Richard was deeply moved.
The Dragon Queen personally granting him a title!
Just think of Brienne, the world-famous "Iron Guard Without a Cloak."
He was far stronger than Brienne.
Because he had slain an evil god!
An evil god was still a god.
He had committed deicide.
And now, his feat of slaying a god had received "official recognition" from the Dragon Queen.
The pockmarks on the knight's face seemed to glow with excitement, shining like tiny lightbulbs.
"Thank you, Your Majesty," he said solemnly as he bent down in a formal bow. When he raised his head, he hesitated and said, "Isn't 'Demon Hunter' a bit too ordinary? It doesn't really stand out."
Dany replied seriously, "The name may be somewhat plain, but within that plainness lies deeper meaning.
Overly flashy titles only represent your past, that you once killed a skin-walking demon.
But your glorious life has only just begun. In the future, you will face the White Walkers, the White Walker King, and countless dark demon gods lurking in the shadows. Your glory must not be constrained.
That is why a simple, low-key title like Demon Hunter better showcases your true ability and great achievements."
"Indeed. Demon Hunter carries a sense of wild dominance and understated luxury," Dr. Perestan nodded in admiration.
"Hearing it explained like that, it really does," the pockmarked knight said, overjoyed beyond measure. "Demon Hunter, Demon Hunter Richard?
Good. From today onward, I'll be called 'Demon Hunter'!"
Nearby, Clatten Song split his mouth wide, revealing a set of brown, rotten teeth. His expression was a mix of fear and anticipation. "There will be countless dark demon gods in the future?"
"Countless does not mean that their number is immeasurably large," Dany explained. "It means that even I do not know how many there are. There may be many, or there may be only a few."
"Are they all as strong as the bull-headed monster Richard killed?" Sir Clatten asked nervously.
"They are definitely not as strong as that bull monster. As long as everyone harbors no fear and works together, we can surely defeat them.
Just like eight thousand years ago, when Azor Ahai wielded Lightbringer and led the heroes to drive away the monsters from the far eastern lands."
Dany raised her voice, rallying the Knights of the Fiery Heart.
"For honor, for His Majesty Stannis, for the Lord of Light!" the Demon Hunter shouted excitedly.
"Very good. With fighting spirit and courage like this, how could a great undertaking fail?" Dany praised him with a thumbs-up. She then took out a stack of parchment pieces about the size of movie tickets and handed them to the Demon Hunter. "These are 'Temporary Residence Permits for Heaven' that I obtained through prayer to the Maiden. With these, even if you unfortunately die in battle, you will be able to enter the heaven of the Seven Gods."
"Come, it just so happens that seven of you knights took part in that battle. Is that not destiny?"
Dany placed one "movie ticket" into the Demon Hunter's hand, then handed one each to the other six Knights of the Fiery Heart.
One of the knights held the temporary residence permit at a loss and said hesitantly, "We believe in the Red God. We are followers of the Lord of Light."
"There is no contradiction. The seven of you are the 'Seven Sons of the Sun.' You now hold dual citizenship in the divine realms of R'hllor and the Seven Gods. In the future, you may choose freely. If you wish to go to R'hllor's domain, then go there. If you wish to go to Heaven, then go to Heaven."
"But…" the pockmarked Demon Hunter said with a conflicted expression, "the Lord of Light is the one true god!"
"Do not the followers of the Seven Gods also proclaim that the Seven Gods are the all-powerful one true God? Those words are meant to deceive ignorant fools. You gentlemen are so wise, you should easily see through the little tricks of the priests."
Dany spoke casually, her tone relaxed, and just as casually shocked everyone around her into dropping their jaws.
"Your Majesty, you are the Supreme High Septon of the Seven," Dr. Perestan reminded her with a twisted expression.
"Yes. And I guarantee, in my capacity as the Pope of the Seven Gods, that everything I said is true," Dany nodded, speaking as if it were perfectly natural.
"Isn't this blasphemy?" the pockmarked knight asked blankly, holding the temporary residence permit.
"Lying is blasphemy. What I said is the plain truth. Was the descent of the Maiden false? Is the Lord of Light false? Are the gods worshipped by the Free Cities of Essos false?
And what about the dark realms east of Asshai, with so many evil gods? Are they false? Evil gods are still gods!"
The Dragon Queen fired off question after question, leaving everyone with no way to argue back.
They could not be certain whether the gods of the Free Trade City-States were real, but both the Maiden and the Lord of Light had displayed divine miracles. At the very least, those two were real. That alone shattered the claim of a single true god.
Seeing that the Knights of the Fiery Heart were still hesitant, Dany gave a strange smile and said, "Trust me. Accept them, and you will not regret it.
If you refuse, then in a few days… By the way, where is Stannis? It has been two days already. Why has he not brought Melisandre here yet?"
The Dragon Queen herself was unsure whether R'hllor would be too ashamed to complain to Mel about the Knights of the Fiery Heart committing the act of "piercing the sun with a blazing blade."
However, as a shadowbinder who devoutly believed in R'hllor, the red-robed woman would certainly know the true name and appearance of the shadow demon R'hllor.
This was much like the diary of the shadowbinder Tamm, which recorded various blood magic rituals that resembled horror stories, along with many sketches depicting the appearances of evil gods.
If you were going to offer sacrifices to an evil god, you had to know what the god looked like, its name, and its domain.
Therefore, after hearing the detailed account of the "Seven Sons of the Sun" driving their swords through the sun, Mel would most likely be able to guess the true identity of the bull-headed, serpent-bodied monster.
