Stephen Baratheon POV
Valyria was large. Larger than he could have possibly imagined. He was confident that he could effortlessly fit more than ten Kings Landing inside it with ease.
He had no doubt that the city also looked equally magnificent in its prime. It was regrettable that he couldn't witness much of it, as the entire city was submerged beneath a glowing sea of molten lava.
And though much of the city was in ruins, the towering structures made of the same black, fused stone found in the construction of Dragonstone still stood resolute, defying the destruction that had befallen the rest of the city.
A feeling of disappointment struck his heart as he thought about the vast amount of knowledge and information that was lost when Valyria met its demise.
And it was not just the mundane knowledge that was lost, but the magical knowledge as well. The Valyrians were responsible for inventing the black fused stone and utilizing it in the creation of towering skyscrapers and extensive, straight trade routes that connected the entire continent of Essos.
They were the ones who invented the Glass Candle, which enabled more efficient long-distance communication. They were the only ones who knew how to create Valyrian steel. And now he has come to learn that they knew how to create city wide wards as well. Just how much magical knowledge vanished from the world along with them?
Sure, they were slavers. Which was a huge red mark on their empire. But they also had many positive attributes that shouldn't be forgotten.
He was brought out of his sad musings when he noticed some movement down below in the sea of magma.
He gazed down at the sea and used his Eagle eyes to try and spot any more movements.
It didn't take him long to spot another movement in the far distance and his eyes immediately zoomed in on it.
What he saw was a colossal serpent-like creature, with its head submerged beneath the molten lava, but its sinuous body winding in and out of the fiery liquid.
The sight of the creature brought to mind the Nagga's bones on the Iron Islands, where the massive skeletal remains of a long-dead serpent could easily accommodate hundreds of men.
One night, he had flown over to Old Wyk with the intention of studying the Nagga's bones in the hope of gaining insight into the creature's biology. However, much like the dragon skulls, the bones possessed a significant magical essence. As a result, examining them provided him with a sensation more akin to staring at a blank TV screen than any real understanding of the creature's inherent biology.
This serpent didn't look even one fifth as large as the Nagga's bones. But for all he knew, this one just might be a juvenile among its species.
He quickly used Observe on the serpent before it could submerge itself back into the molten sea. And the results were what he had expected.
This was a Firewyrm. From what he'd read about them in both this and his previous life, he knew that they had the ability to breathe fire, and can effortlessly burrow through rock, soil and stone.
They did not have the ability to fly. But some of the maesters had theorised that they were possibly related to dragons. Thinking about his own Theory of Magical evolution, he mused that such a thing was highly possible.
He was aware that Firewyrms typically dwelled in the deep volcanic mines of Valyria. However, he was astonished to witness the creature effortlessly swimming through the molten lava, as if it were a fish in the open ocean.
Given their undoubtedly magical nature, he acknowledged the unlikelihood of being able to delve deeply into the biology of Firewyrms. Nevertheless, his curiosity was piqued and he yearned to study them further. With that in mind, he hovered over the Sea of Magma and surveyed it with a keen, predatory gaze.
When the next Firewyrm appeared, he descended rapidly towards it, accelerating with more velocity than ever before. However, he was taken aback to discover that the creature had somehow sensed his presence, and as a result, raised its head in his direction from the magma sea.
Its head looked remarkably similar to that of a dragon. With large scales, and even two small pointy horns. The Firewyrm didn't have any eyes as far as he could tell, but it did have some form of vision that enabled it to track his movements with remarkable ease.
Just as he was about to reach the Firewyrm, it opened its mouth and let loose a stream of intensely hot, jet blue fire at him.
Instead of dodging, he dove straight into the fire, his Valyrian sword clutched tightly in hand. The fire was searing enough to incinerate his high-quality clothes in an instant. But with his incredibly high Fire Resistance, the fire didn't even singe a single hair on his head.
