Bonus Chapter
Alright, hello everyone!
Your handsome, generous, and noble author is here.
First of all, thank you for all your comments and encouraging reviews.
Every morning when I wake up, one of the first things I do is open my notifications and read through every single comment.
I reply whenever I actually have something to say.
Most of them are questions that need answers, while others genuinely make my day.
I love you guys.
❤️
First, I know a lot of you are annoyed by the name “Habsburg.” When I chose it, it was literally just something that popped into my head.
So afterward, I decided to actually look them up.
Holy shit.
What a history.
I knew about the whole inbreeding thing, but I seriously underestimated just how widespread it was and how closely related some of them were.
Then there was the imperialism, territorial expansion, political repression, religious extremism, and those devastating wars of succession.
Hmm…
wait a minute.
Incest.
Conquest and invasion.
Political repression.
Civil wars.
That sounds like the Targaryens.
And yet somehow none of you hate them.
Well, I guess that’s the power of aura and being ridiculously good-looking.
Anyway, since you guys asked, I’ll change the name to Augustus.
That means going back and editing around 15–20 chapters, so it’ll take me a little time.
I hope you can appreciate just how fucking amazing and reader-friendly your author is.
Second, I know chapters ar a little short, but trust me, I could easily fill it with pointless filler, rambling, and stupid jokes and push it past 2,000 words.
I’ve been on Webnovel since 2020 and I’ve read around 6,500 novels.
There’s almost nothing I hate more than finding a genuinely good story only for every chapter to be stuffed with filler and repeated information until I eventually drop it out of boredom.
So, I’d rather give you a chapter where every line either gives you something new or serves a purpose in the story.
That said,
I’m really sorry about that.
I promise I’ll make the upcoming chapters longer.
Third, about a week ago, I set a goal for us to reach the Top 20 in the PS Rankings.
To achieve that,
Reaching Top 20 required 700 PS.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it.
So I came up with an idea that, as far as I know, I’ve never seen anyone try before.
I honestly have no idea if this will work, but I’m putting my faith in you.
By the way, we currently have around 1,500 active readers, so all it takes is roughly a third of you contributing.
Alright, enough rambling from your handsome author.
Enjoy the chapter❤️
…
Hearing Onyxia’s parting snarl, Erwin understood well enough.
Talked himself right back into a wall again.
Still, as long as she stayed in his collection, he figured there’d be time enough to find his way through to her eventually.
No sense pushing further tonight.
He’d try again another day.
He had Willem set the night watch, then sent everyone off to rest.
Nothing disturbed the night.
Erwin woke early the next morning, washed up, ate a quick breakfast, and called Willem in.
Two matters needed doing today.
First, a trip to the Red Keep to submit his request for an audience with King Robert.
Second, a look around the city, and some shopping while he was at it.
Getting ready took more thought than usual.
Wandering King’s Landing in his Seventh Legion plate would draw eyes he didn’t want, so today he dressed down.
In truth, he’d simply used the transmog NPC riding his Grand Expedition Yak to hide the armor entirely, layering plain Westerosi noble dress over top of it, courtesy of the inn’s staff.
To anyone watching, he looked like an ordinary lord out for a stroll.
Underneath, he was armored head to toe.
He’d learned something useful about that yak, too.
He didn’t need to summon the whole beast, just the merchant riding it, which let him shop from his own room without anyone the wiser.
He’d even tested the hidden armor with a dagger against his own arm, and it held just as well invisible as it ever had in plain sight.
He’d toyed with an idea after that.
Wear the hidden set, then layer a second, visible suit over it.
Twice the protection, nothing able to touch him at all.
It didn’t work.
The system wouldn’t let him equip two pieces to the same slot, hidden or not, and even trying to force a second set on by hand met something like an invisible wall.
He gave up on the idea.
The experiment wasn’t wasted, though.
Two things came out of it worth knowing.
First, hiding the armor meant enemies would misjudge him completely, assume he had nothing on underneath at all.
That kind of surprise could turn a fight in an instant.
He could even sleep in it, and in truth, he’d never once taken it off since arriving in this world, not willing to risk being caught unprepared.
And if some assassin ever came for him and found their blade simply wouldn’t go in, no matter how they tried, that would be a story worth telling.
He could even claim the Seven themselves had marked him untouchable.
In a world where nearly everyone believed in something, a tale like that would carry his name the length of Westeros on its own.
Between that and a dragon at his back, there’d be little left standing in his way.
The second discovery mattered more.
Stripping the armor off for the first time, he realized his stats had never truly been his own.
Fourteen strength, and the rest of it, all of it had come from the gear itself.
Bare-skinned, his real numbers came to eight strength, nine speed, seven stamina.
That all but confirmed what he’d already suspected.
Ten points looked to be about where an ordinary man sat.
Not that he’d ever admit those numbers out loud.
Seven stamina wasn’t a thing any decent man wanted attached to his name.
Either way, short of some real emergency, he decided that armor was staying on his back for good.
He thought about testing other pieces from his collection too, but like his mounts, anything carrying even a trace of magic wouldn’t come out, not even as a transmog, let alone equip through his panel directly.
That settled, he rode out with Willem and two other men, dressed plain, a handful of servants trailing behind, eight of the farmers who’d chosen to stay on in his household after the rest had taken their pay and gone home.
Their first stop was the Red Keep, where they filed a request for audience with the gold cloaks at the inner gate.
No man walked in on the King uninvited.
A request went in, and word came back in its own time.
From there, Erwin turned to touring the city, and settled quickly into what amounted to throwing coin at anything that caught his eye.
One snag came up early.
His own gold and silver, by law, weren’t recognized currency here at all.
He’d need to take it to the royal mint first and exchange it for proper Westerosi coin, gold dragons, silver stags, copper stars, before he could spend a copper of it.
Minting rights belonged to the crown alone, every coin struck under royal authority, the exchange rates and the mint itself overseen by the Master of Coin.
Robert hadn’t bothered changing any of it after taking the throne, dragons and stags stamped with the old Targaryen sigil still passing hand to hand same as always, though plenty of powerful houses minted a bit of their own coin on the side when no one was looking too closely.
Erwin knew enough from the show and his own reading to expect as much.
So when he tried paying a merchant in his own gold outright, the man politely pointed him toward an exchange, offering to handle the conversion himself for a small fee.
Erwin didn’t mind the fee at all.
He already knew how the numbers worked in his favor, whichever way the conversion ran.
He paid it gladly, traded a hundred of his own gold coins for thirty thousand silver stags, and left the merchant convinced he’d gotten the better end of the deal.
He had too, just not in the direction the man thought.
From there, Erwin bought his way through half the city, and came home loaded down with more than he could easily carry.
By the time he did, word had already reached the Red Keep again.
The rich, free-spending foreign lord in King’s Landing had a name people were starting to remember.
…
Full refund, no questions asked.