Marcos woke up with the sun shining directly in his face.
"Damn it..." she muttered, covering her eyes with her arm. "I forgot to close the curtains."
He sat up in bed, disoriented for a moment. His brain still expected to see his apartment in Buenos Aires, with the Indiana Jones poster on the wall and his laptop on the desk.
Instead, he saw a luxurious medieval room with expensive tapestries and windows without glass (but with wooden shutters that he definitely should have closed the night before).
"Oh, right," he said aloud. "I'm in another world. I died. Reincarnation. Magic. Minecraft. All that."
He got up and stretched. His body felt... good. Better than good, actually. Normally, after sleeping in a new bed, his neck was aching or his back was in agony. But now he felt completely rested.
"I suppose having Demon King power comes with physical benefits," he muttered as he walked toward the bathroom. "I'm not going to complain."
The bathroom was functional but basic: a large wooden bathtub lined with metal, a polished bronze mirror that reflected his image (though not as clearly as a modern mirror), and a sort of primitive toilet that drained...somewhere. Marcos decided not to ask exactly where.
She washed her face with cold water from a pitcher that had been left in the room.
He looked at himself in the bronze mirror.
His distorted reflection stared back at him.
Marcos Vidal Santacruz: 28 years old, medium-length black hair that definitely needed a cut, three-day beard that made him look more like a bandit than an academic, dark brown eyes that now—if he concentrated—could shine with a terrifying crimson red.
"I'm not bad," he admitted. "Although I look more like an extra from Game of Thrones than a main character." He smiled. "You're going to have to change that, Marquitos."
She dressed in the same clothes as the day before (mentally adding "get more clothes" to her to-do list) and went down to the inn's dining room.
The place was more crowded than the night before. It was mid-morning, and several merchants were having breakfast while discussing business aloud.
Marcos sat down at a table near the window and ordered breakfast when the same waitress from yesterday approached.
—Good morning, Mr. Vidal. Breakfast?
—Please. Anything typical of here.
The waitress nodded and walked away.
While he waited, Marcos activated his enhanced hearing—one of the many abilities that came with the Anos Voldigoad package—and began to listen to the conversations around him.
It was time to gather information.
Table 1: Two fat merchants in expensive clothes.
—I'm telling you, silk prices are going to rise in the coming weeks. The roads to the East are dangerous with those nomadic tribes.
—The Dothraki? They're always there. It's nothing new.
—But now there are rumors of a new Khal. A young and ambitious one. Drogo, I think his name is.
Marcos almost choked on his own saliva.
Drogo. Khal Drogo.
That was crucial information.
Table 2: Three city guards eating bread and cheese.
—Have you heard about the Targaryens?
—The dead dragons? What about them?
"There are two survivors. A brother and a sister. Viserys and Daenerys, I think. They're out there, hiding."
The Usurper is still looking for them.
—Robert Baratheon has a morbid obsession with them. Years have passed since the rebellion, and he still sends assassins.
—Prince Viserys is a madman. I saw him once. Mad eyes. His sister is young, barely a child.
Marcos clenched his fists under the table.
Daenerys was still a child.
That meant it was BEFORE her marriage to Drogo.
Perfect.
Table 3: Two minor nobles with wine glasses (at this hour? Oh well, Westeros).
—Magister Illyrio is planning something big. I can feel it.
—Illyrio is always planning something. It's in his nature. But lately he's been more secretive than usual.
—They say he has hosted some very special guests at his mansion.
—Guests? Who?
—I don't know for sure, but the rumors speak of important exiles. People with royal blood.
Marcos connected the dots immediately.
Illyrio Mopatis. The Magister of Pentos. The son of a bitch who, in canon, sold Daenerys to Drogo as part of a plan devised with Varys to restore the Targaryens to the throne.
"They're here," he muttered to himself. "Viserys and Daenerys are in Pentos. Probably at Illyrio's mansion."
His breakfast arrived: eggs, sausages, warm bread, fruit that looked like figs, and a jug of something similar to tea but with a mint flavor.
He ate while his mind raced.
The timeline was clear now:
Khal Drogo was active but not yet married to Daenerys
Daenerys and Viserys were in Pentos, under Illyrio's "protection".
The marriage would probably be planned soon.
That meant I had time, but not much.
The question was: what to do with that information?
Marcos knew how the story ended. He knew that Daenerys would suffer horrors: she would be sold as a bargaining chip, repeatedly raped by a warlord, lose her son, her husband, walk on a funeral pyre...
