The prow scraped softly against the muddy riverbank as the fleet moored silently, like ghosts in the night.
A deathly silence clung to the surroundings.
The knights had already muffled their warhorses’ hooves with thick rags.
The young fishermen silently donned the breastplates and helms Quentyn had distributed, their rough hands gripping spears and rusted harpoons.
Six or seven corpses lay strewn across the muddy shallows.
Each body sported more than one black-fletched arrow buried deep in a throat or eye socket.
Billy Burley looked at Robb differently now.
His calloused hand unconsciously rubbed the grain of his longbow.
Several arrows fletched in the Northern style jutted from the puddles, but every single deadly shaft fired by the riverlands boy had found a vital mark.
“Seven Hells, lad.
You win,” Billy muttered, a dry note of defeat in his voice.
Robb remained silent, simply tucking away the weirwood longbow and sticking close to Quentyn like a shadow.
Quentyn took the heavy caparison from Hogg, working together to drape it over his destrier’s broad back.
In the blink of an eye, fifty fully armored heavy cavalrymen and their warhorses stood ready in the darkness.
The knights vaulted silently into their saddles one by one, while the young fishermen panted with nervous excitement in the cold wind.
Quentyn raised a hand, pulling his dragon-skull visor down with a heavy click.
The interlocking steel fangs snapped shut, completely sealing the boy’s face behind the cold helm.
He slowly drew his longsword, aiming the cold steel straight at the flickering campfires in the distance.
“Leave no survivors.” Thud.
The girl’s ruined head slammed heavily against the rough wooden post.
The grotesque Ser Morn grabbed her mud-caked hair in agitation, wiping the blood from his spear blade with his other hand.
“Useless trash…” Morn belched, spitting a wad of phlegm and sour wine into the mud.
The aged vintage the farm steward had hidden in the cellar for years had been guzzled down like water by these thugs.
The alcohol did not lull the robber knight to sleep; rather, it completely stripped away his hypocritical veneer of piety.
Morn flicked the gore from his blade, his vision blurring from the drink.
What was I trying to do again?
Ah, right.
He was supposed to continue interrogating the captured heathen villagers.
Those wretches who swore fealty to the incestuous dragonspawn had entirely forgotten the teachings of the Seven.
As a servant of the gods, it was his duty to remind these animals of the gods’ glory with steel and blood, and to squeeze them for every last copper penny they hid.
“Help…” “Run…” “Kill them all, leave no one alive…” A chaotic cacophony surged from all directions like a rising tide, the piercing screams stabbing into Morn’s addled brain.
“Dammit!” A dark fire flared in Morn’s chest.
He snatched up his longsword and stumbled through the tent flap.
“What are you sons of bitches doing awake at this hour…” Thwack.
An arrow shot from somewhere in the darkness instantly pierced Morn’s left shoulder.
The agonizing pain struck like lightning, instantly cleaving through his drunken haze.
“Seven Hells…
what is happening?” Morn sobered up completely.
A blood-soaked rebel soldier screamed as he staggered toward him, only to collapse like a broken ragdoll into the muddy water after barely three steps.
A long arrow jutted from the man’s back, its fletching still quivering.
The entire camp had transformed into a living hell.
Fire ravaged every corner, consuming burning tents, collapsing woodpiles, and men rolling on the ground engulfed in flames.
Morn’s eyes widened in horror as a cavalryman clad in black plate armor charged out of the inferno like a demon riding hellfire, using the momentum of his destrier to cleave a rebel’s skull in twain with a single swing.
Desperate wails mingled with the shrieks of warhorses.
Morn even saw a terrified rebel wildly hacking at his own comrade with a woodaxe, only to have his ribcage caved in by a whistling morningstar the very next second.
Quentyn himself had not expected this night raid to be so overwhelmingly decisive.
During their slow advance toward the camp, Billy and Robb had treated it like a silent hunting contest, eliminating every sentry along the way.
Not a single alarm was raised, not a single soul spared.
By the time the fifty heavy cavalrymen tore through the camp’s flimsy wooden palisade and launched their devastating charge, the vast majority of the rebels were still lost in drunken dreams.
