I awoke to the bright morning sun cresting over the horizon. It took several moments of blinking comprehension until I realized where I was. In a new world. In the body of a dragon. With a growing sense of hunger.

[From sleeping outside, your health has been restored up to 80% of its maximum.]

[From sleeping outside, your stamina has been fully restored.]

[You are hungry!]

[2 unspent skill points remaining.]

[HP: 18/22]

[SP: 11/11]

[Satiety: 52%]



Well, I suppose that answered the question of how I might replenish stamina; it seemed a good night's sleep was all it took to give me back my energy. Apparently sleeping was also good for restoring most of my health as well. Interestingly, the notification made note of the fact that I had slept outside. That seemed to imply that fully restoring my health would require sleeping indoors, though it seemed unlikely that any inns in this world would be willing to welcome a dragon as a tenant, especially a dragon that brought no coin to pay for lodging. Perhaps it was incumbent on me to find (or create) some kind of nest or lair if I wanted sleep to bring me up to full vitality.

My health was at 18/22, and a quick mental calculation told me that being healed up to 80% of my maximum health should have left me at 17.6 HP, which seemed to generously be rounded up to the nearest integer.

I didn't exactly recall how sated I was at the end of the previous day, but I was pretty sure that it wasn't as low as 52% -- I recalled seeing it somewhere around 55% the last time I took stock of it. If that was the case, it meant that my metabolism while sleeping did require sustenance, but at least it seemed to drain at a significantly slower rate. But with nearly half of my stored calories consumed in the previous day, it was clear that I couldn't go another day without eating.

I needed food.

I peered over the edge of the plateau down at where the hyenas had watched vigilantly over their fallen comrades the night before, but saw nothing. No abandoned carcasses, and no hyenas waiting for me to descend. I cautiously surveyed the area, checking to make sure that they weren't waiting somewhere to ambush me.

I looked south -- or what I was now choosing to define as south, as I didn't have a compass and wasn't familiar with the ordinal directions of this new world. Labeling the direction I was facing as "south" wasn't too arbitrary; the rising sun was on my right, and I was used to seeing the sun rise from the east and set in the west, so it seemed logical enough to define whichever direction the sun rose from as east. Using that as my point of reference, the canyon seemed to run from north to south, and the area of descending elevation where I had encountered the hyenas was south of where I sat.

I scanned the canyon, looking for any trace of the hyenas, and in a moment, far in the distance, I got a glimpse of movement and managed to follow it for several seconds before losing sight of it. It was a hyena of the same sort I had encountered yesterday. Its brown fur matched the color of the ground almost perfectly, and I wouldn't have noticed it had I not been specifically looking for it. Even with my deliberate efforts to follow its movement, it was hard for me to track it for more than a few seconds. Several moments later, I again spotted movement, a hyena far enough away from the first movement that it couldn't have been the same hyena I had seen before.

It seemed clear that there was no way for me to descend south through the canyon without confronting the hyenas. The canyon was too narrow. If they had the sense to attack me once, they would probably do it again. After all, I had only managed to survive the encounter by using the terrain to my advantage; it was unlikely that I would be able to provoke them into leaping up to attack me as I clung to a cliffside so that I could swipe them out of the air with my tail. I had no chance of beating the hyenas in a fair fight, and the possibility of goading them into an unfair fight that somehow favored me didn't seem promising.

But maybe there was another way that didn't involve a direct confrontation. I had the potential for wings, and I had that unspent skill point left. Perhaps now was the time for me to realize that potential.

I brought up my character sheet.

Claws: level 1

Scales: level 1

Mouth: level 1

Wings: level 0

Wings, please.

[Unable to increase level for "Wings." Maximum level for your class reached.]

I noticed that the text for 'wings' was a subtle shade of gray darker than my other attributes. I had initially assumed that was because it was because it was a lower level, but it seemed clear now that it was because depositing points into that area wasn't an option.

