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On the third day after the assassination in Dragonclaw Village, fourteen boys, each around five or six years old, arrived at the Stone Drum Tower.
As Jacaerys had mentioned in High Tides, everything within a lord's domain belongs to the lord, including the people.
By command of the Princess of Dragonstone, the villagers of Dragonclaw were forced to allow the lord's guards to select their children.
Rhaenyra, at this time, was quite generous and merciful. She not only rewarded the parents of these fourteen children with ten silver stags each, but also allowed them to visit their homes every year at the end of the year.
Indeed, in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, the value of a common child was roughly equivalent to two cattle.
Despite this, the villagers of Dragonclaw Village remained deeply grateful to Rhaenyra, constantly praising their lord.
Jacaerys, who had become the leader of the children, began training them in discipline and absolute obedience, much like the military drills from his past life.
Days passed in a blur, and before long, over half a year had slipped by.
In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, the length of winter and summer is notoriously unpredictable, and the concept of a "year" is based on a fixed number of days. As such, the end of the year could fall in either winter or summer.
120 AC was a year of relatively stable weather, but as the end of the year drew nearer, the temperature steadily dropped, and snowflakes began to drift from the sky.
At first, Rhaenyra and Daemon kept a watchful eye on the fourteen children. However, they soon realized that Jacaerys seemed to treat them as if he were playing house with them.
[P.S: Tell me if you have ever played it? I used to play with my sisters.]
Aside from learning to read and write, the children were often made to march in a straight line or stand perfectly still for one or two hours at a time.
After a while, their enthusiasm began to wane. To them, Dragonstone didn't seem to need the fourteen children. They were simply playmates for Jacaerys and Lucerys.
Little Lucerys felt the same way. Initially eager, he quickly grew bored of the monotonous training and soon began spending his days playing with his three-year-old brother, Joffrey.
In contrast, it was the elder twin sister, Baela, who joined the training midway through and continued to practice every day, determined to keep up with her fiancé.
Jacaerys, however, found the past six months to be immensely fulfilling.
Every day, in addition to his regular training with his guards, he also studied High Valyrian and practiced swordsmanship under Daemon's watchful eye.
Of course, he never neglected his most important task—feeding Vermex.
Without additional points from slaying enemies, Jacaerys had accumulated over three hundred points simply from feeding Vermex during the past six months.
However, these points hadn't resulted in any new options appearing on his stats panel.
Growing increasingly restless, Jacaerys decided on a whim to refresh his stats one day.
To his dismay, a gray negative trait appeared: -10% attack: [Timid].
Filled with both regret and frustration, Jacaerys resolved to begin accumulating trait points, patiently waiting for his stats panel to show any new changes.
Of course, the past six months haven't been without their triumphs.
After repeated checks and confirmations by the dragonkeepers in the Dragon's Lair, Vermex had grown large enough to carry a rider and take flight!
On the day Jacaerys officially became a Dragonrider, even Rhaenyra, who was now eight months pregnant, came to the Dragonriding Tower to witness the moment.
Whoosh, whoosh!
Vermex, with a dragon saddle carefully fitted by the dragonkeepers, descended from the sky and landed at the dragonhead position atop the Dragonriding Tower.
Vermex's saddle was modeled after Rhaenyra's dragon Syrax's, though its color had been adjusted to match Vermex's emerald-green scales.
Excited beyond measure, Jacaerys climbed onto Vermex's wing, carefully stepping onto the soft, comfortable dragon saddle.
After adjusting his position and gripping the handles at the front with both hands, he shouted with all his might, "Fly!"
Hiss~~
Vermex first let out a loud screech, directed toward the sky, before launching into the air with a powerful push from his muscular hind legs.
Together, the dragon and rider soared from the top of the Dragonriding Tower, plummeting toward the rolling waves of the Narrow Sea below.
Whoosh, whoosh!
After falling a certain distance, Vermex spread his pair of dragon wings wide and began flapping them with force.