Warhorses kicked over the burning braziers, trampling the thugs who hadn’t even had time to put on their straw sandals into the muck.
For this undisciplined mob, the sudden onslaught of steel instantly obliterated their boasted numerical advantage, scattering them like fat sheep before a pack of starving wolves.
It was a completely one-sided slaughter.
Beneath his visor, the boy’s eyes coldly observed the carnage.
Ser Sebastian’s broadsword reaped lives like the scythe of the Stranger, drawing a fountain of blood with every strike.
Ser Edmure the freerider swung his morningstar with vicious power, caving in a rebel armor and all with a single crushing blow.
Pate mercilessly shattered enemy knees with his hammer.
And the portly Galwyn wielded his gilded warhammer like a violent whirlwind, sweeping away every remnant foe in his path.
The knights of Harrenhal plunged through the burning camp like an unstoppable force, either riding alone or grouped in twos and threes.
Wherever iron hooves fell, the thugs who had flaunted their might before the villagers yesterday, and the main rebel force that had twice broken House Strong, met the exact same fate: reduced to a landscape of severed limbs.
These scum are worse than beasts…
A metallic taste rose in Quentyn’s throat.
His breathing grew heavy, his heart hammering wildly against his ribs.
When he caught sight of an infant’s corpse impaled on a broken spear, the last shred of mercy evaporated from his soul.
And when Pate smashed a rebel into pulp, Quentyn was left with only one emotion, an absolute, burning thirst for vengeance.
“It’s over, old one, it’s over.
Lord Quentyn of Harrenhal is here to save us…” An old man knelt in the muddy water, his trembling hands trying to soothe a completely maddened old woman beside him.
“My sweet girl…
my baby…
No!
No!
Give me back my granddaughter!” The old woman, covered in dark blood, let out a piercing scream that tore through the night sky.
Through the firelight, Quentyn saw clearly the thing she was clutching desperately in her shriveled arms.
It was a human head.
A head of a little girl, her unblinking eyes staring into the void.
“Mercy, my lord…” The old man wept, kneeling before the horse’s hooves.
“Ever since those demons in human skin killed my granddaughter yesterday, my poor wife has lost her mind…
She was only nine…” She was only nine.
Quentyn felt a violent spasm in his stomach.
He clamped his jaw shut, forcing down the searing rage that threatened to consume him whole.
How dare they…
Even with the memories of two lifetimes, even as he tried to view this world through a lens of detached rationality, the lives wailing in the mud right now were his subjects, the people who had sworn him their fealty.
Beneath the visor, the boy’s jawbone clicked from the extreme pressure.
He closed his eyes slowly, and when he opened them again, his violet pupils had turned to bottomless ice.
A lord cannot break.
A lord must control everything.
“I will bring you justice.” Quentyn yanked the reins hard.
The black destrier reared up, unleashing a deafening neigh.
“In the name of Quentyn Qoherys, before the Old Gods and the New, I swear to make these beasts who bathe in your blood pay a terrible price.” The warhorse galloped through the burning wreckage, the violent jolts traveling up through the saddle into Quentyn’s body.
Every rise and fall of the iron hooves was accompanied by the sickening crunch of bone and shrill screams.
Robb and Hogg rode like two loyal gatekeepers, shielding their young lord on the left and right.
As his destrier vaulted over a blazing corpse, Quentyn spotted a tall figure through the flames.
Morn stood before the largest tent in the center of the camp, swinging his longsword wildly like a rabid dog.
The trembling white-fletched arrow lodged in his left shoulder stood out starkly against the firelight.
Without hesitation, Quentyn drove his spurs hard into his mount’s ribs.
With an agonized, furious squeal, the destrier shot toward the prey.
Using the horse’s terrifying momentum, the boy thrust his longsword straight ahead like a lance, exactly as Ser Sebastian had taught him countless times in the training yard.
Clang!
A jarring crash of steel erupted.
Morn was a heinous thug, but a man who lived on the edge of a blade to survive this long was no amateur.
The moment he spotted the heavy cavalry charge, he forced his body to twist despite the agonizing pain.
The swords clashed violently.