Hmm, so a "Hatchling" had a level cap of zero for wings. I guessed it was something I would grow into, though that left the question of whether "growing" meant leveling up or simply aging. I suspected the former.

What, then, was the best use of my unspent skill point? Yesterday, when I had tried breathing fire, I found out that my mouth level was insufficient to learn breath skills. Given that breathing fire seemed like such an obviously useful skill, that seemed a judicious use of it. My claws seemed capable of rending flesh even in the absence of any special claw "skills." I wasn't sure what exactly "scale skills" might be. Maybe the ability to grow porcupine-like quills? A statistical buff that caused me to lose less HP with every hit I took? Whatever the case, when it came to increasing my abilities, it seemed likely that increasing my proficiency with "claws" or "scales" would reflect a difference in degree, while an investment in "mouth" could equate to a difference in kind.

Alright, level mouth.

[Mouth level increased: Level 2! You can now spend skill points to learn level 2 breath attacks]

Huh. So leveling my attributes didn't seem to have any direct effect, but by spending a skill point, I had earned the privilege of spending skill points to learn actually useful things. With my remaining skill point, I should be able to learn one of those 'level 2 breath attacks.' Let's see what's available.

[Level 2 breath attacks:]

Noxious breath (unlearned)

Hot breath (unlearned)

Cold breath (unlearned)

I considered my options. One thing that immediately struck me was the classifications for "hot breath" and "cold breath." Not "fire-breathing" or "freezing breath." I couldn't safely assume that "hot breath" would allow me to spew flames from my mouth capable of igniting any combustible material it came into contact with, especially considering that these were only "level 2" breath skills. I wasn't sure if I was on level 2 out of 20 or out of 1000, but whatever the case, these were skills available to a mere dragon hatchling who didn't even have his wings yet. Actual fire-breathing was probably reserved for more mature dragons, or at least the kind of thing that might be reserved for someone who had invested more skill points into leveling the mouth skill.

"Noxious breath" seemed potentially more useful. In the best case, "noxious" might be enough to poison something. I strongly suspected that whatever poison (if any) the noxious breath delivered, it wouldn't be enough for a single exhale to constitute a lethal dose, but it seemed to be something more immediately harmful than hot or cold breath. At the very least, noxious breath could be a good repellent. It might not be enough to win a fight, but it could decent chance of helping me to avoid one. Simply being malodorous was a good way to say "here be danger" or at least "here be something you probably don't want to make a meal out of."

A nagging part of my brain noted that my first evaluation of these available skills and appraisal of their potential usefulness had been their potential lethality. The fact that my first day alive as a dragon hatchling had pit me in a life-and-death struggle against wild beasts certainly made it seem like it was wise for me to consider ways in which I might make myself more capable of violence. However, my main concern wasn't succeeded in perpetuating violence -- it was to survive. There was a chance I could avoid fights with predators altogether, but there wasn't any way to get around the fact that I needed food.

Of course, the [Carnivore] trait meant that "finding food" was synonymous with "finding the carcasses of defeated creatures." One way to find those carcasses was to encounter living creatures and turn them into dead creatures which I could eat (using necessarily violent means), but there was the possibility of stumbling upon dead creatures and becoming a scavenger. None of the "breath" skills seemed particularly suited to scavenging, though. Which left me again with the same question of which skill might give me the best chance of converting living prey into fresh meat.

Well, not necessarily fresh meat. Just some sort of remains I could feast on. There was the possibility that "noxious breath" could be tied to the decaying of flesh, maybe some kind of build-up of methane-like gases. The idea of basically farting through my mouth to produce "noxious breath" didn't seem like a particularly pleasant one, which left me with the question of whether I wanted to be the kind of creature that was capable of "noxious breath."

