Stephen Baratheon POV
He threw another pebble and killed the final Stone Man.
The plaza he'd lured them into had run black with their putrid blood. Corpses littered in a large circle around him. Any Stone Men who came with 30 meters of him had died to the case of an exploded head.
He was taken aback by the Stone Men's relentless persistence, despite knowing that they would die at his hands. It made him wonder if perhaps their suffering from the disease had driven them to keep going.
He pitied them, and wondered if this is what would've happened to his sister, if Melisandre hadn't been there to save her in the canon timeline.
It was a sad fate. And he tried not to think too much on it as he returned back to the place with the Dragon skeletons.
It took him another hour to collect all the Dragon bones. All except for the skull, which were too big for him to fit into his Inventory.
He left the skulls in their place in favour of looking at the corpses of the Dragon riders.
For some reason, he felt a certain sense of kinship with them. Was it because they were dragon riders, and he aspired to be one as well? Or was it because they gave him two Valyrian Steel swords?
He didn't know. But he decided to put the two of them to rest instead of letting their corpses rot out here in the open any longer.
Since their bones were fragile and prone to breaking apart, he opted to place a Mana Platform beneath them and lift their intact skeletons into the air before taking flight over the city.
After searching for some time, he finally found a picturesque spot on a hill that offered a stunning view of the desolate city below. There, he dug a sizable hole and carefully placed both siblings inside.
He covered them with soil and took a moment to pay his respects before bidding them a final farewell and taking to the skies once again.
By soaring above and gaining a bird's-eye view of the city, he quickly spotted the grandest and most opulent mansion.
The structure before him was not so much a mansion as it was a palace, and without hesitation, he entered through one of the shattered windows to assess the situation more closely.
Despite the skeletal remains scattered throughout each room, the overgrowth of vegetation, broken windows, and the decaying bedsheets curtains, the palace appeared to be remarkably well-preserved.
If one were to remove the unsightly debris, perform a thorough cleaning, and apply a fresh coat of paint, it could easily be mistaken for a newly constructed structure.
He pondered whether the exceptional craftsmanship of the Valyrian people was responsible for the palace's remarkable condition, or if it could be attributed to the protective ward shielding the entire city.
And that was yet another something that confused him.
If there was a ward protecting the city, then how the hell did all these people die in the first place?
Was it the heat? Or a lack of air? Or something else altogether.
Based on his observations of entire families' remains seated together in almost every room, he surmised that these individuals were aware of their impending demise and opted to spend their final moments together in each other's company.
After ruminating over their strange manner of deaths for a few minutes, he decided to stop procrastinating and get started on searching the mansion for any gold, jewellery, Valyrian Steel, ornate decorations, or any other valuables.
Just as he had assumed, the palace turned out to be a treasure trove.
Contrary to his expectations, the palace did not contain a vast quantity of gold. In fact, the Valyrian gold coins he managed to gather amounted to a mere 70,000 gold dragons.
It was in the jewellery department, where he really made out like a bandit.
The women's chambers within the palace were adorned with an impressive array of jewellery, a testament to the Valyrians' wealth. Even the lower-ranking ladies of the city possessed collections that rivalled that of Cersei Fucking Lannister, indicating the high standards of luxury and opulence among the Valyrian people.
As he continued to explore the palace, he began to question whether the Valyrians had amassed treasures from all corners of the world in an effort to amass wealth, given the seemingly endless riches he had encountered thus far. Because it certainly seemed that way.
He'd even found a few Valyrian Steel objects like 2 Valyrian Steel daggers, 3 VS plates, 4 VS rings, a set of VS cutlery, 1 VS necklace, and 8 VS coins.
Yes, these people had fucking coins made out of Valyrian Steel, bearing the emblem of the Freehold. He wondered how much such a coin would sell for in an Essossi auction house.
Eventually though, his search came to an end as he had finished scouring the last of the rooms.
He was sure that there was more treasure hidden in this palace somewhere. Maybe behind secret entrances, fake tiles, inside hidden safes, etc. etc. But it'll take him a shit ton of time to locate those hidden places, and he might not even find anything of value, so he decided to move on to the next place.
Which ended up being the 2nd largest mansion in the city. Which was a palace in its own right.
As he scoured the palace's numerous chambers, the sun's descent below the horizon initiated a stunning transformation of the environment. The sky took on a fiery red hue, which, combined with the crimson shade that engulfed the horizon, imbued the entire surroundings with a blood-red tint.
It would've looked beautiful, if it didn't creep the fuck out of him for some unknown reason.
The moon and the stars had already started becoming visible by this point. But even the moon appeared to be blood red in colour, as did the stars. It filled him a foreboding feeling.
He contemplated leaving this place for the night, and flying back to the mainland and spending the night away from Valyria.
