Random Talent, God of Cuisine

With Ser Willem and that group of servants gone, the Red House courtyard suddenly felt empty.

Now, only Viserys, Rhaenys, and Daenerys remained.

As the saying went, a home needed people to gather its vitality. Maintaining a grand estate or castle required a great many hands.

Once manpower grew scarce, a house would fall into neglect.

Harrenhal was a typical example. It had five enormous towers, yet even House He'an could only fill the lower levels of two of them. Most of the place lay abandoned.

With the earlier experience fresh in mind, choosing servants was a troublesome matter for Viserys. They still needed cooks, laundresses, stewards, gatekeepers, and others to manage the estate.

And Viserys and the others were not even employing that many servants. An ordinary grand estate needed a chief steward, maids, cooks, grooms, guards, gardeners, kennel keepers, and more. It was practically a giant money pit.

Although in the long run, Viserys would have to flee. No matter how useless the three of them might be, their looks and bloodline alone made them highly appealing. After all, they were descendants of the oldest dragonlords.

But for now, they still had to maintain the Red Door Courtyard.

Leaving Daenerys and Rhaenys to do the work of laundresses and cooks would have been utterly absurd.

Yet Xisa, the city watch officer who managed security for this entire residential district around the Sealord's Palace, had unexpectedly and generously told Viserys that he could introduce them to some reliable servants. It was as though the sun had risen in the west.

Viserys did not find it especially strange. Back then, he had felt that the guard following Xisa was likely an official close to the Sealord, and not a low-ranking one at that.

Even Xisa himself was a Braavosi noble with considerable backing.

To the Sealord, these exiles had no right to negotiate. It was merely the sudden incident that had drawn the Sealord's attention to them again.

"Try the sea snails," Viserys said to Rhaenys and Daenerys in the reception room.

The plump sea snails smelled delicious, sprinkled with garlic and butter.

This plate of sea snails was expensive. If not for raising his attributes, Viserys would not have been willing to indulge like this.

Rhaenys and Daenerys obediently began eating as well, but they were little girls after all and did not have such large appetites.

Viserys ate most of them himself. The Cannibal Talent seemed to directly convert kinetic energy, and only high-quality food could be converted into strength.

Viserys's Strength attribute had now risen to 1.2, but if he kept eating like this, they would sooner or later spend themselves into ruin.

"Will you listen to Xisa's suggestion, Viserys?" Rhaenys asked hesitantly. "Hire another batch of servants, the ones he recommends for us?"

"You have some concerns." Viserys looked at Rhaenys. A beautiful girl with olive skin, black hair, black eyes, and soft flowing hair, she truly looked more like a Dornishwoman, with Rhoynar and Salt People features.

The main issue was that House Targaryen did not have any unbreakable caste-like advantage. Baelor Breakspear, the firstborn, had looked Dornish as well.

"I'm worried they'll be Braavosi spies. They might not embezzle our money like those people before, but they'll watch our movements..."

"We have no choice." Viserys wiped the corner of his mouth. They were already in Braavos, right in the tiger's jaws.

Since that was the case, the risks brought by leveraging its power were acceptable. The few of them had nothing worth taking anyway. What difference was there between watching them and watching lab rats?

If they wanted to speak directly with the Sealord, they would certainly need the corresponding capital.

"How much money do we have left?" Viserys asked Rhaenys.

Rhaenys was now looking after Ser Willem's little treasury, while Viserys held Queen Mother Rhaella's crown and other jewelry. Those jewels could also be exchanged for quite a bit of money.

After they had been driven out of the Red Door Courtyard, Viserys and Daenerys had originally lived off those jewels. It did not last long before they became wandering beggars.

Those jewels were a king's dignity. Viserys did not want to sell them as he had before and truly become the Beggar King.

"After paying for those servants, we can still support ourselves for a few more years, provided we don't have any major expenses," Rhaenys said.

With the cost of renting the estate, paying the servants, and the medicine expenses for Ser Willem earlier, their money had actually been disappearing quite quickly.

And now that Viserys was showing signs of turning into a bottomless pit, this little cash would probably become increasingly insufficient.

He had lacked money before transmigrating, and he still lacked money after transmigrating. Had he transmigrated for nothing?

I still need to make money, Viserys thought. Living off their savings until they ran dry was already close at hand.

Money was both lubricant and a calling card, especially in a place like the Free Trade Cities, where people only cared about money.

Daenerys and Rhaenys could not be counted as labor, while Viserys's current means of making a living were painfully limited.

No matter how he looked at it, Viserys's appearance was truly the only thing that set him apart, the one thing with the most value.

Even though the Free Trade Cities had once been little more than dragonlord colonies to be trampled upon, they still greatly revered the bloodline of the ancient dragonlords.

But if he truly had to fall so low as to completely sell his looks, that would be a hell of a joke.

Just as he was worrying over it, Viserys suddenly noticed another change in his attribute panel. Something new had appeared on the Talent panel.

[The Poison Mushroom Incident has occurred. The axis of fate has changed. Random Talent skill reward granted.]

Viserys looked carefully with eager anticipation. It was a brand-new card, which spun several times on the Talent panel.

The card depicted a fat, tall, middle-aged cook, holding a spatula in one hand and a wok in the other. Yet the confident air of high spirits around him made it impossible not to call him a god of the culinary world.

[Talent: God of Cuisine. From the Land of Extreme Winter in the north to Sothoryos in the south, from the lighthouse of Lonely Light in the west to the resplendent Yi Ti in the east. I have witnessed countless wonders and cooked countless ingredients, all to bring food to the height of its beauty.]

Viserys looked at the card. This was a purely life-oriented skill, unlike the Cannibal, which had some fantastical flavor to it. Still, it was something he had obtained for free, an entirely unexpected delight.

Before Viserys's eyes, it was as though he had lived through the cook's entire life. This was the god of cuisine in the world of ice and fire.

He was skilled in every culinary art, from steaming and boiling to chopping and cutting. He had prepared every kind of ingredient, including shark, mushrooms, lamprey, mammoth meat, and venison. His footsteps had crossed mountains and seas, and he was certain he could bring cuisine to its utmost perfection.

That was not the only good news. Viserys discovered that his Strength attribute was rising as well.

"Buy one, get one free?"

After his initial delight, Viserys understood the logic behind it. Both cooks and blacksmiths did heavy labor, wielding weighty objects like iron woks and hammers.

Without a strong body, one simply could not become a good cook.

"I'll make another serving for you two." Viserys rose and spoke to Daenerys and Rhaenys. He wanted to test the true value of this Talent.

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