Morn put all his strength into parrying the lethal thrust, but the terrifying kinetic energy of the warhorse still split the webbing of his hands, sending him stumbling back seven or eight paces uncontrollably.
“The Seven curse you, you damn bastard!
Dragon’s lapdog!” Morn ground his molars, gripping his sword with both hands in a desperate attempt to block again.
Quentyn clamped his legs tightly around his horse, guiding the beast to circle the ugly robber knight rapidly, like a hawk toying with dying prey.
“Full of shit!” “You dare blaspheme the gods…” “A beast wearing human skin like you dares speak the name of the Seven?!” Quentyn’s roar echoed like muffled thunder through the night sky from behind the dragon-fang visor.
“The Father teaches the world justice, the Mother pities the suffering of all.
Where are your justice and mercy?
Eaten by dogs?!” Using the momentum of his circling mount, Quentyn’s longsword became a flurry of silver lightning.
Morn was forced into a dizzying defense, his arms growing numb.
The boy’s every heavy slash forced the robber knight to expend all his strength to block, while Quentyn’s blade effortlessly slipped away, guided by the leverage of the saddle.
“The Maiden teaches the world to protect the weak, and how do you repay her grace?!” “All dragonspawn belong in the deepest hells!” Morn roared in despair, throwing himself recklessly at Quentyn in a bid to drag him from the saddle.
What awaited him, however, was a cold, merciless flash of silver.
With a bloodcurdling scream, a thick arm clutching a broken sword carved a bloody arc through the air, crashing heavily into the muddy water.
“Bullying the weak makes you worse than swine!
The Warrior has already brought down his judgment!” Quentyn followed with a backhand strike, sending the dagger Morn tried to draw spinning into the darkness.
“You bring nothing but endless darkness and despair to the weak!
The Crone’s lantern and the Maiden’s purity will curse your soul for eternity!” This torrential assault utterly shattered Morn’s defenses.
“You…” “The Father abandons shameless scum like you!
In this life and the next, you will never go anywhere near the Smith’s forge!” Quentyn rose hard in his stirrups, gripping the hilt with both hands.
Channeling all the repressed rage and hatred in his chest, he brought the blade down in a skull-crushing strike.
“Take your sins and confess them to the Stranger!” Crack.
The blade sliced effortlessly through Morn’s thin, ragged clothes, tearing through frail flesh and fat in an instant.
Accompanied by a sickening crunch, the fine steel edge brutally shattered the robber knight’s breastbone.
The grotesque Morn let out an inhuman howl, collapsing to the ground like a pile of sludge.
The immediate second strike precisely severed his windpipe.
Blood poured instantly into his lungs.
Morn clutched his neck, his eyes bulging as he desperately tried to speak, but only a wet, hissing sound escaped his ruined throat.
“No…
ghk…
glug…” The warhorse reared high and brought its front hooves down heavily on Morn’s caved-in chest.
The notorious robber knight spat out a massive mouthful of black blood and organ fragments, his limbs twitching a few times before he went completely still.
Quentyn yanked the reins hard, his blood-splattered visor slowly sweeping across the slaughterhouse.
It was a textbook, flawless victory.
The entire camp had been reduced to scorched earth, littered with the broken corpses of the rebels as far as the eye could see.
The young fishermen who followed had finally reached the center of the battlefield.
With red-rimmed eyes, they used their rusted spears and harpoons to pin the twitching, wailing survivors firmly into the mud.
Despite this, a few dozen stragglers had managed to slip away in the chaos, fleeing wildly into the dark woods toward Milkstone.
But that no longer mattered.
Quentyn dismounted, his boots sloshing through ankle-deep bloody water, and walked slowly to Morn’s cooling corpse.
The boy raised his longsword with both hands and drove the tip deep into the dead man’s throat.
The very moment the blade sank into the soil, a long-absent, deeply familiar hum echoed quietly in the depths of Quentyn’s mind.
He closed his eyes slowly.
That mysterious door connecting the endless void to the laws of reality surfaced once more in his consciousness.
What condition triggered it this time?
First time killing a man with my own hands?
With a trace of doubt, Quentyn slowly reached out his hand in his mind.
The heavy door let out an ancient creak as it slowly swung open.
