In Britain, the Noble Phantasm: Divine Key

"no problem!"

Nidhogg responded excitedly, and then Anan felt as if something had left his consciousness.

Boom—

The black dragon, as large as a mountain, suddenly trembled slightly, and then its black dragon eyes, which had been dormant for thousands of years, suddenly opened!

"Roar--!!!!"

Its colossal body stood on the earth, its chaotic wings unfurled once more, and the Dragon of Despair let out an excited roar, celebrating its return!

For some reason, even though it should have been a scene of a king's return, Anan inexplicably felt like a lost husky that had finally been found and brought home by its owner.

“It’s definitely more comfortable to be in my own body,” Nidhogg exclaimed. “How about it? Are you attracted by my magnificent figure? Do you feel like you can’t take your eyes off me? It’s alright. Whether you sing praises or admire me, even though I’m just an uncivilized monkey, I’ll reluctantly accept your praises in consideration of your hard work along the way.”

Yanan: ......

Artoria: ......

Slud: ......

"Teacher, is it like this all the time?" Artoria turned to look at Anaen.

“No, this is called a petty person getting ahead,” Yanan said expressionlessly.

"I advise you not to be so happy yet." He looked up at the black dragon and said calmly, "Don't forget what just happened."

Nidhogg snapped out of her daze and hurriedly checked the power within her body. Half a minute later, she suddenly let out a scream:

"No! My dragon power!"

Although the structure of dragons makes it difficult for them to express a wide range of emotions through facial expressions, Anan still saw a sense of mourning on Nidhogg's face.

"My dragon power is now only half gone..."

"So, Vortigern took forty percent?" Anahn frowned slightly.

A strange sense of crisis welled up within him. Vortigern's elaborate scheme to seize Nidhogg's power likely had an ulterior motive.

He once again used the power of Feathered Dust to enter a state of absolute rationality, but in the end he still couldn't come up with any useful conclusions.

The Holy Grail was such a huge variable that he couldn't possibly figure out Vortigern's true purpose.

"Things have come to this, we can only take it one step at a time." He shook his head to himself. "Fortunately, I am not without the power to resist."

With the Key of God in hand, he had nothing to fear as long as Vortigern did not have complete control of the Holy Grail.

If he hadn't been caught off guard by a lack of information, he wouldn't have ended up in such a sorry state.

"When I see that damned white dragon again, I will make him pay the price!" Nidhogg said through gritted teeth.

“Let’s talk about this after we get out.” Yanan glanced at Nidhogg’s body, his brow furrowing slightly. “By the way, are you really planning to go out like this?”

Nidhogg was silent for a moment, then suddenly black light emanated from his body.

When the light faded, the massive dragon body, as large as a mountain range, had vanished, replaced by a beautiful girl with long, straight black hair who looked about the same age as Artoria. She had delicate and pretty features, fair and smooth skin, and wore a plain black knee-length skirt that revealed two slender and long, fair legs.

"The human body is such a hassle, especially these two lumps on my chest. They always feel a bit uncomfortable. Honestly, why do I have all these useless things on my body?" Nidhogg grumbled softly, looking at his full, firm breasts, before turning to look at Anan.

"Is this alright...? Huh? Why are you all looking at me with such strange eyes?"

Chapter Thirty: The Eternal One Who Pursues Eternal Stillness

"Nidhogg... is actually a female dragon?"

Slud's expression was unusually strange. Although she had never heard anyone say Nidhogg's true gender, looking at the girl in front of her, she still felt a sense of disillusionment for no apparent reason.

The despairing dragon that brought Ragnarok is actually a beautiful girl with long, straight black hair?

What a bizarre turn of events!

Artoria clenched her fists tightly, her head bowed so that her expression was obscured.

There are other men around the teacher, and they spend more time with her than I do...

Anan was probably the calmest of the three. After all, he had already been exposed to countless ACG works before coming to this world, so this kind of development was all too familiar to him.

Even King Arthur became a girl, so why can't Nidhogg become a girl?

However, to be fair, Nidhogg is indeed quite beautiful.

Especially considering his aesthetic sense, it is almost impeccable.

When he was surfing the internet in his previous life, he wasn't really interested in the white-haired, red-eyed characters that were often associated with Chinese people. What really interested him were people like Nidhogg, with their long, straight black hair and a somewhat aloof demeanor.

If only I could add a pair of black stockings...

His gaze unconsciously slid downwards, landing on Nidhogg's smooth calves.

"What are you looking at?" Nidhogg asked, puzzled.

“Cough, no, I’m just curious why you’ve become like this,” Yanan said with a light cough.

He suspected that Nidhogg was deliberately teasing him, otherwise why would it happen to be in this way that most resonated with him?

"What are you talking about?" Nidhogg looked completely bewildered. "What do you mean by becoming like this? This is my human form."

"So, you didn't do this on purpose?" Yanan asked.

“I am the embodiment of the rules, and the rules are the most rigorous things in the world. How can they be changed so easily?” Nidhogg rolled his eyes. “If I could really do whatever I wanted, I would have thrown away these two lumps of flesh on my chest long ago. They’re heavy and useless, just a burden.”

