Chapter 218: The Sixth Month Settlement
Ian sat alone in his study at the top of the pyramid and waited out the night.
Tonight was the settlement for the sixth month. Another player had been eliminated this cycle, which meant this was effectively Ian's last leaderboard payout — unless whoever got drawn next month somehow managed to hold off the Faceless Man long enough to stay alive, or proved so dangerous that Jaqen needed more than a month to prepare before moving. Ian didn't put much weight on either possibility.
He knew relatively little about the Faceless Men as an institution. He didn't know where Jaqen ranked among them. But if Jaqen was taken as a baseline for what they were capable of, Ian wasn't confident he himself could survive a sustained month against one of them. That was a sobering thought he kept at arm's length.
At midnight, the system delivered its report.
Congratulations to the player ranked first on the leaderboard. Sixth month settlement complete.
Player rewards: 50 points, 5,888 gold dragons, 1 S-rank NPC selection (regional pool).
Ian read it with an odd feeling he hadn't expected — something close to regret. He found himself wondering whether he'd moved through the other players too quickly. A few more alive would have meant a few more months of payouts.
The thought lasted about three seconds before he set it aside. The players he'd eliminated had been essential to getting him where he was. If he'd played it softer, he'd be weaker now. The math didn't work the other way.
He pulled up his current stats and reviewed them.
Ian — Strength: 35, Agility: 31, Spirit: 30 Skills: Basic Etiquette, Common Tongue (Basic), High Valyrian (Basic), Sword Mastery, Horsemanship (Advanced), Lance (Intermediate), Shapeshifter (Advanced), Greensight (Basic) Attribute Points: 4 | Skill Points: 2 | Points: 349 Items: Basic Skill Selection Scroll ×2, Skill Upgrade Scroll ×2
He put all four free attribute points into Spirit, bringing it to 34. Spirit had the longest tail on his current build and the most compounding value down the line.
Then he opened the S-rank NPC card.
S-rank selections had become less exciting than they used to be. His roster was strong enough now that a single NPC rarely moved the needle significantly. He looked at the draw with the calm of a man reviewing a supply manifest rather than unwrapping a gift.
The first two cards were old friends — the Khorov Black Goat Riders and the Unsullied Lance Master had appeared in his runner-up slots so many times they felt like furniture. He moved past them.
The third card stopped him.
Winter Wolf Warrior — Strength: 33–38, Agility: 28–34, Spirit: 0–6 Skills: Battle Axe (Advanced), Mace (Advanced) Equipment: Two-Handed Battle Axe, Hardened Leather Armor
Ian stared at it.
"You cannot be serious."
The Winter Wolves. Lord Rodrik Dustin's personal household guard from the Dance of the Dragons — the men who marched south with him and never came back. Not a single one had returned to the North. Famous for their loyalty and their deaths, not particularly for anything else.
He'd drawn unusual cards before. The Raven's Teeth, the Warriors' Sons — the AI had explained at the time that the organizers had pulled elite units from across different historical periods and regions. Fine. Acceptable. Those had at least made geographical sense given where Ian was operating.
But the card was marked regional. He was in Astapor.
If the Essos NPC pool was genuinely this thin, there were better options. Shadowbinders out of Asshai. Warlocks from Qarth. He'd have taken a Giant from beyond the Wall before he'd take Northern household cavalry deployed to a slave city in the middle of Slaver's Bay.
He set the Winter Wolf card face-down and didn't look at it again.
Which left the Khorov Black Goat Riders, who had been patiently appearing in his runner-up pool long enough that Ian almost felt he owed them something. He selected them.
The full stats resolved.
Khorov Black Goat Rider — Strength: 38, Agility: 32, Spirit: 4 Skills: Scimitar (Advanced), Hammer (Advanced), Riding (Advanced), Lance (Intermediate)
Ian's eyebrows went up slightly. He'd assumed the persistent runner-up was a middling option being propped up by a weak pool. The actual numbers were solid — strong physical stats, a genuine multi-weapon skill set, and riding to match. For a heavy cavalry NPC, that was a legitimate selection.
