Thanks to the Lightbringer, still glowing where it was embedded in a wight's shoulder blade, the Night King, who possessed excellent night vision, saw the two explosive projectiles flying through the air. Already prepared for this, he glanced at them with disdain, allocated some magic to reinforce the ice armor already formed on his body, then paid them no further attention. Instead, while continuing to direct the wights as they crossed the sea of fire, he reached out to the eight… no, already seven subordinates trapped within the town, instructing them to attempt a breakout while he drew the humans' attention.
At the same time, he picked up a second stone. Even if he couldn't kill those two key figures on the human side with precision, he could at least scare them and draw their focus.
...
Due to the limitations of the era and technology, expecting to detonate explosive projectiles directly above the Night King by aiming with catapults and precisely controlling fuse lengths was nothing more than a pipe dream. One of the two projectiles, launched with slightly less force, landed among the wights, bounced across the frozen ground, and exploded about a hundred feet away from the Night King. The other veered off course slightly, passing high over the Night King's head and detonating a few tenths of a second later.
It was an imperfect bombardment, but the hundreds of fragments in various shapes, recast from twenty Dragonsteel arrowheads from Lightbringer 31 to Lightbringer 50, were propelled by the combustion and explosion of Powder. Their sheer number fully compensated for poor accuracy. Like a flurry of petals, they spread out across two spheres more than thirty meters in diameter. Even so, a small number still shot toward the Night King.
Amid the scattered rain of Dragonsteel fragments, a crisp crack sounded. The Night King suddenly lost contact with another subordinate priest.
At first, he thought it was one of the seven still trapped inside the town who had encountered a counter-artifact and been killed. But in the very next moment, he remembered that the priest who had just gone silent was clearly standing right behind him… and should have also reinforced his ice armor to resist Dragonglass fragments.
Before he could fully register the anomaly, a small, sharp object had already pierced through the solid shell of his body from just left of the center of his back and detonated violently within.
---
Dragonsteel fragments, of course, did not possess the magical property of secondary explosions. The "explosion" the Night King felt inside his body was the result of a violent reaction between the high-density, high-purity fire magic within the Dragonsteel and the cold magic of similar strength inside him. This fierce clash of opposing magic caused the carefully regulated energy circulating within his body to erupt outward from the impact point in a violent shockwave.
In the previous second, the Night King had still been strategizing, commanding tens of thousands of wights to launch a diversionary assault across the fire barrier. In the next second, his life came to an end.
Just as the concept of dosage must be included when discussing toxicity in the human world, the lethality of magic-imbued weapons like Dragonglass and Dragonsteel against wights and White Walkers cannot be separated from their "dose."
Because wights are fully physical beings, many forms of attack can damage them. However, only by dispelling or neutralizing most or all of the cold magic within them can they be killed instantly. Fortunately, since wights only contain a wisp of cold magic to begin with, even a small amount of fire magic—such as that in a basic Dragonglass arrowhead—is more than enough to overwhelm it. That is why humans often find that weapons of any size made from Dragonglass or Dragonsteel can easily destroy wights.
White Walkers are different. Their bodies are composed almost entirely of magic, with only a thin physical shell. This makes them highly resistant to ordinary magic but extremely vulnerable to penetrative magic damage. If they are invaded by fire magic equivalent to just a few percent of their total magical composition, their entire ice structure collapses and cannot be repaired. This leads to irreversible death unless supported externally.
Furthermore, if the amount of fire magic surpasses the lethal threshold, the effects become increasingly dramatic. If it reaches roughly one-tenth of a White Walker's internal magic, instant death is likely. Higher levels can cause them to shatter or even vaporize entirely.
If the Dragonglass dagger Aegor had used in the past had been slightly smaller or of lower purity, it might not have killed the White Walker. Conversely, being struck by a Dragonsteel Arrow leaves a White Walker with no chance of survival.
Dragonsteel is extremely light. Each explosive projectile was cast from ten arrowheads, which yielded over one hundred grams of Dragonsteel split into two to three hundred fragments. On average, each piece was smaller and thinner than a thumbtack head. Because their size reduced their lethality, the Night King did not vaporize on the spot like one struck directly by Lightbringer.
Even so, the damage was severe. The high-spec Dragonsteel used in exclusive weapons by the Targaryen dragonlords contained immense magical energy. Even a tiny sliver, recast from that material, contained more than enough fire magic to exceed the death threshold.
With a sharp crack like a glacier splitting, the Night King, the central node, immediately lost contact with all the wights under his direct control. He struggled to maintain his connection with the other priests, dropped the second stone he had planned to throw when the time was right, formed his right hand into a cone, and brutally stabbed it into his left chest. Relying on instinct and immense willpower, he dug out the Dragonsteel fragment lodged in his back and hurled it to the ground.
This self-inflicted wound successfully prevented him from dissolving in the next second. However, the massive hole carved from his shoulder blade to the center of his chest hissed and spat out plumes of vaporized cold magic. The ice armor covering his body immediately cracked with countless fractures, and his entire being became unstable.
As a creature composed of magic, a hole in the body wasn't necessarily fatal. As long as he had sufficient magic, he could reseal and regenerate in minutes. But the real problem now was that the Dragonsteel fragment had not only forced a gaping wound in his chest. The immense energy released during its brief presence inside him had also completely disrupted the magic structure of his upper body, rendering his normally unmatched regeneration completely useless.
Among the five priests standing nearby and watching the battle, another was ripped apart and killed by a Dragonsteel fragment. The remaining four quickly gathered around the staggering Night King, attempting to stabilize him with magic to keep him from collapsing.
As the central node of the Cold God Priests' magical web, the sudden death of the Night King would throw the entire priesthood into chaos.
In theory, as long as a magical being is not instantly killed, it can be sustained by continuously injecting magic until it stabilizes and begins to heal. But this was no longer beyond the Wall, where the cold god's power bathed them constantly. The priests who still had magical reserves had already been sent into Crown Town to fight. The few left behind were all weakened, having exhausted their power during previous battles at Shadow Tower or Sentinel Tower and had not yet recovered. For the moment, there was no source of surplus magic large enough to keep the Night King alive.
At that moment, the memory of the nearby priest who had been vaporized and reduced to raw magic offered a solution. Though the priests did not have free surplus magic, the energy that made up their very bodies was considerable.
If one or two priests voluntarily sacrificed themselves, willingly breaking down their physical forms into pure magical energy, there might still be a chance to save him.
As the four remaining priests began to debate which of them should die, the Night King grabbed one priest's arm and shook his head. He refused.
He knew how critical his condition was. The efficiency of converting a priest's body into usable magic was far from one hundred percent. It was unlikely that one or even two lives would be enough to restore him. In that case, it would be better to use the last of his strength to transfer leadership and the full control of the cold god's magical network to another priest. A new Night King had to rise. Otherwise, all of them would fall together.
A surge of turbulent magic and information flowed from his pale, bone-like hand into the body of the strongest priest among them. As the transfer occurred, the Night King's form began to smoke, shrink, and melt. At last, with a faint hiss like air leaking from a puncture, nearly half of his remaining power, along with all his knowledge, memories, and authority, was passed on.
The newly crowned Night King, reborn in the moment of crisis, issued his first command: abandon the assault on Crown Town entirely and lead the remaining army of wights to retreat swiftly into the darkness of the wilderness of the Gift.
(To be continued.)