Assuming he travels at his maximum speed, it would take him one hour to depart and another hour to return. However, doing so would stop him from pursuing his treasure quest for the remainder of the night. Nevertheless, the upside would be that he could sleep in peace.
He seriously contemplated the idea of leaving for the night. But then he remembered that he only had a limited amount of time in Valyria. And decided to make the best use of it that he could.
He created a Mana Ball to illuminate his surroundings and got back to searching for more treasure.
Sleep was for the normies any way. Or so he thought.
And it didn't take long for his decision to come back and haunt him…
Literally.
It started with a few whispered voices that even his Hyper sensitive ears didn't manage to pick up properly.
Then those whispered voices started to increase in volume. And he stopped searching for treasure as he realised that there was something seriously freaky going on in this place.
He used Shaper to increase the size of his ears, to be able to pick up more sounds, and the whispered voices immediately became clear to him.
They were… talking in High Valyrian language. And were talking about normal day to day things. Whoever 'they' were.
A part of him hoped that he had discovered a secret society in Valyria. A group of people that survived the doom and lived in underground areas to stay safe during the day. But another part of him realised just how stupid that idea was.
Regardless, he moved around the palace, following the sounding around in the palace, but no matter how far he walked, he failed to reach those people.
It was then that he heard the crying of a child.
A crying child, at night, while he's inside a ruined building…
Yeah, he probably should've left as soon as he heard that, but an inner drive compelled him to unravel the enigma. Consequently, he trailed the sobbing voice until he arrived at what he surmised to be a nursery, based on the presence of multiple cradles within the room.
He immediately flew over the cradle where the crying noise was coming from, but as soon as he did, the crying noise vanished, and he came face to face with the skeletal remains of a baby.
He only had enough time to blink in surprise before a cacophony of crying noises erupted from everywhere around him.
The noise was so loud that it took him by surprise. He cringed in mild pain at the abuse of his Hyper Sensitive hearing and immediately returned his ears back to normal before he flew out of the room, no longer interested in checking the other cradles.
…and immediately came face to face with a walking corpse of a woman in an attire similar to a medieval nurse.
His mouth went dry as he noticed her white eyes, her decayed face, her slightly glowing form, his heart beating faster and faster as he stood frozen in place.
A half decayed, half skeletal hand reached out toward him and his 'Danger Sense' pinged as he immediately launched a Mana Ball at the woman.
The Mana Ball traversed through her form without causing any injury and soared to the end of the passageway, detonating in a blinding burst of energy that jolted him backward several feet, a development for which he felt grateful since it propelled him away from the lifeless figure.
The woman came to a halt and swivelled her head around 180 degrees to observe the section of the palace that had disintegrated as a result of his Mana Ball, as well as the remaining portions that were now crumbling under the influence of its explosive power.
Her neck turned 360 and hair rose at the back of his neck as the woman's dead countenance took changed into a ghostly one, and expression twisted into that of pure rage before she lunged toward him.
"Shit!" He cursed as he immediately flew up in order to dodge the woman.
He broke through multiple floors in his ascent, but he didn't care about any of that as he continued to fly up, and up and up until he had finally escaped the palace.
Only once he was floating in the middle of the sky did his heart beat started to calm down and he looked down to take a proper stalk of the situation.
He paled when he saw the corpse in the nurse outfit crawling its way out of the whole he had created.
"O...O...Observe," he stammered, and a blue screen materialized before his eyes, confirming the identity of the woman.
She was a ghost...
"Oh…" He whispered and then noticed the slight glow emerging out from the entire palace, no, the entire city. As the entire landscape beneath him came alive.
One by one, people started emerging out of them homes and started filling the streets. No, not people but corpses. And they all started up at him, their eyes blank, and their mouth twisted in horror and rage.
Suddenly, they all began to shriek in unison, emitting a discordant, gut-wrenching noise that seemed to originate from the depths of the underworld, causing a peculiar sensation beneath his eyelids, as if tiny fingers were attempting to claw their way out from underneath them.
Gamer Mind has negated Psychic attack!
The strange sensation under his eyes went away as he read the notification and gulped the dry saliva in his mouth.
He was in a city of ghosts…. And he had decided stayed here overnight to look for some fucking treasure. What a great imbecile he was.
'Yeah no. Fuck that.' He thought with and immediately chanted. "Create ID." Options filled his sight and he immediately select Empty ID. And a moment later, he was back in the city.
Except, the city was empty. Truly empty this time. No ghosts. No screaming babies. No dead nurses. No nothing.
He let out a sigh and slowly floated down to the palace he'd just broken out of. He sat down on its roof and it took him a moment to realise that he was shivering.
He pulled his knees to himself and stared in the distance with wide eyes, terrified out of his mind and wondering if what he'd just witnessed was real or not.
A part of him didn't want to believe it. Didn't want to believe that ghosts were real. And that there were a city full of them in the city he has been treasure hunting in.
