Waltrautesan no Konkatsu Jijou - Chapter 2 - Part 7

“Y’know…”

A single goddess looked annoyed up in the heavenly world of Asgard.

It was Freyja.

“Lady Frigg is trying her best, but will this really turn out okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“He may look cute, he may be the type I just want to devour, and he may make me drool, but isn’t that boy a little too delicate? Simply put, I doubt he can make it to the underground world of Niðavellir on foot.”

“Th-that is where you are wrong! Despite how he looks, he has a strong core. He is the boy who did not hesitate to take on the world tree. Heading to the underground world will be a simple… Ah!?”

“…Hee hee.”

“Why are you grinning like you are holding back from saying something, Freyja!? Is it that strange for the loser to refuse to overlook any insults turned toward the victor!?”

“Hah. Not at all. ‘My darling is so powerful and cool. I will not let anyone speak badly of him.’ ”

“I take it you want tonight’s main dish to be a sow ginger sauté…”

“Then how about we make a bet to turn this into a competition? I’ve been wanting a new accessory anyway, so if that boy does not make it to the underground world of Niðavellir, you give me those decorative feathers on your head!!”

“Wha-…? If I lose these, I will have no idea who I even am! No one will be able to tell it is me!”

“But I thought he was going to make it? You’ll win the bet, so does it even matter? You said that boy has a strong core, so he can easily make it to Niðavellir, right? Hee hee.”

“Uuh…!! B-but… What do I get if I win this competition?”

“Then Freyja here will give you a very hands-on lecture on what pleasures can be achieved between two wome-…Nothing, nothing. I was just joking.”

Waltraute pulled out her Spear of Destroying Lightning, so the goddess of beauty Freyja quickly corrected herself.

“Then how about this: As the goddess of harvest and fertility, I will give that boy an abundant harvest from the asparagus growing in his garden.”

“That still does not actually benefit me…but if that boy is satisfied I suppose he might be less likely to challenge me to strange and reckless competitions. If I look at it as adjusting the frequency of future competitions, it does benefit me.”

“ ‘I, Waltraute, want to see that boy’s joyous face. I will go to any effort at any opportunity in order to see it, so rub my head, darling!’ ”

“How about you repeat that nonsense after I hang you upside down?”

“If you’re going to tie me up, make sure my legs are spread.”

At any rate, the competition had been set.

Waltraute was betting the boy would make it to the underground world of Niðavellir while Freyja was betting he would not.

“(Idiot. Have you forgotten what will happen if that boy does make it to Niðavellir? I look forward to seeing your cute form after that boy removes your aurora armor, Waltraute. Nya ha ha!)”

“Hm? Did you say something?”

“Nyothing at all! Okay, now that the bet has been made, let’s see what’s going on in Midgard!!”

“Then again…” Waltraute may have consented to the competition, but she seemed worried about something else. “Hey, Freyja.”

“What?”

“Will that boy be okay? When he tried to climb the world tree Yggdrasil to reach Asgard, he almost died due to issues with the atmospheric pressure and altitude. There will not be any trouble like that this time, will there?”

“It’s hard to say,” replied Heimdallr the watchman in all seriousness. “The pressure and altitude will not be an issue this time because he is heading down. But heading to the underground world means heading deeper and deeper into a cave. As the space grows narrower and narrower, he might not have enough oxygen, and it’s possible he could run across some volcanic poisonous gases down there. You can’t exactly say the journey is without its risks.”

“Is there no way to take measures against those risks? I do not want to have to act at the last second like last time.”

Everyone else there thought “that is only because you were too stubborn”, but they did not dare say it.

Heimdallr honestly replied, “I hear they use canaries in mines. When the oxygen is too low or dangerous gases are floating around, they react in a special way to inform you.”

“…”

Waltraute then turned to the two messenger ravens Muninn and Huginn.

They both began protesting.

“I don’t want to do a dangerous job like that!!”

“No good can come from acting as a sensor by being the first to collapse!”

The Valkyrie then slowly held up the Spear of Destroying Lightning.

