Chapter - 64
My first order of business was to stop everyone inside from attacking the fleshy walls, as the wildlings had apparently decided that being inside a giant worm, no matter how comfortable, warranted an immediate violent response.
"Would you stop trying to hack your way out?" I sighed, positioning myself between them and the pulsing biomechanical tissue. "First of all, it wouldn't work. Second, Paul's rather sensitive about people stabbing his insides."
"You named this beast Paul?" Ygritte asked incredulously, her hand still hovering near her knife as she eyed the gently moving walls with suspicion.
"Look, I'll be the first to admit I'm terrible at names," I said, running a hand through my hair. "But yes, Paul. You know, like Paul Atreides? The guy who..." I trailed off, remembering my audience.
"Never mind. Just... no stabbing, alright?"
After spending what felt like an eternity reassuring everyone that no, Paul wasn't going to suddenly decide to digest them, and yes, the moving walls were perfectly normal, I managed to get the group settled in the main chamber.
I'd designed it to be surprisingly cozy, all things considered - smooth surfaces, comfortable seating, and central heating.
"Right then," I announced to the still-wary faces. "Make yourselves comfortable, It shouldn't take that long before we reach your camp. I need to check something in storage."
What that said I made my way through Paul's internal corridors, I could hear Tormund's voice echo behind me:
"Never thought I'd be sitting in the belly of a worm drinking mead. The songs they'll sing about this!"
I smiled to myself. At least someone was starting to embrace the absurdity of it all.
The smile quickly fell off my face as my mind drifted back to that encounter, analyzing it with the same clinical detachment I used for my experiments.
But this time, a tremor of something else - something primal - kept creeping in.
The Night King hadn't just been powerful. He had been wrong - fundamentally, impossibly wrong in a way that triggered every survival instinct I'd carefully cultivated over my time in this world.
The worst part? I hadn't even been close enough to feel his presence directly. My enhanced senses had picked up nothing until that cursed spear had nearly ended my existence.
That spear... I kept replaying the moment in my mind frame by frame. My enhanced mind and eyes could process information at speeds that would make hummingbirds look sluggish - catching subtle shifts in air pressure.
But that weapon? It had simply been there. No travel time. No arc of motion. Just point A to point B, physics be damned.
An image of a blood-red spear surfaced in my mind, memories from my past life.
Back then, watching anime, the concept had seemed awesome - a spear that reversed cause and effect, striking the heart before it was even thrown. Now?
The thought made a shiver go down my spine.
…No, I was overthinking. If the Night King had a spear that never missed, then I would be dead now.
I absently traced my fingers over my heart to just check if it was still beating.
For the first time since arriving in this world, I felt that deep, instinctive fear of death - not the intellectual awareness of danger, but the gut-wrenching terror of staring into the abyss and not knowing if you could return.
The fear of dying.
I had not felt that way in a long, long time.
And that gave way to rage.
Rage like I hadn't believed I was capable of.
I was angry—
At myself,
At this messed-up world.
A world that I now knew was far more dangerous than I had expected.
I raged at my shattered pride.
Pride in my power and my place in this world had just been challenged.
I raged at the indignity of being forced to run with my tail between my legs.
Sure, I had told Vaylara I would run if the Night King showed up.
But that was mostly said under the assumption that others around me would be in trouble and I wouldn't be able to protect them.
My own safety had never really been in question.
I had kept Paul on standby in case I needed to make a quick escape. I hadn't expected to need him so soon.
No.
I was definitely going to come back here and raze this entire fucking continent to cinders.
But it seemed my ego wouldn't let me just run away.
Not when I had almost been killed by something I had thought beneath me.
I wasn't going back there right now, of course.
Wounded pride or not, I wasn't stupid.
I was running on fumes.
I had regenerated my shoulder and arm, but my mind was still screaming at me to get some sleep.
The only reason my brain hadn't melted out of my ears was that I could regenerate my neurons.
But I would not leave without a parting gift for the Night King.
Whatever I was going to do needed to be done fast, as Paul was currently doing the best imitation of a submarine while booking it towards the Wall.
I finally reached the hidden part of the storage area.
You see, there was a reason I had gotten cocky.
A few months back I came to the realization that while I could end all life on the planet in my sleep by just releasing a plague, I didn't have any sort of wide-scale - how would I say this eloquently - "fuck you" spells.
While I had gotten quite good at runes and Vaylara's particular brand of magic, the really dangerous spells were more like rituals. They took too long to prepare.
To make significant progress in this area, one needs decades of experience to improve their efficiency to a reasonable extent.
Unfortunately, I didn't have that experience, and I didn't think I would out magic the Night King anytime soon, not after what I had just seen.
However, magic wasn't the reason I was not to be trifled with in the first place.
Once I started studying my brain better, I came to the realization of just how amazing neurons are.
They were essentially really good logic gates.
Neurons are incredibly versatile, and with enough time, I believe I could create a computer using them. Although it would likely take me a couple of years of dedicated work, and even then, the computer would only be capable of very basic tasks.
The idea first struck me when Paul returned from his underground exploration bearing trace amounts of radiation damage.
I immediately backtracked through the cave system and discovered a significant deposit of uranium. After collecting enough samples for experimentation, I'd sealed off the entire section—no need for unnecessary complications.
The real challenge had been constructing biological refineries capable of converting raw uranium into a usable form, but that puzzle had only taken a week to crack. I'd unlocked the final two components of what every kid inevitably obsesses over at some point in their childhood.
Seriously, considering the number of YouTube videos I had watched about how a nuke works and how to build one, I was definitely on some watchlist.
