Chapter 172: The Dragon King and the Night King
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Golden fire erupted from three throats simultaneously, painting the frozen wasteland in hues of destruction that had not been seen since the fall of Old Valyria.
Viserion's flames struck first, a torrent of molten gold that turned snow to steam in microseconds. Where her fire touched the wights, they didn't simply burn. They liquefied, ancient bones becoming ash, frozen flesh vaporizing so completely that not even smoke remained. The sheer heat created a pressure wave that flattened hundreds more, their brittle forms shattering like glass dropped on stone.
It was a sight to see. How many thousand wights were eliminated just from a single breath?
Drogon's black fire followed, darker than midnight yet somehow more terrible in its beauty. His flames carved through their ranks with surgical precision, every burst of flame was calculated to maximize devastation. Rhaegal's jade fire completed the trinity, his flames dancing between his siblings' destruction like some cosmic orchestra playing a symphony of annihilation.
Look at that. Three hundred thousand, I thought, watching the tide of undead evaporate before our combined assault. They don't look scary though. In the show, they seemed so threatening.
But then again, the show's dragons were barely the size of passenger jets. These are flying fortresses. System enhanced.
I was [Level 153] now. So my dragons were much stronger as well.
The numbers fell like autumn leaves. In just a few minutes, it fell to two hundred and fifty thousand. The mindless creatures ran and threw stones at my dragons, but they had no effect.
My eyes remained locked on the one real threat amid this crowd. The single entity who could change the battlefield.
He didn't make any moves. So the first few minutes were a lovely slaughter fest. The undeads fell to two hundred thousand.
Even as tens of thousands died with each breath, my eyes never left the Night King. He sat motionless on his pale horse, those alien blue eyes tracking our movements with calculating intelligence.
Around him, his White Walker lieutenants remained equally still with their eyes all trailing my form in the sky, their ice armor catching dragonfire and throwing it back in crystalline refractions.
He's waiting for something. But what?
The answer came with terrifying swiftness.
The Night King's hand moved, almost casually, to the spear carried by one of his subordinates. The weapon was beautiful in its lethality, ice that seemed to drink in light, its point sharp enough to cut reality itself. He hefted it with the practiced ease of a being who had been perfecting the art of death for eight thousand years.
Fuck. I know this scene.
Time slowed as my enhanced perception kicked in. The Night King's arm drew back, muscles that no longer needed blood still remembering perfect form. His target became clear as his alien gaze fixed on Drogon.
Of course.
In the TV show, he managed to take down Viserion because he was the smallest. Here, Drogon's the weakest of the three. Still massive, but not System-enhanced like the others.
The spear left his hand with impossible force, whistling through the air like a falling star made of winter itself.
Its trajectory was fast and perfect, aimed not where Drogon was, but where he would be in the next heartbeat.
"Dany!" I roared, my voice carrying harmonics that made the air itself vibrate.
But shouting warnings wouldn't be enough.
The spear moved too fast, carried too much force. Even if Daenerys heard me, even if she reacted instantly, Drogon couldn't dodge something moving at that velocity.
Can't affect the spear directly. Too much magical energy, too much intent behind it. But I can affect other things.
My hands shot out, Mana flowing from me like a river bursting its banks. Mana transformed into kinetic force as I used a [Spell].
[Telekinesis].
The invisible force struck not the spear, but Drogon himself, a massive telekinetic shove that sent the black dragon tumbling sideways through the air.
"W-what?!" Daenerys screamed as they spun, her enhanced reflexes the only thing keeping her mounted as Drogon fought to regain control of his flight.
The ice spear passed so close to his wing that frost formed on the membrane, a line of white that marked how close death had come calling.
The spear continued its arc, burying itself in the ground with enough force to crack bedrock. Ice spread outward from the impact site like a spider's web, killing anything it touched.
That would have gone straight through Drogon's heart, I realized, cold sweat beading despite my fire immunity.
This was what I was cautious of. This was not some poorly written show, the Night King was not an easy opponent. He's not just throwing blind. He's calculating trajectory, wind resistance, target movement. This isn't some mindless undead. This is a general.
From below, the Night King's head turned toward me. Even across the distance, I could feel his attention like a physical weight. When he smiled, it was with the satisfaction of a chess master who'd just forced his opponent to reveal their hand.
I smirked back. Smart bastard. He knows I can't keep doing that. Mana is far more useful than this world's magic, but my reserves aren't endless.