Emerging from the flames unscathed, he zoomed past the Firewyrm, wielding his sword infused with mana. In a flash of light, a slender, sharp mana blade pierced the Firewyrm's head, precisely between where its eyes would have been, and burst out through the back of its skull, spraying blood in all directions.
The Firewyrm stood still in the aftermath of his attack before its body lost all motor control and its started to sink into the sea of magma.
He caught the Firewyrm before its corpse could vanish back into the sea of magma, and with some effort, he pulled it out of the sea and flew to the nearest Valyrian tower where he dropped its corpse on the landing pad that was once used for dragons.
Once he'd dropped the Firewyrm, he finally took a better look at it.
Upon closer inspection of the Firewyrm's corpse, he discovered something he had previously missed - it had multiple small limbs along its serpentine body. Probably to help push it through the tougher rocky parts of the ground.
He also noted that while its head bore an uncanny resemblance to that of a dragon, the rest of its body remained distinctly snake-like.
He judged its length to be about 90 feet, about the length of a basketball court. And the width of a 100 litre water drum.
This Firewyrm was much smaller than the other one that he had seen before, so he had no doubt that it has the ability to grow much larger in size.
But what was their size limit, if they even had any? What was their diet? How did they survive in the scorching temperatures of the lava sea? And what kind of organ gave them the ability to breathe such intense flames?
He touched the Firewyrm with mild anticipation, attempting to let his Shaper power penetrate its body and uncover its secrets. However, to his great disappointment, no matter how hard he tried, the only thing he got was a feeling of static.
The Firewyrm was so magical in nature that its body didn't even give him any hint about its biology. Annoying. But he'd already expected this, and was ready for the next step.
To perform a vivisection and study its body the old way.
He stretched the Firewyrm and laid it out across the landing zone, marvelling at the immense size of the Valyrian towers. Then he used Stag Song and made a precise incision in its stomach, using thick mana threads to pull its leathery skin to the side and expose its internal organs to him.
He had studied snakes with his Shaper power, so he had a good idea about what a snake's insides would look like. A Firewyrm's insides… looked nothing like that.
The Firewyrm's internal biology was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Its organic system appeared to be highly complex and unusual, almost as if it had been haphazardly assembled by a toddler.
He couldn't make head and toe of its organic structure, and using Shaper power didn't give him any resolute answers either.
The Firewyrm almost seemed... artificial in nature.
As if someone with very little knowledge of anatomy had created this Firewyrm from scratch. It made him question his Theory of Magical Evolution, and if these Firewyrms had actually evolved from a snake or a lizard. But that theory didn't match what he was witnessing right now.
At this point, he was starting to wonder, if the Firewyrms were not the creation of some ancient and highly advanced civilisation.
The same vast civilisation that created those black oily structures all over the globe. A civilisation that both he and Marwyn suspected to have perished long before the emergence of the earliest human civilisation."
He contemplated whether the humans and their various subspecies in this world were merely experiments of the Old Ones. Experiments which broke free and fled into the wild when the Old Ones vanished unexpectedly one day.
Either he was looking too deeply into this, or Planetos had a deeper, much sinister history than he'd first thought.
Lacking a proper answer for any of his questions, he decided to dissect the organs one by one and get a better understanding of the Firewyrm.
He took his Stag Song and started making precise cuts into the various organs that lined the insides of the Firewyrm.
A part of him wondered why the hell he was dissecting and studying the body of a Firewyrm when he could be looking for treasures within these colossal towers. But, he recognised that his curiosity won't allow him to do anything else until he had thoroughly metaculously studied these creatures.
After dissecting all of its organs, the Firewyrm started emitting a foul odor, and he had cut off his sense of smell to avoid having to endure it."
After manually studying the Firewyrm's entire organic structure for the next hour, he finally came to two conclusions.
One. The entire biology of Firewyrm was so incredibly alien in nature, that without his Shaper power, he had no idea what the hell he was even looking at.
Two. Unlike what the maesters had theorised, Firewyrm did not eat or sustain themselves on meat, like the Dragons. The Firewyrm's source of sustenance was rather obvious, in hindsight. And something that he should've realised by himself before he even started studying it.