And from all of that, she would emerge as the Mother of Dragons.
But the price had been monstrous.
"Should I intervene?" she wondered aloud. "Change their fate? Or let things unfold as they were meant to?"
It was the classic dilemma of the time traveler.
But Marcos wasn't a time traveler. He was something far more dangerous: he was someone with future knowledge and the power to change everything.
"I'm going to need more information before making any decisions," he decided. "First, I need to get to know the city. Make some contacts. Understand the local politics. And most importantly…" He smiled. "I need real money. I can't be mining Minecraft gold every time I need to buy something. That would draw too much attention."
He finished his breakfast and went up to his room .
It was time to do something I'd been putting off: actually test the Minecraft System.
Marcos locked the door and closed the shutters.
The room was plunged into darkness.
Perfect.
"Okay," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Time for the truth. Let's see what I can actually do with this."
He opened his inventory.
The translucent interface appeared in front of him, glowing softly in the darkness.
He browsed through the categories: Building Blocks, Decoration, Redstone, Transportation, Food, Tools, Combat, Potions...
It was overwhelming. There were THOUSANDS of items available.
"Let's start with something simple," he murmured.
He selected "Dirt".
He pressed the mental "get" button.
In his hand appeared a perfect cubic block of earth, compacted in an unnatural way, each side perfectly flat and with exact 90-degree angles.
It was surreal.
Marcos placed it on the ground.
The block remained there, floating lightly above the wooden floor, defying gravity in the most casual way possible.
"This is beautiful and disturbing at the same time," she commented.
He picked it up. The block disappeared and returned to his inventory.
—Okay, it works. Now let's try something more complex.
He navigated to the tools section.
He selected "Diamond Pickaxe".
He got it.
In his hand appeared a pickaxe that was simultaneously the most beautiful and the most ridiculous tool he had ever seen. The handle was made of wood, but the head was pure diamond—not like a gem, but like a brilliant blue crystal—and it was perfectly balanced in a way that defied the laws of physics.
Marcos brandished it experimentally.
It was light. Too light to be a real diamond.
"It's like the rules of Minecraft override the rules of this world," he murmured. "Interesting."
He put it in his inventory and tried something else.
"Torch".
It appeared in his hand: a wooden stick with charcoal at the tip that spontaneously caught fire without the need for a spark or ignition source.
And the fire did not consume the stick.
It simply burned. Eternally.
—Physics, you've gone to hell —Marcos said admiringly—. This is pure magic.
He placed the torch on the wall.
It stayed stuck there, defying gravity, illuminating the room with warm light.
Marcos sat on the bed and stared at the floating torch.
His engineer-historian mind was at work.
"If I can create endless torches that never go out, that means perpetual free lighting. If I can create blocks of any material, that means instant construction. If I can create food..." His eyes widened. "I can create food."
He opened the inventory again.
He navigated to the food section.
There was everything: bread, apples, carrots, potatoes, cooked meat, fish, cakes, cookies...
He selected "Bread".
It appeared in his hand: a perfectly baked loaf of bread, still warm, with a delicious smell.
He took a bite.
It tasted like bread. Generic bread, but bread nonetheless. It wasn't gourmet, but it was edible and nutritious.
And it could create infinite quantities.
"I can feed an army," he said slowly. "I can feed a city. I can feed a fucking continent if I want."
The implications were mind-blowing.
Food was power in a medieval world. Whoever controlled food resources controlled the population. And Marcos had just realized he had an unlimited food supply.
"But I can't just show up in a city and start handing out free food," he reasoned. "That would attract too much attention. It would raise questions. Suspicions. And eventually, enemies."
I needed to be smart about this.
Strategic.
"I need a long-term plan," he decided. "I can't just improvise. I'm a historian. I know how empires work. I know what they need to survive."
He stopped and began pacing the room, thinking out loud.
"First: I need territory. I can't build an empire without land. Second: I need people. Loyal, capable people who believe in what I'm building. Third: I need legitimacy. I can't just show up and declare myself emperor. Well, I CAN, but they'll want to kill me." He paused. "Although with my power, I could technically conquer by force… but that would breed resentment. Empires built on fear alone collapse quickly."
He recalled his studies.
Rome worked because it offered citizenship and protection.
The Spanish Empire worked because it combined military force with matrimonial and cultural strategy.
No empire lasted solely through brute force.
