—Sally—

  I awoke with a groan, my body burning with pain as I cracked open my eyes to see nothing recognisable. Whether or not that's a good thing was something I'd yet to figure out. I took advantage of my new neck to inspect my surroundings—thankfully without moving my aching body—and what I saw was… strange. I was in a stone hallway, with two walls on either side of me and one behind me, the open air above and in front of me stretching into the darkness.

  And by the looks of it, my body was unbroken somehow, and nobody had given my legs extra joints again. But there was no hint of the Ranger, the man nowhere in sight.

  I cast my mind back to the last thing I could remember, the frankly demeaning situation of being forced to eat my food in the lap of Orion. I was tempted to bite him to show that I wasn't accepting the situation, just to prove the point to the Ranger, but the nearby cliff-edge dissuaded me. How would I know if he got tired of his new toy?

  A growl slipped out of me as I realised that might've been what happened. Did I get thrown off the cliff? The last thing that happened before the sudden freefall was Orion trying to talk to someone. Well, there was that moment where he started to stand up—right before I fell. The question was whether he accidentally dropped me, not-so-accidentally tossed me, or if we'd both tumbled into the void.

  I suppose the next question I solve should be, 'how in the fuck did I just survive that?' I’m pretty sure that just being a dragon didn't give me a free feather falling trait. If the system’s amazing analysis is anything to go by. But an irritatingly loud ding interrupted my thoughts, making me wonder if whoever told the maker of the system about free trials and Excel also told them about pop-ups.

  [Notable achievement: Leap of faith]

  [Congrats brave adventurer, you’ve discovered the hidden area of the Mountain Dungeon!

  But I wouldn't recommend staying here too long. This is where the real monsters are kept.]

  [Reward: 1 [General XP]]

  Spooky. But XP? Did it do anything at all? Other than the dopamine of watching a 0 tick into a 1.

  I watched the orange screen flicker into existence, and unsurprisingly saw that nothing had changed. In fact, there wasn't anywhere for it to go, so of course, of course it did nothing. But it does suggest that there at the very least is something to level, though how much would I need to get a level in… anything really.

  [(???) infant: #DIV0!%, 1/0 XP]

  Nice. Cool. It’s even more broken now. Ha Ha.

  I lay there lamenting how simply horrific my situation was, and felt a bit of bitter amusement at how I thought things couldn’t possibly get worse literally minutes before falling off a cliff.

  I probably would’ve limply stayed there a while longer if I hadn’t felt the sudden return of my hunger and thirst. Another quick check of my environment revealed a nearby puddle, only a few metres away.

  I tried to stand up, and immediately failed, my limbs refusing to work how I wanted them to. How was walking with four legs harder? I’ve gotten two more and yet it felt four times harder.

  I tried to stand again, and failed. Again.

  But on the third go I succeeded, managing to get the achy and shaking limbs to hold me. It probably looked like I was going ice skating for the first time—if anyone was here to see me try. I groaned and tried to carefully move one of my front legs forwards. I immediately toppled over like a table missing a leg instead of achieving anything productive.

  I let out another sigh and got back up, trying again to take a step and succeeding this time. I held my breath in anticipation and moved my other front leg forwards, and quickly realised that I'd accidentally gotten stuck in a yoga pose. The effort to simply maintain it left me trembling and quickly finding myself floor-bound once again.

  But before I could get up again, I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, it felt like something was trying to claw its way out of my insides. The hunger rose up again, almost making me regret not eating the meat t-that s-she—*sob*

  All of a sudden every emotion that I’d been badly suppressing burst free at the thought of Mother and Father. The dam of emotions that consisted of fearing for my life, getting kicked like I was an invasive pest, the murder of my new parents, almost being f-forcefed their remains and then dumped off a cliff collapsed. It came at me all at once, leaving me unable to do anything but curl up into a ball.

  I tried to cry, as I desperately wanted to let out these emotions in the way I usually do whenever life gets too much. But I couldn’t, apparently dragons don’t cry, they just let out prehistoric screeches.

  I let out a choked, sardonic laugh at my own joke, ignoring the miserable sound that sounded like a cross-breed of a cat and a fox getting strangled. I grabbed onto my tail like it was a life raft, clutching it like a pillow and using it to ride out my complete breakdown.