The Firewyrms ate lava. More specifically. They had an organ in their body where they stored vast amounts of lava, giving it time to cool off, and once the Lava cooled off, it sent the liquid sludge through its other alien organs, which then rooted through the lava to find and anything that was nutritious and valuable to the body before discarding the rest.
The biological system was similar to that of an Earthworm, rather than any mammal he was familiar with. Similar to how Earthworms consume soil, extract nutrients from it, and excrete the remainder, Firewyrms consumed lava and extracted valuable nutrients from it."
The entire thing was a bit out of his area of expertise, since he had, understandably, never studied the biology of any other lava eating animal in his life.
While contemplating obtaining additional Lava Worms for dissection, a deafening roar erupted from one of the distant volcanoes. He spun around to face the source of the noise, and his eyes widened in astonishment, as he saw a colossal figure flying towards him from afar.
Flying. Large figure.
It… it was a dragon.
But, all dragons died out in the Doom, didn't they?
Well, apparently not, if this fucker was anything to go by.
His eyes zoomed in on the dragon rapidly approaching him, and blinked in surprise as his calculations told him just how enormous this dragon was.
It… might be larger than Balerion. No, it was definitely larger than Balerion. And by a huge margin at that. Almost twice as big, in fact.
He hadn't known that dragons could grow to be that big.
Like… he'd heard that dragons did not stop growing for as long as they lived. But he figured that that particular theory was written by someone who just didn't knew any better.
Apparently they did knew what they were writing about. And it was he who didn't knew any better.
One part of him rejoiced at the discovery, but another part frowned as he questioned whether he possessed sufficient Targaryen blood to bond with a fully-grown dragon.
He used Observe and let out an exasperated sigh as he realised that any Targaryen blood in his veins won't mean shit to this particular dragon.
Because this dragon, was none other than the Cannibal.
You know… the dragon from the time of the Dance of the Dragons. The one who made it his job to eat other dragons. And to kill any human who even got close to it.
Yeah, that dragon. The same one who had vanished from Dragonstone shortly after the war ended.
Figured that the fucker would be lounging around in old Valyria. Snaking on these Firewyrms now that dragons were in short supply.
He snorted at the line of his thought as his gaze fell upon the dissected corpse of the Firewyrm.
The Cannibal probably caught its smell and was coming here to eat it. Eating his science experiment? Yeah, not on his watch.
He took over to the sky and started flying toward Cannibal, wondering how to deal with this dragon.
He understandably did not want to kill Cannibal, but bond with it instead.
A dragon that size was undoubtedly a Tier 6 monster. And if he could successfully bond with it, and turn it into his Familiar, then he should get 30 points for that capture.
Probably.
He has never bonded with a dragon or any other creature before this, so he wasn't sure about how this entire stuff worked.
Point was, he didn't want to kill Cannibal. But the problem was, defeating Cannibal while making sure that it stays alive would be a huge challenge, even for him.
Well, nothing to it but to try his best. Because if he succeeded, then the reward would be worth more than anything else that he could possibly gain in this world.
With that thought, he accelerated his speed until he finally reached Cannibal.
Cannibal also finally noticed his presence and opened its mouth to let loose a Sea of liquid black flames that covered the entire expanse in front of him.
He planned to charge right through those flames until he noticed the hate emanating from them. Danger sense blared like a Siren in his mind and he quickly covered himself with a Mana Shield before he did a quick 180 and pulled back as fast as he possibly could.
Some of the black fire fell on his mana shield and his jaw dropped when the black fire immediately started to eat through his shield. No, not through his shield, but the magic within his shield.
What the hell? Was he dealing with Fiendfyre or some bullshit like that?
Thankfully, he managed to escape the area in time before the sea of flames could cover him.
Though, it was worrisome that he could feel the heat of those black flames from this distance. It meant that the black flames had to ability to burn him. Not to mention eat through his magical reserve.
