With a single step forward, she left Westeros and entered the deathly world projected by the Narrow Sea, the rapidly flowing river of gray mist ahead.
Dany's vision blurred for a moment, and she found the surrounding scenery completely changed.
The gray fog she had anticipated did not appear. Above her hung layers of heavy black clouds, while beneath her feet surged rolling gray waves.
She tried taking a step.
Gone was the earlier feeling of moving as freely as a fish in water. She encountered resistance.
It was like leaping from solid ground into a mud pit waist-deep, and the mire grew deeper with each step, every movement more difficult than the last.
She could sense that simply traveling through the death world did not consume much divine power, but if she were to use the god of death's divine arts, such as summoning the surrounding undead to her side, the consumption would be terrifying, while the effect would not even reach half of what it would be in Westeros.
The farther she moved from Westeros, the greater the resistance and the lower the efficiency of divine arts.
"The death world really is wondrous," Dany murmured.
Before long, she encountered the Shadowfiend in the middle of the Narrow Sea.
Calling it the Narrow Sea was not quite accurate. The corresponding location in the real world should have been the Shivering Sea between Qohor and Braavos.
"Where is that sinful blasphemer?" the Shadowfiend roared angrily.
The Shadowfiend, with the body of a serpent and the head of a bull, stood ten meters tall, while the Stranger Dany was just over 1.7 meters. The difference in stature was enormous.
"Where are my subordinates?" Yet her voice was no smaller than his.
The Shadowfiend widened his bull eyes and stared at her coldly. He raised his right claw, spreading his palm to reveal a cluster of soul flowers growing from its center.
It looked as though each soul were a single strand of hair, growing from his furry tiger-like paw.
"Your Majesty, save me."
"Your Majesty, I suffer so much!"
"Queen, mercy, compassion!"
Old Wood and a group of officers from the Mother of Dragons' guard howled and begged together.
Suddenly, the Stranger Dany retreated at extreme speed and shouted in fury, "How devious of you, evil god, to dare ambush me!"
The sneer on the Shadowfiend's face froze as he blurted out, "How did you discover it?"
As soon as he finished speaking, he transformed into a streak of light and chased after the Stranger Dany at even greater speed.
He was about to catch up when, in the next instant, the retreating Stranger abruptly stopped and expanded into a massive black raven, spreading its wings as it lunged toward the Shadowfiend's eyes.
Seeing the dazzling flames on the raven's beak, the Shadowfiend hurriedly shut his eyes and instinctively raised his right hand in front of him.
"Caw, caw, caw!" The raven instead took the opportunity to peck at his wrist.
Boom! In the death world, which had always been only black and white, a burst of black-red fire erupted.
"Ao!" The Shadowfiend, so tall and imposing, had his right hand bitten off in an instant by the small raven.
Well, both were spirit forms, so size meant nothing. But Dany was piloting the "Fire Raven Gundam," while the Shadowfiend relied solely on his own divine soul and will.
In terms of soul quality, Dany was far inferior to him. In terms of sheer scale, she utterly crushed him.
Coupled with the fire-elemental spirit essence of the Fire Raven, the Stranger could wield dragonflame divine arts. In a one-on-one fight, the Shadowfiend truly was no match for her.
"Save me!"
"Queen, save me!"
The undead on the furry paw cried out in ecstatic joy. Like noodle men, they stretched their necks endlessly, writhing toward the great raven.
"Caw!" The raven cried out. What answered the souls of her subordinates was not "you are saved," but a terrifying soul-annihilating strike.
"Ao, wooo!" The faces of the undead twisted as they wailed in agony.
"Why?" Old Wood's eyes burned red like a ghost's as he demanded sorrowfully.
Boom! Dany did not answer him. Almost without pause, after the soul-annihilating strike came blazing Holy Mother Dragonflame.
The raven seemed to turn into a fire-breathing dragon, spewing an ocean-like expanse of sacred white flames that engulfed all the souls on the severed hand.
