Chapter 13: Useful II

I put on some clothes and went to see my kids. They were playing together in a children's room, and a maid was always looking after them. Gerold, the son that I had with the maid. He was alone, trying to mix some shapes and Oliver was bullying his other brother.

"Oliver, what did I tell you?" I picked up my silver-haired son, getting him away from Tray who looked like a mini-me, with dark hair and eyes. "Never hurt your family, we are all that we have. Blood is thicker than water, always remember that."

He just looked at me and smiled, a baby wouldn't understand anything I said anyway.

"Dada!" He called out as his hands extended towards me, it brought a smile to my face. I looked towards the maid and she was standing over Gerald, trying to teach the annoyed kid about shapes that he wasn't getting right.

Tray on the other hand just went back to playing with his toys, not caring about any of his brother's actions.

*sigh* "What am I gonna do with you all?" I sighed and as if on purpose, Oliver grabbed my hair. His grip was quite strong for a baby.

Kids, I had opened orphanages around Braavos and other cities to care for the children. I also took a page off Varys' book and started training the smallest orphan boys and girls.

I had ex-thieves train the children how to climb buildings. Some sailors and shipbuilders were brought to teach them how to get a profession or even fight in case they want to become guards.

There was an unspoken deal with the orphans, that they must spy for me to repay them for taking them off the streets and raising them. Also, they would get rewarded if they got any important information.

Places like Lorath, Pentos, Myr, Tyrosh, Lys, Volantis, Elyria, Tolos, Meereen, Yunkai, Astapor, New Ghis, and many more had orphanages sponsored by me. Braavos had five places like that. Every city that my ships went to trade had places like that, and the captains of my ships would bring news back to me.

I could say that even Varys doesn't have as many spies as me. I had more wealth and resources than him dedicated to building my spy networks. When the time came when the new orphans grew into adulthood, my spy network would be the best in the world. While Varys was smart, he didn't have the modern knowledge I had for spy networks.

...

As I played silly games with my kids and hearing them laugh made me happy too. But that moment was interrupted when a guard came in. "My Lord, we have disposed of the…" he noticed my kids in the room and chose his words wisely. "Red trash."

That meant that the guards had gotten rid of the dead body. "Did it cause a stain on the floor?" That was my only worry now. I didn't need to waste any thoughts to feel nervous about a dead enemy.

"No, my lord," he answered and I waved him off. But as soon as he went away, another guard came in, and this time I recognized him as one of the people in charge of reporting important news to me. "My Lord," it got tiring to hear people call me that.

"The informants have reported that the Myrish Merchant, Odinos has gone against you and started trading glass with Braavos directly, and even openly challenged you to beat him in trade."

"Good, I will beat him in trade," I nodded. "After his corpse rests at the bottom of the sea he won't be able to trade, so it will end in my victory," after saying that I looked at the guard and the maid standing by the side and taking care of the kids.

"You can both leave."

They gave a slight bow and left the room. As soon as the door closed, a red hawk landed on my shoulder and I gave it a small cloth ball. It was concentrated salt, something made by magic so even a grain would kill this man by making him over consume salt causing his kidneys to shut down.

The gawk can enter his halls and quietly wait in the darkness till it's dinner time and then drop this silently after the food taster did his job. The good thing about this was that it didn't leave any traces of Magic in it.

The hawk flew off to do its job, without me needing to tell it anything. It already knew my orders due to the telepathic-like bond we share.

While the spy network costs a lot to keep up, it already gave me useful information on my competitors and who needed to get their throats slit, or have a bird 'accidentally' fly and knock over a vase from a roof, bringing it down in their heads, killing them. Magic was quite the neat trick if it was kept a secret. There wouldn't be a clue leading to me being involved with any of the murders either.

Sometimes I even use hypnosis to control a drunk to kill someone for me. Though I couldn't control someone with a strong will or intelligence. So this method had become kinda outdated lately, it wasn't worth using. Too risky, what if there was another guy like me out there who only acted drunk?

Though the spy network by itself wasn't perfect yet and there have been some hiccups. But one of them stood out the most, and that was Asshai, the place didn't have any kids. So I had to send some adult spies to get me some reading material. I also killed the spies after they brought what I asked for. But the news that they brought was creepy, everyone in Asshai wore cloaks and masks.

The Books on the usage of Magic were phenomenal though. And while there wasn't any magic that would allow someone to rule the world or allow someone to kill a hundred people in one spell. Much new magic became available and useful.

Just watching the marvel of this supernatural phenomenon was amazing. For someone like me, Magic was better than sex could ever be. Though I can't use magic too much or I will start losing lifespan, so that was a bummer.

"Bye~ bye~" I waved off to my kids and called some maids to take care of them.

