Not to mention the uncultured wildlings who feared power but lacked reverence for virtue—even the Night's Watch on the Wall couldn't help but cheer for the Dragon Queen at such a soul-stirring scene.
"Long live Queen Daenerys! Queen Daenerys is unparalleled in valor!"Perhaps afraid the wildlings would try to claim the Queen as their own, the Night's Watch shouted even louder—until...
Crunch, crunch...Stannis's eyes burned with fury as he ground his teeth hard, as if he were chewing on the detestable, hateful dragon witch herself.
The Night's Watchman next to him, who had just been shouting excitedly, shuddered with a chill, hunched his neck, and fell silent.
Pomegranate cautiously glanced at the fist-clenched, teeth-gritting Stannis and softly asked Maester Aemon, "Should the rangers head into battle?"
"Th-that's up to you," said the centenarian Aemon, even he a bit unnerved by the gloomy aura radiating from the two-antlered man.
Below, Dany seemed a bit carried away with pride—beginning to recklessly court death.
She silenced the wildlings around her who were randomly chanting slogans and gave the order:"There aren't enough wights left for me to kill. Now help me challenge the White Walkers."
"Uh, how?" Harley's scrawny little face was full of confusion.
"Shout together: 'Cowardly, lowly White Walkers! Your granddaddy is here—dare you come out and fight me one-on-one?'" Dany said in a low voice.
"This... this..." Harley's face went from pale to green.
"I can't," said the wildling thousand-man leader awkwardly. "The White Walkers understand human speech."
"That's exactly why I want you to shout! Otherwise, would I have you light a lamp for the blind?" Dany snapped.
"But I can't fight a White Walker. I don't even have a steel sword or armor—how could I possibly duel one?"
"Just shout for me. If a White Walker actually shows up, you won't have to fight."
"Oh." Harley swallowed hard, then raised his voice and yelled, "Everyone, listen up! The Dragon Queen is challenging the White Walkers to a duel—we're helping her call them out!"
"Cowardly, lowly White Walkers! Your granddaddy is here—dare you come out and fight me one-on-one?"
Dozens of wildling men shouted in unison, their voices shaking the land. Wildlings hiding in the camp and the Night's Watch on the Wall all heard it—and were stunned.
"Wildlings… true warriors!" muttered Toad-faced Tod.
"If the wildlings are this brave, we can't fall behind. The rangers can move out," said Morsay, seemingly addressing Maester Aemon, though his eyes furtively watched Stannis. Seeing that Stannis only wore a sullen expression and voiced no objection, he finally breathed a sigh of relief and began notifying Commander Qhorin Halfhand below.
Yes—the one leading the rangers out of the city was none other than Cotter Pyke, the commander of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. He was the one who had concealed Stannis's arrival from Castle Black and led him in a sneak attack on the wildling camp.
Morsay suspected he had sided with the "Stag Faction," which was why he feared Stannis might object.
Beyond the Wall, the wildlings continued to flirt with death.
Seeing fewer and fewer wights remaining and still no sign of the White Walkers, they grew bolder—throwing all decorum aside and hurling every imaginable insult.
At that moment, Dany instead fell silent. She was multitasking—while casually pulling a fire arrow from a dragon flame ball to burn an incoming White Walker, she was also observing the constant fall of spirit rain within her soul-space.
Yes—she was absorbing the spirit essence released from the burning of wights.
As soon as she entered the battlefield, she had "seen" in her dragon-spirit state the spirit essence dispersing into nature—emanating from the wights burned by wildling warriors.
She hesitated only briefly, then gritted her teeth in secret: There will surely be countless wights in the future, and even corpses contain spirit essence. It's too wasteful to let it go. Why not try absorbing it first?
With that thought, she activated her "Soul Infusion" ability and split part of her consciousness to sink into her soul-space, observing the falling spirit rain.
As expected, this time the falling spirit essence was different—pure black, carrying a chilling aura of deathly stillness.
"Can this stuff be absorbed?"
Within her soul-space, Dany hesitated.
Could this help form a third soul?Tempted by the idea, she no longer hesitated and reached out her hand, catching the fine black rain.
Ssshhh—As the black spirit essence was touched by her mental energy and marked with her soul imprint, a suction force emerged from the ring-shaped second soul at the edge of the soul-space. The newborn spiritual power, along with the black rain falling from the sky, was all drawn into the ring.
She then felt her second soul grow—just a little, extremely faintly, but undeniably stronger.
"This… what's going on?!"Dany was more shocked than pleased.
Last night, when she held a cremation ceremony for the wildlings, she had tried to have her second soul absorb the colorful spirit essence—but the results were poor, with almost no spiritual growth.
She hadn't thought much of it—yes, spirit essence could strengthen the soul, but once a certain limit was reached, growth practically stopped.
Like eating rice to grow taller—once an adult, no amount of food can make you grow taller indefinitely.
Her soul had nearly reached saturation.
Dragons, on the other hand, had no such bottleneck. They could absorb spirit essence endlessly and continue growing.
She suspected it was because dragons had far higher growth limits than humans. That's why 99% of the spirit rain over the years had gone to the dragons.
But now, her "second soul," based on the Green Seer meditation method, had a unique affinity for this black spirit rain—growing almost visibly.
The growth of her second soul should have been good news—something to be happy about.But what this phenomenon implied was terrifying: a deep connection between the Green Seers and the wights!
Of course, Dany had watched Game of Thrones and knew the White Walkers were magical beings created by the Children of the Forest. She wasn't worried that Bran would become the next Night King.