"I need to offer something that people WANT," he concluded. "Security, prosperity, justice, order..." He smiled. "And I can offer all of that with infinite resources."
But the problem of where to begin still remained.
Westeros was a political disaster. Seven kingdoms constantly on the brink of civil war, with a drunken king on the throne and a web of conspiracies so complicated that even the conspirators themselves didn't know who was betraying whom.
Essos was more fragmented: city-states, slave kingdoms, the Free Cities, the Dothraki on the plains...
"Essos," he decided. "I'll start in Essos. Less established, more opportunities. And if Daenerys is going to be a factor in all of this, I'd better establish my position before she gets the dragons."
Another question: Should I look for her? Introduce myself? Offer her help?
In the canon, Daenerys started with nothing. That suffering forged her.
But Mark was not here to simply repeat the canon.
"I'm going to look for her," he finally decided. "I'm not going to intervene directly yet, but I need to know where she is, what's happening. I need to keep watch. And when the time is right... I'll act."
It sounded like a plan.
A vague plan, but a plan nonetheless.
He put all the test items in his inventory and left the room.
It was time to explore Pentos properly.
And this time, he would try not to get lost.
Spoiler: It's lost.
Not immediately, but eventually.
Marcos had left the inn with the intention of going to the central market where, according to Lysaro, he could find information about everything and everyone in Pentos.
The problem was that Pentos was a fucking maze.
The streets had no names (or if they did, nobody used them). The directions were along the lines of "turn at the dolphin fountain, then keep going until you see the house with the green roof, turn there where the old fishmonger is."
Marcos, with his legendarily bad sense of direction, got lost in fifteen minutes.
"My cousin's shell," he muttered, looking around. "All these streets look the same."
I was in a district that seemed residential. Two- or three-story houses, some with balconies, laundry hanging out to dry, children playing in the street.
A group of women watched him suspiciously from a corner.
Marcos decided to ask.
He approached, putting on his best non-threatening smile.
—Excuse me, ladies. Could you tell me how to get to the central market?
The women exchanged glances.
One of them, an older woman with a headscarf, replied:
—Are you new to Pentos, stranger?
—Very new. I arrived yesterday.
"It's obvious." The woman pointed in a certain direction. "Go straight ahead to the square with the statue of the ancient magistrate, then turn left onto Bakers' Street. You'll smell the bread before you even see it. From there, the market is a ten-minute walk."
—Thank you very much —Marcos said sincerely.
"Be careful, stranger," added another, younger woman. "The market is safe during the day, but there are pickpockets."
Put your bag away.
—I'll keep that in mind.
He followed the directions (surprisingly, without getting lost this time) and finally arrived at a large square where there was indeed a statue of some fat guy in elegant clothes with a pompous expression.
"He must be a magistrate," Marcos muttered. "They all have the same 'I'm important and you're not' look on their faces."
He turned left.
The smell of freshly baked bread hit him like an avalanche.
—Okay, the ladies weren't lying.
Bakers' Street was exactly that: a street full of bakeries. There were about ten on one block.
They were all selling bread, cakes, cookies, things that Marcos didn't recognize but that smelled amazing.
Her stomach growled even though she had eaten breakfast just a couple of hours before.
"I'll be back later," he promised himself.
He continued walking and finally, as promised, the central market appeared before him.
And it was massive.
It easily occupied the equivalent of two entire city blocks. Stalls, tents, shouting merchants, people haggling, animals (goats, chickens, even a camel), colors, smells, noise...
It was pure chaos.
And Marcos loved him.
"This is perfect," he murmured with a smile. "If I want information, this is the place."
He ventured into the market, dodging aggressive merchants who tried to sell him everything: fabrics, jewelry, weapons, food, spices, "magical objects" (probably fake), and even slaves.
That last part made Marcos stop dead in his tracks.
There was a stall—no, an entire area—dedicated to the slave trade.
People in chains.
Men, women, some young people.
Looking at the ground.
Defeated.
Marcos felt anger rising in his throat.
"You sons of bitches," he muttered through gritted teeth.
A slave trader, noticing his interest (or what he thought was interest), approached with an oily smile.
—Good morning, sir. Are you looking for laborers? We have an excellent selection. Domestic slaves, farm workers, trained guards...
Marcos looked him straight in the eyes.
And for a fraction of a second, her eyes glowed red.
The merchant stepped back, pale.
—I... excuse me...