  I just want to go home at this point. I miss mom. MY mom, and MY dad. Could I ever see them again? See home again?

  W-why do I have to be stuck in this hellhole of a world? I wanted to be able to do something… Change things for the better, make anything. I hate being this fucking helpless.

  It was so jarring that I was now this weak, pathetic thing, I couldn’t even WALK! Humans don’t even care about my existence. All I've managed to achieve by getting reincarnated is getting declared as someone's fucking pet by a brand new force of nature called the system. A ‘companion’ to follow around some asshole with a string tied to a bendy stick.

  MY BODY IS NOW A LIZARD'S!

  I laughed incoherently as I tried to process the idea that I’m now… less… Less of a person, not even human. I’m a wild yet sentient animal that has to try and survive in the wild as a baby. Well fuck, it looks like the Buddhists were right—reincarnation sucks. The joke didn't feel that funny anymore. None of the jokes really helped as much as they used to.

  For an unknowable amount of time, I writhed into a tighter and tighter ball, trying to cry without any success, only making sounds I could've never imagined being capable of before… Yesterday? This morning? How long has it been since I got given this body?

  But my attention fell off that problem—my sense of time slipping—and got dragged back to the source of all of my issues. Things weren't going how they were meant to the moment I popped out of that egg. I knew that there had to be a fate set aside for me. But so much of the story's scenes and abilities I should've received had been ruined. Was I just being arrogant? In thinking that I had good things waiting for me for once?

  But eventually a coherent thought emerged out of all of the broken feelings of misery that were floating through my head. I-I can still fix this. This has to be rock bottom, so that from here I can make it better, I can change it so it's like the stories. I can—I will—make it better.

  I won’t die, I-I-I’m sure there’s a way back home once I get this system working and level up a whole bunch. I can still see my parents and friends again, Mom, Dad, Ethan, Jess, and shit, even my cousin Kerry.

  I can’t die yet. I might be happy one day.

  After thinking about what might be the catchphrase I'd been thinking to myself for the last five years of my life, I tried to put together something that might possibly be able to help. The system, the system has to be able to do something. Is there a class or race I can pick now that I have an XP?

  [Resolve trait: [Free Trial] to gain access to [Race]]

  Is it just my fate for everything to go wrong? Am I fated to die at the bottom of this hole?

  [Resolve trai-][-Please do not cause the system undue stress-][SEEK APPROVAL FROM-][-#DIV0! %, 1/0-] [-Reward: 1 [General XP]-][-Please do not cause the system undue stress-][SEEK APPROVAL FROM-]

  Uh oh.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  [-cause the system undue stress-][-APPROVAL FROM THE SUN-][-system undue stress-][-THE SUN-][-undue stress-][-THE SUN-][-undue stress-][-#DIV0! %, 1/0-][-Reward: 1 [General XP]-][-THE SUN-][-stress-][-SUN-][-New-][-s-][-K-][-i-][-L-][-L-][-due-][-to][-^@#%-][-Sorry-][-overflow]

  [.][..][…]

  [(???) infant: 0 - 0%( 0/0) XP]

  … Is everything okay? Should I not ask what happened to my XP? Will you freak out again?

  That’s great! A classic, and a reassurance that I'm in the right genre, but why did the XP go into this?

  [Unlock the full version for more details.]

  That’s still there, but could i use [Appraisal]? Maybe I could ‘Appraise’ the system itself and see how [General XP]]worked.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: [General XP]]

  [[General XP] is experience that can be applied to any class, usually awarded after making a notable achievement. The other type of experience is class XP, and is typically the main type of source of progression, as class XP is rewarded after completing tasks or actions related to your class. For example, a medic will receive class XP after healing a wound, a swordsman will receive it after perfecting a technique or winning a fight, and so on.]

  So I guess this'll be my work-around, now I should be able to get enough information to survive. Today I will conquer the cave—tomorrow, the world!

  Now that the system is sorted, the next thing to solve is walking. I think my main problem is how I'm going about it. I’m still trying to walk like I’ve only got two legs, using my four legs like two pairs of human legs instead of how they're meant to be used. I needed to manage my limbs differently. I thought about my cat as inspiration, the easiest to remember four-legged animal that I saw every day. The way that it moved and sauntered around the house. Now that I gave it some thought, animals don’t really move the two front legs in a row—like I tried to—unless they’re running.