Crackle! Like fat maggots fished out of a cesspit and thrown into boiling oil, the undead were ripped open, their soul bodies melting away, emitting from the depths of their souls a scorched, rotten stench of decay.
They were not human at all. From the moment they entered the Shadowfiend's divine domain, they had become his servants.
Just as the followers of the Seven Gods become lambs of the Holy Mother after entering heaven.
"You are so cruel!" Ordinary undead were completely annihilated in the flames and the sanctification. Old Wood, being a transcendent, barely held on for a brief moment.
In the instant the flames consumed him, his soul hurled a deep curse at the Dragon Queen: "I curse you! In life I served you loyally and died for you, yet you show no regard for old bonds at all!
It was because of that dog-shit soul technique of the great wizard you taught that I suddenly met my end.
The hundreds of thousands of Gold Glory coins I left behind were never dealt with. You must have embezzled them, right?
I curse you! One day you will fall into the hands of the great R'hllor, I curse—"
"Sigh, if it were not to free you all, why would I risk coming to the Narrow Sea?" the Stranger Dany said with a complicated tone. "You curse me, yet I do not blame you, because I understand that you have already been completely corrupted by R'hllor.
Just as you said, you served me loyally and died for me in life. I should help you escape from this sea of suffering."
"No, this is my heaven!" Old Wood's aged face melted away in the flames.
"By the way, I didn't take a single coin of the inheritance you left behind. I handed it all over to your best friend while you were alive, Pogba," Dany said suddenly.
"Ow! I curse you, and I curse Pogba too. He clearly knew I kept a little—boom!"
The final curse was cut short as Old Wood turned into a stream of ash-gray spiritual matter of the same type as the Black Sun, the divine soul of the Shadow Demon of the Eastern Sea, and was utterly annihilated, his soul scattered to nothingness.
After burning away all the undead, Dany let out a sigh, and also felt a sense of relief.
"Hehehe! Finished with your work? Since you're done, it's our turn," the Shadow Demon said with a ferocious grin.
As the great raven burned off the severed hand, the bull-headed, serpent-bodied monster dodged the raging flames and retreated several steps.
Beside it, another figure slowly emerged.
A short woman wearing a loose white canvas "suit."
Well, it was really a set of wide clothing cut from dirty gray-white sailcloth, looking like a little girl sneaking into her father's suit.
Her hair was a tangled mess like seaweed, her face deathly pale. Her features were fairly delicate, but her mouth, nostrils, and eyelids were all tightly sewn shut with thick iron wire, without the slightest gap.
"You are… the Maiden of the Pale Moon?" Dany asked in shock and doubt.
The image of the bare-legged woman in a suit was far too distinctive. With just one glance, Dany found the corresponding deity in her memory.
The Maiden of the Pale Moon, the sea god of death worshipped by sailors.
It was said that not only were her mouth and eyes sewn shut, but even her lower body was sealed as well. Because of this, everyone believed she was an absolutely pure maiden.
In Westeros, the Maiden of the Pale Moon was not particularly famous, but in the coastal trading city-states of Essos, every one of them had her temples.
Naturally, the Faceless Men had also prepared a statue for her in the House of Black and White.
"Splash!" The bare-legged woman in the suit pointed a finger at the great raven. Gray seawater immediately rose, forming an arched dome above the heads of the three death gods.
Dany instinctively felt like a butterfly caught in a spider's web. Her entire body was bound, and even the slightest movement was difficult.
"Tired of living! A tiny demigod like an ant dares to meddle in the war of dragons?" the great raven screeched sharply.
"The sea is my domain. Here, I am the dragon, and you are the ant," the Maiden of the Pale Moon said for the first time.
The sound of her soul was like a threaded sewing needle, piercing straight through, as if to stitch the listener's soul into the same ghostly form as hers.
Seeing the great raven trapped, the Shadow Demon did not rush to attack. Instead, it asked curiously, "This is the sea, the domain of the Maiden of the Pale Moon. How did you discover her presence?"
