In a reasonably comfortable room at the Inn by the Blackwater, Luke slept lightly despite his exhaustion.
He was, after all, in an entirely unfamiliar foreign world.
Any unusual sound in the dark—footsteps in the hallway, distant dog barks, or even the wind whimpering through the cracks in the window—would instantly startle him awake, his hand instinctively reaching for the paring knife hidden under his pillow.
This subconscious alertness kept him from truly relaxing.
Moreover, staying in Westeros for extended periods carried unpredictable risks.
Who knew if there would be night raids, thieves, or even worse in the middle of the night?
So, after double-checking that the door was bolted and there was nothing unusual outside the window, Luke blew out the candle.
Instead of spending his first night after crossing over in an alien bed, he focused his mind and silently willed himself to return.
After a brief moment of weightlessness and familiar darkness, he once again felt the slightly springy touch of the hard bed in his rented room.
Outside the window was the low, continuous hum peculiar to the city in the early hours before dawn, punctuated by the occasional passing car.
The air held the familiar scent of “home,” tinged with dust and old furniture.
A sense of safety instantly wrapped around him.
He let out a long, deep sigh of relief, his tense nerves finally unwinding completely.
Without turning on the lights, he used his mind in the pitch-dark to pull all of today’s earnings from Westeros out of his dimensional storage and pile them onto the bed.
*Clatter—*
The crisp clink of colliding metal sounded exceptionally sweet in the quiet room.
By the faint glow of the streetlight filtering in through the window, Luke saw a mountain of wealth covering nearly half the bed:
Most dazzling was the pile of Gold Dragons, still glowing with an alluring, warm golden hue even in the dim light.
There were exactly three hundred and twenty of them!
Piled together, heavy and solid, they exuded a primal, heart-racing charm.
Beside them lay a smaller but still impressive pile of over a hundred Silver Moons, gleaming with a cool sheen.
Next to those was an even larger jingling mound of Silver Stags, easily hovering around a thousand.
Tucked into a corner were two smaller piles—Copper Stars and copper pennies—quite a few in number, though they looked dull and lusterless beside the Gold Dragons and Silver Moons.
These were real!
Not play money, not prop coins, but solid, heavy precious metal currency from another world!
Lying beside the mountain of money, Luke reached out and scooped up a handful of Gold Dragons.
Feeling the cool weight of the metal, he couldn’t help but grin silently.
This dual visual and tactile shock was far more overwhelming than any digital balance could ever be.
Today was the first time in his life he had ever held real gold!
Exhaustion gave way to intense excitement.
He hardly closed his eyes all night, his mind endlessly calculating the value of this fortune back on Blue Star and how to safely cash it out.
Early the next morning, just as dawn was breaking, Luke couldn’t wait to head out.
First, he went to a nearby hardware store and bought a small claw hammer—heavy, solid, and comfortable in his hand.
Returning to his rented room, he locked the door behind him.
From the Gold Dragons, Silver Moons, Silver Stags, and Copper Stars, he randomly selected three coins each of average condition and without distinct markings. Get faster updates on g.com.
Then, placing them on a cloth pad, he raised the hammer.
*Thwack!
Thwack!
Thwack!*
With a series of dull thuds, he hammered all twelve coins flat and deformed one by one until their original markings and shapes were completely obliterated, leaving behind a small pile of irregular lumps of gold, silver, and copper.
He hit the Gold Dragons and Silver Stags with extra force, making sure that even the most expert numismatist wouldn’t be able to identify or restore them.
Once finished, he meticulously cleaned up the area, stored the hammer and the rest of the coins back in his dimensional space, and put only the mangled metal lumps into an inconspicuous cloth pouch.
He headed out, hailed a ride through his phone app, and set his destination as a small but established, legitimate gold shop.
He had purposefully chosen a weekday morning right when it opened, when foot traffic would be sparse.
Entering the store, he found only an old shopkeeper wearing glasses, wiping down the counter.
Luke produced the cloth pouch and poured out the three mangled “gold nuggets” onto the velvet mat on the counter.
“Boss, could you take a look at these…
pieces of metal and check the purity?
They’re old items found at home that got melted together.
I can’t tell the fineness.”
He kept his tone as casual as possible, laced with just the right touch of curiosity and uncertainty.
The old shopkeeper pushed up his glasses, picked up one of the gold nuggets, weighed it in his hand, gave it a pinch with a fingernail, and then brought out his professional tools—a small blowtorch and a tiny ceramic dish.
He scraped off a tiny bit of powder, burned it with the torch, observed the color change, and tested it with a reagent.
“Hmm…
the purity is a bit mixed.
It’s not pure gold.”
The old shopkeeper said slowly, “Gold content…
I’d estimate it’s between fifty and eighty percent.
We’d have to melt it down completely for an exact test.
The other two you brought are silver, right?
Average purity too, probably around sixty or seventy percent.”
Luke breathed a deep sigh of relief.
This closely matched his estimates and the reality of Westeros coinage.
These coins were alloys, not high purity, but their value lay in being genuine precious metal.
“So…
based on this purity, what’s the buyback price right now?” he asked.
The old shopkeeper carefully weighed the three gold nuggets again.
Exactly 24 grams.
“Based on the average, let me treat it as sixty percent gold.
Today’s buyback price for gold is about…
940 per gram for you.
13,536 yuan.
If you’re selling the silver, the price is much lower.
I’ll bundle these three in as well for 100 yuan.”
“Deal!
Let’s do a bank transfer!” Luke said immediately.
What he needed was starting capital; he didn’t care if the owner was taking a small bite out of him.
The transaction went smoothly.
The old shopkeeper didn’t ask about their origin, assuming Luke was just an inexperienced young man who had stumbled across some old family gold and wanted to cash it in.
Soon, his phone chimed with a notification: 13,636 yuan deposited.
Stepping out of the shop, the morning sunlight felt almost blinding.
Luke clutched his phone, staring at the five-figure balance that had appeared in his banking app, feeling his steps grow light and floaty.
Over ten thousand yuan!
For someone at the end of his rope, surviving on credit apps and his last remaining cash, this was a true fortune!
And he had earned it so “easily”!
Fighting the urge to throw his head back and laugh out loud, his facial muscles twitched from restraint.
He could only bow his head and walk briskly toward the bus stop, his shoulders trembling slightly from suppressed laughter.
He held it in the whole way back until he returned to his tiny rented room and bolted the door behind him.
“Haha…
Hahahaha!!!”
He couldn’t hold it back any longer!
Wild, uninhibited laughter burst from his throat, echoing through the cramped space.
He doubled over with laughter until tears welled in his eyes, rolling around on the bed like a complete lunatic, pounding his fists against the wooden bedboards.
“I’m rich!
I’m fucking rich!
One day!
Just one single day, and I made over ten grand!
Pure profit!
Hahaha!”
All his stress, the bitterness of unemployment, the panic of his initial crossover, the anxiety of tiptoeing around selling his wares…
at this moment, everything was washed away by his jubilant laughter and the cold, hard notification of money deposited.
When he finally finished laughing, he collapsed onto the bed, his chest heaving, a flush of excitement lingering on his face.
But this was only the beginning.
Ten thousand yuan wasn’t a massive fortune on Blue Star, but as starting capital, it was more than enough.