  I stood up again with the new knowledge in mind, and mentally prepared myself for the challenge ahead. I moved my left foot forward, and awkwardly teetered my weight onto it, and then moved my back right foot before I could fall without it. Once stabilised, my other back foot followed, and then, to complete the cycle, I matched it with my front right foot.

  I stood there in disbelief for a few seconds before a happy squeal escaped my mouth. After processing the fact that the fox-like noise had indeed come from me—that for the first time since waking up alone—I was happy about the fact that no-one was around to hear that.

  But I returned my attention to the more important issue at hand, and moved my talons in the same way again. I did it faster and faster, until what I was doing was indistinguishable from walking—well, I suppose that’s what it was, walking.

  After basking in the glory of completing the trial, I finally waddled over to the puddle. I leaned towards the water and was frozen by the sight I saw reflected by its surface.

  For a moment I was dumbstruck by how… Beautiful the image was. A gorgeous head that looked like it—no, it did—belong to a dragon, was staring back at me. My head was elegant and smooth, without horns or any rough elevations, similar to a snake’s. But I had more definition and height around the eye ridge and forehead—bringing it closer to a lizard’s features.

  But it was so much more than either of those animals, you could see so much more liveliness and emotion in my face, it was a tad human in that way, like all those cute animals that people loved to sympathise with.

  I turned my head so I could inspect the back of it, the back of my head adorned with a slight ridge flaring outward, starting from my hole-like ears and wrapping around to the other side. The scales that it was made out of formed a regal crown, and made my head into a triangular shape, my two big eyes sitting on either side of my head.

  Oh, those eyes, they looked royal and haughty, with giant blue irises that filled the entire eye with a dark blue hue, the orbs slit in two by cat-like pupils.

  I thought that I’d be bothered by seeing what I looked like, that there’d be some sort of backlash at looking in the mirror to see a face that isn’t mine, or human. But I could only be enamoured by it, feeling like my wishes to escape my terribly ordinary and boring body to something new were granted. Surprisingly, the non-human reflection staring at me felt normal, like this is what I am, what I should’ve expected when I first peered into the water’s reflection.

  It reminded me of characters in some teen-fantasy books I read when I was younger. The ones who got magicked into some fantastical creature and had to explore a new strange world with people they met and befriended as soon as they woke up. I felt inspired, hopeful, like the rest of my journey in this dreary cave would be as fantastical as those stories. Like I was going to have an adventure, the ones I’d day-dreamed about when I was younger. Though those fantasies had been replaced by… more, inappropriate, alternatives a while ago.

  I shook my head to get rid of the naughty thoughts and inspected my new body further. I admired my lithe and thin form, wondering if this is what you'd got if you mixed a cat and lizard. Then I spotted the two wings attached to my back and unfolded them, stretching out the two thin bat-like wings awkwardly.

  At least with my legs I was familiar with the muscles before I ended up with them. But wings were an entirely new concept, and I could barely twitch them without extreme effort. After too much time and effort, I managed to get them fully outstretched by tensing every muscle I had. The wingspan of two appendages was easily the same length as my body, longer than the distance between my head and the tip of my tail.

  Though my one-man fashion show came to an end when my stomach reminded me of how hungry I was. I let the wings uncomfortably retract, having to try a couple times to get them to fold up properly so they’d stick to my body again.

  I glanced around the pond, spotting a weed growing near the water. I wonder if I was still an omnivore.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: Fouled water hemlock]

  [Fouled water hemlock – Level 8 plant.]

  [A poisonous plant that’s native to the lakes that exist in the wild expanses of the Divian forests.]

  [Hemlock is considered to be one of the most dangerous non-magical plants in the whole forest. Ingesting the non-magical variant may cause abdominal pain, convulsions, delirium, nausea, seizures and vomiting, often resulting in death. The fouled subspecies can be found in areas filled with magical contaminants, and will result with similar but much more extreme symptoms that are incurable without magical remedies.]

  Oh, I'm glad I checked that before I drank some of the water.

  With nothing left here for me, I looked into the darkness of the only available direction I could go, feeling surprisingly nervous. Even though now I can walk and potentially run away from the psycho-humans, I felt strangely vulnerable, now that I'm by myself.