...

When I went to my office, a smile came to my face at the cleanliness of the place. Also, no blood had stuck to the floor, and neither did it smell like blood. Paying those maids so much was worth it after all.

I saw the goblet of water on my desk and picked it up and threw the water in the air. But instead of falling, the water just stood there as if it was stuck in time. Simple tricks like this, something that wasn't even generally useful except to stop small amounts of water from falling on the floor, was amazing. I could spend all day just playing with this.

But the biggest change now was that this wide knowledge of magic had given me the confidence to experiment with it a little.

Everyone wanted to live forever, even those who didn't would want to live a little longer at the end of their lives. Sure, some might say that it would be devastating as one would have to handle losing people they love along the way.

But most of them didn't understand that time heals everything, if someone dear to you died, then four years later that feeling would be dull till you no longer thought about them. Life always went on.

But when the time came for me to try and become immortal… there was no perfect way. Even the Undying Ones have had their minds changed and morphed by drinking shade of the evening. That was no life, because if one wasn't oneself with all his memories and experiences in life, then what was the use for all of this.

The Blood Raven had connected his body to tree roots, that was even a worse method than the Undying Ones.

In the end, the solution I came to wasn't to zombify myself where I would lose my mind. Well, maybe I would do that later in life if there was no other chance.

But my main spell was called Blood Descendant Body Resurrection... it was the reason I had started wanting to have more children, bastards, and legitimate ones.

Though this method was extremely risky, it was the only one where I would be able to keep my sanity and power at the same time. I also had the chance to grow stronger too.

How this worked was that after my death, my red hawk familiar would come and touch my body, picking up my soul and then transferring it over to one of my blood descendants. Then I take control of their body, my thoughts and sense of self should stay the same. Ironically, changing bodies was the only way where I could be myself.

My existence from now on will be like a snake eating its tail. I will be the head, while my sons will be the tail. To live on I had to continue with a form of self-cannibalism.

This was sad, I loved my children, even if they were only born to become my future bodies. Well, it doesn't matter, they will live the best life they can, I guarantee it.

I will try to hold on to this body for as long as I can before taking them over. Let them experience life fully, eventually, they would die anyway.

Though this was all speculation and there had been zero tests done on this spell, so I wasn't sure if it even worked. Plus there were many other risks too, for example, if my hawk got shot down while carrying my soul then I would die too.

What if the body I went to was infertile? After all, the spell was intended for me to possess my descendants. So if the new body also became 'myself' then would I only be able to possess the descendants that I will make with that body?

Ugh! Just so many uncertain things. Why can't this world's magic be more certain and simple? Every spellbook that I read always had some parts that contradicted another book. There was no definition of a 'good' way to use magic without hurting the user in some way.

...

As night came around, my spy before-dinner reports came in. A man dressed in rags walked into the office with no one bothering him.

"My Lord, Westeros doesn't seem to have anything too big going on. Also, the Spider might be onto us. Getting any information out of King's Landing has become impossible."

"Did Varys find out we were the ones behind the spies?" I asked while shuffling through some letters. "Did he capture any of our guys?"

"A couple of the child spies have been drowned under suspicious circumstances," well that wasn't surprising, after all the bald eunuch did cut off children's tongues, I wouldn't put it past him to kill a couple of kids.

"But don't worry, neither the young nor older spies in Westeros know who the real ringleader is. So even under torture, they won't say anything about us."

"Okay, then stop trying to put spies in King's Landing for the moment, no need to send our informants to the chopping block," that bald bastard was good at this. While I had been able to play on equal footing with him and even surpass him in some places due to the huge amount of money I put in the network.

But in King's Landing, no matter what, no spy of mind has been able to live past a week in there. "What other news is there?"

"A tourney has been organized in Harrenhal," he reported and I could sense that he was uncertain about something. "Also… rumors say that the first Prince is planning to use the gathering as a meeting of Lords and organize a takeover. After all, the owners of Harrenhall couldn't afford this Tourney."

Well, it seemed like Robert's Rebellion was about to start soon. Now is my chance!

...

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Okay, some people seem to misunderstand what Ruthless means. So let me explain, some other authors in other stories might call their MCs ruthless, but at the same time the MCs don't kill kids, the elderly or women… how the hell is that ruthless?Arthur is ruthless, meaning he will kill anyone who gets in his way.

Though at the same time, it doesn't mean that he will slaughter people illogically. After all, he doesn't like killing people if it doesn't bring him benefits.

P.S: I also saw some people also said that Braavos didn't allow Slaves and all that. Dude… you just saw things from the perspective of someone who hates Arthur, don't assume that what she said about him was a fact. He did free the two women from slavery once in Braavos.