The human body, as it turns out, is capable of synthesizing an impressive array of compounds. And with my particular brand of tinkering, that could theoretically be pushed to create... well, almost anything.
And I was now holding the culmination of months of hard work in my hand.
It looked like an arrow but that was only in shape, it was thicker than my arm and as long as the spear that had almost ended my life earlier.
The outer part was entirely made of lead, but inside…
It contained everything I needed to show the Night King a little taste of the 21st century.
I didn't carry it with me everywhere, of course. I had created that little device about half a year ago and had been too scared to test it. Since then, it had just been locked away in my lab. Even then, it was in two pieces that I stored separately, just in case.
Honestly, I wasn't even sure it would work.
I had picked it up on a whim and stored it inside Paul, along with some other things I thought I might need.
"What is that?" Ygritte asked, apparently not content to wait with the others.
"My parting gift to the Night King."
"Well, if you're going to ask me to fire that at the others, I'm going to have to disappoint you because I don't think I'll be able to shoot it very far."
I snorted. "You don't have to worry about that. I'm terrified enough of what I hold in my hands that I wouldn't trust anyone else to launch it far enough away from me."
The hand that she was about to touch the lead with stopped just before making contact, and she took a cautious step back.
"You think that is going to kill the Night King?" The question hung in the air, heavy with implications.
A bitter laugh escaped my lips as I studied the warhead in my hands.
"Well, if you had asked me that a few hours ago, I would have definitely said yes." My fingers traced the lead casing, feeling the dormant power lurking beneath.
"Now..." The words tasted like ash in my mouth. "I'm not really sure."
Then a cold smile crept across my face,
"But what I do know is that I'm about to completely vaporize his entire fucking army."
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Ygritte watched the mage with careful eyes, noting how his movements seemed to flow between calculated precision and barely contained chaos.
There was something unsettling about the way he carried himself now - like a storm barely contained in human form.
The healing he'd performed earlier had been miraculous enough, but that was nothing compared to what she'd witnessed when death had nearly claimed him.
The power that had erupted back then made her feel like crawling into a deep, dark cave and never coming out—a primal force that seemed older than winter itself.
No one had brought it up yet, and the mage himself was acting oblivious to it, not that they were expecting any answers from him.
Even now, standing in the belly of a creature that should have terrified them—a massive serpent he had casually named Paul, of all things—she found herself more wary of its master than the beast itself.
The way he manipulated flesh and spoke to his creations like old friends, it painted a picture of someone who'd long since left normal human limitations behind.
She followed him back into the chamber where the others waited, carrying the black spear. The grin on his face was infectious and terrifying all at once.
"You guys want to watch the greatest fireworks show of your lives?" he asked, eyes gleaming with that particular brand of madness that seemed to fuel his works.
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Once I felt we had gone far enough, I instructed Paul to rest for a bit and surface for a moment.
The rest of the wildings followed me as I walked toward Paul's maw. All his teeth were retracted, giving me a clear view of the night sky. I made Paul face the right direction.
Considering what I was about to do next, I let out a small giggle.
I created a completely impractical bow for anyone of my stature due to the sheer size of it to accommodate the warhead
It was made out of bone and tendons It could not be drawn by mortal means
I had a very difficult time, but I managed to attach it firmly to Paul's mouth, making it look like a makeshift crossbow.
I had to use its muscles to pull the bowstring to its absolute limit.
I made sure that everything was in place and was working at interred before placing the warhead in the position touching the bowstring
I looked at the blizzard, far away.
I could still see it, even though it was a lot smaller.
I doubted what I saw was real, but I could feel two glowing orbs of blue watching me, even from this distance.
Mocking me.
The rage that had been building up inside me reached its peak before I let out a breath and calmed myself.
I had almost died.
And now I was stronger for it.
I would not make the mistake of underestimating my opponent again.
With barely a thought, I released the firing mechanism.
The warhead - carrying a payload of 20 kilotonnes if my math was correct - disappeared into the night sky.
There was only the sound of the wind for a few moments.
"Not to be skeptical," Benjen called out, "but I think you forgot to aim it?"
I laughed, genuinely amused by his concern. "The beauty of this particular arrow is that I just need to point it in the general direction"
"Are you sure-"
His words cut off as night transformed into day with violent suddenness, the horizon erupting in a flash that turned arctic darkness into blinding radiance.
My eyes screamed in protest, Still, I forced myself to watch.
This wasn't just destruction - this was art, a testament to human spite.
The mushroom cloud rose with terrible majesty, a pillar of flame and fury that clawed its way into the heavens.
The gloomy storm clouds that had sheltered the Night King's domain parted before atomic fury, split apart by raw energy.
Nature itself seemed to bow before this display of devastation.
Then the shockwave arrived.
I watched with clinical fascination as the wall of pressurized air raced across the landscape at supersonic speeds, transforming everything to dust.
The wave rippled through reality itself, shattering everything in its path with indiscriminate fury.
Behind me, I heard the others struggle to maintain their footing as Paul's massive form shuddered under the impact. But I stood unwavering, refusing to even blink as my creation rewrote the geography of the Land of Always Winter.
As the artificial sun began to dim, leaving behind a glowing crater in its place, I allowed myself a moment of pure satisfaction.
The ionized particles still dancing through the air painted everything in eerie shades of crimson.
The Night King had shown me power beyond my comprehension, had nearly ended me with casual disregard.
I'd responded by igniting a small star in his backyard.
Next time, I'd be back with more.
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A/N: If you wish to read ahead you can find 8 more chapters on my Pa treon