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Chapter 279: Parasitic Creatures
🕑 Added 2025-04-20 10:59:40 +0000 UTCThe overwhelming feeling that the Valyrian ruins gave off was one of dead silence. Lynd couldn’t sense the presence of any living creature nearby. The sound he had just heard clearly wasn’t caused by molten debris falling from the sky—it was more like something crawling across the ground, stone scraping against stone.
Not taking any chances, Lynd drew the greatsword of the Banished Knight from his waist and switched his normal vision to a special one that allowed him to perceive magic.
The pitch-black surroundings instantly transformed into a world made up of countless rippling and granular waves of magic. Everything around him emitted distinct magical fluctuations, forming shapes like unrendered three-dimensional objects. With this altered vision, Lynd could see the world in an entirely different way.
And with it, he spotted something unexpected.
Just next to a nearby Dragonbone, a soft-bodied creature—shaped somewhat like a sea cucumber—was writhing on the ground. Although it appeared to be a single organism, Lynd could tell from the magical aura that it was actually a cluster of dozens of smaller entities fused together. Each one had a core resembling a source of magic, glowing like molten lava.
These creatures seemed to possess high predatory intelligence. The moment Lynd noticed them and turned his gaze their way, they all froze in place. Their magical aura retracted, as though they had entered a dormant or camouflaged state.
Had he not seen the entire sequence unfold with his own eyes, he might have dismissed them as mere stones.
The sight reminded Lynd of the records surrounding the death of Aerea Targaryen—accounts of creatures of fire and heat squirming beneath her skin, her flesh blackening and cracking like roasted pork, smoke billowing from her mouth and nose, and her eyes boiling in their sockets until they burst.
“Moroya and the others would probably love these little things.” The thought of the Black Cave came to mind. Whether or not these were the same creatures that killed Aerea Targaryen, they were clearly magical in nature. They would make excellent research specimens for the mages of the Black Cave. If conditions allowed, setting up a research base here might even be worthwhile.
Just as Lynd’s thoughts began to wander, the magical creatures seemed to sense that his attention had shifted. In an instant, they began rapidly crawling across the ground.
Despite their slug- or snail-like appearance, their movement was alarmingly fast. In the blink of an eye, they had reached his feet and launched themselves upward, aiming straight for his face.
“Facehuggers?” Seeing the way they attacked, Lynd instantly thought of a deadly parasitic alien species. At the same time, the telekinesis he had trained for years was unleashed in a flash, suspending the creatures mid-air, rendering them completely immobile.
Right then, Lynd felt a mental force trying to invade his mind—issuing commands to release the captured organisms.
“Psychic control and some level of intelligence? Now that’s interesting.” He immediately traced the source of the mental intrusion back to the creatures he had immobilized. Had it been anyone else, they likely would have been taken over—or, at the very least, heavily influenced.
He recalled that the first thing Aerea Targaryen reportedly said upon returning to King’s Landing from Valyria was, “I will not…” Clearly, something had tried to control her mind, but her will had resisted it until her death.
Moreover, the creature that parasitized her hadn’t died with her. It had tried to survive until it touched the ice water meant to cool her body, and was finally frozen to death.
King Jaehaerys, who witnessed the event, had been so terrified that he enacted a strict decree: no ship suspected of sailing to Valyria or through the Smoking Sea was to dock at any port in the realm. Any Westerosi who had visited Valyria was to be executed.
With that in mind, Lynd used telekinesis to isolate one of the parasites. Then, he activated the ice rune of the Frost Dragon, releasing a wave of freezing power that instantly froze the creature solid.
Through his magical vision, Lynd saw the parasite's lava-like core crystallize the moment it was exposed to the intense cold. Its magical energy vanished, and its body turned to stone—solid, inert.
He placed the now-fossilized creature on the ground and sliced it open with his Valyrian steel sword to examine the interior and confirm it wasn’t just playing dead.
He quickly dissected it, extracted its fingernail-sized core, and held it up for inspection.
He couldn’t yet determine what the core could be used for, but one thing was certain—it still held strong magical energy. And unlike the chaotic magic saturating the ruins, this core’s magic was stable. It immediately brought to mind the wedge stones mentioned in the Nameless King’s memories—materials used to forge magical weapons and armor, or to craft certain magical potions with unique effects.
That realization changed the way Lynd looked at the creatures. If their cores really could be used for crafting magical gear or potions, their value would be immense.
Just then, more sounds came from the pile of dragon bones. Lynd turned and saw more of the same parasitic creatures emerging. They had clearly established a colony here and had been breeding for some time. Now, upon discovering a new potential host, they eagerly swarmed toward him.
Unlike before, they showed no hesitation. Perhaps emboldened by their numbers, they rushed him like a wave.
Lynd retreated to a more open area—not out of fear, but to make collecting the spoils easier afterward.