His fire resistance had grown so strong that he could submerge himself in the magma sea below without feeling any discomfort. Thus, the notion that any flame in the entire world of Planetos could harm him had seemed inconceivable until this moment.
He started flying even further away when he noticed Cannibal flying through his own flames, without any friendly fire (heh) damage. The titanic dragon noticed that he was still alive and dove toward him, spewing yet another sea of fire in his direction.
This time, he was better equipped to handle the situation and easily dodged the black flames. Utilizing his superior flying speed and manoeuvrability compared to Cannibal, he circled around in a semi-circle, approaching Cannibal from its flank while channeling mana through his Stag Song."
Before he could swung his sword through, Cannibal's gaze snapped into his direction, as if sensing the magic in his blade. Cannibal's pitch black eyes met with his own blue ones and his own eyes widened as Cannibal opened its maw let loose yet another stream of black flames at him, at point-blank range.
He immediately created Five shields, one on top of another in order to cover himself as he tried to dodge to the side. Only for Cannibal's much more concentrated flames to eat through all five layers of his shield immediately before the fire engulfed him.
He let out a cry of pain as the Flames started eating through his skin and notifications filled his view as his HP started falling at a rapid pace.
The discomfort he felt from the flames was somewhat mitigated by his high Pain Resistance and his Shaper ability to shut down his own pain receptors, but the situation remained dire as his HP rapidly plummeted from 14K to 12K within a matter of moments, and continued to drop.
With the fire not going out on it own violation, he did the only smart thing he could think of in these circumstances and dove below to the sea of magma.
The magma sea acted as an actual sea for his current purpose and put out the fire eating away at his body.
He emerged out of the lava a moment later and glanced at his notification screen.
His Health Points had dropped to 9K. The dragon had successfully decreased his HP by 5,000, which was something that hadn't happened to him in a while.
The only positive part about this whole thing was that he gain many more levels of Fire Resistance.
He knew he would need to gain many more levels in Fire Resistance before becoming immune to Cannibal's fire. However, he also knew that Cannibal would not get another chance after this.
He lifted his gaze to the colossal dark shape that perched atop the tower he had recently vacated, feasting on the remains of the dissected Firewyrm. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his Stag Song as he fixed a fiery glare on the dragon.
Time to take this bastard seriously now.
No more playing around.
He took out a few high grade Health and Mana Potions from his Inventory and chugged them down, filling up his Health and Mana Points to the brim.
With that, he flew toward the dragon once again.
Making a circular flight path, he approached Cannibal from behind. And knowing that Cannibal had the ability to sense large concentrations of mana (which seemed obvious in hindsight), he didn't charge his blade until he was on top of Cannibal.
By the time Cannibal realised what was happening, it had already happened.
A large blade of mana flew out of his blade and tore open a large wound into the Dragon's back.
He blinked in surprise at that. The amount of mana he had poured into that slash should be enough to cut through a dozen boulders. Seems like Cannibal's durability was nothing to scoff at either.
The Dragon roared in pain, its voice loud enough to shatter glass within an entire mile radius. The Vibration damage notifications he was getting certainly seemed to suggest that.
Cannibal turned in his direction and let loose another sea of flames but by the time those flames reached him, he was already gone.
Cannibal was large. Larger than anything else he'll probably encounter in this world. And the dragon was not particularly slow either. But it might as well be a snail when compared to his supersonic speed.
The only reason Cannibal even managed to hurt him earlier was because of the surprise factor. And because he wasn't taking this fight seriously. A foolish mistake in hindsight. Without anything to challenge him, he had grown too arrogant.
Well, you know what they say about living and learning.
He flew in from a different direction, taking advantage of Cannibal's limited field of vision due to its own black fire, and launched another crescent blade of mana into its side. He quickly ducked below and flew under Cannibal's own feet before flying away.
Magma-hot blood seeped out of Cannibal's wounds as the titanic creature roared in pain once again.