“If you can make that much noise, you are perfect for the role. Now go.”

After Waltraute sent the two ravens to the boy, Freyja spoke up.

“But how are we supposed to see what happens in the underground world? We can’t see down their just by looking down from the runway.”

“Heimdallr. Hand over the horn.”

Heimdallr’s shoulders jumped when she held her hand out toward him.

Waltraute ignored that and continued.

“The Gjallarhorn. It stretches down to Jötunheimr so you can use it to drink the water of wisdom, correct? If we have it stretch down to the underground world, we can use it to view the boy’s movements.”

“Y-you can’t!! The Gjallarhorn is also used as a siren for the heavenly world! The final battle of Ragnarök could start at any moment! My duty as watchman is to inform everyone if I detect its coming!! So I cannot let go of the Gjallarhorn no matter wha-…!!”

“What a pain.” Waltraute shook her head slowly. “Are you really asking for me to become a tyrant once more?”

“Me too!? You’re going to do to me what you did to Muninn and Huginn!?”

He was in danger of becoming a heavenly meal.

After Waltraute swiped the horn from Heimdallr, it stretched out using magical power. It quickly stretched all the way to the human world of Midgard before stabbing down through the ground and into the cave leading to the underground world.

Waltraute and Freyja peered in through the mouth of the horn.

“Hm. It looks like we can watch using this.”

“I can kind of see why Lord Odin feared this marriage of yours. But as long as the galactic pretty girl Freyja can enjoy it, none of that matters!!”

“Are you coming up with groundless suspicions again, you fool?”

Thanks to the Gjallarhorn’s magical effects, it would easily move around even while stabbed in the ground as long as it was moved slightly from above. They would have no problems keeping the boy in sight.

As they viewed what was happening underground, they spotted the boy double-checking his possessions at what was more or less the entrance to the cave.

“Handkerchief: check. Snacks for when I get hungry: check. Water bottle: check. Okay, time to go!”

“He’s packing that lightly again!? He’s clearly only wearing sandals. And he doesn’t have any kind of light despite heading into a cave!!”

“Whoops, my hand slipped,” said Freyja unconvincingly as she tossed a torch into the mouth of the horn.

After a hard clattering noise echoed through the horn for a bit, the torch fell out from the roof of the cave the boy was in.

“?”

The boy looked puzzled, but then he picked up the torch and headed further into the cave.

“Wasn’t that against the rules?”

“We never set any rules.”

After casually turning aside Waltraute’s question, Freyja went back to watching.

The cave had many complexly intertwining paths that stretched out over vast areas. Plus, the underground world was split into two large categories. The boy found himself at a junction between many different paths. Among them, one led up to the surface, one led to the underground world of Niðavellir, and one led to the underground world of Svartálfaheimr.

“Niðavellir… Nidavlure…”

“Oh, dear… It’s so hard to say, he’s started to say it wrong!!”

“He’s definitely going to get lost.”

“But there is a sign right there telling him which way to go…”

“If that other path leads to Svartálfaheimr, doesn’t that mean the dark elves come through here? I wonder if those prank-loving elves have switched out or altered the sign.”

The residents of the heavenly world grew quite worried, but the boy continued on into the cave with no real trouble.

The ravens Muninn and Huginn were secretly watching over the boy, but they did not start yelling about lack of oxygen or poisonous gas.

“Hm. This is quite normal. Nothing interesting is happening,” complained Freyja.

“Yes, this would be boring to the one who bet he would give up. But this is going extremely well for me since I bet he would make it safely. Nothing happening is for the best. All hail nothing happening! Who needs drama!?”

“ ‘Oh, I’m so worried. Waltraute is so worried about that boy. I hope he doesn’t get hurt. I hope he doesn’t get lost. Once he gets back, I’m going to give him a nice big hug!’ ”

“Do not start spewing strange nonsense just because you are bored, you fool!”

