TitoVillar
patreon
GOT Chapter 17: Dragon Egg!
🕑 Added 2025-07-11 04:21:51 +0000 UTCIn the forest at night, the chorus of insects filled the air. Once Kal confirmed there was no one around, his gaze sharpened—and in the blink of an eye, his figure vanished into the darkness.
As if what had just appeared was nothing more than a fleeting illusion.
Kal once again entered the game world.
With a flicker of vision, the world shifted—what had been a pitch-black environment abruptly turned into brightness.
Reflexively, he squinted in discomfort.
Then, almost by instinct, he glanced at the time dial in the top-right corner of his view. What had previously shown 'midnight' had instantly switched to 'daytime' due to the world transition.
But Kal wasn’t fazed—he was long accustomed to the abrupt changes that came with world-hopping.
As for his current location, it was the house that now belonged to him in Monsterwood Village.
The last time he’d logged out, he had saved right here, so the world had paused at that exact moment.
And now, with his return and the file loaded, it resumed its flow once more.
Gazing at the familiar home before him, Kal didn’t bother exploring or lingering. He walked straight to the bed and collapsed onto it.
In an instant, his vision went black—then opened again.
Just like that, eight uneventful hours passed.
The fatigue he’d built up over the day marching with Robert was now completely gone.
He glanced at his fully restored status, the result of a proper rest, and let out a satisfied smile before getting up and heading downstairs.
Though Kal’s house was one of the largest in the village, the structure itself was incredibly simple.
Upstairs held the bedroom and study; downstairs contained the living room and kitchen. Just four distinct sections, yet the whole thing still sprawled over at least 400 or 500 square meters.
Once he reached the first floor, Kal went directly to the dining table in the living room.
He casually chose a seat, pulled out the chair, and sat down.
The next second, with a light wave of his hand across the tabletop, a steaming vegetable stew made of carrots and potatoes appeared before him.
Alongside it materialized a grilled beef steak, a slice of honey-glazed toast, and a bottle of elven wine.
All of it had been pulled from Kal’s inventory—still piping hot, as if fresh from the kitchen—forming his version of a 'breakfast'.
Even though it was already evening in the game world.
With practiced ease, he polished off the meal—flavorful, yes, but after so many repetitions, utterly devoid of excitement.
Wiping his mouth, Kal stood up. He didn’t care that the utensils vanished the moment he left the table.
Without pause, he stepped outside.
Once outdoors, Kal gave a quick glance at the surrounding houses and the empty streets.
Then, without hesitation, he turned right and briskly headed west along the street.
After leaving Monsterwood Village and heading west, Kal arrived at the western road. There was an ogre’s cave nearby—but only a single ogre lived inside.
Kal didn’t stop.
He continued west.
Walking along the road and through the forest, Kal eventually reached a crossroads.
There, a runestone used for teleportation stood at the center. Beside the road was a graveyard, where soldiers dispatched by Kal patrolled the area.
But still, Kal had no intention of stopping. He kept walking—ever westward.
After passing through the crossroads, he entered another forest.
In the distance, Kal spotted an inn. Bored after walking for most of the day, his expression finally showed a hint of joy.
He was close to his destination.
Without delay, Kal turned off the road and headed south, spending more time pushing through the woods until he arrived at the entrance of a cave.
Looking up at the enormous cave before him, a smile appeared on Kal’s face.
Because this place—this was the dragon’s lair in the game world.
And naturally, the dragon’s lair housed a dragon.
Yes—one that could transform into a human form. A dragon girl.
Shaking his head slightly, Kal inhaled deeply, catching a strange, indescribable scent lingering in the air.
Without hesitation, he stepped into the dragon’s lair.
The cavern ran deep, and the farther he walked from the entrance, the darker it became.
But thanks to his night vision, Kal needed no torch or source of light.
As he moved deeper into the lair, his surroundings revealed nothing but jagged black stone walls—and a floor littered with the remains of both humans and animals.
Kal didn’t bat an eye. He was used to such sights, and his expression stayed calm as he pressed forward.
Eventually, he caught a glimpse of dazzling gold.
And soon, the narrow tunnel opened up into a vast, expansive cavern.
Before his eyes: heaps of treasure—gold, jewels, and all manner of riches stacked high.
And sprawled atop the mountain of gold that covered the entire floor of the cave…
Was a massive dragon, the size of a small hill.
“Artessa!”
In the face of the dazzling gold and jewels glittering throughout the cave, Kal’s eyes, however, were fixed on the massive dragon resting atop the hoard.
The dragon he called Artessa, even while curled up and lying asleep atop the gold pile, was already as large as a truck from his previous life.
She had her head tucked beneath her wing, heavy breaths echoing through the cavern, and a faint scent of blood lingered in the air.
At Kal’s shout, the dragon—previously sound asleep—suddenly stirred. Slowly, she raised her head, her crimson eyes locking onto Kal.