As the swarm surged forward and leapt up in unison, forming a monstrous wave, the Banished Knight armor on Lynd erupted with an intense blast of frost. A chilling storm spread outward in all directions, instantly freezing every parasite in the clearing into ice sculptures. The whole area became a frozen wasteland.
These parasites had virtually no resistance to cold. Those directly hit by the freezing power were killed on the spot, and even those slightly outside the blast radius were frozen by the residual cold. The ones Lynd had suspended earlier with telekinesis were also dead.
He wasn’t concerned. Judging by the situation, there were plenty of these parasites in the ruins, and he could easily capture more alive elsewhere. If their cores were truly viable crafting materials, this place would become an inexhaustible resource hub—ripe for regular harvesting. Even ordinary people could do the job, as long as they carried items imbued with the Frost Dragon rune.
As he pondered how best to manage the area, Lynd used telekinesis to swiftly crack open the petrified bodies and extract their cores. In no time, over three hundred had piled up before him.
He set them aside for now, planning to retrieve them later after finishing his exploration of Valyria.
However, he didn’t continue searching the dragon bone mound. It was clearly the primary breeding ground for these parasites. Venturing further in might yield a dragon egg—or it might just result in more attacks. And even if he did kill them all, extracting the cores would be difficult. He was already struggling to manage the three hundred he had, and gathering more would only mean having to leave some behind.
So he circled around the mound and entered the city proper. Earlier, while flying overhead, he’d spotted a building in the city center that appeared to be intact. Despite the many craters caused by fallen meteors surrounding it, not a single one had touched the structure.
Lynd moved quickly. Though the terrain was uneven and littered with ruins, nothing obstructed him.
Along the way, he came across several dragon corpses sprawled across the streets. Unlike the ones he had seen earlier, these dragons bore no wounds—but all their flesh and organs had vanished, their skins clinging tightly to their bones, giving them the appearance of undead dragons from games in his previous life.
Stranger still, their eyes were intact—but transformed into burning, lava-like masses. Even now, they continued to smolder. They looked quite similar to the parasite cores, only much larger.
Lynd carefully extracted the eyes and examined them. They emitted no magical aura and, once cut open, were simply solid rock.
He couldn’t say for sure what had happened to these dragons before they died, but he was certain they had been parasitized. Some may have even fought Balerion the Black Dread, as records described numerous lacerations on Balerion’s body—and the only beings capable of inflicting such wounds were other dragons.
Now, though, all of them were dead—parasitized or not.
This left Lynd with a lingering question: why hadn’t the parasites spread beyond Valyria? Even the Lands of the Long Summer, separated by just a stretch of sea, remained unaffected. If these parasites had reached other regions, it would’ve spelled disaster for the entire human world.
“Maybe they need the chaotic magic generated by the black stone to survive,” Lynd speculated.
It took him about half an hour to travel from the city’s edge to its center. After passing two large craters, he finally stood before the intact structure.
It resembled a temple. Its design reminded him of both the Red Temple in Volantis and the mountaintop temples of Norvos—clearly products of the same architectural tradition.
In the square before the temple lay countless human remains. Volcanic ash had buried and solidified them, preserving even the expressions on their faces. Fear, panic, confusion, despair—hundreds of years had passed, and yet their final emotions were still frozen in the cement formed by the ash.
Lynd stepped toward the temple’s entrance. Before long, something else caught his eye: hundreds more corpses, different from the Valyrian ones outside. These were all mummified, as though every drop of fluid in their bodies had evaporated. Their clothes didn’t match Valyrian styles either—some looked like the garments of slaves, others like the attire of Westerosi knights and nobles.
He approached one of the mummified nobles and brushed the dust from his clothing, revealing a family crest.
“Lannister?” Lynd paused, then looked around at the other corpses.
“Could this be Gerion Lannister?” he muttered.
Back when Gerion Lannister sailed the Laughing Lion into the Valyrian ruins, it had caused a major stir. Lord Tywin had even sent search parties all the way to Volantis, but they never caught up. Gerion had entered the Smoking Sea and never returned. The Lannisters had long since presumed him dead.
Lynd had met Gerion once at a banquet in Lannisport. Though the corpse before him was unrecognizable, some facial features remained that allowed Lynd to confirm the identity.
“Yeah... it’s definitely Gerion Lannister.” He nodded, then looked at the other bodies nearby.
From their positions and postures, it seemed they’d either been chasing something—or fleeing from it—before taking refuge in the temple. But whatever was inside must have been even more terrifying. Something had caused the fluids in their bodies to evaporate all at once.
The thought made Lynd wary, and he carefully examined his surroundings.
The temple was vast but empty. Only a single altar stood at its center—simple, unadorned, with no carvings or symbols of any known deity.
Lynd stepped up to the altar and saw a mummy lying upon it. Beside the corpse, on the ground, was a twisted, deformed horn.
