there wasn't enough time. Second, if he could crush the mortal alliance here, he could always start over by selecting new mortal candidates for his transformation plan.

And this led to a crucial miscalculation.

The giant who had returned to report the breach was no sharp mind. He stuttered out a jumbled story about a woman with a powerful flying spear.

Given how deeply Cú Chulainn's magical spear had impressed Odin, he never imagined that the weapon wielded by Scathach had once been his own—Gungnir.

After becoming a chaos-infused giant, Odin's physical power had skyrocketed, but his sensory perception had sharply declined.

So when Scathach unleashed Gungnir, Odin felt nothing. And the reporting giant never saw the ensuing rainbow light.

This created massive information asymmetry.

Even now, Odin had no idea that his old "brother" Thalos had been involved in the Celtic world's upheaval from the start. He was still playing the perfect villain, lost in his delusions of conquest.

Because Odin had played his villain role too well, perhaps even if every intelligent being in the Celtic world ended up kneeling to Thalos, none would realize the whole thing had been his design from the beginning.

Odin's frown deepened—his brow knotted into a mark like the character for "river" (川).

Seeing the tide turning against him, he stopped waiting.

He raised both hands high, and immense chaos energy gathered in his palms, forming two murky blue-gray beams that shot into the equally murky sky.

The sky responded.

"Look! What's that?!"

Suddenly, a strange wailing noise echoed from above, like some massive object screaming as it plummeted from the heavens.

The sound drew the attention of King Arthur and his men. Moments later, several masses of blue-gray sludge tore through the sky and came crashing down toward the battlefield.

They looked like falling houses.

Before anyone could react, they slammed into the ranks of the allied army.

"Your Majesty, watch out!" Gawain managed to shout as an explosion of shattered earth and chaos slime engulfed the field.

King Arthur's royal guard suffered heavily. Countless soldiers were caught in the blast and thrown through the air like rag dolls.

Arthur himself was lucky—Merlin was at his side. The wizard stabbed his gnarled wooden staff into the ground, and vines and petals burst forth, forming a thick wall that completely blocked the shockwave.

When the dust settled, the hill that had stood not far away had been reduced to a crater.

And in its center, a stone giant four times a man's height, oozing with thick chaotic sludge, was climbing out.

Arthur and his knights stared in disbelief.

What new abomination was this?

Fomorian giants could be cut down with blade and steel—but these chaos-stone monstrosities were another matter entirely.

Merlin snorted and launched a fireball the size of a carriage from the tip of his staff.

"BOOM!"

The creature exploded on the spot, crumbling into chunks of stone soaked in chaos energy, now lying inert on the battlefield.

Only the rancid stink of burnt chaos and the popping shards of corrupted rock remained to remind them of what had just attacked.

But more were falling from the sky.

Arthur's heart sank.

Sure, Merlin had handled one easily—but how many Merlins did their army of hundreds of thousands have?

These chaos-stone giants were Odin's final trump card. They were born of the chaotic corruption festering across the Celtic world.

The Fomorians? They were just a smokescreen.

While Arthur, Commander Finn, and Queen Medb fell into dismay—

Suddenly, the murky sky cleared.

Beams of radiant rainbow light fell from the heavens, and with each flash, a taller, more imposing giant appeared beside the emerging chaos-stone monsters.

They wore golden armor and helms, radiating divine power so pure that even mortals could feel it.

Without a word, they raised their sacred weapons and smashed the chaos-stone giants with ease.

Now it was Odin whose blood ran cold.

He saw the leader of the group—an old acquaintance—and his voice trembled beyond control.

"Th-Thor?!"

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