“By the way, aren’t you kind of denying the whole reason Valkyries exist by praising normalcy? Your job is to watch over and retrieve the souls of humans who die in dramatic ways.” Freyja gave an annoyed sigh. “But he’s headed to Niðavellir in order to request the dwarves make a tool for him, right? But don’t they make their items out of gold? And there are always a lot of extra issues to go with their tools. I wonder if he’ll be okay. I’d say the real challenge is yet to come.”

"Shh, wait. Someone is approaching that boy.”

The area near the entrance to the cave was very complex, but once one got onto the route heading to Niðavellir, it was just a single path following Yggdrasil’s root. A figure could be seen walking toward the boy from the other end of the passageway.

“Is it a dwarf?”

“They aren’t that tall. Ugeh!? That’s-…!!” shouted Waltraute when the figures face was illuminated by the boy’s torch.

The boy did not know who it was and the figure spoke to him.

“Oh? A resident of Midgard here? How unexpected.”

“Who are you, mister?”

“Ha ha ha. Sorry, but your skill is useless against a male god.”

The figure merely smiled at the sort of talk that had elated Frigg.

As he smiled, the male god said, “I am Loki. My origins are pretty complicated, but I am one of the Æsir.”

Meanwhile, the Valkyrie was trying to throw any and all weapons available to her into the mouth of the horn.

Freyja was frantically trying to stop her from destroying that treasure of the gods and the military level of the nine worlds.

“D-do not stop me!! That is Loki! That is Loki!! He killed the god of light Baldr as a joke, shaved off the blonde hair of the harvest goddess Sif as a gag, chaotically fathered both Fenrir and Hel, and is one of the primary causes of the final battle of Ragnarök!! It is so obvious he is lying about this being unexpected! He is definitely waiting to pull some kind of trick!!”

“That’s almost certainly true, but just calm down!! You’re about to destroy the world!!”

“I must do this to preserve the fairness of our competition!!”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure you want to go kiss that boy right now and just kiss and kiss and kiss!!”

Freyja tried to hold Waltraute’s hands behind her back but was thrown off. The giant boar the goddess of beauty usually rode around on slammed into the Valkyrie to buy some time. Meanwhile, the conversation between the boy and Loki continued in the underground cave.

“What are you doing here?” asked the boy.

“I was having the dwarves make a magic tool for me. That bastard Thor was really pissed that I shaved Sif’s head. I needed some replacement hair.”

“That’s why I’m here, too.”

“You also shaved a goddess?”

“I came here to have a tool made.”

“Oh, so that’s it. But ordinary methods won’t work with those dwarves. If you simply ask them, they’ll take an exorbitant fee and then run off without giving you anything.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. There’s a certain trick you have to use when asking something of them.”

Goose bumps appeared all over Waltraute’s body.

“He’s creepy!! That smile of his is creepy!! Vahh, vahh!! Get away from that boy right this instant!!”

“Just calm down!!” said Freyja. “While he’s most certainly a pervert, you’re in luck. He’s a male god! He won’t try anything of that sort with the boy, so just calm down!!”

“That is not what I was talking about! The fairness of the competition and the boy’s life are both at risk!!”

“Yes, I know what you claim your reason is. But this grouping won’t result in any kissing, so don’t worry!!”

“I-I suppose so.”

Waltraute finally calmed down a bit.

But then Heimdallr made an unnecessary comment.

“But what if he’s gay?”

“!! That’s right! This is dangerous after all! And come to think of it, Loki transformed into a horse, was mounted by a different horse controlled by a giant, and then gave birth to Sleipnir!! He was both a horse and the bottom!! Is there any less trustworthy god when it comes to sexual preferences!?”

“Dammit, Heimdallr! Why did you have to say that!? D-don’t worry, don’t worry. Such a turn of events may make me drool, but this isn’t going to turn into anything of that sort that maidens would love to see!! Calm down, calm down.”

As she pacified the angry Valkyrie, Freyja wiped a cold sweat from her brow.

Meanwhile, the conversation in the underground cave continued.

“What do I do to get them to make me a tool?”

“It’s simple. You have to…”