The issue was—her second soul also used a flawed version of the Green Seer meditation.
She was worried about herself!
The Dragon Queen had no desire to bring an ice dragon and sit upon the frozen throne!
So even amid the battle, she continued to devote part of her attention to diving into her consciousness, checking the status of her second soul.
Uh… she was in excellent condition—so good it made her nervous.
"White Walker, come out so I can stab you in the ass!"
"White Walker, you cowardly bastard, take off your pants and let me see if you even have a dick!" a spearwoman shouted loudly.
"Hahaha! Even if he does, it's probably just a popsicle. You think you can bite that off?" the nearby raiders burst into laughter.
The wildlings were so uninhibited that Dany started to feel worried.
She frowned and reminded them, "Be careful, raise your shields—"
"Screeeeeeeech——————"
"Screeeeeeeech——————"
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"Screeeeeeeech——————"
"Screeeeeeeech——————"
Before she could finish speaking, sharp screeches suddenly rang out from the darkness. Four crystal-clear ice swords flew out from the thick mist almost at the same moment as the sound. Under the light of the torches and dragonfire, Dany saw only four flashes of cold light.
Whooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh—
Clang!
The wildlings' laughter and curses were abruptly cut off. The surrounding temperature dropped by more than ten degrees, and swirls of white mist appeared out of nowhere, covering the wildlings and the Dragon Queen in a blanket of fog.
A chill ran down Dany's spine. Cold sweat covered her forehead. If she had lifted her helmet, one would have seen a pale, twisted face and terrified violet eyes.
—Right in front of her was an ice sword, two fingers wide and thin as paper. The blade was over two meters long—more like a spear than a sword.
The tip had pierced through the bodies of three wildlings in front of her, and with undiminished momentum, it stopped right against the spine of her Skycleaver.
On either side of her, pressed close to her body, were three more ice swords that had skewered about a dozen wildlings.
In an instant, nearly half the group was wiped out. The surviving wildlings were frozen in fear, their souls practically fleeing their bodies.
If Dany hadn't been in her dragon-spirit state all along—if not for the sudden sense of danger that made her instinctively raise Skycleaver across her chest—she would've ended up like Captain Harley.
Well, Harley wasn't dead yet. The ice sword had pierced through his round oak shield, entered his chest from the right, and exited through his back. Blood steamed on the blade in a hot, swirling mist.
But the hot blood from his heart instantly froze into dark red spots on the ice-cold blade.
"S-So cold… the sons of bitches, yelling all day and not one shows up, and now four show up all at once…" Frost slowly formed on the small, dry face of the wildling Harley. Yet he still turned his head with effort, saw the ice sword blocked by the smoky-black sword spine, and let out a heavy breath of white mist. He forced a smile and said to Dany, "Dragon… Dragon Queen, d-do you think… four… is enough for you to kill?"
"Not enough," Dany replied in a low voice, but her tone was firm and powerful. "Far from enough. I swear, I'll kill every last one of those dog bastards!"
"Good… that's… good—" The smile froze forever on Harley's small, weathered face.
"Dragon Queen! They're—they're coming! It's not just four, it's more than four!" The surviving wildlings screamed in panic.
They didn't even need to warn her—Dany had already seen them.
The freezing wind roared in, mixed with ice shards. The torches flickered wildly. Even the dragonfire balls began to twist irregularly, as if their form couldn't hold.
In the wavering light, six towering figures could be seen riding the wind toward them.
They moved like gliding phantoms. Four of the White Walkers walked silently, without making a sound. Only two rode horseback, and their mounts made a faint squelching noise as their hooves stepped into the muddy ground.
Yes—dead horses.
But even the dead horses had glowing blue eyes. Ghoulish horses?
"At last… we meet," Dany whispered.
Each was around 1.9 meters tall, close to two meters—massive, like Dwayne Johnson–sized brutes.
And no, it wasn't her poor memory for faces. The six White Walkers looked like they were cast from the same mold—apart from the unique ice-crystal engravings on their foreheads, they were nearly identical.
Their faces were gaunt and stern, wrinkled like dehydrated apples. They had cold blue eyes that sparkled like stars, and skin pale as spoiled milk. Their ghostly white hair floated around them like seaweed in the frigid air—like it was made of frozen fire.
The White Walkers wore stealth armor, which changed color as they moved. Sometimes it shimmered like the glow of dusk, dotted with yellow and red lights like torch or dragonfire. At other times, it turned pitch black, blending into the freezing mist.
With each step, the patterns on their armor shifted like moonlight rippling across water. Occasionally, Dany lost track of them completely.
It wasn't an illusion.
Whenever they blended into the environment, they vanished from sight. But due to the unstable lighting—flickering and dim—the background fluctuated, revealing them once more before they disappeared again.
Thus, as the firelight danced, the White Walkers flickered in and out of sight.
The dead horses were coated in frost, like frozen sweat. Blackened, rotting intestines spilled from gaping bellies. On their backs rode riders pale as dark ice.
The six White Walkers stopped about ten meters ahead of Dany, forming a loose arc that faintly surrounded her. As the wildlings stared in horror and confusion, one of the White Walkers spoke.
Yes, he spoke—using a solemn tone and strange, alien inflections, he addressed the Dragon Queen with a few words.
His voice sounded like shattering ice over a frozen lake, like a liquid nitrogen bomb exploding by your ear—so cold and piercing it could tear through your bones. Everyone around clutched their heads in pain—except Dany, still in dragon-spirit form, unfazed.
"Anyone know what that dog bastard just said?" the Dragon Queen shouted.
(End of Chapter)
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