The gray veil faded, to reveal darkness, green runes above and a void below, broken by gleaning green columns.

“Choose your place of rebirth,” Caunal rumbled. And his voice was still as deep, still as booming, but now Rich's ears seemed different.

The green columns faded down to two spots. Green symbols spilled from them...

...and now Rich could read the symbols. He knew they weren't english, but he could understand them nonetheless.

The second he realized that, they rippled and changed into english words.

One said “The Blasphemous Hatchery.”

The other said “The place of your demise.”

Mulling it over for a second, Rich stabbed a claw towards “The place of your demise,” and was unsurprised as the pillar expanded, drawing him into the green light.

Then the world was darkness again. Wet darkness, with familiar dripping and a fishy smell lingering about. Rich knew where he was instantly. “Dragonseye,” he said, and the darkness went away. He was back in the cave, next to the dead crawmammy. And glancing down at himself, he saw that he was whole again.

Your Dragonseye skill is now level 7!

Rich wondered absentmindedly why the skill had levels. You could see in the dark or you couldn't, that seemed obvious to him.

He didn't wonder for long, because now he had a way to answer that question.

“Status,” Rich said, and a whole lot of words appeared in front of his face.

Name: Rutger Royal

Age: 3 Hours

Jobs:

Cultist 1, High Dragon Hatchling 2

Attributes Pools Defenses

Strength: 102 Constitution: 101 Hit Points: 203 Armor: 45

Intelligence: 30 Wisdom: 26 Sanity: 56 Mental Fortitude: 45

Dexterity: 12 Agility: 27 Stamina: 39 Endurance: 0

Charisma: 28 Willpower: 100 Moxie: 128 Cool: 45

Perception: 101 Luck: 29 Fortune: 130 Fate: 2

General Skills

Brawling – Level 8

Dodge – Level 2

Fly – Level 2

Ride – Level 1

Stealth – Level 2

High Dragon Hatchling Skills

Burninate – Level 5

Chomp – Level 3

Draconic Tongue – Level N/A

Dragonseye – Level 7

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

“Okay,” Rich said, looking over the numbers. “I have no idea how good these are. So... let's try... help?”

It took some experimentation, but Rich figured out how to get the help queries working. He rolled through each part of the character screen, reading everything he could.

The attributes were how effective he was at doing things, or resisting things being done to him. The pools were energy used to fuel skills, but they did bad things if he ran out of them. If hit points went to zero he started dying. If stamina got to zero, he fell unconscious. When sanity ran out he risked going insane. Moxie was a weird one, until he looked it up. It was basically bravery, when he was out of that he would be cowering or running or whatever. Fortune... fortune was basically his luck. But there was an attribute called luck? “Weird,” Rich muttered. Basically when his fortune ran out he'd suffer horrific and most likely fatal bad luck.

Pool energy recharged slowly, every pool regaining one point per ten minutes. They recharged faster with sleep or other rest, or if you consumed the proper food or drink for each kind of energy.

Moving over to the next column, The defenses helped prevent damage to his pools.

Taking it in, he thought he understood it pretty well. He still had nothing to compare the numbers to, so he didn't know how good he was at anything, really. High was good and low was bad, but how strong was the average human? Was his strength of 102 good, there? He really needed to hit up those readit pages that Norm had mentioned.

Rich shook his head, and moved on to the skills.

The general skills were simple. They added to the appropriate attribute when you were trying to do things. The High Dragon hatchling skills were much more interesting.

Burninate

Cost: 10 Mox Duration: 1 Attack

Blasts everyone in front of you with fire! This attack effects an area that starts with your mouth, and extends in a cone ten feet long. This attack is constitution-based. It also inflicts the burning condition on the target after a successful critical hit.

Chomp

Cost: 5 Sta Duration: Instant

You have the option of activating chomp when attacking with the brawling skill. A successful attack deals bonus damage.

Draconic Tongue

Cost: N/A Duration: Passive Constant

You can speak the ancient tongue of dragons! This lets you comprehend and understand it, and you can choose to activate skills by roaring, instead of speaking them normally. This skill has no levels.

Dragonseye

Cost: 10 For Duration: 1 minute per dragon level

This skill lets you see in complete darkness. It also adds its level to all your perception checks while active.

Limited Equipment

Cost: N/A Duration: Passive Constant

Your scales are your armor! Which is good, because you can't equip armor, or many other common items. You're limited to necklaces and bracers and rings, and that's about it, really. This skill has no levels.

No Thumbs

Cost: N/A Duration: Passive Constant

Every bit of you is a weapon! Which is good, you can't use any sort of weapon. At all. You also have trouble manipulating things that require thumbs, suffering a severe dexterity penalty. You just aren't made for that, sorry. This skill has no levels.

Scaly Wings

Cost: 5 Sta Duration: 10 minutes

This skill lets you fly.

Slow to Age

Cost: N/A Duration: Passive Constant

You're almost immortal! This has a downside; leveling your high dragon hatchling job takes much longer. This skill has no levels.

