Valkyrie's Maneuver
"Two intruding entities... wait. Frey, that's not Kang Jun-cheol?"
Yuna's fingers, which had been flying across the keyboard, froze mid-stroke.
"Ah—that's the wavelength of Asgard's regular forces. The Valkyries came down themselves!"
"...You said the security bypass was perfect."
Ha-rin's voice dropped low.
Yuna pushed up her glasses and gave an awkward smile.
"The bypass was perfect! It was perfect, but... maybe today was the old geezer Odin's Authority cycle...?"
"Unnie!"
"I even set up a barrier with my own Authority just in case of that old coot Odin's Authority, Gungnir—Confirmed Causality. So where did they break through? Did a gap open when we brought Sang-hae in?"
Even as she spoke, the two red dots on the monitor were closing in on their location in a straight line.
"Three minutes until the barrier rebuilds. Ha-rin, just in case—get the 'key' ready!"
"Got it. You know this is a last resort."
Ha-rin bit her lip, diary tucked under one arm. On that face that was always so prim, a restlessness I'd never seen before was rising.
"Nir, you hide next to Yuna unnie. If I'd known it would come to this, I would've saved Nir's true form..."
"Wait, what about me? What am I supposed to do?"
When I cut in, Ha-rin turned to look at me like I was an idiot.
"You crouch in a corner. You absolutely cannot be seen! A defective product with no Authority..."
Defective product?
Getting cut in half and dying, waking up as a woman, and being thrown into someone else's fight without a clue what was going on was already unfair enough—but somehow, that one word was the thing I couldn't stand.
"...I caught the remote without looking."
"What?"
"I dodged Nir's attack, too. Pretty good for a defective product, don't you think?"
"That's not the point, you idiot. The ones coming are real Valkyr—"
Ha-rin was opening her mouth to snap something back when the basement's steel door split clean down the middle without a sound and collapsed inward.
Shoving aside the door that had been sliced as smooth as a mirror, two women walked in through the dust.
One was a tall woman with silver-white hair cropped short like a soldier's. The other was a petite girl with blonde hair neatly braided, doll-like in her features.
Both wore all-black suits over white shirts—immaculate, professional—but with every step they took, the air itself seemed to vibrate with their presence.
In each of their right hands, a translucent force shimmered like heat haze, condensed into form: a longsword for the silver-haired one, a long spear for the blonde.
They had no physical substance, and yet just looking at them sent a chill down the back of my neck.
"Trickster. Fenrir. And the Serpent."
The silver-haired woman spoke in a voice as flat as someone reading a document, not a grain of emotion mixed in.
"Asgard Audit Team, Part Three. We are conducting an inspection."
"...Inspection?"
"Bypass traces have been detected in the security protocol of a sealed designated unit. We will confirm what you have done with that unit, and if violations are found, we will reclaim it. Valkyrie Kara. Inspect."
At the silver-haired woman's command, the blonde slowly swept her gaze across the basement.
The dissected corpse. The scattered equipment.
Ha-rin, Nir, Yuna.
And finally, me, standing in the corner.
No—she passed over me, then came back.
"Unregistered incarnation discovered within the Trickster faction."
"Confirmed. Unauthorized incarnation body."
The silver-haired woman answered mechanically, studying the dissection table for a moment before shifting her gaze to me.
"Based on the circumstances, this is judged an unauthorized attempt to load an incarnation soul into a Valkyrie unit. Per Regulation Article Seven, we will execute unit reclamation and disposal of the loaded soul."
Soul disposal.
It took one second to understand that the word was pointing at me, and another second for my spine to freeze solid.
"You people sure love your regulations."
Ha-rin opened her diary and stepped in front of me.
"That was defective stock you couldn't even track down yourselves, wasn't it? I paid a fair price and bought it. The owner wants to use it however she likes—what's with the regulation talk?"
"Trickster. That sophistry will be entered into the report as-is."
"Write whatever you want. Just don't mess up the spelling."
"Defiant. Noncompliance with execution confirmed."
From behind the blonde who had answered, wings woven of pure white light unfurled wide.
The light those wings poured out turned the basement bright as midday.
For a split second, I nearly lost myself in how beautiful they were.
But the moment I saw that every single feather stood on end like a blade, awe flipped straight into terror.
Those weren't wings—that was the same as carrying hundreds of swords on her back.
"Commencing execution."
The blonde vanished from my field of vision.
A flash—
The instant my eyes flooded gold, the tip of the long spear was already hurtling toward my throat.
No time to think. I twisted my body sideways, and the spearpoint skimmed past just under my chin.
BOOM!
I hadn't even been hit directly, but the shockwave alone lifted me clean off the ground.
The concrete wall behind me caved in, spiderweb cracks racing out in every direction.
My breath locked in my chest.
"Your opponent is me!"
Yuna shouted, flinging her glasses aside.
In that instant, a massive shadow surged up behind her. The form of a serpent covered in scales draped over Yuna's entire body like a heat haze, overlapping her completely.
Over the outline of a person, the gaping maw of a colossal snake was superimposed in translucent layers. Just looking at it planted a primal urge to scream.
"Do not interfere with Valkyrie business! Jormungandr!"
CRAAASH!
Yuna, wrapped in the enormous phantom of a serpent, collided head-on with the blonde radiating golden force.
Every time their blows met, the concrete walls dented under the sheer power.