I like the rules of this world... Yanan silently said to himself.

Nidhogg reached out, and a crack suddenly appeared in the withered trunk of the World Tree. A crystal-clear egg and a withered spear floated out and landed in her palm.

"Huh! That's not..." Slud covered her mouth, an incredulous look appearing in her deep red, agate-like eyes.

"Odin's weapon - [Gungnir], and his mount, the eight-legged winged horse Sleipnir."

Nidhogg tossed the spear and the egg to Anan.

Yanan looked at the egg and the gun with a strange expression on his face, and looked at Nidhogg: "You didn't steal this from the battlefield after Odin died, did you?"

"Do you take me for a ragpicker?" Nidhogg said irritably.

Slud was furious. How could the great god's divine horse and divine spear have become wrecked!

"Then why are these things in your possession?" Yanan asked.

“It’s all because of that old man Odin.” Nidhogg rolled his eyes. “Before he died, that old man entrusted these things to me, saying that when I left Norse mythology, I should hand them over to the person who helped me escape.”

"How did he know the teacher would help you get out of trouble?" Artoria asked in surprise.

"How would I know? Anyway, that old guy is always like that, talking nonsense all day long," Nidhogg said with his arms crossed.

“Odin once drank from the Well of Wisdom, so it’s not inconceivable for him to be able to foresee the future to some extent,” Yanan explained.

He examined the "Declaration of the Great God" in his hand and suddenly noticed a line of runes inscribed at the bottom—

[Those who seek eternal stillness say: What has departed will ultimately return to nothingness.]

"The eternal seeker of eternal silence..." Anan frowned slightly. "What does that mean?"

He showed the inscription on the gun to Slud, who, like the valiant Valkyrie, looked completely bewildered.

"I don't know either. That's strange. I don't remember there being such a passage in Gungnir..."

After careful recollection, Yanan realized that there didn't seem to be anything in Norse mythology that matched this description.

"Forget it, who cares? All the Norse gods are gone now, what's the point of thinking about this?" Anahn shook his head. "Who knows, maybe Odin got drunk one day and accidentally wrote it down?"

Odin never ate meat at banquets, only drinking alcohol. All the meat was fed to his two loyal wolves, Kili and Kulich. From a physiological point of view, drinking alcohol without eating food would make one more likely to get drunk, so Anan felt that his reasoning made some sense.

He put the eight-legged pegasus egg and the "Great God's Declaration" into the alternate dimension, planning to study these two things carefully when he returned.

Afterwards, Ananen shrank the Oath of Judah and gave it to Nidhogg, letting her step outside the white circle of light to test it. She found that the power of the rules had indeed lost its effect on her.

Nidhogg was overjoyed to finally be free from the constraints of the rules. She immediately did a 10,000-meter round trip. If Yanan hadn't held her head down, she probably would have run several more rounds.

“It feels so good to be able to move around freely!” Nidhogg exclaimed sincerely.

Because of the restrictions imposed by Helab in Helheim, Anaen was unable to open a spatial passage here using the primordial runes, so it took them more than ten days to reach the central courtyard.

At the mountaintop, Slud gazed at the familiar yet unfamiliar scene before her, a complex expression appearing in her deep red eyes.

“If you want to stay here, I won’t force you,” Yanan said.

Slud was silent for a moment, then shook her head and smiled, "No need. There's no point in dwelling on the past. Besides, I promised Otlind and Slud that I would meet them again."

"In that case, let's set off."

Yanan snapped his fingers, and the void twisted and tangled, instantly transforming into a spatial passage as tall as two people.

Anan, Artoria, and Nidhogg entered one after another. Slud walked to the door, turned around for one last look, sighed, and then went inside.

A moment later, the spatial passage gradually disappeared, and a cool wind blew across the desolate mountaintop, as if nothing had happened.

Chapter Thirty-One: Heavenly Judgment, Void Treasury, and the One Vehicle of a Thousand Realms

As soon as Yanan and the others stepped out of the spatial passage, a biting cold wind howled in their faces.

However, this level of cold was nothing to the four of them.

Wait, can they really be considered "four people"?

Anan glanced at Artoria, Nidhogg, and Slud behind him, then looked down at himself and gave a helpless, bitter smile.

"Is this the outside world?" Slud looked around curiously, then clenched her fist. "The concentration of ether is indeed very low. My power has been weakened by about 30%."

Before coming, she had already learned about the situation outside from Anaen and Artoria, and had made preparations in advance, so she was not too flustered.

"Ah...this is wonderful, this is the feeling of freedom." Nidhogg spread his arms wide, his face full of ecstasy.

As the embodiment of the rules, her power did not originate from the aether, so neither the Norse kingdoms nor Britain had any effect on her.

[Mission Five: Rescue Nidhogg's true form within three years. Completed]

[Quest Reward: Ninth Divine Key - Devouring Key - Star of Eden. Already issued]

[New task detected]

[Mission Six: Annihilate the Seven Kingdoms of the North within five years (0/7)]

[Quest Reward: Seventh Divine Key - Key of Destruction - Judgment of Heavenly Fire]