"Kal?!"
Upon seeing who had called her, Artessa let out a thunderous roar of excitement. The deafening bellow made Kal’s ears ring.
In an instant, the entire cave echoed with Kal’s name.
"Alright, alright, I get it—keep it down!"
Completely unprepared for her roar, Kal instinctively raised a hand to push downward, motioning for her to lower her volume as his hair was blown back from the force.
He then rubbed his ears, finally feeling a bit better.
Unlike the dragons of the Game of Thrones world, this one belonged to the game world—an honest-to-goodness western fantasy dragon: four-legged, horned, winged.
Not one of those bipedal wyverns from Game of Thrones that looked more like crawling lizards.
She could speak, cast magic, and even transform into a humanoid form—something resembling an elf, or maybe a succubus
Though, being a dragon, her humanoid form wasn’t quite as slim and petite as an elf or succubus—but that didn’t matter at all.
Most importantly, the real-world manifestation of this dragon girl didn’t look nearly as ugly as she did in the game’s cutscenes.
Otherwise, Kal honestly doubted whether he’d have had the guts to take on this quest in the first place.
After hearing Kal's request, Artessa didn’t roar again in excitement. Instead, she slowly got up from her golden mountain and crawled over to him.
Then she leaned her enormous dragon head in close, blocking Kal’s path. "Kal, why did you come looking for me? Do you want to do that…?"
"Ahem…!" Kal coughed sharply, cutting her off in a panic. "Well, actually, I came to see you for something else..."
After speaking, he awkwardly rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Something else?" Artessa looked a bit confused. "You don’t mean that worthless rock of yours, do you?"
As she spoke, Artessa tilted her head toward the spot where she'd been lying moments ago. There, nestled on a cushion made of red velvet and cotton, sat a golden, egg-shaped object roughly the size of a football.
"Artessa, that’s not a rock—that’s a dragon egg!"
Kal couldn’t help but feel exasperated at her constant insistence on calling the dragon egg he’d brought a mere rock.
Even as he spoke, his eyes instinctively followed hers toward the object.
That item was the very treasure he had spent five whole years searching for after leaving the Vale and crossing to Essos.
He hadn’t wandered through the Free Cities of Essos just to play mercenary or enjoy life, nor out of some curiosity about the world.
After all, this was still a medieval western world—no matter how splendid some parts looked, the daily discomforts and inconveniences far outweighed the appeal for Kal.
So from the moment he chose to leave the Vale and sail across the Narrow Sea, his true goal had always been to find this.
Fortunately, his perseverance had paid off. After five years of quietly gathering information, he finally managed to buy it from an adventurer—paying with enough gold to purchase an entire ship.
Kal wasn’t particularly worried about being tricked—about whether the adventurer had simply carved a rock to fool him.
Because even if a dragon egg turns to stone, it still remains unmistakably unique.
Besides, Kal had his own ways of verifying its authenticity.
The dragon egg he had acquired felt heavy in his hands, like a chunk of dense metal or stone. Its surface was primarily golden, but layered with intricate patterns and markings.
These decorations made it look like gemstones were inlaid into an egg-shaped piece of gold.
Its reflective sheen resembled the gloss of fine ceramic glaze, or perhaps the brilliance of glass infused with crushed mother-of-pearl.
The surface was also covered with tiny scales, giving the egg a unique tactile sensation when touched.
However, one had to be careful when handling it—those sharp edges on the scales could easily cut skin if not treated with caution.
This made the dragon egg appear, even if it truly were just a stone, like a one-of-a-kind creation.
And after finally obtaining the thing he had longed for over five or six years, Kal decided to end his wandering journey and set off back to Westeros.
That was also why he had spent half a year in King’s Landing.
However, after acquiring the dragon egg, Kal found himself unable to activate or hatch it.
Even when he placed it into a blazing fire, it would only become scalding hot—without any other reaction.
Kal understood that what enabled dragons to hatch wasn’t anything mundane, but rather the intangible, invisible magic that truly existed in this world.
Indeed, there was magic within Kal’s body—magic not native to this world—but even when he tried to imbue the egg with his own energy, even when he soaked it in magical potions, or cast [Minor Healing] on it, there was still no response.
So after all his experiments had failed, Kal thought of the dragoness—Artessa.
He believed that this female dragon might be able to hatch the egg.
But even after half a year in the real world—and two and a half years in the game world—the dragon egg remained completely unresponsive.
And mind you, Kal had spent time every single night entering this world just to keep its timeline progressing, all for the sake of giving the dragoness enough time to incubate the egg.
But now, it all seemed to have been for nothing.
Just like a dragoness being pregnant yet still unable to give birth.
So Kal couldn’t help but suspect that it might be due to the world’s incomplete rules, or perhaps because the game version hadn’t been updated to include the next part of the dragoness’s storyline—thus leaving the egg completely inert.
And that left Kal feeling rather troubled.