It was a question worth considering. While [noxious breath] seemed likely to trump [cold breath] and [hot breath] in terms of utility, there was a chance that my utility calculation was wrong (a decent probability of that, given that I knew nothing about the skills other than their names), and even if I was "right," there was a chance that [noxious breath] carried only marginally more utility than the alternatives while being accompanied by a host of unpleasant side effects. "Cold breath" and "hot breath" could be skills with more utility in a developed society that had need for things like refrigeration or boiling water, while "noxious breath" did not seem like the kind of skill that would be likely to win friends and influence people. Then again, dragons were not a species that often consorted with humanoids on favorable terms, and if my goal was to make friends, I'd probably want to start with remedying my embarrassingly low "Charisma" score.

In addition to [noxious breath] seeming like the kind of skill that would make more enemies than friends, there was the fact that I would have to live with it myself. Would I find my own [noxious breath] to be, well, noxious? The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed. There were plenty of creatures in the animal kingdom who had to deal with "unpleasant" things, but "unpleasant" seemed like a values judgment by the humans who were in the business of classifying things. Dung beetles found feces palatable enough to subsist on it, and rats found each other sexually appealing enough to copulate with one another, despite the fact that both of these activities would probably seem unappealing to humans. The same evolutionary patterns that gave dung beetles the capability to consume dung and get nutrition from it probably also made it pleasant for them to eat dung, to whatever extent dung beetles were capable of feeling pleasure. Considering the converse, it seemed unlikely that an animal would evolve itself to a point where its very existence left it in a state of misery. (Sorry, Buddha.)

So when it came to the question of whether my abilities could have effects that I would find directly unpleasant, it seemed reasonable to assume that I was in the clear. "Noxious breath," by whose standards? Probably (and hopefully) not a dragon's. If I was going to be in the business of eating the remains of fallen creatures without taking the time to properly disinfect them, I could probably also be in the business of breathing "noxious" air. And besides, why did I care so much about making friends, anyway? [Noxious breath] seemed like a good skill for a baby dragon to have.

Still, even as I dismissed the possibility of rejecting noxious breath out of concerns that it might make me less charismatic, I briefly pondered the criteria for my initial evaluation of the breath skills. Something in me felt that if my first inclination was "how can I make myself more capable of violence," that fact should make me uneasy. But the truth was, realizing that about myself didn't make me uneasy -- and the fact that it didn't make me uneasy was part of what made me uneasy.

Of course, choosing the option that would make me more capable of violence was the rational choice. But for most people who come to the conclusion that violence is necessary (either before declaring war, or before confronting some kind of evil that can only be responded to with violence), wouldn't that be the sort of thing that they arrive at after capable deliberation? When you have a person who's presented with three choices and immediately thinks, "which of these choices will make me the most deadly," you might start to worry that they're some kind of monster.

Well, I was actually a monster, in some sense of the word. Still, there was the question of why my mind immediately went there. Was it the result of what I am now? Is it some kind of survival instinct that kicked when I faced death yesterday at the hands (er, claws) of hyenas?

[You are hungry! Satiety: 50%]

Perhaps when you're facing the possibility of starving to death, a keen survival instinct is better than pontification. If I was really trying to make the rational utility calculation, maybe was best to stop rationalizing and start hunting. Besides, if I was really going to scientifically evaluate all of the "breath" skills, I needed to subject my hypotheses to experimentation. It was time to stop speculating and actually find out what this "Noxious breath" was capable of.

[Skill acquired: Noxious breath. Emits noxious gas, which deals damage over time. Scales with mouth level.]

I opened my mouth and felt something well within me. I wasn't sure what exactly it was I was feeling inside myself. Maybe some kind of air sac that had already been there and that I was only now becoming aware of. Or maybe the air sac had just now grown in the moment that I'd decided upon [noxious breath]. But whatever the case, I could feel a capability that I hadn't felt before.

I opened the air sac and exhaled. A billowing green cloud erupted from my mouth, projecting forward. The green cloud spiraled in a cone-like shape, spreading outward as came forth from my mouth. It had a smoky, wispy texture. The green color gave it the appearance of something artificial created in a lab, but as I croaked the last bit of breath from my mouth, nothing could have felt more natural.

As the breath reached its end, I shut my mouth, and felt my lips curling into a grin.