This time, the darkness didn't go away.

What the hell? What the hell was that? Rich thought, as the darkness grew hot around him, and it became hard to breathe.

And then there were words.

Welcome to Generica, and your new life as a

HIGH DRAGON HATCHLING

You have learned the Burninate skill!

Your Burninate skill is now level 1.

You have learned the Chomp skill!

Your Chomp skill is now level 1.

You have learned the Draconic Tongue skill!

You have learned the Dragonseye skill!

Your Dragonseye skill is now level 1.

You have learned the Limited Equipment skill!

You have learned the No Thumbs skill!

You have learned the Scaly Wings skill!

Your Scaly Wings skill is now level 1.

You have learned the Slow to Age skill!

Congratulations, you are now a level 1 Cultist!

CHA+3

INT+3

LUCK+3

ERROR: No Patron chosen!

You must choose a patron before learning Cultist skills!

Find an altar and pledge to your chosen dark power!

Loading Tutorial...

Loading Tutorial...

ERROR!

No Tutorial found for race

HIGH DRAGON HATCHLING

Abort/Retry/[email protected]~%!

ERROR!

Rich blinked, and found he couldn't. There was pressure against his eyelids, pressure all around him.

High Dragon Hatchling?

Wait a minute, was he a dragon? Had the mystery race been dragon?

“Fuck yeah!” he tried to say, and couldn't open his mouth. That pressure...

The rest of it, though, that wasn't a good sign.

All those error codes... he flipped over to his software interface view, and stared into the code.

It was still running, it hadn't crashed yet, but there were a lot of checks being failed.

But through it all, one process note stood out.

Defaulting to localgod.exe

Searching...

Searching...

Running Intervention.god

Sure are a lot of gods here, Rich thought, distractedly. No wonder they had to put this on the darknet. This is straight up blasphemy, the Ministry's got to be shitting bricks.

And just as he thought that, new words flashed across his view.

Incoming Message>>Ritaxis

>>Well, this is a first.

To: Ritaxis>>Hello? Can you help me?

>>You're not one of mine. And I'm normally more of a help people get off their asses and help themselves kind of goddess.

>>What's a goddess?

>>Are you serious?

Rich was. He'd never heard the word before. Maybe it was another word for demigod? But now it was getting hard to breathe, and that reminded him he had other things to worry about.

>>Yeah but nevermind. I don't know why all these errors are happening and I'm stuck in a very uncomfortable place.

>>I can see that.

>>So... are you like an admin? Can you help me get out of here? I'm a player, and I really want to play.

>>Yeah, I can see that you're a player. But you're also a dragon. First time that's happened. I've never been called on by a dragon before, normally they don't have much use for us. Oh well, time's wasting. Let's wrap this up quickly.

>>I'd like to do that, but I don't know how! That's your job, right?

>>My job is war, boy. You're more of a sideline right now. An interesting quirk. I don't have to help you.

>>Please could you? I've had a really bad day.

>>You're about to have a worse one. Be interesting to see if your player reincarnation works through THIS. But... not my department. I suppose I could help you make things more interesting. But you're going to have to fix things all on your own.

>>Thank you, I guess.

>>So you have two choices. Fight or die.

>>What?

>>You're in your egg, and it's hatching time. Struggle to get out or die. Fight, boy. And if you keep on fighting, maybe we'll meet again. As you were, civilian.

>>What?

But there was no reply, and now he couldn't breathe at all.

I'm in an egg, Rich thought, and tried to remember what he knew about eggs. His mind flashed to farm videos sponsored by Mysantos (The friendly fresher food corp,) and Byson (Meat! There's plenty for all!) and other educational stuff that he hadn't seen in years. He didn't know how chickens and birds and things got out of their shells, they just kind of did it.

Didn't they?

There were red bursts in the blackness of his vision now, and though there wasn't any pain, He felt an uncomfortable pressure building in his chest.

Maybe they didn't hatch. Not all the time.

The goddess had told him to fight?

Well. He'd played fighters before, he could do that!

Rich tried to punch the egg, couldn't move his arm. He tried to kick it, and that got some motion, but his legs barely moved before hitting something hard. The shell, he knew. It didn't feel like he'd done anything at all.

Starting to panic, he thrashed, legs twisting, and something tore next to him. The pressure shifted around his head and suddenly he could breathe again. The pressure in his chest eased.

And his head fell forward, nose bumping against the shell.

It didn't have far to fall. Was it really that tight around his head?

Rich pulled his head back, found that he had room to maneuver.

What can I do here? What do I even have?

Well, I'm a dragon, right? And one of my skills is called Chomp, right? So I've got teeth.

Why not use them?

He tried to open his mouth, but the pressure resisted him. He tried again, and something else tore, and the pressure shifted against his throat.

It's not air. I'm not breathing air.

Rich pushed his head forward again, tried to take a mouthful out of the shell... but there was nothing for his teeth to catch on.

There's something on my nose. Something in the way.

He tried to wiggle his nose against the shell. He had a long, long nose, he could tell. No, they were called muzzles, right? He wasn't sure what type of dragon he was. Well whatever the proper word for his face was, there was something on the end of it.

