Agony.
It felt like someone was swinging a hammer, again and again, against his forehead through a thick quilt.
Jake's consciousness was yanked out of a sea of Chaos.
He tried to open his eyes, but there was only viscous darkness. He tried to move his limbs, yet it felt as if he were stuffed inside a cramped can, submerged in warm fluid, unable to stir.
Where am I?
Wasn't I grinding ranked matches in pokémon Scarlet/Violet all night? I just KO'd that guy's Baxcalibur with a Terastalized Steel Beam—what…? Rumble—
A dull boom echoed outside the "can," followed by the roar of some colossal creature. The sound carried a primal pressure that sent ripples through the liquid around him.
Jake was stunned.
What is this, the latest full-immersion VR? The tactile feedback, the audio—way too real. Even the claustrophobia of being locked in a pitch-black box was perfectly simulated.
He struggled, but his body refused to obey. All he felt was an instinctive impulse—a wild craving to smash through this shell and rush outside.
Survival instinct drowned out human reasoning.
No more thoughts of games. Following that impulse, Jake hurled every ounce of strength against the wall encasing him.
Bang!
His head throbbed.
It felt like he'd slammed into a hard curved surface. Besides making his head spin, the "wall" hadn't budged.
Again!
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
He didn't know how long he'd been at it—a day? Two?
Inside that dark, sticky void, time meant nothing. He went from full strength to total exhaustion, then kept going on nothing but the thought: break out or die.
His strength was almost gone.
Just as he felt awareness sinking away…
Crack…
A faint fracture sounded from the spot his head had struck.
Hope!
Jake's spirit surged; clutching that last straw, he gathered every remaining scrap of strength into his head.
Open… for… me!
Crack—!!
With a sharp shatter, freezing air and blinding light poured in.
Unfamiliar cold made his newborn body convulse; the glare stabbed his eyes.
He tumbled and crawled through the hole.
Once fully out of the eggshell, he had nothing left. Covered in sticky fluid, he collapsed onto cold stone, gasping.
After a while Jake recovered enough to move.
He forced his heavy eyelids up and wearily surveyed the area.
A colossal cave stretched before him, the ceiling lost in darkness; only a few glowing crystals cast dim light. The air reeked of sulfur mixed with blood, sickening to breathe.
Scattered across the cavern lay heaps of huge eggshell fragments like the one he'd just escaped.
Farther off, titanic shadows loomed in the dark, their slow breathing roaring like bellows.
A dragon lair?
The thought popped into his mind unbidden.
He instinctively lowered his head to check his limbs.
Then he saw.
They weren't human hands.
It was a short, thick claw covered in drab, lusterless scales; the dull gray nails looked blunt and brittle.
Jake's heart iced over.
He numbly lifted the "hand," studying his body—same gray scales, stubby limbs, a stumpy tail.
This design… was hideous.
As if the Creator had doodled while half-asleep.
At that moment a small commotion sounded in the distance.
He turned to see another newly hatched whelp stepping gracefully from a pile of silvery-white shells.
Its body was sheathed in scales that shimmered like moonlit silver, its form slender and elegant. Two refined horns glowed with faint mana, and ruby eyes held innate pride.
Silver Dragon.
The unfamiliar term surfaced in Jake's mind.
He glanced again at his own dull "budget skin." Compared with that Silver Dragon whelp, he was a lump of roadside mud.
No—mud was prettier.
Suddenly a torrent of chaotic memories slammed into him.
A spike of pain wrung a cry from him; he curled up, twitching on the cold ground.
Alien memories sped through his head like a documentary on fast-forward.
Dragon Clan… the world of Azeria… supreme rulers…
Bloodline theory...a rigid pyramid of Ranks...Gold Dragon, Silver Dragon, Red Dragon, Blue Dragon...and...Earth Dragon.
At the very bottom of the Dragon Clan Bloodline chain, a born inferior species.
