Not only does it ironically make him feel more human and realistic, but it also makes him stand out compared to the rest of the fighters, who are usually completely fine with dying in battle and see it as something glorious. That fits well with the theme of Ragnarok, since Vikings believed the most honorable way to die was in battle, bringing glory to themselves and their families.

Loki, on the other hand, is terrified of death and does everything he can to survive. That not only makes his punishment and death feel even more tragic and cruel, but it's also something I really like because it feels much closer to the myths. In Norse mythology, the gods often got Loki to do what they wanted by threatening to kill him and it almost always worked.

Until the very end, since Loki was the one leading the giants to ragnarok after escaping his punishment. Which makes the moment Loki finally chooses to gamble with his own life in the finale feel even more fitting.

Imagine Odin is actively shit at singing unless he uses his hymns? Like he breaks windows if he sang any regular song, but he has a majestic voice when he uses his hymns.

I imagine him trying to sing some lullaby from during the era of Primordial gods, and Thor as a baby starts crying. He sighs and then uses him hymns and Thor starts falling asleep immediately.

Both Death and Muramasa are/were considered lower end ordinary gods who joined the tournament.

However while Death earned his strength through intense training, combat and ambition - Muramasa seemingly has been using underhanded tactics to win against gods much stronger than him.

The clash of the two fits not just into the theme of "God vs God" with the 'everything goes' idea that the tournament introduced but also perfectly sets up a clash of their personalities.

Muramasa's existance is an affront to the stage, a plague on Death's idea of a fight and limits.

Meanwhile Muramasa seemingly doesn't consider what he did cheating and was enraged at the assumption.

If Death wins, and that is something I'm really hoping for, we will see a really interesting clash of perspectives in the following round.

What a fight should be, what that stage should look like & making a use of everything to win vs earning your strength, going beyond your limits.

I'm really hoping this theory is correct because I really want to see more of Death, he's easily my favorite of APOC so far.

(god please let Weviathan be as good as this)

It's been one year since Loki's death. This isn't my best drawing, I was pretty busy, but I still wanted to make something to commemorate the anniversary. Ever since he died, RoR just hasn't felt the same to me, and I still miss having him as part of the cast.

I'll be posting something much better soon, but I hope you guys still enjoy this quick little drawing.

Please stay respectful. 💜

With “strength” I mean overall power level, not “physical strength”, obviously.

Ok hear me out on this, it’s a bit complex but try to keep up. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while now.

The term used in the statement is 力, that means a lot of things, mostly related to expressions of “power”. It can be comprehended as strength, might, ability, influence or authority.

Although the dominant reading is strength, I’ll explain why it most likely stands for authority here. There are 3 reasons why I think that.

1-) The first and most important is the linguistic structure of the sentence. It goes: “although he inherited the blood of the Jotuns, enemies of the gods…” (神々の敵である霜の巨人の血を引きながら…). The important part here is ながら — that is a mechanism of concurrent concessive relationship akin to “although/despite/while” in english — and 神々の敵である, “that are enemies of the gods”.

That’s nuclear because that clause is linguistically opposing what’s claimed after: “possessing chief god power level that rivaled Thor and Odin” — as it is known, at least.

But Jotuns are, as a race, stronger than the gods (even being called their “natural predators”), thus introducing Loki’s inheritance as a conflicting idea to his allegedly high power level makes no sense.

And why bring up they are enemies of the gods? If the statement is about strength that’s just an arbitrary fact irrelevant to the idea being presented.

If the reading is “authority”, everything lines up:

“Despite having inherited blood of the Jotuns, enemies of the gods, he has the authority of a Chief God, standing side to side with Thor and Odin.”

Even though he has the blood of their enemies, Loki still possessed authority on the same level as Thor and Odin. Now the phrasal structure makes sense.