He tapped it against the shell, didn't feel anything.

So Rich reared his head back as far as it would go, and slammed his muzzle...and the thing on it, into the shell as hard as he could.

Clack!

Something made a sound like teeth slamming together.

Rich's whole body shuddered, and when he drew in a breath, it felt a little lighter.

This is some realistic modeling. They devoted a lot of programming to breathing? Rich thought, distracted. How much work did they put into this game?

Evidently not enough, if he didn't get a tutorial for a player-accessible race. Even if it was a hidden one. That was just sloppy programming.

But there wasn't anything Rich could do about that, so he thrashed, kicked, and slammed his head into the shell over and over again.

And after a few tries, words flashed up into his view.

Your actions have unlocked the generic skill: Brawling!

Your Brawling skill is now level 1!

That was a good sign!

Rich fought harder, struggling with all his might.

Your Brawling skill is now level 2!

Your Brawling skill is now level 3!

But as he struggled, it started getting harder and harder to breathe again.

And the pressure in his chest built, until new words appeared.

You have been afflicted with the suffocating condition!

Numbers flashed above him, red and blue and green and yellow and white, and Rich felt an uncomfortable tap, like someone had nudged him square in the chest. No pain of course, because there wasn't anything like that in games, but he was pretty certain he'd just been damaged.

That red number was really high, like an 8 or so, and it worried him. Red usually meant hit points. He was a level 1 character, how many of those did he have?

To hell with it, he thought, and beat his head against the shell over and over again, ignoring the pressure in his chest, ignoring the numbers flashing up.

Fight or die, Ritaxis had said.

No choice at all, really.

Your Brawling skill is now level 4!

CRIK.

Okay, that sounded good! But the colored numbers were coming faster now, he thought.

Your Brawling skill is now level 5!

CRI-CRAAK!

An easing of tension around him, just a bit. Had he broken through?

Rich pushed his body out in all directions, until his arms and legs were up against the shell, drew his head back, and pushed just as his muzzle slammed home one last time.

STR+1

CRAAK-POP!

And then he was out and breathing, and the air was cold but he didn't care except to note it with amazement. He was free, and that was what mattered.

You are no longer afflicted with suffocating!

But he still couldn't see. There was goop all over his face, all over every part of him that he could feel. And probably the parts he couldn't, for that matter. Rich reached a hand up and felt his nose.

He couldn't reach it.

His arm was too short to reach his face.

Well this was a problem.

So he tried lowering his head instead.

And felt a touch of vertigo as his neck bent way, way more than it should, and kept on bending.

Something thumped into his hand. He didn't know what it was, it was as gooey as the rest of him.He felt it carefully.

A mass of hard material... stone? Glass? Something. It was slick and he couldn't get his fingers around it.

Although...

His fingers felt off. They didn't move right, and his thumbs refused to move at all, no matter what he did.

Rich broke off feeling around the thing on his face, and tried to bring his hands together. And after some fumbling, he managed it.

He didn't have any thumbs.

He'd like to call what he had hands, because they were a bit long to be paws. There were flexible fingers, tipped with nubbins too long to be called nails, and too sharp to be anything but claws. Everything but those claws was dusted with a layer of small scales, which made it harder to feel things. The entire setup was clumsy and unfamiliar, but with some time and effort he figured out how to move his muscles so each individual finger moved the way he wanted them to.

Then he reached up and tried once more to figure out what was wrong with his face.

Rich found his eyelids, gummed under a crusty layer of goop, and rubbed and rubbed until he saw red sparks. But that did the trick, and after a while, his eyes unstuck. With a tearing feeling he forced them open, and tears streamed out into the cool air.

And he still couldn't see a thing. But it was a different sort of darkness, so that was something.

Now, that thing on his nose...

...well, he didn't actually have a nose.

Again, perspective was impossible, but he had a long mouth sort of a cross between a crocodile's maw and a wolf's muzzle.

And that thing on the end of it felt all the world like a jagged lump of glass. It was heavy, and it didn't feel like the rest of him, and some instinct told him it shouldn't be there, so he scratched and pulled and tugged and knocked his muzzle against the ground until with a sickening rip and a patter of fluids, it came free.

And oh, that was a relief, because now he could lift his head from the ground without straining, and move it around on what his questing hands determined to be a long, flexible neck.

The rest of him...

His arms couldn't reach that far. A scaly body, and something that felt like a damp pile of cloth.

Wings? Do I have wings?

Oh holy crap, can I fly at level one? Fucking sweet! Rich thought to himself. He did recall one of the skill messages talking about some sort of wings, but he didn't remember the exact wording.

Well, that's not a problem. He switched over to his echo and called up his interface...

...and found that it didn't change the game in the slightest.

“Um. What?” He tried again.

Nothing. Normally when you did this in a game it pulled up the systems menu, and let you adjust the settings, or open help screens, or quit. But this wasn't doing anything.