Marcos said nothing. He simply turned around and walked away before doing something stupid like freeing all the slaves right there.
—Mentally: abolishing slavery is on the list—he murmured. —When I have the power to do it without causing an international disaster.
He continued exploring, leaving the slave area behind.
Eventually, he found what he was looking for: a tavern inside the market.
Taverns were the true center of information in any medieval city.
It was called "The Snake and the Hawk," it had a sign painted with, indeed, a snake and a hawk fighting, and it looked exactly like the kind of place where shady business was done.
Perfect.
Marcos entered.
The interior was dark, smoky, with scratched wooden tables and questionable-looking people drinking mid-morning.
Several pairs of eyes assessed him when he entered.
Stranger. Rich (his clothes gave him away). Possibly vulnerable.
Marcos ignored the stares and sat down at the bar.
The tavern keeper, a bald man with a scar on his face, approached.
—What are you going to have?
—Beer. Any kind.
The tavern keeper poured a jug of something murky and passed it around.
Marcos took a sip.
It wasn't bad. It tasted like medieval beer: strong, not very filtered, but drinkable.
"You're new here," the innkeeper remarked. It wasn't a question.
—I arrived yesterday.
—What brings you to Pentos?
—Business. And information.
The tavern keeper raised an eyebrow.
—Information costs money.
Marcos took a silver coin out of his pocket (he had created several in his room before leaving) and placed it on the bar.
—Answer my questions and there's more where that one came from.
The coin disappeared from the tavern keeper's hand with impressive speed.
-Ask.
—The exiled Targaryens. Are they in the city?
The tavern owner tensed up.
—That's dangerous information, stranger.
Another silver coin appeared in the bar.
—I am willing to pay for dangerous information.
The innkeeper looked at the coin. He looked at Marcos. He sighed.
—There are rumors. They say that Magister Illyrio Mopatis has them as guests at his mansion. A brother and a sister. They don't make themselves known much. But people are talking.
—How long have you been here?
—Months. Maybe half a year.
—And what does Illyrio plan to do with them?
The tavern keeper laughed humorlessly.
"If I knew the plans of a Magister of Pentos, I'd be rich. But there are rumors of a marriage. An alliance with the Dothraki." He shrugged. "Though they're just rumors."
Marcos nodded.
Everything matched what I knew about the canon.
"One more question," he said, taking out another coin. "Where can I find information about acquiring land? Not in Pentos, but in the surrounding regions. Available territories."
The tavern keeper seemed genuinely surprised.
—Do you want to buy land?
—Eventually. First, I want to know what's available.
—Speak to the magistrates. They control the properties. But be warned: they don't sell easily to outsiders.
And when they do, they get paid triple.
—I figured as much.
Marcos finished his beer and left another coin on the bar.
-Thanks for the information.
He got up to leave, but the innkeeper stopped him.
"Some free advice, stranger. If you're going to meddle in Pentos politics, or worse, in Targaryen affairs... be careful. There are powerful people pulling strings. And the small pieces end up crushed."
Marcos smiled.
—Don't worry. I'm not a small piece.
He left the tavern.
The mid-morning sun momentarily blinded him.
He walked back to his inn, thinking.
She had information now. She knew where Daenerys was. She knew Illyrio was planning her marriage to Drogo. She knew she had time, but not much.
The question remained: what to do with that information?
I could:
To intervene directly. To present oneself to Illyrio, to offer one's help to the Targaryens. Staying on the sidelines. Letting the events of the canon unfold while he built his own power base. Something in between. Observe, plan, and act at the right moment.
—Option C —he decided—. Always option C.
That night, back in his room, Marcos took out paper and ink (he had bought it at the market) and began to write.
LONG-TERM PLAN - BUILDING THE EMPIRE
Phase 1: Establishment (Months 1-3)
Acquire initial territory
Recruit key personnel
Establish basic infrastructure using Minecraft
Create a compelling public identity
Phase 2: Consolidation (Months 4-12)
Expand territory
Develop local economy
Train army
Establish political contacts
Phase 3: Expansion (Year 2-5)
Strategic conquest
Key alliances
(???) Daenerys (????)
He looked at what he had written.
"It's a shitty plan," he admitted. "But it's a start."
He threw himself on the bed.
Tomorrow I would look for information about available land.
Tomorrow I would start looking for allies.
Tomorrow he would take the first real step towards building his empire.
But tonight, I would sleep.
And I would dream of dragons.
[END OF CHAPTER 3]