When the blonde's long spear thrust in a straight line, Yuna twisted her upper body and deflected the blade. Then she spun with the momentum and drove her elbow down. The blonde folded her wings like a shield to block the strike, but she couldn't absorb the impact—she skidded a long way back and slammed into the wall.
There was no time to watch.
The silver-haired woman was already approaching us slowly, formless sword in hand.
From the diary Ha-rin had opened, black sentences poured out and formed a wall.
Every time the silver-haired woman's blade cut through the sentences, light burst with a sound like tearing paper.
"Hostile act confirmed. I recommend you hand over the unauthorized Valkyrie, Trickster."
"How about no?"
"Noncompliance confirmed."
"If you wanted to negotiate, you should've started with a conversation. Does your whole company hold meetings with swords drawn?"
"If it is efficient."
"...You are the most boring Valkyrie I've ever met!"
Black sentences coiled around the silver-haired woman's ankles like snakes.
But she didn't so much as blink.
One twist of her sword, and the sentences were sliced to pieces, scattering as black ink.
The entire basement was a chaos on the verge of collapse.
And then—
In the middle of that pandemonium, with the whole basement about to come down, my vision suddenly began to slow again, unnaturally.
The same feeling as when I'd caught the remote earlier.
In that fleeting moment when the world flowed as if frozen, I could clearly see why my vision had slowed.
A golden shard, split off like a lightning bolt from the tip of the formless spear the blonde had swung, was flying like shrapnel—and standing at the end of its trajectory was Nir.
Nir had seen it too. Unable even to unfasten his child-safety collar, he could only stare with round eyes at the golden spear fragment streaking toward him.
The golden shrapnel closed in right in front of the child's nose.
A blow that crushed concrete like tofu.
A direct hit would mean at least half-body paralysis—no, vaporization, wouldn't it?
The spear's trajectory.
The distance to Nir.
The angle my legs would need to push off the ground.
Before I could even think, my body moved first again.
BOOM!
When I came to my senses, I had landed on the opposite side with Nir tucked under my arm.
The concrete floor where Nir had been standing just a moment ago was gouged deep in the shape of a spear blade.
"S-Sis??"
Nir in my arms looked up at me with wide round eyes. My heart felt like it was about to leap out of my throat. My legs were shaking, but I hid Nir behind my back.
"Going after a kid is a bit much, don't you think?"
At my words, the blonde who had stepped back leveled her formless spear at me.
"Just now—that maneuver..."
For the first time, a crack appeared in the blonde's doll-like blank expression.
Her wide-open eyes were trembling, like someone who had seen something impossible.
Her lips quivered.
"A Valkyrie, dayo."
"What?"
"Team Leader! This isn't an unauthorized unit—it's a real Valkyrie Maneuver, dayo!"
Even the silver-haired woman, who had been locking down Ha-rin, turned to look this way.
Across that ice-cold face, a clear ripple of agitation passed.
"...Just as the Chairman said."
The silver-haired woman murmured low.
Chairman? There's a Chairman?
Is the world of the gods some kind of corporation?
While I stood there bewildered, the silver-haired woman dissolved her formless sword with a soft hiss and took a step back.
"Valkyrie Kara. Halt execution. This matter exceeds on-site judgment authority."
"Yes, Team Leader!"
At the silver-haired woman's order, the blonde also withdrew her formless spear and stepped back.
"Trickster. And Serpent."
The silver-haired woman started toward the wrecked steel door, then turned only her head to look at us—at me, specifically.
"What we witnessed today will be reported to upper management as-is. The disposition of that unit and its loaded soul will be decided by the Chairman personally. Until then, do not remove the unit."
"Hmph. Inspection, execution—you sure put on a show just to scare us and leave. Get lost already!"
Ha-rin bared her teeth, but the silver-haired woman didn't reply.
Behind the two Valkyries, wings of light unfurled wide once more.
With a single powerful beat of those wings, the dust in the basement whipped up like a storm—and in the same instant, the two of them soared up beyond the collapsed steel door, vanishing into the darkness and leaving only a white cluster of light behind.
Those storm-like few minutes passed, and a heavy silence settled over the basement.
"Wow! Ha-rin sis! Did you see that? This sis saved me! She was super fast! Next time I'll save sis too!"
It was Nir who broke the silence.
Watching the little kid bounce up and down, dangling from my arm, Ha-rin stared at me for a long moment before whipping her head away.
"...I'll take back calling you a defective product."
"Is that your way of saying thank you?"
"No. How about you go awaken an Authority or something first?"
The way she snapped at me with faintly flushed cheeks made a laugh slip out of me before I could stop it.
Dying and coming back to life. Becoming a woman. Even getting a disposal sentence handed down. The worst day of my life.
And at the end of it, for the first time, I laughed.
But that laugh didn't last long.
"Ha-rin. What just happened—that's not something to laugh about."
Yuna, having withdrawn the serpent's shadow, stood in front of the monitor with a pale face.
"A regular Valkyrie acknowledged it as a Valkyrie Maneuver. Looking at a soul with a twelve-percent synchronization rate, no Authority, and no memories."
"So what about it?"
"I don't know. This unnie doesn't know either, but... this isn't normal."
Yuna's narrow eyes slowly turned toward me.
"Odin might have known from the start that we would activate this unit. And..."
Yuna cracked her narrow eyes open a fraction, looking at me with pupils split vertically like a reptile's.
"Sang-hae. What are you, really?"
At Yuna's words, I couldn't answer at all.
Just as the Chairman said.
That one line the silver-haired woman had left behind settled belatedly onto my spine like ice.
What the hell am I?