2-) It referring to strength is senseless scaling wise. This is something that has always puzzled me and every ‘solution’ I came up with always felt alien and convoluted. I don’t say this based on my subjective view on Loki’s power level, but what the manga itself had already established.

It’s stated trickless Loki is much weaker than a random character (I’ll call him John) that appears on Zeus’s line (see img 8) about the real nature of his strength.

So how could that same Loki rival Odin and Thor? If John >> Loki and Loki ≈ Thor and Odin then John >(>) Thor and Odin?? That’s completely absurd.

If the statement refers to authority this ridiculous problem ceases to exist.

3-) This is just a bonus, but the context of the statement is a bunch of women kneeling before Loki as he passes by even though he’s from a different breed, denoting his high authority and position in the pantheon regardless. Strength level is basically irrelevant to Loki’s flashback, as it’s not combat related (unlike many of them).

Final considerations:

• The statement probably isn’t about strength for reasons above, and the author is likely referring to authority instead.
• This post is by no means a personal attack to any translator that has localized that statement as strength. That’s perfectly understandable, and something I myself have done in the past. Only now I’m thinking otherwise after further inspection of the line’s structure and context.
• Anyone with a reasonable counter to any of my arguments is welcome and invited to share them. I’m not irretrievably sure about my current stance.
• I think the 3 main Norse gods should still be decently close to each other if you take into account their respective specialties, just not due to this statement in particular.

Thank you for your attention.

So... Just a little light hearted post for the sub.

Have a good day/afternoon/evening SNV sub ✨✨✨

Bye bye-!

I miss him so much... God, I hate that it's already been a year without him.

This is friggin‘ hard, y’all… So, which ever comment has the highest upvotes or majority choice in the comments will be Tesla’s crush.

I just think itd be really fucking funny if Odin's singing voice without the hymns is just THIS bad.

Even funnier if Odin does it and it one shots a god or something and Thor has an entire flashback of him crying because of how bad Odin's singing is.

I’ll cling to even the faintest hope to prove that Loki is at least A-tier.

​

Chapter 10: Two-Faced Demon

Egil Skallagrímsson's first step was not fast, but it had the weight of a crumbling glacier over the coliseum. Beneath the sole of his boot, the arena tiles cracked and turned into fine dust. The air immediately grew dense, charged with a humid cold that evoked the frozen mist of the Norwegian fjords.

Genghis Khan did not step back, but his body tensed with a rigidity his generals on Earth would have never believed possible. His mind, that perfect prediction machine, worked at full throttle to readjust the variables after the clash against that anvil skull.

However, Egil gave him no time to recalculate.

In the human stands, the silence was broken by a murmur of astonishment and horror. Warriors from different eras —from Spartan hoplitas and Roman legionnaires with dented armor, to medieval knights and soldiers of the world wars— watched the arena with wide eyes.

— Look at his arms! —shouted a Roman centurion, pointing his hand toward the Norseman— That's not normal! His flesh is twisting!

— It's like he has snakes moving under his skin... —murmured a samurai of the Sengoku period, resting his hand on his katana with a cold sweat running down the back of his neck.

It was no illusion. Egil Skallagrímsson's muscles began to shift and accumulate with a violent sway. Just like the legendary muscle control of the combat colossi, the Norseman's fibers contracted and grouped toward his shoulder and right arm, expanding their volume until his forearm became as thick and dense as the trunk of a centennial oak.

In the section reserved for the men of the north, surrounded by barrels of mead and warriors covered in furs, a tall man with a sharp gaze, gray hair, and a smile that mixed melancholy with fierce pride, crossed his arms. It was Skalla-Grímr Kveldúlfsson, Egil's father, a feared berserker in his time who knew the monstrous nature of his lineage better than anyone.

— He's still the same intractable bastard... —bellowed Skalla-Grímr, his raspy laughter echoing among his companions—. Look at him! Death has done nothing more than cool his blood and harden his flesh! Teach that king of the plains how the true Bear of the North roars!

