The gods and giants of Asgard were utterly baffled—how had so many divine horse foals suddenly appeared out of nowhere?
Everyone knew the origins of Svaðilfari. But to breed a steed like that, wouldn't you at least need a divine mare?
Where had the divine mare come from?
Thalos kept the truth tightly sealed, leaving everyone to wildly speculate.
It quickly became the stuff of legend.
Still, none could deny it—Asgard now had over a dozen massive, powerful divine steeds. In the event of war, warriors like Thor would surely be all the more unstoppable with such mounts.
And among them all, only Thalos remained clear-headed.
He knew the truth, of course: this had all started because Loki, following some thread of fate, had tried to steal the horse—and ended up getting… well, ridden instead.
That part alone was enough to shatter anyone's worldview.
And yet… it was vividly recorded in the Edda.
Let's not forget, in the original epic, Sleipnir was meant to be the famous eight-legged celestial steed!
But now, thanks to Thalos and his imposed Order Laws, it had become a completely normal four-legged one.
Even if this absurdity were exposed, others would merely gape in disbelief.
But Thalos' thinking went much deeper—Loki, being a pureblooded frost giant, shouldn't have had any shape-shifting or magical abilities to begin with. And yet, he was an outlier. He not only excelled at illusion and transformation, but was also astonishingly fertile—not just with his wives, but by himself, and what he sired was almost always… monstrous.
An eight-legged horse? Just imagining it was grotesque enough.
Thalos couldn't understand how the Odin of old ever accepted such a freakish mount. Was there truly no other fitting steed in all the world?
Odin might have been able to ignore such anomalies. Thalos could not.
To him, such twisted aberrations were signs of Chaos leaking into Ginnungagap, or worse—evidence that the world's resistance to Chaos was weakening.
Yes—
Only Chaos had the power to shatter the laws of shape and form, producing such distorted monstrosities.
In the old days, Yggdrasil could absorb near-infinite Chaos energy, refining it into pure Order. That's how the Nine Realms maintained their structured forms.
And because Thalos had introduced massive amounts of Earth's physical and metaphysical laws into the world, defining and restructuring the Nine Realms—he had earned the deep trust of the World Will.
But Thalos didn't fully trust the World Will in return.
Over time, he had begun to understand the nature of this world's "consciousness." It wasn't so much that the world "needed certain gods" and therefore inspired divine births. Rather, the World Will would randomly "go crazy" and vomit out some absurdly powerful extraordinary energy, which then caused gods—who happened to be procreating at the time—to give birth to bizarre new beings… or monsters.
Just look at Loki's children from the Edda—the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, the world-ending wolf Fenrir, the world-encircling serpent Jörmungandr, and the goddess of death Hel.
Not a single one was normal.
Even Hel, whose upper half appeared as a beautiful woman, had a lower half that was rotting and monstrous.
And aside from Sleipnir, the other three were rejected by the Aesir, eventually raising the banner of rebellion and attacking Asgard in Ragnarök.
So this time, Thalos' use of Law Tablets to forcibly correct the divine horses' biology was actually part of a grand-scale divine experiment.
From his seat in the Golden Palace, Thalos looked out and saw the horses frolicking freely with their siblings outside. Satisfied, he gave a slight nod.
He murmured to himself: "So far, it seems Ginnungagap still possesses a decent self-correction capability. If I can continue reinforcing the laws of Order, maybe I can avoid triggering Ragnarök altogether. But if this world has some innate deficiency at its core... then I'll need a backup plan…"
Whatever the case—Thalos was grateful to Loki.
Because in trying to steal Svaðilfari, Loki had unknowingly helped Thalos test multiple foundational truths about this world.
Like how Darwinian evolution doesn't apply here.
Or how the world's law system can't always distinguish between the original body and a transformed form.
Strictly speaking, not just Loki—anyone who could freely change size or shape, like the Aesir gods, could be seen as a "shapeshifter" in the World Will's eyes. Each form might be treated as a separate biological entity.
Or perhaps, this world identifies life based on soul signature, not physical form.
That might explain why offspring from Aesir–giant unions are often seen as fully Aesir, rather than giants. Or why, in this timeline, Odin's son Vali—born from a mortal woman Lind—still had divine power comparable to Thalos' own sons.
Thalos rubbed his chin. "Next question—Is the amount of Chaos that leaks from Yggdrasil at a given moment constant? If I convert all of it into Order... will new Chaos immediately take its place?"
He had no answer yet.
And far below, in the mid-level world of Jotunheim, Odin was facing a new kind of nightmare.
He encountered a new frost giant—one that didn't need to be licked out of the glaciers by the sacred cow.
No—this one broke out of the ice like a corpse rising from the grave.
It grabbed a massive pine tree, stripped off the excess branches with one hand, and with its mismatched, muscular legs, began thundering toward Odin's golden palace.
By the time it arrived, Odin was livid.
With a single throw, the giant hurled a massive boulder and smashed Odin's smaller version of the Palace of Joy to rubble.
"You dare—"
Odin immediately hurled Gungnir.
By all rights, it should have pierced the creature's heart easily.
But shockingly—this giant's heart was made of metal.
The spear tore through the outer muscle, but clanged loudly against the metallic core, sending out a cascade of sparks.
Silver and black divine energies collided, and the clash of Order and Chaos spread out in a blast wave.
Where it passed, the flesh was peeled clean, the ribs and organs shredded into pulp.
The giant still died—but not because its heart was pierced. It was the massive organ damage that finished it off.
As Odin stood over the corpse, feeling the feedback of damage from his divine spear's edge, he felt deeply, utterly unlucky.
And perhaps it was just his imagination—but Odin couldn't shake the feeling that ever since leaving his elder brother's protection, everything had gone wrong.
The crown of Jotunheim's king was not what he'd imagined.
Frustrated, Odin stormed back into his palace.
Fine! No gods wanted to join his banner? Then he'd make his own!
Three sons weren't enough? Then he'd birth a dozen!
A dozen not enough? He'd birth a hundred!
Thus, Odin resolved to create an entire divine army—of his own flesh and blood.
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