The remaining wights, perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand now, stopped their advance.
They turned as one to stare up at us, blue eyes reflecting our dragonfire like a galaxy of malevolent stars. The Night King raised his hand, and the temperature plummeted another ten degrees.
Then, with movements that spoke of perfect coordination, the White Walkers began to spread out. No longer clustered for protection, but positioning themselves strategically across the battlefield.
Conventional warfare just became impossible, I thought, watching them deploy with military precision. He's adapted. One exchange, and he's already changing tactics.
The Night King reached for another spear.
****
"Keep burning!" I commanded, my voice carrying across the frozen air. "Don't let them regroup!"
But even as my dragons continued their aerial bombardment, I knew the game had changed. The Night King wasn't just some mindless force of destruction. He was a tactician, a strategist who'd had eight millennia to study warfare.
Every move we made, he was learning from.
Time for a different approach.
"Dany!" I called out, guiding Viserion closer to her position. "The small fries aren't the real threat!"
She nodded, understanding immediately. "I know that brother, but what do we do?!" The wights were just fodder, meant to exhaust us while the real killers positioned themselves. Her eyes, now glowing with their own inner fire, tracked the White Walkers as they spread across the battlefield like pieces on a cyvasse board.
Thirteen of them plus their king. Fourteen total. How troublesome.
I felt the familiar tingle of transformation beginning, my human seeming form starting to shift. But not here. Not in the air where one well-placed ice spear could send me tumbling to the ground.
"Stay airborne," I told Viserion. "Keep them honest. Use your claws to take out those White Walkers."
Dragon flame was useless against the White Walkers, but Viserion's claws were adorned with black crystals, like artificial nails. Obsidian Shards. The same went for the other two dragons, but Viserion was the strongest and therefore could take risk.
Then I did something that, in hindsight, was probably stupid as fuck.
I let go.
The fall toward the battlefield was exhilarating, wind tearing at my clothes as the frozen ground rushed up to meet me. Around me, the sound of dragonfire continued, Viserion's roars mixing with Drogon's and Rhaegal's as they kept up their bombardment.
At fifty feet, I spread my wings.
The membrane caught air like black silk, slowing my descent but not stopping it. I hit the ground with enough force to crater the earth, ice and stone exploding outward in a perfect circle. Steam rose from my impact site as my body heat turned snow to mist. I was two heads taller and thicker now.
Now for the real show.
Mana flowed through me, not the crude telekinetic burst I'd used to save Drogon, but something far more refined. Fire magic, shaped and focused through months of experimentation. My eyes began to glow, not with the orange-red of normal flame, but with something closer to the heart of a star.
White-hot. Blue-white. Temperatures that existed in the cores of dragons.
Let's see how they like conventional warfare when the conventions include plasma.
The nearest White Walker approached with that inhuman grace they all possessed, its crystalline sword catching the light from above. Beautiful and terrible, like everything else in this damned world.
I turned my burning eyes and spoke a single word in High Valyrian.
"Dracarys."
The beam of concentrated fire that erupted from my eyes was nothing like dragonbreath. This was focused, controlled, precise.
The reason Dragon Glass hurt the White Walkers but Dragon Flame couldn't was simple. Dragon Glass was condensed.
If that was the case, couldn't I achieve the same effect by concentrating my plasma mouth beam through my eyes instead?
The heat vision punched through the White Walker's ice armor like it was made of paper, boring a hole straight through its chest and continuing for another hundred yards, melting everything in its path.
The White Walker looked down at the smoking crater where its heart should be, then back at me with what might have been surprise.
Then it crumbled, ice armor cascading to the ground like broken glass.
One down. Thirteen to go.
The others had taken notice. They moved now with purpose, no longer testing or probing but committed to ending this threat. Ice spears formed in their hands, weapons that sang with deadly intent.
But I was done playing defense.
Let's show them what eight thousand years of combat evolution looks like.
Power flowed through me like molten metal through my veins, rewriting the very essence of what I was. My skin took on a bronze hue, then deeper, darker, until veins of actual lava began tracing patterns across my arms and chest. Not metaphorical fire. Literal molten rock, heated to temperatures that should have been impossible for any living thing to contain.
[World-Eater's Legacy].
I felt the transformation settle into my bones. Time to show them why dragons ruled the world.
In my right hand, I withdrew something from the Inventory. An obsidian spear. Not the crude volcanic glass that most called dragonglass, but something refined, shaped by will and fire into perfection. A spear longer than I was tall, its edges sharp enough to cut through the fabric of reality itself. The weapon hummed with power, eager to taste the ice-blood of my enemies.