The green-scaled dragon skimmed just above the surface of the Narrow Sea, cutting through the water like an arrow, speeding forward.
The howling wind rushed past Jacaerys's ears, and the salty, damp sea air whipped at his face.
Having just experienced the weightlessness of a bungee jump, he was now feeling the exhilarating rush of high-speed flight.
Ahh!~~
Overcome by the combination of sensations, Jacaerys couldn't help but let out a loud, ecstatic scream, as if trying to release all the pent-up frustration and negative emotions from both his past and present lives.
Ordinary Dragonriders needed to use reins to control the dragon's direction, but with the mental connection Jacaerys shared with Vermex, he didn't need to do anything.
With a mere thought, Vermex immediately flapped his wings and soared high into the sky, shooting upwards from the sea level.
In just a few minutes, he and Jacaerys broke through the white clouds and entered the high altitudes, where they began to fly among the heavens.
At thousands of meters above the ground, Jacaerys should have been frozen to the bone by the cold, but Vermex's body radiated a warm heat that kept him comfortable and steady.
Indeed, as a legendary creature, the dragon possessed wondrous and strange traits.
Without this heat, Dragonriders would have frozen into icicles long before reaching such altitudes and speeds.
After soaring through the sunlit skies and fluffy clouds for nearly half an hour, Jacaerys finally returned to the Stone Drum Tower with a sense of profound satisfaction.
As Vermex descended, they happened to pass through a layer of rain clouds, where snowflakes were gently falling.
On a sudden impulse, Jacaerys shouted aloud, "Dracarys!"
Whoosh!
An orange-red pillar of dragonfire erupted from Vermex's mouth, lined with jagged teeth.
The rain clouds above Stone Drum Tower were instantly scorched by the intense heat of the dragonfire, turning into wisps of steam that drifted away.
Vermex continued to unleash fire, circling the sky for two or three times, until the rain clouds above Stone Drum Tower were completely burned away, leaving the sky clear.
A brilliant beam of sunlight poured through the hole in the clouds, casting a golden glow upon the Dragonriding Tower.
Everyone looked up, and there, soaring toward them, was the dragon and rider, bathed in radiant light as though they carried the brilliance of the sun itself.
At that moment, Rhaenyra, Daemon, the twin sisters, the fourteen children, and the guards each wore different expressions.
But Jacaerys was oblivious to their gazes. Lost in the feeling of immense satisfaction, he reveled in the moment.
Though it was just a small-scale change in the weather, it was something beyond human reach!
After this thrilling and exhilarating dragon-riding flight, Jacaerys finally understood his true life's goal for the first time.
That was to become the most powerful Dragonrider!
And to live freely in this world, never allowing himself to suffer even the slightest grievance!
---
More than a month passed in the blink of an eye.
At the end of 120 AC, Rhaenyra and Daemon's first son, Aegon Targaryen, was born without complications.
Though the name was intended as a tribute and remembrance to their ancestors, having two Aegons in the same era felt somewhat awkward and even embarrassing, didn't it?
In any case, Jacaerys, who had been born in Japan in his previous life, couldn't quite understand the reasoning behind this naming choice.
[P.S: It's China actually.]
Meanwhile, the fourteen children, now beginning to assume their roles as guards, were granted a long-awaited family visit holiday.
Generous as ever, Jacaerys made sure each of them received a portion of the leftover food from the celebratory feast held in honor of Aegon's birth.
However, these gestures of goodwill couldn't restore his tarnished reputation.
Over the past six months, aided by certain influential figures, stories of Jacaerys' brutal actions—his dragon devouring people, among other deeds—had spread across the Seven Kingdoms.
Rhaenyra's failure to properly raise her son had become the subject of gossip throughout the realm, and Jacaerys' reputation for cruelty and evil was now infamous. Even King Viserys had sent a raven, urging Rhaenyra to keep a tighter rein on her son.
In the face of this scandal, the young Jacaerys was forcibly confined to Dragonstone Island by his mother.
And this confinement would last for six long years.
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[Chapter End's]
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