“Two of those are more like disadvantages than skills,” Rich said to himself. Still, it was good to know how everything worked.

Speaking of that... he turned the help function on his two jobs.

HIGH DRAGON HATCHLING

Power. Might. Fire. Flight. These are all words bound to dragons in the dawn of time, and from time immemorial, dragons have inspired both awe and fear in all mortal races.

They do not suffer fools lightly. Nor are they prone to sharing their business with others, even other dragons.

Bound by the Vow of Renewal, dragons are forbidden to slay other dragons, but only a foolish wyrm thinks this protects him from the ire of ancient dragons who can and have borne grudges for millennia.

Dragons hoard treasure, eat voraciously, can sleep for years, and eventually rank up into many different sorts of other jobs... all of them powerful and majestic.

“Wow...” Rich breathed. Caunal had done him a favor, there. Well, maybe not with the sleeping for years thing. Hopefully the game wouldn't make him do that in real time.

Then, hoping to figure out more about the seemingly useless job he'd been given, Rich whispered “Help Cultist”

CULTIST

Cultists are sinister worshipers of dark powers who dabble in evil magic. They choose a patron from among several fallen factions, and work to uncover forbidden knowledge and lore while they spread their patron's influence. Cultists gain experience through using their dark magic, gaining power, and empowering their patrons by any means necessary.

Rich gnawed his lip. He'd told Caunal he wanted power. So Caunal had given him a job that gained experience from seeking power. Was that the only reason? If so, he wasn't too thrilled about that. Especially since he was pretty sure this was exactly the sort of thing that would get his ass landed on a Ministry watchlist for blasphemy. They took that sort of thing seriously. Even in games like this one. In Neverquest, the Ministry servers had all references to the fantasy gods replaced with the state religion.

Still, it was what he had gotten, so Rich decided to roll with it. At this point there wasn't much more the Ministry could do to him that he cared about.

But there was no clue in the description as to how Rich could go about getting a dark patron. That was a puzzle, and Norm had said...

“Norm!” Rich blurted, and followed it up with “Close status!” The words disappeared, and sure enough, there was a new sentence behind them.

Stormanorm has sent you a friend request!

Accept? Y/N

“Yes!” Rich said, relieved. If he'd said “No,” during his help perusal it might have cancelled the request. Just sheer luck he hadn't.

LUCK+1

The game... agreed with him?

How was it even reading his thoughts? Was it reading his thoughts or was this something else? It had to be. Maybe it was detecting emotions instead. He was feeling relief back in his body, so the game registered it as getting lucky?

Rich snorted. Getting lucky, he thought again.

But then words appeared in front of him.

STORMANORM: Dude! Welcome back!

RUTGER: Thanks! Everything's good here. You make it back okay?

STORMANORM: Yeah. I found a ruin in the interior of the island that I can respawn at. Gives me time to get my shit together and go after my killers. I should probably hide some gear here for the next time this happens, actually.

RUTGER: You don't keep your gear when you die?

STORMANORM: It's weird. Magic stuff is supposed to go with you, but sometimes it doesn't. Normal stuff doesn't at all, unless you respawn where you died and nobody's taken it from your body.

RUTGER: Good to know. Even though dragons don't get to use much equipment, it looks like. We have a skill that says we don't get to do that.

STORMANORM: Oh boo fuckin' hoo. Gotta get by with firebreath and wings and shit. You've got firebreath and wings and shit, right?

RUTGER: Well, yeah...

STORMANORM: Then it's virtual world problems. Oh hey, did you ever figure out your interface? All that status and stuff?

RUTGER: Yeah, I got that. Been using status and help for a few minutes or so.

STORMANORM: Did you know about options?

RUTGER: Um... no?

STORMANORM: Options is how you do system stuff. Just say it and you can use help if you don't understand it. Nerd like you you probably won't have any trouble understanding it.

RUTGER: Gee, thanks.

STORMANORM: Anytime! Alright, I see some wild dogs in the distance so I gotta motorvate.

RUTGER: Hey! One more thing?

STORMANORM: Make it quick.

RUTGER: I rolled a Cultist but I don't know how to choose a dark power. Can you maybe help me figure that out?

STORMANORM: Sure, I'll ask next time I'm in town. Gotta run!

Well, that was something. Options, though... options sounded interesting.

In fact it wasn't, not really. Rich pulled up the options screen and spent a few minutes looking things over, renewing Dragonseye when everything went dark again. Most of it was straightforward. Most of it he left on default, liking how things were going so far.

There was one option he did end up activating.

LESSER NAMES: Turning this option on will reveal the names of the NPCs you view.

That was too handy. He clicked it on, and instantly the creature next to him had a grayed-out name above its head. LESSER CRAWMAMMY.

This should make life easier, Rich thought.

Then he eyed the crawmammy.

He was a little hungry again, and this thing was basically a big lobster...

Well, why not?

