Dany received just over two thousand Children of the Forest ravens from Bran, evenly split between wind and fire attributes.
She had previously been focusing on converting fire ravens, as the burning process for wind spirits was relatively slow.
Or rather, the conversion cycle for wind spirits was very long. Burning them once a day often required more than half a month to refine a Children of the Forest raven into a pure life imprint.
In the more than one month since the Battle of Winterfell, the thousand fire ravens had not yet been fully converted, while only about fifty wind spirits had been successfully transformed in the past few days.
Elemental spirits had three forms: raven, humanoid, and elemental essence.
The elemental form of fire spirits was a fireball, while that of wind spirits was a mass of wind.
When gathered, they formed a cyan ribbon; when dispersed, they became intangible and formless.
"How fascinating. If elemental spirits assist in casting sorcery, it should make things twice as effective with half the effort, right?" the dwarf said enviously as he looked at the ravens.
"There are things you simply can't envy. Be honest and do your work properly. Go set up the tents first. We'll camp here tonight and head to Loring City tomorrow morning."
The dwarf did not leave. He gave a few instructions to his attendants, then leaned back beside the great black dragon and pointed at the raven glancing around curiously.
"Why is she called Beetroot? I remember your ravens were all named after fruits."
"Fire spirits are named after fruits. Wind spirits are named after vegetables."
As she spoke, Dany flicked her hand, and Beetroot transformed back into a gust of wind, singing a cheerful tune in the sky that only the Wind God could hear.
Just as fire spirits detested ice and preferred to stay in blazing flames, wind spirits hated confined, enclosed spaces. They loved the open sky and roaming freely in the wind.
Now, with the northern winds howling day and night, humans loathed the weather, but wind spirits drew strength from the raging winds, thriving without being affected by the cold.
The dwarf grinned ingratiatingly. "Could you give me two wind ravens? I want to fly too."
"You want to fly?" Dany gave him a strange look, then nodded. "Alright. I've already given you a pair of invisible wings. Fly wherever there's wind, fly past despair, and toward hope."
Tyrion actually jumped up and down a few times. "Where are they? Where are the invisible wings? Why can't I see or feel them? Is there some kind of spell?"
"Since they're invisible, of course you can't see them now. Ride Tessa up to three thousand meters, then jump down. As you fall, shout 'I am a big idiot' in Sichuan dialect, and the invisible wings will activate," Dany said with a straight face.
The dwarf froze for a moment, then snapped angrily, "Do you think I'm stupid?"
Dany nodded. "Only a fool would think I'd give you wind spirits."
The dwarf was left speechless.
By nightfall, after much effort, thousands of Westerlands volunteers had piled up the severed limbs of a hundred thousand wights along the roadside.
They did not gather them in one place, but instead arranged them nearby along the road, after which two dragons flew back and forth, breathing fire to burn the corpses.
In addition to human bodies, they found nearly ten thousand animal corpses, including livestock such as cattle and sheep, as well as wild beasts like tigers, leopards, wolves, and bears.
"If we hadn't used dragonfire to burn them, the number would probably be even higher," the dwarf said, picking up a chunk of meat covered in black fur and sniffing it. "This is wild boar. There's no foul smell, so it must have been killed by the Others while still alive. Fighting the Others might even make us rich."
The Great Bear said oddly, "During the long night, with such freezing weather, it's nearly impossible to hunt in the forest. But when the wights sweep through the woods, they flush out all the hibernating beasts.
"The beasts are hungry too. They can eat the flesh of the wights, and then the living can eat the flesh of those beasts. In this way, both humans and animals can survive the long night."
Dany's mouth twitched. Wasn't this just a human-animal version of exchanging children to eat?
"How are the casualties?" she asked.
"Nearly half are injured. Including those at Golden Tooth, more than three hundred have died," Tyrion sighed.
"It's the first time, and it was a field battle. That's already very good. Even five Dawn Warriors died," said the Great Bear.
"Gather them together. I will personally send them to heaven," Dany said.
She first treated the wounded, then assembled the surviving soldiers to hold a funeral for the fallen.
Amid the chanting of The Seven-Pointed Star, the flames burned fiercely. In the end, the ashes were buried in one place. The Dragon Queen also split a mountain with her sword, flattened one side of a massive stone over ten feet tall, and used her blade as a pen to carve the course of the battle, its results, and the name and title of every soldier, if they had one.
Noticing the barely concealed fervent admiration of the soldiers around her, the dwarf later remarked sourly, "I think that monument should have been mine to erect."
Dany glanced at him. "Could you have done it?"
"There isn't a swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms who could carve on granite so smoothly. I could have hired a stonemason to do it slowly. After all, the goal is just to win people's hearts," the dwarf said.
"Do you think I need the hearts of the Westerlands?"
"If you needed them, I wouldn't say anything. But you clearly don't, and yet you wasted such a good opportunity to win them over," the dwarf lamented.
"If you perform well in the war against the Others, charge at the front every time, and enjoy the rewards last while striving to keep the rest alive, that is far more righteous than any method of winning hearts."
In the battles that followed, the dwarf truly fought at the front with remarkable bravery.