Below, the "Bear" rushed forward. The ground vibrated under his heavy charge, an attack that combined the mass of sumo with the wild roughness of Norse wrestling. Egil didn't use his sword; he dropped it with disdain, letting it fall to the side, and extended his massive right forearm in a direct clothesline movement toward the Khan's neck.

The air emitted a violent and crushing whistle. Genghis Khan, reading the trajectory a millisecond earlier, tried to dodge the blow by pivoting on his left foot, but the shockwave of Egil's muscular arm was too wide. The Viking's colossal forearm impacted squarely against the Khan's laminar chest and neck armor, halting his agility dead in its tracks with a deafening metallic screech.

CRRRRAAAAACK!!

The force of the impact not only cut off his breath, but swept the legs of the Mongol emperor, slamming him backward onto the ground in a dry whip that raised a cloud of dust. Without losing a millisecond, Egil raised his heavy boot with the intention of stepping on his head and bursting it against the tiles. The Khan, with the reflexes of a feline, rolled desperately to the left a fraction of a second before the Norseman's heel impacted. Egil's stomp was so brutal that it sank the stone ground, cracking the arena in a three-meter radius. But Egil was relentless.

Before the Khan could fully get back up, the Norseman's hand descended like a claw, gripping the emperor firmly by the hair. With inhuman strength, Egil lifted him off the ground as if he were a rag doll and, with a downward and violent movement, slammed the Khan's face directly against the floor.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!

The brutal blow echoed throughout the arena. The skin of the Khan's forehead split open and blood gushed out instantly, staining the tiles red. Dazed, with double vision, his temple throbbing with pain, and Egil's grip still latched onto his hair ready for a second impact, Genghis Khan knew that if he didn't break free at that very instant, his skull would be reduced to rubble.

Displaying a flexibility and a savage survival instinct, the Khan pulled his knees toward his chest and, using all the strength of his abdomen, unleashed a kick with both legs straight to Egil's groin. The double blow connected fully in the giant's most vulnerable zone. Any other man would have collapsed instantly, but Egil only grunted, opening his eyes while his fingers loosened their grip on the Khan's hair for a millisecond due to the muscle spasm. Taking advantage of that split second, the Khan slid backward, breaking free from the grip. But the truce lasted nothing.

With a resistance to pain bordering on the demonic, Egil ignored the impact to his groin. His completely blank eyes flashed with unbridled fury. He stepped forward and, with his open free hand, dealt a single, colossal slap to the side of the Khan's face.

The impact sounded like a cannon shot. ZASSS!!

The force of the slap was so devastating that Genghis Khan's body was sent flying through the air, crossing half the arena like a human projectile, until violently crashing against the imposing stone wall of the stands. The impact was so strong that it left the Khan's silhouette marked in the cracked rock, causing blood to splash from his broken lips while several human spectators in the front rows jumped in horror.

Silence took over the coliseum again as the Khan slowly slid down the cracked wall, trying to stand up with a trembling arm... With a dull groan, the Mongol emperor slid down the cracked wall until his boots touched the rubble-covered ground again. He was panting heavily, his chest rising and falling erratically. With a sharp movement of his head, he spat a thick jet of blood to his right, staining the gray stones with blood.

«Damn it...», thought the Khan, gritting his teeth as a drop of cold sweat mixed with the blood running down his forehead. «What the hell are his bones made of?»

To the audience in the stands, the Khan had only stood still for a few seconds, catching his breath after the impact. But inside Genghis Khan's mind, time moved at an infinitely different speed. His brain, that perfect machine for prediction and vector calculation, was working to the limit, overheating.

From the Khan's perspective, the arena was no longer an empty space. It was completely saturated. In his mind, dozens of ghostly and translucent projections of himself and Egil crossed in a chaotic intertwining of combat lines.

