Chapter 7

After few days, Artys and his group returned to Vale with the body of his father. He organized a funeral and all the nobles of Vale came to attend the funeral of the Lord of Vale and pay their respects to him. After the burial, all the nobles expressed their condolences and loyalty to the House Arryn and Artys Arryn.

Although Artys was currently only 14, he was made the Lord of Vale. His mother wanted to be rule in the place of his son and send Lord Nestor Royce back to the gate of moon but Artys did not allow this.

Because he was still suspicious of his mother and did not want to cripple the Vale under her rule. Thus although treated with respect will not be allowed to rule in his place.

Other nobles also supported him as they have seen him increasing the income of Vale in these years as well as the respect he has garnered. With this, Artys now has really become a lord of the Vale.

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After half a year, Artys was still focusing on increasing his trades and relations with the free cities and other regions of Westeros. A month ago, when the ship building potential reached the building time of only five days, Stannis Baratheon, brother of the current king Robert Baratheon and also the master of ships came to visit him.

He came here to make a deal with him to build ships for the royal fleet. And although Artys did not want to build military ships for others, he could not reject this offer as it came from the royal fleet. So the deal was made for dozens warships and trade ships.

With this large order, Artys was happy as it finally made his shipbuilding factory a renowned shipbuilding place although not as famous as Braavos but still top of their industry in Westeros. Since then, various merchants and traders have come to his place for building.

And the assassins he tied in his dungeon were killed. Even after countless torture, they still did not leak any information that could lead him to the initiator or perhaps they really did not know but this made him more and more wary of this.

In these few months, the Claw Town really was starting to phase toward the real town. The factory also expanded and recruited more and more builders. And with more and more people coming to trade, the population reached the bare minimum of tens of thousands. With more and more populations and size, brings more and more chaos to the town.

Lord Harwin Ruthermont has been smiling since the town was formally announced. It has brought greater income and wealth to House Ruthermont several times than before. Artys was also happy as he also took a share of that wealth. He established his own set of inns and taverns in this new town and had invested in real estate in this town from the beginning.

He has also invested greatly in building smooth roads from the Eyrie and ForgeMount to the Claw Town so he can bring the supplies to and from the town more easily and efficiently. He has been trying to link the territory of the Vale with the smoother roads so that the resources can be quickly utilized. From the snake wood to Salt town, the road has been trying to link these useful resources.

With this development, along with the necessary resources the army can also be mobilized quickly increasing the war potential of the Vale.

He has also invested greatly on the infrastructure in the ForgeMount where he has been trying to increase the number of people working in the factory and also established an Academy here few months ago.

Although it costed him, the income he has now can fully support his training his men. He has brought the men from the Eyrie here for the training too. Here in the academy, he also train officers with the strategies and tactics so they can better lead the army.

Many people were also joining the academy due to its lucrative treatment and future development. With the recruits coming in, he appointed a supervisor here to supervise the smooth development of these recruits.

He also trained orphans so he can slowly build up their loyalty and program them to be capable officers/knights for him. He has also constructed a military library which records the military exploits of the previous kings and commanders. But the library did not have much books as he did not find much in the library in the Eyrie.

With more and more resources, he has been able to gather more and more exotic animals along with some books as it seems that books related to military tactics were not easy to find and were rare to come across one. Perhaps he can try the citadel, but seeing as how the organization has been limiting the access to outsiders and even their own members cannot fully access the books.

Artys did not have any hope of quality books. He also seem to hear that there are very rare and even magical books in the citadel along with the thousands of history written in a book library. Although he wanted to access them, he will have to first infiltrate or conquer the citadel for them. But seeing how it has been standing for thousands of years even outliving the dynasty who established the organization and even influencing the course of the continent, he does not want to take risk.

Who knows what kind of things they have invented with all these knowledge concentrated in this organization. Maybe when he can download the skill of the faceless assassin's ability, he can try.

He has also been able to increase his physique and strength to advanced level thanks to shadow cat brought to Eyrie and aurochs which was later brought to him by another team.

He has also been training some small animals to spy on his territory to check for any suspicious activity. Although with the zoolingo, it was faster to train but the intelligence of the animals were the problems. So he could only train for simple commands and not the complex ones. He divided the animals with their own functions so he could better control and train them.

He has also been able to bring his thick skin content to advanced level giving some resistance to swords and lance with heightened senses. Currently almost all his contents was of advanced tiers.