At that point, the situation would become extremely awkward and extremely terrifying.
Dany spent two days working in the room before finally producing the Seven Gods' version of "Heaven Admission Tickets." Adding the day she led people to excavate the Insect Tunnel of the Eastern Sea Watch, the Second Stag had already left Castle Black for three days.
He should have returned with Mel by now, yet neither of them was anywhere to be seen.
"Perhaps something delayed them?" Perestan said uncertainly.
"As for Your Majesty, have you and the Three-Eyed Raven found the White Walker King?" he asked.
"The various armies of the White Walkers have long been located, but we are not certain where the White Walker King is at present," Dany's expression grew solemn. "The White Walkers do not act together. A million wights are led by several hundred White Walkers, and each White Walker is equivalent to the commander of an entire army."
More than two hundred Others led more than two hundred separate columns, forming a dense sieve that swept from north to south, scouring the land of all living beings.
Human villages, graveyards, and the ferocious beasts of the forests were all targets of the dead.
Their numbers grew like a rolling snowball, expanding every single day.
I was not sure whether there were a million before, but now there are certainly more than a million.
Before long, we should be hearing news of great noble castles falling."
"Ah, the North is truly finished. Even if Stannis were the savior, it is already too late." The old maester's face was deathly pale, his voice trembling.
The knights of the Lord of Light, the Night's Watch, and the wildlings around them all wore grave expressions and fell into silence.
"Why hasn't the King of the Others attacked Castle Black? From a strategic point of view, once the Wall collapsed, Castle Black indeed lost its value as a target.
But the Others should not be talking about strategy at all. Are they not a bit too clever?" After a long pause, Garth Hightower said worriedly.
Maester Perestan shook his head. "The Others were originally transformed from humans. You can slaughter them like livestock, but you must not assume they are as stupid as livestock."
"Perhaps Castle Black really can become a stronghold that draws the Others in." Dany lifted her head and looked at the cracked wall, speaking thoughtfully.
"What do you mean?" the red-nosed maester asked in confusion.
"I'm going to repair the Wall!"
The Wall had inner and outer layers. The inner layer was built from massive stones, like an enlarged version of the Great Wall of China. The magical runes engraved within the Wall were embedded in this stone layer. Outside the stone Wall, as if clothing it, lay a thick covering of solid ice.
Most of that ice came from the frozen rivers of the Haunted Forest. The Night's Watch cut enormous blocks of ice from the rivers, dragged them back, and cut them into smaller pieces that could be lifted, then stacked them onto the surface of the stone wall.
Boiling water was poured into the gaps between the stacked ice blocks, instantly freezing again into a single, solid mass of ice.
This process of ice covering continued for several hundred years, eventually forming the towering structure seen today, 210 meters high and wide enough for twelve knights to ride abreast.
If eternal summer were to arrive beyond the Wall and all the ice atop it melted away, the Wall would lose a third of its height and become half as thick.
For eight thousand years, no one had ever cleared the snow from the walkway atop the Wall.
At five hundred kilometers long, there simply was not enough manpower to do such a thing.
Of course, there was even less need. The thicker the ice, the stronger the Wall.
To avoid slipping on the ice, the Night's Watch laid a path of crushed stone along the sections of wall they garrisoned.
The roadway atop the Wall was far too wide to cover entirely with gravel. It was enough to pave a strip wide enough for two brothers of the Watch to walk side by side.
When one layer of gravel was buried by snow, another was laid on top. Year after year, a layered mass sixty to seventy meters thick accumulated atop the Wall, like a gigantic mille-feuille.
Under normal circumstances, this seventy-meter-thick mass caused no trouble for the Night's Watch. But on this day, when the Horn of Winter was blown, cracks appeared everywhere in the Wall's ice.
The massive fissures were dozens of meters deep and four to five meters wide, like abysses waiting to swallow Watchmen whole.
In fact, over the past few days, quite a few brothers of the Watch had fallen into these glacial chasms at the top of the Wall while rushing toward Castle Black.
At this moment, at Stone Gate Camp, one hundred sixty kilometers from Castle Black, two thousand five hundred members of the Night's Watch were blocked by a gigantic crack.
It was as if a god had raised a massive cleaver and brought it down in a single fierce stroke, leaving a gash across the Wall that cut straight through its cross-section, twenty meters wide and seventy meters deep.
If you tossed a torch down, you could see the stone layer inside the Wall.
"Ser Mormont, should we go down? Stone Gate Camp still has a few stone towers and some wide tunnels," said Ser Seven, commander of the watchtower, clutching his cloak tightly as he shivered.
"Wait a bit. Her Majesty Queen Daenerys is repairing the Wall," the old knight said in a low voice.
These men came from several castles in the west. After the Wall collapsed, they received a raven from Castle Black and led their forces up onto the Wall, migrating eastward together, only to be stopped by this enormous glacial fissure.
Afterward, Drogon flew west along the Wall once and told all the migrating Watchmen to halt immediately and stay away from the cracked areas.
These two thousand five hundred men had already been waiting in the wind and snow for two days.
"In just these two days, we've frozen seven brothers to death!" Ser Seven said despairingly.
"There are too many of us. Going down from the Wall could attract the Others. If that happens, even more will die," Ser Mormont said with a frown.
"The Wall is cracked everywhere. Leaving aside whether it can even be repaired, even if it can, wouldn't it take tens of thousands of people and decades of work?"
"No. The queen will repair it with magic, just like that day…"
"Seven gods above!"
Before Ser Mormont could finish speaking, everyone suddenly saw a line of flames ignite beneath their feet.
(End of chapter)
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