Niflheim

Niflheim is the single neutral city of the demon realm — a glittering metropolis raised upon literal heaps of gold, where merchant profit, not the will of the Demon Lords, is the only law. While civil wars tear the human continent apart, here war is a distant fairy tale: the archdukes of the demon realm lobby ceaselessly to keep the flames away, throwing lavish banquets every fortnight with the costliest dancers and wine worth its weight in gold. Hundreds of races — from goblins to elves, beastfolk and fae — live side by side regardless of birth or rank, in an ordered society that is emphatically not a rabble of wild monsters.

One iron rule governs the city: teleportation is strictly forbidden inside Niflheim as a guarantee of its neutrality. Anyone who casts a teleport spell within its bounds is to be hunted down by all the Demon Lords united — a prohibition so absolute that even **Gamigin**, trapped by humiliation, dared not break it and had to ride to the negotiation hall by carriage. The city sustains a governor's mansion, a grand palace and ballroom, a parliament, casinos, the costliest brothels, and its own guild of assassins for hire.

**The seat of Kunkuska (ch 138-254).** Niflheim is home base of the **Kunkuska trading house**, the largest merchant company of the demon realm, where **Lapis Lazuli** rose to prominence. It is the place **Lapis** once sent **Dantalion** to convalesce when his Demon Lord's Syndrome flared. The true body of **Ivar Lodbrok** — the company's vampiric founder — dwells here, and Dantalion's real aim in visiting the city is to reach it. When Dantalion engineers the collapse of Kunkuska in a single day, the whole economy of Niflheim bursts and the Demon Lords' army is thrown into panic; only then does the city, which had resisted every bribe, quietly fall under his control.

**Dantalion's Walpurgis Night (ch 266-274).** In the fifth month of that year, lowly 71st-rank **Dantalion** convened a Walpurgis Night in Niflheim — an outrage, since he held the lowest seat of all. Through the ballroom he marched fifteen merchants and citizens of Niflheim led by **Ivar Lodbrok**, openly cooperating with him; the city that had kept absolute neutrality against every bribe had sided with Dantalion, allowing the council to be staged on his terms. There the rank system of the Demon Lords' army was publicly abolished, under the banner of harmony and equality. Niflheim's central square is also the realm's place of public reckoning — it was here, in full view of all, that Dantalion slew **Andromalius**, a deed his enemies brand the act of a shameless law-breaker.

**The triumph and the gift (ch 307-311).** After **Bael** is brought to heel, the commanders return to Niflheim to a triumphal procession of more than ten thousand onlookers; in the repaired palace a victory banquet gathers the cream of demon society, and the ruined wing wrecked by Bael is kept forever as a monument named «Traitor's End». Later Dantalion rents out the whole of Niflheim for a day so that **Ivar** may at last walk her own city in her true body — for Niflheim is the embodiment of one girl's desire, a place that seeks only the merchants' gain. **Ivar** thereafter represents the city's parliament and is known as «the curled fox of Niflheim».

Niflheim's whole identity rests on profit-driven neutrality. Built on heaps of gold, it answers to merchants rather than to any Demon Lord, and its great trading firms are famous for bowing to no one. The guarantee of that neutrality is a single absolute prohibition: no one may teleport within the city. Break it, and every Demon Lord is bound to unite and strike the offender down. The rule is enforced even on the powerful — a humiliated Gamigin must endure a carriage ride rather than risk it — and it is precisely this trusted neutrality that makes Niflheim the natural ground for the Walpurgis Night and for public executions in its central square.

A city that resisted every bribe could not be bought, so Dantalion broke it instead. By collapsing the Kunkuska trading house in a single day — fulfilling Ivar Lodbrok's own long revenge — he burst the economy that held Niflheim together and bound the city to himself. With Niflheim secretly in his hand, the lowly 71st-rank lord could stage a Walpurgis Night on his own terms and parade the city's merchants as his open allies, leaving rivals like Vassago cornered. Through Ivar, who comes to represent its parliament as «the curled fox of Niflheim», the neutral city is folded into Dantalion's web of power.