His folder screen seemed like this,

<Folder: Artys Arryn

Contents:

Miscellaneous items:

Production recipe of Blanket

Knowledge of Blanket

Production recipe of Cup

Knowledge of Cup…..

Normal skills:

Pick pocket (Advanced)

Singing (Advanced)

Zoo-Lingo (Advanced)

Poison knowledge (Advanced)…..

Fighting skills:

Sword Fighting (Advanced)

Archery (Advanced)

Horse riding (Advanced)

Hand-to-hand combat (Advanced)

Underwater Fighting (Advanced)

Stealth (Advanced)

Assassin technique (Advanced)

Dagger Mastery (Advanced)

Physical contents:

Physique (Advanced)

Strength (Advanced)

Agility (Advanced)

Stamina (Advanced)

Underwater Breathing (Advanced)

Thick Skin (Advanced)

Heightened senses (Advanced)

Poison Resistance (Advanced)

Night vision (Advanced)

Eyesight (Advanced)

Download speed: 450MB/s

>

Now, although he did not have poison resistance to more potent poisons, he can now find them. With this ability, he is now not so stressed about the poisoning.

He has also increased his influence on the capital now albeit smaller in scale allows him to influence some actions in the city. He also found that after few days of his departure from the Kings landing, King Robert rode toward the North to Winterfell with his queen and entourage.

Brandon still fell off the tower and got crippled, while Jon Snow went to the Nights watch few months prior to the series. It seems that many things from the original timeline has been shifted and now the things he knows may not happen or may happen prior than the original time.

He knew that king was trying to name Ned Stark the hand of the king. And then finally start the game of thrones which he was waiting for. As the little finger said "Chaos is a ladder", which means he can greatly profit from this chaos. And with Vale fully under his control, he was going to take advantage in this game of thrones.

He recently got the letter of arrival of the king and the new hand of the king. Same as in the series, Lysa Arryn secretly sent the letter from the Eyrie which Artys did not stop so that Ned will finally accept the offer.

Now Little finger and Spider will guide him too although Varys may not want to drag the wolf and lion this quickly.

Varys was the supporter of Targaryens across the Narrow Sea and believed that only the Targaryens will be able to bring peace to the realm. And with Danaerys still not mature and not married to Khal Drogo, they did not have army nor the influence. So Varys will do everything possible to avoid that situation.

Few days after, Maester Luceon brought a letter of the appointment of Eddard Stark as the hand of the king along with the invitation for the tourney held in his name.

With exaggerated amount for the victor, he still did not believe that there will be such huge rewards considering the current state of treasury. The amount may be nerfed later in the tourney.

After reading the letter, he was still thinking whether to go to the capital this time to attend the tourney. He still wanted to get the contents from the dragon skulls last time, but he could not because his body was still not able to fully digest the current contents.

It may take one or two years before he can transition to more advanced contents although he did not know what tier was after the advanced as he was not yet exposed to that. But dragons will definitely be one.

After thinking for some time, he decided not to visit capital but he still wrote the letter to Eddard Stark congratulating him.

Currently, Artys was going to travel to the free city of Pentos. As he wanted to build a city on Essos, he figured that he can first visit the free cities and probe their attitudes.

But first he has to arrange his people in his territory so that even when he is not here, there won't be any problems. He summoned various manages/supervisors he appointed to give instructions and directions.

After arranging people, Artys brought with dozens of sailors capable of fighting along with some guards with him to the docks. He finally sailed with the first four warships built in his factory along with some of his trade ships. As although he wanted to visit the city, he still has to allow his ships to trade and bring profit.

Currently he has increased his military warships to almost a dozen and trading ships to almost thirty. Now, his ships sails faraway lands to trade for more exotic products to sell here at Westeros at profit.

It was more than a year since he sailed across the narrow sea to Essos, but this time there were no pirates along the journey. Perhaps due to the four warships sailing together, the pirates did not dare to come near them.

After more than a month, they finally reached the bay of Pentos. As he has yet to establish his forces in the continent of Essos, he did not want to unnecessarily cause trouble here. He just wanted to visit the city and experience the free city of Pentos.

But before docking in the dock, he let his gyrfalcon fly away first to survey the area. After few minutes gyrfalcon came to him telling of its findings. And as Artys became more and more proficient in zoolingo, he could understand as well as train his pets more easily and effectively.

When they finally docked their ships, Artys finally took a step in this city for the first time. Along with some of the guards, he first found the inn for resting their weary bodies from the journey before any activities.