Sellsword Knight

"Ding!" A notification exploded in Ian's mind, jolting him awake from his sleep.

He raised his head and looked around in alarm.

It was a somewhat rundown inn room. The rickety bed, the wooden table darkened by grime, and the curtains that had clearly not been washed in ages all gave the place a cheap, shabby air.

A fine drizzle drifted outside the window. Rather than bringing much coolness, it made the weather feel even more muggy.

Ian felt sticky and thoroughly uncomfortable. He gently lifted the blanket and discovered that his entire body was already drenched in sweat.

For some reason, Ian suddenly had a brain glitch and viciously bit down on his forearm. Only when the sharp pain clearly reached his mind did he finally let go, looking bitterly at the teeth marks on his arm.

This felt fucking real.

Although the organizers were renowned throughout the industry, and he had never doubted their capabilities—

when he truly appeared in another world in another body, it still felt far too dreamlike.

After sitting there for several minutes, Ian finally forced himself to calm down.

Then he suddenly realized that there really were extra memories in his mind. Although those memories contained no specific people or places, they held a complete story matching the setting.

The clearest parts were bits of knowledge—such as the heraldry of minor nobles in the Vale that Ian had not memorized in his previous life. For the time being, he would call the time before entering the game his previous life, since everything in this book took place in the world of Ice and Fire. There was also the entire procedure followed by an Andal Knight keeping vigil in a sept, along with certain methods of riding and swordsmanship.

Just as the auxiliary AI had said, possessing these memories would be a great help in passing himself off as a real Sellsword Knight.

Sellsword Knights were also known as Hedge Knights. Their only possessions were their equipment and warhorses, and they earned their name because they often had no choice but to sleep beneath hedgerows in the wilderness.

Of course, a Sellsword Knight at the start of the game was not quite that destitute. Otherwise, Ian would not have chosen one.

Taking a deep breath, Ian climbed out of bed and walked to the window.

The sky outside was gloomy. Through the dusty glass, Ian's beautiful blond hair was reflected back at him. He hurriedly pushed open the window, and an incomparably magnificent tower immediately came into view. Its towering black body stood out like a crane among chickens even amid the imposing castle complex around it.

But the tower's summit, which pointed straight toward the heavens, had melted and warped, leaning to one side like an enormous half-melted black candle.

"That's... melted stone? Dragonflame's work? This is Harrenhal?" The sight before him overlapped with the images in Ian's memories. He licked his cracked lips, his mouth suddenly dry.

Ian turned and walked to the table, picked up the jug, and poured its contents into his mouth. At once, a faint spicy kick and the fragrance of malt spread across his tongue.

Fuck! This was way too unlucky!

It was true that he had chosen to start in The Riverlands, but The Riverlands were so vast. Why did he have to appear in Harrenhal?

Harrenhal was "the largest fortress in Westeros," built on the shores of Gods Eye Lake by Harren the Black, the last king of The Iron Islands and The Riverlands. He had spent forty years and exhausted all the wealth and manpower of The Riverlands to construct it.

Its walls were thicker than those of Storm's End, and its gates alone were as large as Highgarden's main keep. Harren the Black had claimed it was an "impregnable fortress."

Yet, much like some supposedly unbreakable alliance that collapsed on its own, Harrenhal's impregnable walls and towers had not fallen to the siege of ground forces. Instead, they met the Dragonflame that descended from the sky with Balerion the Black Dread, ridden by Aegon the Conqueror.

Harren the Black was ultimately burned alive with all his children in the highest tower. The half-melted black candle in Ian's view was thus named Frying King Tower.

Ever since then, Harrenhal had remained shrouded in the shadow of a curse. Not only had every family granted Harrenhal died without heirs, but nearly everyone who had occupied the castle in any form had met a miserable end.

"What rotten luck." Ian wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and asked inwardly, "By the way, when exactly are we starting?"

"Jon Arryn, Hand of the King, has just passed away. King Robert Baratheon is preparing his funeral and plans to travel to Winterfell afterward, where he will invite Eddard Stark to head south and serve as Hand of the King," Annie replied.

Ian nodded in understanding.

At the beginning of the original Ice and Fire story, King Robert was already close to Winterfell. Now, however, Robert was still in King's Landing and had not yet departed.

The overland distance from King's Landing to Winterfell was roughly 2,300 kilometers. Note 1. Considering that Robert's royal procession would travel along the Kingsroad, it should take around two months to reach Winterfell.

In other words, the current time was probably about three months before the beginning of the original story, near the end of 297 in Aegon's calendar.

There was still more than a full year before the War of the Five Kings broke out.

In other words, Westeros still had over a year of peace.

This made Ian feel puzzled once more. When registration first opened, the organizers had promised that every aspect of the game would be prepared before the players transmigrated. Once the competition officially began, the organizers would no longer intervene in any form—not even to fix discovered bugs.

So what kind of mechanism had the designers prepared in advance that could make players abandon peaceful development during peacetime and choose to fight other players?

After all, there was virtually no room for error in the early stages of such a competition. If you got hacked to death, you lost everything. Players should not choose to clash head-on so early.

"All right, AI, tell me the detailed rules of this game now." Still puzzled, Ian questioned his auxiliary AI.

"This game has three main mechanics," Annie began directly.

"The first is the kill mechanic: for every player killed, you receive 4 points and inherit all unused system resources of the slain player, including points, Attribute Points, Skill Points, and system items. You will also receive certain additional rewards based on the slain player's level of development.

"If a player personally kills the target, they receive the full reward. If the target is killed by the player's subordinates or by other 'hired agents' assigned by the player, the player receives only fifty percent of the kill reward."

P.S.: Based on the original setting that "The Wall is 100 leagues, or 480 kilometers," and the official map, some experts estimated by counting map grids that the mapped portion of Westeros covers roughly more than nine million square kilometers.

Here are two figures to give everyone a simple sense of the size of the world of Ice and Fire. The overland distance from Winterfell to King's Landing is about 2,300 kilometers, roughly comparable to the distance from Beijing to Shenzhen. The overland distance from Winterfell to Castle Black is about 1,100 kilometers, roughly comparable to the distance from Beijing to Xi'an.