Iden asked somewhat impatiently, "When do you plan to take me to Midgard?"
Harvey was about to say 'now', but a sudden "Boom!" of explosions echoed through the air.
The two looked out the window simultaneously to see a massive black, diamond-shaped warship appearing above Asgard.
Laser cannons at the bottom of the ship were relentlessly bombarding the energy shield of the Royal Palace.
"An invasion?" Iden stood up abruptly, looking toward the unknown vessel with worry.
She was an erudite mage, not a warrior; her combat ability was roughly on par with a common Asgardian.
Faced with such a sudden upheaval, she feared for Asgard's future.
As a physician, she knew all too well that the All-Father had fallen into the Odinsleep.
Harvey wore a grave expression on the outside, but inside, he was ecstatic. Finally, the day of the Dark Elf invasion had arrived.
All his patient waiting had not been in vain.
The timing was perfect.
He had already memorized every single Rune; though he hadn't mastered them all, he had plenty of time for that later.
Even though the Dark Elves had arrived earlier than in the original timeline—a bit of the butterfly effect—Harvey could accept it.
At that moment, many Asgardian guards spotted the intruders and began manning the magical turrets to return fire.
Harvey turned to Iden with a solemn look, instructing her: "Guard the library. I'm going out to fight!"
"Once we drive these bold invaders away, I'll find the time to take you to Midgard."
As the guardian of the library, Iden's primary duty was to protect the precious grimoires from destruction.
Thus, even if war broke out in Asgard, she wasn't required to join the front lines.
Hearing Harvey's command, Iden nodded quickly. "I understand. Go! And please... be careful!"
Watching Harvey vanish through the palace gates, a thick cloud of worry gathered in Iden's eyes.
The All-Father's condition was deteriorating; if he were forced awake by war, he might not survive the next Odinsleep.
Iden's face turned bitter. "These damned invaders chose the worst possible time!"
"Sigh... I hope Heimdall and Prince Thor can hold them back."
"Heimdall, you must come back alive!"
After leaving the Omniscient Library, Harvey had absolutely no intention of helping Asgard defend its home.
He found a remote corner of the palace.
Indifferent, he watched Thor in the sky, who had transformed into the God of Thunder to engage dozens of Dark Elf ships.
Thor swung Mjolnir, summoning blinding dragons of lightning to strike the enemy vessels.
Boom! Bang, bang, bang!
With a single strike, a two-hundred-meter-long black cruiser exploded into a ball of fire, snapped in two as it fell from the sky.
The wreckage slammed into the energy shield, exploded again, and was eventually annihilated.
Harvey watched with cold detachment. He wasn't the real Heimdall; the life or death of Asgard meant nothing to him.
Now, he just had to wait for Thor to feign defeat, for Jane to be taken by the Dark Elves, and for Thor and Loki to team up to infiltrate the enemy lair.
Once the Dark Elves were dealt with and the Aether removed from Jane, Thor would hand the Reality Stone over to the Collector for safekeeping.
That would be Harvey's moment to strike.
Looking at the battle, Thor was strong, but his current power was still lacking.
After summoning ten lightning bolts to destroy ten ships, his divine energy was heavily depleted, forcing him to fly onto the hulls of the ships to smash them manually.
But this time, the Dark Elves had come in full force to reclaim the Aether and realize their dream of turning the universe into a realm of darkness.
They had deployed 5 large capital ships, 30 cruisers, and hundreds of smaller fighters.
It was all or nothing for them.
Consequently, the war quickly became one-sided.
No matter how well Thor fought alone, he couldn't take down this many ships at once.
Asgard wasn't without its own fleet and air personnel.
However, more than half of the Asgardian army was away suppressing rebellions in the other Nine Realms and couldn't make it back in time.
Relying solely on the elderly, women, and the infirm left behind—and without Odin taking the field—it was hard to say if they could stop the frenzied Dark Elf armada.
The main reason the situation was so dire was that Heimdall had vanished.
Without the Bifrost, the warriors abroad couldn't return.
If it weren't for the energy shield protecting the palace complex, the entire city would have been reduced to rubble by the Dark Elf fleet.
Still, the situation was grim.
Thor felt like he had bitten off more than he could chew.
He had planned to weaken the Dark Elves, destroy most of their fleet, and then feign surrender to give them Jane.
Once they extracted the Aether, he and Loki would strike their home world.
It was a bold plan; Asgard had no precedent for surrendering to an enemy.
But with every physician in Asgard helpless against the Aether inside Jane, and seeing her rapidly aging toward death, Thor had to take a risk.
Now, he swung his hammer through the night sky, smashing a Dark Elf fighter in one blow.
He seemed invincible, but his face grew darker by the second.
At this rate, the shield wouldn't hold.
"Father? Are you still not coming out?"
As he began to flag, Thor couldn't understand why his father hadn't appeared.
If the All-Father stepped in, every single invader would die.
But the intensity of the combat left him no time for deep thought. After smashing another ship...
He temporarily disengaged from the battlefield and flew toward the end of the Bifrost.
He searched throughout Himinbjorg.
"Heimdall? Heimdall! Where are you?"
"Damn it! Was he killed by the invaders?"
Logically, as the guardian of the Bifrost, Heimdall would never leave Himinbjorg.
Since he couldn't find him, Thor assumed only one thing: Heimdall had been vaporized by a Dark Elf cannon in the chaos.
"What do I do?"
His mind in a frantic mess, Thor didn't want to surrender so soon.
If the Dark Elves were too strong, he wouldn't be able to rescue Jane from their headquarters later.
Just then, he spotted a familiar longsword lying in a corner, covered in a layer of dust.
"This is... the Guardian Sword that summons the Bifrost?"