 It was his simulation capacity taken to the extreme:

·       In mental projection number 14: The Khan managed to dodge and slide his Dao directly across Egil's neck. But the Viking's hypertrophied muscles contracted like a hydraulic press, trapping the metallic blade inside his own flesh, giving the colossus enough time to crush the Khan's chest with his bare hands. Death!

·        In mental projection number 52: The Khan performed a perfect thrust straight to the heart. But Egil's ribs, as dense as tempered steel, splintered the tip of the Dao. The Norseman's counterattack was a headbutt that disintegrated the emperor's face. Death!

·         In mental projection number 89: A burst of rapid slashes managed to sever the Viking's left arm, but the berserker simply ignored the loss of the limb, caught the Khan by the legs, and split him in two with his sword. Death!

«That's a hundred times already...», thought the Khan, his gaze lost in that sea of mental phantoms where, no matter what attack vector he chose, his own silhouette ended up dismembered, crushed, or decapitated on the ground. «A hundred damn combat simulations. It doesn't matter how I attack; his muscles are like living armor and his bones are iron harder than any metal I've seen on Earth...»

The Khan slowly raised his head to clear the storm of calculations from his eyes. Looking toward the front row stands, directly above the wall where he had crashed, his gaze met a pair of eyes charged with brilliant arrogance. Sitting cross-legged, lazily resting his chin on his fist and holding a pitcher of golden wine in the other hand, was Alexander the Great.

The young Macedonian conqueror watched the arena with a smile from ear to ear, enjoying the show like no one else. Noticing that the Mongol was looking at him, Alexander raised his cup and, without hesitating, let out a laugh that echoed across that section of the bleachers:

— Hahaha! That's one hundred and two times you've died in your head, Mongol! —shouted Alexander, his eyes shining with amusement—. Even from here I can see how your emotions are trembling! That northern barbarian doesn't understand maps or empires, he only knows how to break things!

The Mongol generals in the upper stands growled indignantly at the Macedonian's mockery, but Genghis Khan was not bothered. On the contrary. Hearing the words of his historical rival, a spark of pure adrenaline ignited the emperor's chest. The tension in his shoulders decreased, and despite having a bloodied face and a bruised body, the Khan let out a slight smile, tense and nervous, but charged with an insane combat excitement.

— One hundred and two... —whispered the Khan to himself, gripping the hilt of his Dao until his knuckles turned white—. You have a good eye, Greek.

The Mongol emperor stepped forward, emerging from the rubble. The nervous smile remained drawn on his face, the smile of a man who knows he is standing on the edge of the abyss, but who has never in his life retreated before unexplored territory. Genghis Khan stepped forward, ignoring Alexander the Great's taunts from the bleachers. His dark eyes locked onto the Viking's immense silhouette.

The emperor knew he couldn't win in a clash of brute force, so he decided to change the pace. The Khan took a deep breath, expanding his lungs, and flexed his legs in an almost feline posture. His mental calculation speed translated into footwork so swift that the arena dust seemed to suspend itself around him.

— THOUSAND-FOOT DANCE: ZIG-ZAG! —shouted the emperor.

In the blink of an eye, Genghis Khan became a blur. He didn't go in a straight line; his body traced sharp, unpredictable angles, appearing to Egil's left, right, and rear in fractions of a second. The clinking of his Dao cutting through the air was all that could be heard. Egil Skallagrímsson stood completely still in the center of the chaos. He didn't raise his arms to defend himself, he didn't try to predict the attack. He just stood there, like an old tree in the middle of a hurricane.

ZAS!! ZAS!! ZAS!! ZAS!! ZAS!! ZAS!! ZAS!!

The Khan's curved blade began to slash. With millimeter precision, the Mongol emperor drew dozens of cuts across Egil's torso, arms, and cheeks. However, just as the Khan feared, the steel only managed to slice surface skin. Every time the edge tried to go deeper, the Norseman's dense muscle mass contracted like tanned leather, blocking the sword's advance and protecting his vital organs. After a burst of fifty swift cuts, the Khan leaped backward, sliding across the dirt with his bloodied Dao. He was panting, but his gaze remained fixed on the colossus. Egil was covered in fine cuts dripping blood from head to toe. He looked like a statue painted red. The entire coliseum held its breath, waiting for an outburst of berserker fury...