  Tentatively at first, I began to creep down the tunnel, being careful not to make any loud noises as I slowly realised that the hall might as well be endless. Within a few minutes of walking I observed that the stone was a tad too uniform, a tad too straight, like an abandoned mineshaft.

  But before I could think about it further, a squeaking from somewhere in the darkness distracted me.

  I slowly turned towards the noise and saw a scarred and vicious mammal walk down the path towards me. One of its eyes was missing, a mass of puffy scar tissue replacing it. The claws on its four feet were sharp and looked well used—judging by the blood staining them, and it didn’t make me like my chances.

  But the moment I saw it, it noticed me. For a precariously long moment we both just stared at one another, then the monster took the first step towards me. And—like the hero of the stories I just proclaimed to be—I ran.

  The sudden rush of adrenaline in my veins gave me some miraculous increase in coordination that allowed me the ability to flee without ending up tangled in my own limbs. I glanced back at the monster and saw that it was chasing me—with a thought I used my brand new skill to see what I was up against.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: Tough brown rat]

  [Tough brown rat – Level 3 beast]

  [An adaptable rat that thrives in the niches nothing else bothered to fill]

  [A common species found in nearly every corner of Brekun, known for their tenacity. Their unique adaptability in rough environments and ability to breed has allowed them to spread all over the stitched world like a plague.

  This scavenger and bottom feeder is prey for almost every species, but if it is a threat for you, then you must be special.]

  Oh come on, surely I can fight a rat?

  I skidded to a stop and turned to face it, and it mirrored my move cautiously. When the both of us resumed our staring contest, I realised that I had to figure out a way to fight this thing without getting too badly hurt. It’s not like I can spit fire, so ranged attacks are out—could I use my claws? I don’t really know how sharp they are-

  Before I could come up with a clever plan that kept me safe, the rat leapt at me, its front claws outstretched and ensnaring me before I had a chance to move. Immediately the sharp, needle-like teeth of the rat bit into my shoulder, the scales doing little to spare me from the pain of being bitten.

  A cry of pain left my mouth as I panicked, and instinctively bit back. My longer and more mobile neck allowed me to sink my teeth into the rat's neck easily. For a moment I was ashamed that I was fighting the rat with my mouth like a wild animal, but I didn't get a chance to feel that way for long.

  The rat began to claw at me, its claws scrabbling at my scales and leaving thin cuts in them. And like some sort of self-flagellating Ouroboros, I copied it, my talons digging deep into its stomach.

  We continued for a while, biting down harder and harder as we morphed into one bleeding ball of scales and fur. But with a desperate last struggle, I bit down as hard as I could on the rat’s neck and started to shake it, wiggling violently enough that I heard a crack.

  Then, all of a sudden the attacks eased, and the rat’s stranglehold on me loosened. With a shove, I pushed it off of me, and I stumbled to my feet—a wave of light-headedness and nausea coming over me.

  I wobbled back and forth as I tried to shake the weird feelings out of my head, but it only seemed to make me feel foggier, lost in my own thoughts. Though thankfully it made the pain from my wounds feel more distant and unimportant. The fuzziness in my brain allowing me to focus on the more important things. Like how hungry I was.

  I looked over to the still twitching corpse of the rat, and vaguely remembered the rat Orion had brought and cut up before. It did taste pre-e-e-e-tty good, so I wonder how good it’ll be when it's this fresh.

  I woozily walked over to it, feeling drunk as I roughly fell on top of the corpse. Without a second thought I stuck my head into the fresh meat, opened my mouth and latched onto a piece of it, tearing it off and munching on the fur covered meat.

  Y’know, it doesn’t taste that bad for fur-covered, disease-infested, rat flesh. With a giggle I dug in even further, losing myself in eating. But a noise that viscerally reminded me of a phone notification wouldn't let me eat in peace.

  *ding*

  *ding*

  *ding*

  *ding*

  Shu-u-u-u-t UUUP!

  I scowled as I tried to get rid of the annoying noise that plagued my hearing, and after digging my head out of the rat, the noise moved, like it was somewhere in front of me.

  I took a wobbly step towards it, and in tandem it moved away from me. With a scowl I took a few more steps, and it kept moving away. Clearly the noise wasn’t going to leave me alone, so I had to get rid of it. Ignoring the blood still seeping from my wounds, and the possible side effects from all of that missing blood, I chased after the noise, quickly disappearing into the darkness of the caves.

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