Rich got to work prying the shell up, nibbling on the meat beneath. It was salty and good, if a little oily, and strange juices gushed over his face as he ate. It was nothing like bugyums, and it was good.

Well, it was good up until he bit into something that exploded in his mouth with a foul taste, and he ended up swallowing a bit of it before he could help himself.

You have been afflicted with the nauseated condition!

It turned out that dragons could vomit. And oooh, the sensation was just about the same as real life. He hoped he wasn't blowing chunks back in his real body.

It took about ten minutes to clear his stomach, and by the time he was done his dragonseye had expired again.

You are no longer afflicted with nausea.

Not caring to look at his own barf or the carcass of the thing that had poisoned him, he crawled away until he splashed into the pool of water, and washed and drank deeply until he didn't taste the vomit so much.

Only then did it occur to him that he had been eating raw flesh.

The thought should have turned his stomach even more, but it didn't.

Pattering in the darkness.

“Dragonseye!” Rich snarled, and whipped around.

Your Dragonseye skill is now level 9!

And there stood Geebo, hands up, backing cautiously away. A green “Geebo (Draggit 14)” glowed over the draggit's head.

“Little great one! Is this... you killed this big beast?” Geebo said, pointing at the crawmammy's corpse.

“I did,” Rich told him. “Where have you been?”

“Looking for way out. Left food and words explaining it,” Geebo said. “Was Geebo unclear? A thousand apologies...”

“It's okay, I must have missed the words. And the food.” Rich's stomach rumbled again, and he looked at the Crawmammy's carcass and sighed.

“It is strange you missed those,” Geebo said, frowning. “Ah! Not implying anything. You is hungry? Why not eat clacky crawler?”

“The Crawmammy, you mean?”

“Is strange name for it, but sure.”

Geebo can't see the names. Is that a player-only option? Good to know. “I tried to eat it, but I hit something that tasted horrible and it made me throw up.”

“Probably poison sacs,” Geebo said. “If those are clear, rest should be fine. Do you wish Geebo to clean carcass for your dinner?”

“Clean it?” Rich didn't know what that meant. His confused mind conjured an image of Geebo with a bar of soap and scrubby methodically working over the corpse. “Ssssssure?”

Geebo pulled out a knife and a hatchet and grinned, motioning at the air and making sawing motions.

“Uh,” Rich said, even more confused.

Then he noticed the corpse was shaking. Bits of shell were falling away, and meat was disappearing.

“There!” said Geebo happily as the corpse fell into a pile of plates off to one side, the guts ended up on another side, and the meat arranged itself on a neat pile on the cavern floor.

“How... did you do that?” Rich asked.

“Geebo is Butcher! Has many useful jobs!”

“So you just wave knives in the air and it chops up the meat?”

“No, Geebo is Butcher... wait. Wait, sorry. Geebo remember you is young dragon. Butcher is crafting job. Any crafting job, you work with tools and a bit later boom, job is done. Takes stamina for butchery so can't do it all the time.”

Rich pondered that. This seemed like a weird oversight. The rest of this game was so detailed, and now it had a crafting system that was thoroughly divorced from reality?

Had the programmers hit this part then decided they were too lazy, or that maybe they'd put it in later?

Well, that was possible. Wait a minute. Is this actually a beta? Is this a test?

A lot of things suddenly made sense. Instead of a beta, the company had released it on the darknet under a fake corp name. They'd drum up hype, release it under a different name, and boom, instant money. Hell, no wonder the world was called Generica! Rich was surprised they hadn't called it 'Insertnamehere.'

“Thank you for the explanation,” he told Geebo. “That's useful to know.”

CHA+1

“Err... you're welcome?” Geebo looked surprised, and his head frills popped out a bit. Was that a sign of happiness? Rich thought it was so.

Then Rich tucked in, chewing into the meat. He ignored the memories of barfing it up, and soon enough he was eating with gusto. “So? Mffff.” he asked, between bites. “Howmf do we... mff, mff... how do we get out of here?”

And Geebo's frills immediately fell, as the little draggit explained what lay ahead.

RUTGER'S CHARACTER SHEET

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: Rutger Royal

Age: 4 Hours

Jobs:

Cultist 1, High Dragon Hatchling 2

Attributes Pools Defenses

Strength: 102 Constitution: 101 Hit Points: 203 Armor: 45

Intelligence: 30 Wisdom: 26 Sanity: 56 Mental Fortitude: 45

Dexterity: 12 Agility: 27 Stamina: 39 Endurance: 0

Charisma: 29 Willpower: 100 Moxie: 129 Cool: 45

Perception: 101 Luck: 30 Fortune: 131 Fate: 2

General Skills

Brawling – Level 8

Dodge – Level 2

Fly – Level 2

Ride – Level 1

Stealth – Level 2

High Dragon Hatchling Skills

Burninate – Level 5

Chomp – Level 3

Draconic Tongue – Level N/A

Dragonseye – Level 9

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