Frail bodies, unable to fly, devoid of talent for Draconic Magic, treated by other Dragon Clan as servants, food, or even a joke.
When the Fusion of memories ended, Jake lay on the ground, eyes vacant.
He understood everything.
He had Transmigrated, and it was a soul Transmigration at that.
He'd arrived in a world of sword and magic, reborn as a Dragon.
Sounds cool?
No, not at all.
What he'd become was the lowest of the low in this world's Bloodline despise chain—an Earth Dragon.
I'm finished...
Jake's heart turned to ash.
This starter roll is trash...I drew a Magikarp, only to find the world has no water—no chance to learn Splash at all...
He was barely holding it together.
In a world where Bloodline decides everything, being born an Earth Dragon means your life—no, your Dragon life—has already been sentenced to death.
And it was an abandoned Earth Dragon egg, with no scent of Dragon Mother; food supply isn't guaranteed either.
No mighty strength, no ability to fly, can't even learn decent magic.
What can he do?
Serve those noble True Dragons as a servant? Or dig in the mines his whole life like the Earth Dragons in memory, then die as expendable labor?
Gurgle...
A fierce hunger twisted his stomach, yanking him back from the abyss of despair.
His body craved energy.
Little Earth Dragon struggled to stand, tottered a few steps; its frail body could barely keep balance.
A palm-sized black lizard darted from a crevice beside its feet.
Food!
Instinct flared; without thinking, the Little Earth Dragon pounced.
But its clumsy body couldn't keep up—one stumble, face-first, a classic face-plant.
The lizard merely tilted its head, then strolled away unhurried, as if mocking the attempt.
After several more tries, and even a beating from other Earth Dragons
Jake lay on the ground, too weak to lift his head.
Frustration.
An unprecedented frustration swallowed him.
A veteran pokémon player who knew tactics, base stats, move synergy inside-out, now couldn't beat a starter-zone critter.
Nearby, a few grey Young Dragons that had just hatched were savagely tearing and rolling for scraps of meat fallen from above.
One scrawny Earth Dragon, having snagged a slightly larger piece, was instantly pinned by two others; claws and teeth left bloody gashes.
It shrieked in agony yet still clutched the food in its jaws.
A scene primal, savage, reeking of blood.
Jake felt a chill to his bones.
This is the Earth Dragon's lot: even basic food must be fought for with life.
And he, a newborn who could barely walk—what could he compete with?
Jake noticed his body differed from other Little Earth Dragons.
Bulkier torso, shorter limbs...apparently a deformed runt.
The shell?
An Earth Dragon's eggshell is nothing like the nutrient-rich shells of True Dragons.
A wave of deep exhaustion washed over him.
This was countless times harder than any hardcore survival game he'd played.
In games you can reload a save;
here, death is the end.
The Little Earth Dragon dragged its weary body to a secluded corner, away from the food-fighting kin.
It curled up, burying its head under its stubby foreclaws.
What now?
Lie flat as a "disabled Dragon," waiting to die?
Or...struggle?
But how?
Bang its head against noble Dragons preaching equality? Or talk win-win cooperation with starving kin?
Not looking good.
This world isn't D&D; it's more a Japanese-style sword-and-magic setting.
All he could do seemed to be finding a comfy posture and quietly wait for death.
Owww...so hungry...the deformed Little Earth Dragon lay on cold rock, feeling time slip by, consciousness blurring.
Fine...at least no more hunger and cold.
As his mind faded, about to give up thought entirely
a faint blue light appeared without warning before his eyes.
A hallucination?
Jake wondered idly.
People do see weird things before death.
Yet the blue dot didn't vanish; like a computer booting, it expanded, stretched, until a semi-transparent data panel unfolded before him.
An interface style he knew all too well.
Clean lines, clear data sections, full of tech, jarringly out of place in this sword-and-magic world.
At the panel's top, a line of bold text made Jake's eyes snap wide, breath stopping.
[Template: Garchomp]
[Current Form: Gible]