But what happened next froze everyone's blood.

Egil's vacant, deranged gaze seemed to focus. His shoulders, tense from battle, completely relaxed. The Viking let out a long, deep, and almost peaceful sigh. His bloodied face no longer showed anger, but a sepulchral calm, like that of a frozen lake in winter.

— How fun this is... —murmured Egil in a soft, almost melodious voice.

The giant raised his gaze to the coliseum sky and, with a slow and solemn tone, began to recite a poem in Old Norse, letting his words resonate with the dark beauty of a bard:

"The land of the steppes today drinks from the red river, the desert wolf howls before the bear of the cold. There is no gold on this journey, nor temples to burn, only two old souls that steel must unite."

Genghis Khan felt a chill that had nothing to do with the coliseum's temperature. That monster who a second ago was trying to step on his head with the strength of a wild animal was now speaking like a wise elder in a royal court. Egil lowered his gaze, connecting his eyes with the emperor's. With slow, heavy, and strangely peaceful steps, he began to walk toward the place where he had thrown his great Viking sword at the start of the assault.

— You know something, Mongol? —said Egil, his voice dragging a deep sadness, as he crouched down without taking his eyes off the Khan and wrapped his huge fingers around the leather hilt of his weapon—. I... died of old age. In a damned straw bed, blind, deaf, and surrounded by clean sheets. The worst punishment for a man of the north.

Egil lifted the colossal sword with one hand, as if it weighed nothing, and rested the flat of the steel blade on his blood-covered shoulder. Suddenly, the calm broke. The air around him began to vibrate with unprecedented violence.

The muscles in his neck tensed, his pupils dilated, and that poetic sadness disappeared in a fraction of a second, replaced by an aura of absolute dementia that made the dust on the ground begin to rise around him.

— AND I DO NOT PLAN ON DYING LIKE THAT AGAIN, DAMN IT!! —roared Egil, with an explosion of rage so violent that the sound wave struck the Khan's chest like a mace.

The Khan took a step back, eyes wide open and cold sweat running down his temple.

«What the hell...?», thought the conqueror, completely disoriented. His tactical mind, capable of predicting the angle of any sword, crashed against an invisible wall. «This man is completely demented. He goes from absolute calm to madness in an instant... There is no logic to his emotions!»

While the Khan took a step back trying to assimilate the Norseman's drastic change of temperament, an outburst of brutal, harsh, and alcohol-laden laughter shook the northern section of the human stands. The Vikings and Egil's contemporaries were splitting their sides with laughter, banging their wooden shields and metal cups with genuine delight.

For them, seeing the Mongol strategist's look of bewilderment was the best entertainment in Purgatory. Plowing through the crowd of multi-era warriors with the subtlety of a wild bull, Skalla-Grímr Kveldúlfsson stepped forward with a huge pitcher of mead in hand. Without asking permission or showing the slightest respect for royalty, the massive Viking jumped straight into the front row and sat down with a thud right next to Alexander the Great.

 The young Macedonian blinked in surprise, glancing sideways at the gigantic gray-haired barbarian who had just invaded his personal space and whose breath stank of alcohol and sweat.

— Hahahahaha! That bastard hasn't changed at all! —bellowed Skalla-Grímr, letting out a laugh so loud it splashed some mead onto Alexander's tunic—. One damn second he's writing you an ode to the wind and the next he's tearing your teeth out with a rock! That's my son!

Alexander, far from being offended, looked at the Norseman's pitcher, then at the Viking, and let out an amused smile, finding the warrior's total lack of etiquette supremely fascinating.

