Moonlight poured down like quicksilver, casting dappled shadows on the floor of Viserys's bedroom through the stained-glass window.
The silver-haired boy lay flat on the soft bed, his breathing steady, but beneath this calm exterior, a tempest was raging in his mind.
Several days had passed since the dream communication with the Three-Eyed Crow. On the surface, Viserys's life during the day remained calm and uneventful.
He was still the prince diligently practicing swordsmanship under the strict guidance of Ser Barristan of the Kingsguard. It was as if his world only consisted of learning and training his sword skills.
Only in the dead of night, like this, when everyone in The Red Keep was fast asleep, could he shed his hidden mask and explore the realm of magic that had just opened a corner to him.
For the first few nights, he did nothing but examine his mental world, the terrifying face of the Bloodraven haunting his mind.
Since the Bloodraven was able to forcibly drag him into a dream, it was possible he had left something in his consciousness to influence him. Only when he was certain that there was truly nothing in his mental world did he dare to access and study the unexpected magical knowledge concerning the "Greenseer."
After several days of practice, Viserys was surprised to find that the Greenseer's ability was not like conventional magic requiring spells or rituals. Instead, it was more like the awakening of a talent, an ability to perceive and integrate into the world's network of life.
Viserys roughly divided the core abilities of the Greenseer he had learned about over the past few days into four parts: the first part was the Green Sight, which was the most basic and core ability.
It allows the Greenseer to "see" beyond what the naked eye can perceive, enabling him to glimpse the essence of all things. For example, the elemental light clusters Viserys saw previously—these are the life energies of various creatures. Green Sight allows the user to touch these clusters and sense the information they contain, displaying real-time content directly in the mind without visual observation.
The second part can be called the Heart Tree's Eye, which requires the aid of a weirwood. It allows one to view everything happening near that weirwood at any time, including events that occurred long ago, provided the weirwood has "eyes."
The third part is the ability of the Skinchanger. It not only allows the user to enter an animal's consciousness but also to fully merge with them, combining the animal's senses with the user's own intelligence for perfect control. The Three-Eyed Crow is the perfect manifestation of Brynden Rivers' consciousness within the crow's body.
The last ability is Dream Weaving, just like the unfamiliar environment Brynden dragged him into before. That was not the real world; at the time, Brynden's true body was still beyond The Wall, and that place was a dream world he had woven using the Greenseer's ability.
It was also because it was a woven world that the elemental energy within it was denser, allowing Viserys to quickly perceive the magical elements.
However, Dream Weaving requires a significant amount of mental or soul power, and the current Viserys feels his mental power is insufficient for weaving.
As for why Brynden was able to do it, it was because he inherited the legacy of successive Greenseers, making his mental power stronger, and he also had the aid of the weirwood.
Currently, there are almost no weirwoods near King's Landing. If he were to borrow the power of the weirwoods in The North, the probability of being discovered by Brynden would be too great. Viserys does not want to meet him yet.
Furthermore, the most important abilities for Viserys right now are Green Sight and Skinchanging, so these are the two areas Viserys has been practicing recently.
Green Sight was manageable; Viserys had at least experienced it before, so practicing it was relatively easy.
The only potential problem is that it is currently a period of magic depletion, and the magical tide has not yet arrived, so the external magical elemental light clusters are very sparse, unlike what he experienced in the dream. But this is not an issue, as long as he knows the method, he can use it.
The main problem now is that mastering the Skinchanger ability is difficult for Viserys. After all, Skinchanging requires peeling off a thread of one's consciousness and attaching it to another active life form with an independent will.
This might be relatively simple for those who are born with the Skinchanger talent, but for Viserys, whose talent awakened later, continuous practice is required to understand the underlying principles.
Viserys's previous attempts using rats all ended in failure. Besides having many people, King's Landing also has an unusually high number of rats. Whenever his consciousness tried to connect with a rat, it was either repelled or he exerted too much force and directly erased the rat's consciousness.
If that happened, even putting Viserys's consciousness inside would be useless; he couldn't control it at all. It requires a resonance of life, not cold manipulation.
This is like the opposition of ice and fire, the fundamental difference between life and death, which forms the most basic order of this world. In the laws of this world, there is an insurmountable gulf between the living and the dead. The Greenseer's power originates from the pulse of life, while the legendary magic of the Others is built upon the silence of death.
But tonight, Viserys felt a strange change occurring during his attempt. When a thread of his consciousness contacted the rat again, there was no longer any repulsion; it was as if this consciousness had belonged to the body all along.
In Viserys's line of sight, everything grew larger, and the stench of the sewer swept into his nostrils. He had truly succeeded.
Viserys quickly controlled the rat to climb out of the sewer, moving away from the stench. He guided the rat to run through the streets of King's Landing, and from this new perspective, the city's night presented a completely different appearance.
The forge fires on Steel Street were extinguished, with only residual heat remaining on the forging furnaces. The faint scent of bread drifted from Bread Row, stirring the body's instinctive desires.
In the streets filled with brothels and taverns, he saw several drunks collapsed by the roadside. Viewed from this angle, they looked like sleeping giants.
Seeing the world through the body and perspective of a rat was quite interesting, like playing a brain-computer interface game. He wandered constantly throughout King's Landing, sensing everything about the body.
When the first ray of dawn shone through the high window, Viserys severed the connection.
The return of consciousness brought not fatigue, but an indescribable sense of accomplishment. Although he had only controlled a single rat, this was another step forward in his journey in this world.
Moreover, he had already figured out how to use this power. He would control more small animals and have them help him search for dragon eggs in the Dragonpit.
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