That all he saw, was some kind of glamour attack. Some kind of magical defence that gave hallucination to the intruder and showed him things that he feared.
But… the notification about the Psychic attack could not be faked. And it confirmed that all of this was real.
That ghosts were actually a thing in this fucking medieval world. And he'd run right into their domain.
Gamer Mind has negated Hysteria!
Another notification rang out and his jumbled, muddled mind suddenly cleared up.
His shaking stopped as the terror at the revelation of what he'd just faced suddenly vanished.
"Thank you." He said, to no one in particular as he stopped hugging his knees and stood up in his place.
Now that his emotions had been calmed down and he was thinking more rationally, a part of him wanted to go back and see how to kill those ghosts.
Surely there must be a method to kill them? Maybe Valyrian Steel sword would do the job?
Their Psychic scream had already turned up to be useless against him. And they probably didn't have any physical attacks since they were ghosts.
The ghosts could still try to possess him, but since none of them had shown the ability to fly, as long as he remained up in the air, he should he alright.
He contemplated going back and facing his fears for a few moments before he decided against it.
If there were ghosts in that place, then there might be other magical anomalies out there as well.
Unknowns that he had no idea how to deal with. So in the end, he decided against going back and used Create ID to go to Goblin ID.
The goblins were too feeble to cause any harm to him and defeating them would not yield any experience points. Nonetheless, killing them would provide a decent way to relieve stress, something he desperately needed after the ordeal he had just experienced.
So he took out a Warhammer, for added brutality and started smashing heads and caving in chests.
His uncle Robert would be proud of him.
—
He exited the ID and returned back to the real world once it was morning.
He had Stag Song in his hand. The Valyrian Steel blade charged with mana, and ready to attack in case any of those apparitions (still having a hard time believing that they were real) lingered in the vicinity..
Rather than encountering any specters, he was greeted by a deserted city, as quiet as it was when he initially arrived.
He flew around the city to look for any ghosts. Just in case those fuckers were hiding around someplace, waiting for him to lower his guard so they could Zerg rush him and try to possess his body.
Could those ghosts even possess his body?
Gamer Mind and Gamer Body should, in theory, keep him safe from possession. And give him Resistance to Possession in case it didn't. But he was unwilling to risk it just yet.
In the end, he made an entire circle of the city, and failed to find any ghosts. But he did find something else that was pretty freaky.
The hundreds of Stone Men he'd killed yesterday, were all taken over by strange plants. Their bodies being used as fertilisers for the growth of these plants.
All of them had grown to the size of 10 feet within the period of a single night.
And as if that wasn't creepy enough, when he went closer to the plants, all of them slowly turned to face his direction, as if they were the sunflower to his sun.
Only, Sunflowers didn't look half as creepy as these plants. Nor did they didn't grow on the bodies of dead humans.
He flew around the plants, and the rotated in their place to follow all his movements with unnerving accuracy.
He went closer, getting within a range of 10 meters, and was mildly surprised and disturbed when his Shaper power detected them as half plants, half humans.
He had never seen something like this before in his life. He was both creeped out and intrigued by it.
Advancing closer with the intention of examining their biology through touch, he suddenly halted and tilted his head to avoid an attack from the nearest plant-like creature, which had launched a tongue at him from its primary orifice.
He swung his sword and cut the tongue in half, and the plant shivered, its entire body quivering, as if in pain, even though it otherwise remained silent due to the lack of a voice box.
So… carnivorous plants. Good to know.
"Observe" He said, and a notification appeared in front of him. He studied it, and learned that these plants were basically normal carnivorous plants that eventually mutated due to the heavy magical radiation.
These plants could grow up to the size of hundreds of feet, and had the habit of eating any living creature that comes within their range. Oh, and they also grew under water as well.
He shifted his focus to the roots of the plants, tracing them for two city blocks until they disappeared beneath the dark and murky waters that had submerged half of the city.
Yeah… he was never, never, NEVER, going to go under that water.
In fact, he was not going to go anywhere even close to it. He didn't want a hundred foot large plant tonguing him to death.
He doubted that he would actually die to these plants. Even if they grew up to by the size of thousands of feet. But the experience would undoubtedly be traumatic for him.
And after coming face to face with literal ghosts last night, he wanted to keep his actions as stress free as he could.
Still, he realised that he only had a limited time in Valyria, and he wanted to make the best use of it that he could.
So after making sure that there were no ghosts waiting around to jump scare him, he ignored the magical carnivorous plants went to the 3rd largest palace in the city and started to looting it for treasure.
Though he did make it a point to use Observe on all the stuff he found in this place.
He didn't want to gift one of these necklaces to his mother, only to later learn that it was possessed or cursed in some way.
In fact, he should later take an inventory of all these jewelleries and have Melisandre go through them with her holy fire.
He was not in the mood for taking chances now that he'd come face to face with ghosts himself.