Cannibal was not even able to let loose a stream of fire this time before he came back and sent a mana blade through the tendons in its hind leg.
Although its body primarily relied on magical bullshit to sustain itself, it still had to pay lip service to basic biology. And with its tendon torn off and its hind leg damaged, the dragon could not sustain its footing and fell to the side.
The dragon let out another roar of pain, lowering his HP and giving him a few more points in Vibration Resistance. Then it flung its head around and let loose a sea of flames in every direction. Creating a wall of fire around its body in a futile effort to catch him.
He approached from behind this time and swung his sword at the dragon's head. And for the first time in this battle, its deafening cry of pain transformed into a frenzied scream as the colossal creature lost an eye.
Another failed attempt at cooking him and a few more wounds on Cannibal's back, and the dragon finally realised that this was a losing battle.
It spread out its wings and attempted to drag its body to the edge of the tower so that it could launch itself from the side and fly away while it still has the chance to do so.
He thought about severing Cannibal's wings, but then he recalled that Dragons tended to lose their will to live without their wings and die off pretty soon afterward so he decided against that.
In lieu of that, he opted to make a precise cut in the muscles on Cannibal's back, which supported its wings, disabling the left wing.
Another fly by and another similar wound, and now its right wing was dangling to the floor as well.
Now the dragon was down to one eye, no wings, one limb and had multiple deep lacerations in its entire body.
The dragon was becoming slower as the wounds took their toll. The flames it spewed were less intense than before as well, and he could have easily darted through them. However, he remained vigilant, wary that the old bastard might be trying to deceive him by pretending to be weakened. Dragons were certainly cunning enough to do something like that.
After enduring a dozen more cuts, the dragon eventually lowered its head and collapsed to the ground.
A notification on his Gamer System told him that he has gained 25 Free Stats for defeating Cannibal, along with the title of Dragon Hunter, which increased all his stats by 10% when fighting against Draconic foes. Neat!
Observing that the dragon was no longer capable of rising, he flew over and perched atop its head, right in front of its remaining functional eye.
The dragon glared at him, its expression surprisingly clear and understandable despite its draconic face.
He pointed his sword at the Dragon's eye and channeled some mana into it, making the sword glow.
At the sight of the gleaming blade, Cannibal recoiled in fear. Its eyes widened, and its pupils darted around as it weakly attempted to crawl away from him It didn't have much success since he was standing on top of its head. Nonetheless, witnessing such a massive dragon attempting to scurry away from him in terror went a long way to soothe his bruised ego.
'Yeah. That's what I though, bitch!' He thought as he grinned at the dragon.
"I know you can understand what I'm saying." He said, talking in High Valyrian and the fear in the dragon's eyes was immediately replaced by understanding as the dragon focused on him once again. "I'll give you a choice. Become my Mount, and live. Refuse, and die."
He was in fact, not sure if the dragon could truly understand him. But dragons were said to be almost as smart as humans. And a dragon who was this old and has survived for so long should be even smarter, right?
The dragon fixed its gaze upon him, its eyes seeming to delve into the depths of his soul, and a protracted moment ensued. And then, Cannibal shut its eyes, and slumped down.
...what?
He waited for something to happen. A Gamer Notification informing him that he has formed a new bond. For his Waifu Catalog Device to buzz and tell him that he'd captured a Tier 6 Familiar. For something.
But when nothing happened after a few seconds, he accepted that Cannibal had either either tried and failed to make a bond with him. Or, that it has rejected his offer and was now waiting for death. Or… it could already be dead.
He used Observe on Cannibal and let out a groan upon discovering that while the dragon was still alive, but it had lost its consciousness due to all the wounds and blood loss it has suffered.
Sigh.
He didn't know that dragons could even fall unconscious.
Never mind. He had no idea how long Cannibal was going to remain in this state. And he was not going to stand here and waste his time, waiting for the dragon to get up.
So… he could either go back to vivisecting and studying the Firewyrms. Or… he could finally start his treasure hunt in the ruins of Old Valyria.