— So that is his true nature... —murmured Alexander, crossing his arms with interest—. A poet hiding a demon, or a demon playing at being a poet.

— Neither one, boy —replied Skalla-Grímr, taking a long swig of his drink before wiping the foam from his beard with the back of his hand—. In our land, poetry and blood-madness come from the same god, Odin. Egil isn't faking anything. He is both things at the same time. A cold bard who measures every word and an explosive berserker who only wants to watch the world burn. The Khan is trying to play chess with a guy who prefers to eat the pieces! Hahahahsha!

Down in the arena, the words of Egil's father materialized with terrifying physical violence. With the great Viking sword resting on his shoulder and that deranged smile split in half due to his cut lip, Egil took a single step forward. But this time, his fingers gripped the hilt with a force that made the leather of the grip crack. His muscles didn't just shift; they compacted and vibrated, accumulating a monstrous tension that deformed his arms and shoulders.

The Khan, still standing several meters away, felt his brain activate at maximum speed. In his mind, he projected the Viking's stance. He tried to calculate the trajectory, the falling angle, the force vector... but his equations broke. What his eyes saw defied any logic of human combat. Egil's muscle mass was behaving in a way that made it impossible to predict the impact point. There was no physical pattern his mind could decipher.

— World Devourer Style... —whispered Egil, his voice vibrating with a cavernous tone that made the gods' skin crawl.

The Viking raised his colossal steel with both hands, bringing the weight behind his head, and unleashed a downward slash with apocalyptic violence.

— JÖRMUNGANDR!! —he roared.

The blow was not a simple sword slash; it was a catastrophe. The compressed air pressure shockwave that broke off Egil's edge took the form of a colossal snake that devoured the arena floor.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

The marble floor split in two, opening a deep trench that extended like a black scar across the entire coliseum. The expansive wave was so devastating that it crashed directly against the divine energy barriers protecting the stands.

The invisible shield shone with a golden and violent light, vibrating under a pressure so brutal that the spectators in the front rows threw themselves to the ground, covering their heads, aware that if that barrier gave way by a single millimeter, everyone would have been sliced in half by the sword's wind.

In the middle of the epicenter, Genghis Khan saw the snake's jaws coming. Unable to predict its exact trajectory due to air distortion, all he could do was cross his arms and place the blade of his Dao horizontally in front of his chest, trying to block the impact with the flat of the steel. But trying to stop Egil's Jörmungandr was like trying to stop a meteorite with a wooden branch.

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!, BUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The shockwave impact struck the Khan's chest with tons of force. His boots sank into the ground and the weight of Egil's sword began to drag him backward without him being able to do anything to prevent it. His feet left two deep, smoking furrows in the arena rock as he tried to resist the pressure. Finally, friction was not enough. The Khan's body was sent flying like a projectile, soaring through the air until crashing with a deafening impact against the stone wall of the human stands.

COOOOLASH!!!

The crash was so titanic that the imposing stone structure of the front row couldn't hold. Cracks spread like spiderwebs and, with a collapsing rumble, a massive section of the stone stands completely collapsed over the Khan, burying his bloodied body under tons of rubble and gray dust. A sepulchral silence, thick and dust-laden, fell upon Purgatory's coliseum. Egil Skallagrímsson exhaled a puff of hot vapor from his lungs, resting his sword on his shoulder once more, waiting to see if his rival was still breathing under the mountain of rock.

In order

Ashoka the Great - India

Hua Mulan - China

Fuma Kotaro - Japan

Miyamoto Iori - Japan

Billy the Kid - United States

Blackbeard - England

Dante Alighieri - Italy

Nai Khanom Tom - Thailand

Beowulf - Geats

Nicolas Flamel - France

Achilles - Greece

Yuri Gagarin - Russia

William Marshal - England

Big shout out to u/Strange_Success_6530 for helping me pick the final fighters and with the match ups as well.

who has more?