Over the next half month, with Bran revealing the full map and the Dragon Queen unleashing Blade Storm, combined with an increasing number of Westerlands volunteers, they slew over a million wights and reclaimed nearly all the fallen castles, including the largest city in the Westerlands, Lannisport.
Whenever passing through fallen villages and cities, they often encountered refugees who had survived by hiding in cellars, caves, or forests. Without exception, all of them, regardless of gender, joined the volunteer army.
When they first left Fairy City, they still needed wyverns to transport food. After defeating the first wave of Others, the soldiers suddenly realized that there was more smoked and cured meat than they could eat.
This was true.
In the first wave, during the battle on the Riverlands road, the Dragon Queen had used dragonfire to burn the wight army. After that, she simply used dragons to block their path while unleashing Blade Storm.
Not only did food and spiritual essence increase, but her understanding of the Song of Wind and the Domain of Wind also advanced rapidly.
Real combat was the best way to gain experience and improve combat power.
Now, when Dany used Blade Storm, it became increasingly effortless. With a mere thought, she could harness the wind within a radius of ten kilometers.
As her strength grew, her mindset gradually changed. Her mastery and understanding of high-level power made her more confident.
Now, when using Blade Storm, she no longer had Bran conceal its influence on the River of Fate with a mental barrier. The frequency of using the Wind Domain was too high to hide, and she had also gained new trump cards.
Using the Wind Domain daily to drive Blade Storm had also given her some insight into the Fire Domain and the Light Domain.
All one thousand fire ravens had been fully converted, and more than three hundred wind ravens had been transformed. The Song of Fire had risen to 45 percent, while the Song of Light had reached an astonishing 53 percent.
For every portion of the Song of Laws she gained, the share held by Goat Egg and R'hllor diminished. Now, R'hllor no longer had the face to call himself the Lord of Light in front of Dany.
Moreover, the faith space still stored part of the Song of Light she had seized from R'hllor when she revived Jon. Through comparison, Dany gained a new understanding of the structure of the sun. Perhaps in the near future, she could evolve fire spirits into a true sun.
All of these were the sources of her growing confidence.
Another change brought by her increased strength was the transportation method and efficiency of the Westerlands volunteer army.
With the long night upon them, riding horses was far less practical and efficient than using sleds. However, ordinary soldiers had no right to ride sleds.
In fact, Fairy City could equip all three thousand soldiers with horses, but not all horses and dogs could pull sleds.
In the North, it was easy to gather enough sled dogs and sturdy ponies, but the Westerlands' warhorses were not resistant to cold. Their long, slender legs made them suitable for galloping on plains, not pulling sleds.
The same went for dogs. The Westerlands had hunting hounds, not sled dogs.
The limited sleds pulled by horses and dogs were reserved for noble knights. At most, ordinary soldiers could place their weapons and leather armor on the sleds, while they themselves followed behind on ski poles.
Each time they moved rapidly with the Dragon Queen, the soldiers were exhausted like dogs.
Later, as the Dragon Queen's Wind Domain matured, she began providing benefits to the volunteers: wind-sail sled buses.
They built giant sleds from sturdy ironwood, erected large sails on them, and each could carry thirty to forty people.
Except when climbing slopes or turning, where people had to get down and push, on flat ground, the tailwind summoned by the Dragon Queen allowed them to move as fast as galloping horses.
If they traveled continuously for twenty-four hours, covering a thousand miles a day was effortless.
It was through these sled buses and wyvern transport of grain and vegetables that the Dragon Queen could wage war across vast distances.
Every time they reclaimed a city or won a battle, the Dragon Queen broadcast the news far and wide through the magic network hub and raven messages.
Now, the people of the Seven Kingdoms all knew that the Dragon Queen was slaughtering enemies across the Westerlands.
Of course, this was not merely for show.
With two to three million wights suddenly appearing in the Westerlands, even though she and the volunteers had slain over a million, that was still less than half the total.
Where had the rest gone?
Some were trapped in the mountains of the Westerlands, while others had infiltrated the Riverlands, the Crownlands, and the Reach.
Recently, the Others had resumed their previous tactic of devouring the North: one or two Others leading forty to fifty thousand wights, with dozens of such groups scattered across various regions, attacking villages and small castles.
They had adopted a strategy of surrounding cities from the countryside, lurking near graveyards to farm strength, ambushing smaller towns, and then dispersing immediately after each wave, whether successful or not, preventing the Dragon Queen from tracking them down.
To be honest, Dany would rather have a million wights gather together to besiege the capitals.
She no longer feared dense enemy assaults.
But once the Others scattered, the Dawn Warriors she had organized were stretched thin. Sometimes crises erupted everywhere, forcing her to stay up all night riding dragons to respond.
Because of the upheaval at Casterly Rock, the entire continent of Westeros had fallen into chaos. The six-month buffer period predicted after the Battle of Winterfell had, in reality, lasted less than two months.
While she reclaimed lost lands in the Westerlands, the three great southern kingdoms, the Riverlands, the Crownlands, and the Reach, were constantly reporting fallen castles or even nobles sacrificing to the Others for safety.
The Dragon Queen had to use her continuous victories to strengthen the confidence of the people of the Seven Kingdoms and establish the determination that victory against the Others was inevitable.
(End of Chapter)
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