"Alright," he said to no one. "Fair enough."
He intended to go to bed after that. His mind had other plans.
After half an hour of lying in the dark with his thoughts running at full speed, he gave up and walked out to the rooftop garden at the top of the pyramid.
The moon was a thin crescent near the end of the month, which made the stars extraordinary — more of them visible and sharper than they'd be under a full moon, spread across the sky in a way that made the city below feel very small and very quiet.
Ian stood at the edge and looked down at Astapor.
A familiar loneliness settled over him without particular drama. Celia had been gone for weeks. Daenerys was a child, which placed obvious limits on the kind of company she could offer. The Grace Girls the Temple of the Graces had sent over — their version of an offering of goodwill — held no appeal for him whatsoever.
"Bad habits," he said quietly.
Something moved in his peripheral vision. A dark shape crossed the garden, fast and low, and a sound somewhere between a growl and a roar broke the silence.
Ian turned.
Vion stood in the center of the garden with a dead goat in his jaws — the night's hunt, apparently concluded successfully. The dragon regarded Ian for a moment, then walked toward him with the easy confidence of an animal that had decided it wasn't threatened.
Ian reached out and ran his hand along the top of Vion's head. The dragon didn't pull away. If anything, he leaned into it slightly and went back to his meal.
It had taken time to get here. When Ian had first occupied Vion's body during the shapeshift experiments, the dragon had reacted badly — not with panic, but with a specific, directed complaint aimed straight at Daenerys. His mother would handle this. His mother would fix this. When it became clear that his mother had not only accepted the situation but was cooperating with it, and when Vion further processed that this same person controlled his food supply, the resistance had quietly dissolved. Now they had something that functioned like familiarity, if not quite trust.
Ian wasn't sure how long it would last. Vion's wingspan had crossed two meters. His hide had started running warmer to the touch in the last few weeks — a change Ian had noticed but not yet fully accounted for. His estimate was that within six months, the easy access he had now would be gone. A dragon that size would set its own terms about who touched it and when.
Which made the question of a second dragon more pressing.
Ian had already run one experiment. He'd used Kraznys mo Nakloz — the former lord of Astapor, whose death had been useful in several respects — as the sacrifice for a hatching attempt. The dragon egg hadn't responded. Not even a flicker of warmth.
His attention had shifted to the High Priestess of the Temple of the Graces in Astapor. Her position in the religious hierarchy suggested her blood carried meaningful power — comparable, at least theoretically, to Mirri Maz Duur's.
The problem was that she kept being useful.
When Ian had floated the idea of using the Temple's pyramid for Unsullied officer functions, she'd agreed immediately. When Bronn had engineered a disturbance at the Temple as a test of her response, she'd sent a delegation of priestesses who'd defused it gracefully and without complaint. She'd then dispatched Grace Girls to the Worm River to support Celia's propaganda work around the Five Orders, framing the whole system as a blessing handed down by the Harpy.
You didn't burn your most productive tools on experiments with uncertain outcomes. Especially when burning her wouldn't guarantee a hatching — and if her blood was sufficient, so presumably was the High Priestess of Yunkai, and the one in Meereen as well.
The High Priestess of Meereen was a more appealing candidate on multiple grounds. In the original story she had spent years cultivating Daenerys's trust while quietly working against everything Daenerys was trying to build. She was already on Ian's list for other reasons. Using her for the hatching experiment was efficient rather than wasteful.
That would have to wait until after Meereen fell.
For now, Ian's primary target for the second hatching remained Mirri Maz Duur — the Lhazarene maegi, one of the cleaner documented answers in the source material for what blood could actually wake a stone dragon. She was his main objective for the Lhazarene campaign, and that campaign came next.
He stood on the rooftop a while longer, one hand resting on Vion's warm flank, watching the stars over Astapor, and let the night run out.
(End of Chapter)
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