In my left, Blackfyre materialized from my inventory. The ancestral blade of my house, Valyrian steel that had tasted the blood of kings. The sword felt light as air in my transformed grip, its dark metal drinking in the light from my molten veins.
Twelve White Walkers arranged in perfect formation. Their king watching from the center. This is what I've been preparing for.
This was an uneven fight. But if I got caught off guard and lost, everything I fought for, everyone I conquered, they'd vanish into thin air. Including me.
"Grhhh…"
The first White Walker came at me like an avalanche given form, its ice blade trailing frost as it moved. Fast. Impossibly fast for something that looked so bulky.
I was faster.
The obsidian spear took it through the chest, punching through ice armor and whatever passed for flesh beneath. The White Walker's scream was like winter wind through broken glass, beautiful and horrible in equal measure. As it died, its form began to crack, ice flaking away to reveal... nothing. Just cold and ancient malice given shape.
Two down.
But they were learning. The others approached in coordinated waves, no longer relying on individual skill but moving like parts of a greater organism. Ice spears flew at me from three directions simultaneously while sword-wielders closed from the flanks.
This is why I needed both weapons.
Blackfyre sang through the air, its Valyrian steel edge meeting ice weapons with sounds like church bells breaking. Each impact sent shockwaves through the frozen ground, cracks spreading outward in geometric patterns.
My obsidian spear wove between the strikes, finding gaps in armor, exploiting moments of overextension.
The molten veins across my body pulsed brighter with each kill. Three down.
Four. Five. I was cautious and unstoppable.
They're not just fighting me, I realized as I ducked under a horizontal slash that would have taken my head off. They're studying me. Learning my patterns.
They were also growing stronger somehow. I soon realized why. Interesting, I noted as the remaining White Walkers grew visibly stronger, their fallen brothers' power flowing into them. So death empowers the survivors. What a useful trick.
I filled away that observation, wondering if dragons shared similar bonds...
Indeed, the remaining White Walkers had begun to adapt. Where before they'd attacked with individual techniques, now they moved in perfect synchronization. One would feint high while another struck low. A third would position to exploit whichever way I dodged.
Eight thousand years of existence, I thought, parrying desperately as they pressed their advantage. They've fought armies, heroes, legends. They know every combat technique ever developed.
Six down. Seven.
I realized something as I kept killing them. By killing one, I was making the others more powerful. The powers of a dead brother enhanced the others.
Dammit.
The remaining five were already strong, the ones who'd lasted long enough to truly coordinate. Now they were stronger as the dead seven's powers enhanced them. They surrounded me now, ice weapons creating a cage of deadly sharp edges. No matter which way I moved, two or three blades would find me.
Time for something they haven't seen before.
I planted the obsidian spear in the ground and raised both hands skyward. The mana cost for this would be enormous, but I still had reserves from my level-ups during the battle.
"DRACARYS MAXIMUM!"
Fire erupted from every pore of my body. Not the controlled beams I'd been using, but raw dragonfire given form and fury. The flames spiraled outward in swirling threads of lava, and then in a perfect sphere, temperature climbing beyond anything this world had ever witnessed.
The very air ignited, nitrogen and oxygen burning in chemical reactions that painted the sky in impossible colors.
When the inferno cleared, the five White Walkers were gone. Not dead, not shattered. Gone.
Vaporized so completely that not even their weapons remained.
My eyes sharpened.
"Twelve down. One to go."
I turned to face the Night King, steam rising from my superheated form. He sat his pale horse perhaps fifty yards away, watching me with those alien eyes that held the wisdom of ages and the patience of winter itself.
When he dismounted, it was with fluid grace that belonged more to dancers than warriors. His feet touched the ground, and ice spread outward in perfect circles, creating patterns of deadly beauty across the battlefield.
"Finally," he spoke, and his voice was like the sound of glaciers calving, deep and resonant and utterly inhuman. "A worthyopponent."
He can talk. Of course he can talk.
The Night King drew no weapon. Instead, he raised his hands, and winter answered his call.
It didn't matter what Dany and the three dragons were doing, it didn't matter that they were still clearing the hundreds of thousands of undeads, what mattered was this single man right here.
If he remained, if he won, he could raise a larger army in a week's time.
I had to make sure that didn't happen. I had to win. Yes.
The final battle was here.
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