This was pretty hardcore. But then, it was a darknet game, so he guessed that it had no reason to cater to noobs. Rich tried instead to flex his wings, and after rolling around and humping the air for a bit, all he succeeded in doing was bouncing off the floor.

The floor was pretty hard and cold, but the rest of his body was scaled like his hands, so he didn't think he was getting hurt. It was hard to tell. There wasn't even a hit points gauge. Maybe his vision would turn red and he'd hear a heartbeat when he was really badly wounded? That was what some shooter games did.

A gurgle interrupted his thoughts.

Then a funny feeling filled him. Odd, off somehow, but after a moment he identified it.

He was hungry.

Never before in a game had he felt hungry. Some of the survival ones he'd played had popped up a notice when his stomach got empty. But none had ever managed to capture the actual feeling of hunger.

This was...

This was amazing. At least he was pretty sure he'd find it amazing if he wasn't, y'know, so damned hungry.

Well. Food wasn't going to come to him, he was pretty sure of that. What did dragons eat?

Princesses?

Royalty seemed a bit ambitious right now. Maybe he could start with a baroness and work his way up or something.

Rich snorted at the idea, and decided to explore the space around him as best as he could.

After a few minutes of groping around in the dark, he stepped in something that clinked.

Some fumbling, and he got his not-fingers around something flat and round and metallic and cold. A coin, had to be.

DEX+1

Rich blinked as the word floated up in front of him. Dex... dexterity? Yes, it had to be.

He'd managed to use his dexterity to do a difficult task, and so he'd gotten better at dexterity. That was how it worked, how it had to work. Which was weird, he was used to Neverquest, where you didn't get improved attributes until you leveled up. Did this game have attribute usage growth instead of a level-up system?

But the opening part of the game had mentioned levels...

Anyway, he had a coin. Rich willed it to go to his inventory—

—and nothing happened.

No inventory? I don't have a storage setup? That just seemed bothersome.

But then again, he'd played a few games where storage was tied to physical objects, like bags and backpacks. Maybe he'd have to get one of those before he'd get an inventory option.

There were more coins on the floor, and Rich put the one he'd picked up with the small pile. He could always come back for it later.

More groping in the darkness. Once he found a sword, but he couldn't make his fingers work properly to pick it up. What did a dragon need with a sword, anyway? Another time he found something like a marble.

Then his fingers chanced upon something big. Much bigger.

It felt like a leg, only it was made out of stone. And it went up to a...

...oh. Whoops. Rich jerked his hand back like it was hot. He was really hoping that it was a statue that he'd just groped. Because whatever it was, it was definitely male.

It hadn't moved or yelled at him, so it probably was a statue. He touched it again, found a wing this time, and felt around it, avoiding the area he'd first encountered. A dragon statue? Maybe.

This darkness is getting old.

And just as he thought that, there came light.

A rectangle opening high above, and a red, smoky light oozing out of it, illuminating the start of a long spiral staircase.

A small form, bandy-legged with too-long arms hurried through the door, and slammed it shut. “No! No! Not get Geebo!” the form shrilled, as the room plunged into darkness again. “Ha! Dumb dumb stupids! Now Geebo flees into dungeon! No catch!”

There came a clicking of clawed feet on stairs.

Then a pause.

“Er. Where is dungeon?” the voice asked. “Why is dungeon not...”

“Hello?” Rich asked.

There came a long pause.

“You ah, you sound like baby dragon.”

“Well... yes.”

“Geebo is thinking that is because you are baby dragon.”

“Yes again,” Richard confirmed.

“A baby dragon that just hatched. Which mean dungeon is gone.”

“I don't know anything about that but there's like treasure and anatomically correct statues down here. Does that help?”

A much longer pause.

A sob.

“So no,” Rich concluded. “No it doesn't help. Sorry—”

“Sorry? No! No! No! Geebo sorry! Is led them right to you! Now Geebo dead and you dead too! We doomed! All hope lost! Can't flee to dungeon now!”

“Why did you want to flee to the dungeon?” Rich asked. “What's chasing you?”

The door slammed open, as armored figures with glowing weapons burst out onto the stairs, and Geebo screamed a single word in despair:

“Players!”

????'s Character Sheet

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: ERROR – NO NAME SELECTED

Age: 19 minutes

Jobs:

Cultist 1, High Dragon Hatchling 1

Attributes Pools Defenses

Strength: 76 Constitution: 75 Hit Points: 150 Armor: 30

Intelligence: 28 Wisdom: 25 Sanity: 53 Mental Fortitude: 30

Dexterity: 11 Agility: 25 Stamina: 35 Endurance: 0

Charisma: 28 Willpower: 75 Moxie: 103 Cool: 30

Perception: 75 Luck: 28 Fortune: 103 Fate: 1

General Skills

Brawling – Level 5

High Dragon Hatchling Skills

Burninate – Level 1

Chomp – Level 1

Draconic Tongue – Level N/A

Dragonseye – Level 1

Limited Equipment – Level N/A

No Thumbs – Level N/A

Scaly Wings – Level N/A

Slow to Age – Level N/A

Cultist Skills

Unlocked Jobs