Behind the door, there was no familiar towering giant tree, nor a sky full of twinkling stars and fragments of ancient knowledge.
It was a profound, boundless night.
Suddenly, a brilliant meteor tore through the pitch-black firmament, dragging a long tail as it roared from across the horizon, stopping right before Quentyn’s soul in the blink of an eye.
As the blinding light faded, quietly floating in mid-air was a simple, ancient longsword.
A sword?
Quentyn subconsciously grasped the hilt.
In an instant, a surging tide of muscle memory poured down his arm and into his brain like an electric current.
To his astonishment, the sensation was not unfamiliar; it felt as though he had spent countless days and nights in this void, enduring hundreds of thousands of life-and-death battles.
To adapt to countless unpredictable sword styles, the muscle fibers in his arm felt as though they had been torn, rebuilt, and contracted tens of thousands of times in a single moment.
Completed first vengeance, slaying an individual of extreme evil.
Reward acquired: Sword Mastery.
Quentyn silently noted this trigger condition in his heart.
Counting this one, the system door had opened for him five times.
Each time, he received a completely different blessing based on triggering a specific behavioral logic.
Once I return to Harrenhal and review this properly, perhaps I can completely figure out the underlying rules of this golden cheat.
His consciousness receded like the tide.
When Quentyn opened his eyes again, a shocking, blood-red rift had already torn across the eastern horizon.
Dawn had broken.
Suddenly, agonizing screams erupted from deep within the Milkwood.
The rebel remnants who had fled into the forest moments ago were now scrambling back toward the edge of the open camp like headless flies.
Quentyn jerked his head up.
Through the cold dragon-fang visor, he finally saw the thing that had driven these thugs back to a dead end.
In that moment, even Quentyn, who had just waded through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, felt his breath catch.
A bronze behemoth that blotted out the sky was skimming low over the canopy of the Milkwood, moving with extreme slowness but an asphyxiating, oppressive presence.
Its iconic sagging dewlaps and the sparse, craggy crown of bone spikes upon its head mercilessly declared its terrifying, mythical identity.
Vhagar.
When this ancient dragon, which had once followed Aegon the Conqueror to burn across the entire continent of Westeros, fully unfurled her ragged wings that could cover the sky, even the rising morning sun was completely swallowed by her massive frame.
Roar.
A pillar of dark red fire that seemed to drain the very air fell from the sky like an apocalyptic thunderbolt sent by the gods, instantly engulfing the fleeing rebels.
“Ah…” “Seven save me…” The screams lasted for a mere fraction of a breath.
Vhagar’s terrifying dragonfire, hot enough to melt steel, incinerated their vocal cords along with their flesh to ash in an instant.
Charred coal in the fire makes no sound.
Just as this apocalyptic inferno began to subside slightly, the belated forces of House Strong finally arrived on the plains to the northeast, reaching the edge of the battlefield.
Whether it was Prince Baelon reigning high above on dragonback, or the House Strong soldiers galloping over on their warhorses, the exact same image was seared into everyone’s pupils at this moment.
Across the endless scorched earth lay broken corpses and burning tents.
Fifty heavy-armored knights formed a silent steel circle in a pool of blood.
The rising morning sun leapt from the eastern horizon, pouring blinding, blood-red light mercilessly over this slaughterhouse.
And right in the center of that steel circle, the young Quentyn Qoherys stood leaning on his bloodstained longsword, its tip buried deep into the throat of a headless corpse, looking exactly like an ancient demon god reborn in blood.
Quentyn of House Qoherys had crushed the rebellion of the Faith Militant remnants with the force of a thunderbolt.
With an earth-shaking boom, Vhagar landed heavily on the scorched earth at the edge of the camp.
The old dragon slowly lowered her massive, hill-like head, revealing Prince Baelon straddling the dragon saddle.
Contrasted against the beast’s colossal body, even the world-renowned prince looked as tiny as an ant.
Quentyn slowly raised his head, gazing up at the royal bloodline on the dragon’s back.
He raised a hand and, with a heavy click, pushed open the dragon-fang visor of his helm, revealing a chillingly bright, white smile upon his blood-spattered, handsome face.