If the great raven had only bitten off its arm and burned it, it could have guessed that her earlier shout of "an evil god dared to ambush me" was just a bluff.
But the distance she retreated afterward happened to perfectly avoid the Maiden of the Pale Moon's ambush zone.
If she had not run, she would have already been dragged into the Maiden of the Pale Moon's divine realm by now.
"You're an evil god. How could you possibly abide by an agreement honestly? Since you dared to come exchange hostages with me, you must have set up an ambush," Dany said with a matter-of-fact expression, completely forgetting the fact that she had not brought Richard's soul with her at all.
The Shadow Demon's bovine face twisted. It pointed at the great raven and roared, "Kill her!"
But before the words were even finished, before the two evil gods could take any action, the great raven moved.
"Caw!" She threw back her head and cried out. A soul-annihilating strike was unleashed, slowing the two evil gods for an instant. In that moment, the great raven suddenly expanded into a blazing fireball.
"I'm going to self-destruct! I'm taking you with me!"
The fireball expanded infinitely in an instant, like a detonated nuclear bomb.
"Boom!"
It exploded.
She really exploded.
Twenty-six fire sprites and that single thought of the Stranger Dany detonated together.
Do not be fooled by the fire sprites' small size. The fire demonic power within them was nearly half of Dany's.
After all, the fire sprites' previous lives were Children of the Forest who had cultivated for hundreds, even thousands, of years!
Such terrifying magical power detonated all at once. That destructive force…
The Maiden of the Pale Moon and the Shadow Demon barely had time to show looks of terror before they were swallowed by endless firelight.
The violent magical fluctuations of the world of death even interfered with the real world.
Widow's Watch.
Early morning.
At House Flint's castle, a tower suddenly rang out with shouts of astonished joy: "The sun is out! Look, a sun has risen over the eastern sea!"
"The sun really is out. Could the Long Night have finally ended?" Countess Flint reached out, trying to touch that ray of red light cast toward her.
She truly grasped the sunlight. The warm sensation could not be mistaken.
Over the Shivering Sea to the east, a dark red great sun broke through layers of sea fog, sweeping away in one stroke the dimness and chill that had shrouded Widow's Watch for days.
After months, people once again felt warmth and light from the sky.
Unfortunately, joyful moments are always so brief. Soon, the nobles and servants of Widow's Watch fell back into despair.
"Ah, the sun is going out!" they wailed.
The world of death projected over the Shivering Sea.
Low black clouds and a surging sea surface. It seemed that everything had returned to how it was before.
Except that the Shadow Demon had vanished without a trace. Despite its enormous form, it had only sent over a single divine thought, which was completely annihilated in the great explosion.
As for the Maiden of the Pale Moon, she looked like a cloth doll torn apart by a mischievous child. Her hair was burned away, her nose, eyes, and mouth melted together like an overturned paint palette. Her entire body was charred and ulcerated, and her chest cavity even exposed stark white ribs and a jet-black heart that still thumped.
She had come in her true body.
Just as the Stranger Dany could hide 99 percent of her body in the world of death, the Stitching Sakura Monster could also enter the world of death in the flesh.
However, she could only pull seventy percent of her body into the world of death, far inferior to the Stranger Dany.
Fortunately, it was only seventy percent. Otherwise, she would have been blown to death directly in the world of death.
"So terrifying. Is this the strength and bearing of a Child of the Era? Exploding at the slightest disagreement, without even struggling?" The Maiden of the Pale Moon floated above the sea, her voice unable to conceal its fear.
"I self-destructed simply because self-destruction is one of my techniques. It has nothing to do with bearing at all," the Stranger Dany's smug voice rang out in midair.
Dots of "ink" appeared throughout the vast space in all directions.
The suddenly appearing ink quickly converged toward the center.
It was like a replay of the explosion scene.
"Caw." Under the Maiden of the Pale Moon's terrified "gaze," that mass of ink spread out into the shape of a great raven.
"No!"
(End of chapter)
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