Chapter 18

The realm was fucked. Totally Bankrupted.

There was no other way of putting it.

Like, how else could a realm be under 1 million golden dragon debt to the Iron Bank and half a million golden dragon debt to the Lannister house.

And that is during peace time.

How the fuck did the King put the realm under 1.5 millions debt during peace time.

If there was ever any question about the incompetency of Robert Baratheon as a king, then these statistics were a proof that he was clearly not worthy of being a king.

Especially because the Mad King Aerys might have been mad but he had left the coffers filled with gold before he died.

Finding all these documents were not hard as I just had to give a visit to the Master of Coin at night and do a deep legilimency search.

When I saw the figures, I just sat there and wondered what the fuck the king and his hand were doing. And if they wanted to bankrupt the whole realm by the end of their lives.

If that was their plan, then they were definitely succeeding spectacularly.

A deeper legilimency search showed him that no, Robert and his hand didn't really want to bankrupt the realm. In truth, Robert had just lost all reason to live and wanted to drink and whore his way to an early grave. As for his hand Jon Arryn, he was too busy trying to run the 7 kingdoms in his foster son's stead that he didn't have the time to check the finances properly. Which was why upon his wife insistence, he chose Petyr Baelish to become the Master of Coin and left everything regarding the realm's finances to him.

And that's where the genius of Petyr Baelish shown through as he used various backdoor means to steal from the crown a bit at a time without anyone knowing. He also created his own business empire in Kings Landing as well as took control over all the gold cloaks in the the city. Not to mention the fact that half of the mercenaries living in the city were in his pocket.

To be frank, I was rather impressed by pure genius of Petyr Baelish. And what made his story even more fascinating was the fact that he was doing this because he couldn't get the love of his life.

Petyr was a someone whom everyone underestimated. And he took advantage of this and fucked everyone else.

In essence, Petyr was a total badass.

A cunning ruthless and cruel badass so manipulated the events from the shadows but a badass nonetheless.

It was just a pity that Petyr had to cross paths with me. Especially when I was needed to raise funds for my own projects.

I took all the gold dragons that Petyr had hidden in multiple locations that night. Which amounted to a total of 600,000 gold dragons. The rest of his wealth was in the form of Whorehouses, real estate or businesses so he left those alone.

I waited a few more days for the Blacksmith named Tobho Mott to finished reforging the blade after which I took out the location of Casterly Rock from Grandmaester Pycelle's mind before sending a transfigured giant eagle with a letter regarding the Valyrian Blade that I wanted to sell.

With all that done, I gave my men the order to hold a rope and with another word, the portkey activated and we landed back in Dreadfort.