I had no idea what to expect when the town’s greatest virgin was called for. I really didn’t know how to feel about the fact that, apparently, I was the town’s greatest virgin.

Wasn’t it supposed to be teenage girls being the greatest virgins who would get sacrificed to volcanos and monsters in the forests? They weren’t wrong about me being a virgin, sure, but it was still kind of insulting to know that everybody believed I was the town’s greatest virgin.

But, I shouldn’t complain too much about that. After all, being the town’s greatest virgin is what led me to meeting her and living the life that I had always wanted to live but never thought I could.

It’s embarrassing to remember how I acted at the time.

First, I was insulted. Then, I realized that they’re not wrong and that it was perfectly logical to assume that I was the town’s biggest virgin. Finally, they had to use bolt cutters to cut off the chains I had tied and locked connecting me to my greenhouse’s door.

Whether I consented to going or not, they took me to that dreaded mountain that loomed over the town.

Dragon’s Spine Mountains.

As if the world itself grew a spine that ran from one end of the horizon to the other, it’s no surprise that the mountain range has been called so many names with “spine” included in them.

The World’s Spine Mountains.

Life’s Spine Mountains.

Or, as the locals always liked to call it, just “Spine.”

As for the “dragon” in Dragon’s Spine Mountains… well, that’s because of the dragon who lived within its center.

In a modern world of science, medicine, and hydroponics, there is no room for magic and mythical beings such as dragons. Tales existed of them, sure, but that’s all they were supposed to be.

Tales.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet, in the center of Dragon’s Spines Mountains slept a dragon. That was an irrefutable fact. Everybody knew of it, but nobody ever talked about it. Governments ignored it, scientists acted as if it didn’t exist, and nobody wanted to believe that a being powerful enough to destroy civilization could truly exist in the modern world.

Thankfully, the dragon slept. A lot. That’s what we thought, anyways. It only made demands of humanity – of my hometown, every few decades. Some decades, the demand could be as simple as a cow. Other decades, I have heard of the greatest entertainers being called for and then returning with no memories of what happened within the mountain.

The cow never returned, by the way.

Back to the dragon.

I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to say that everybody knew of the dragon. Everybody in my hometown knew since the dragon was such an important part of our history, some people who would chase UFOs and Bigfoot sightings would come to try and investigate the mountains, and all the world’s government leaders probably knew, but very few… normal people knew about the dragon. They chalked it up to being a gimmicky tourist attraction at most.

The dragon’s existence was undeniable to those in my hometown, myself included.

We were taught of brave heroes who fought to keep the dragon at bay using mystical powers, wizards who came from all over the world to put up barriers to trap the dragon within the mountains, scientists who developed weapons to slay it, and so on.

There was even a museum near the base of the mountains that showed off supposed relics such as dragon scales, holy swords, and preserved eggs from the dragon itself.

Despite that – despite the town’s history being obsessed with the dragon, despite having museums dedicated to it, and despite having a couple of movies that flopped in the box office, there was not a single depiction of the dragon that everybody could agree on.

Some depictions showed the dragon as this mountain-sized, black-scaled, fire-breathing behemoth capable of covering entire continents in its blazing flames. Others depicted the dragon as a sort of legless, winged serpent with golden scales and the ability to summon devastating storms. One country even depicted the dragon as a mutated lizard that somehow got affected by nuclear weapons despite the fact that nuclear weapons didn’t exist when the dragon’s legend began.

Well, who knows? Maybe there used to be human civilization before the modern one that had nuclear weapons and accidentally created the dragon.

There was only a single, absolute fact that was known about the dragon other than, “yeah, it exists,” and that fact was that it lived within the caves in the center of Dragon’s Spine Mountains.

And that cave is where the police took me.

“As you can see,” the local news reporter said in front of the camera that was pointed my way, “the town’s greatest virgin, Drake Hunter – wait, really? His name is Drake Hunter? That’s – oh! The police are now dropping him off at the entrance to the cave! After all that drama of him shouting that he didn’t want to leave his plants and chaining himself to his greenhouse, we’ll hopefully get to see the dragon come for the sacrifice!”

“Is this really something you should be televising?!” I shouted back at her.

They ignored me.

So, what do you do when you don’t want to be on some sort of messed up, public broadcast?

You start shouting profanities.

“Fuck! Shit! Ass! Fuckidy fuck fuck fuck! Fucking fucks!” I shouted at the top of my lungs while staring straight at the camera.

I was stressed, alright?

Both the cameraman’s and the reporter’s eyes went wide as they tried shushing me so that the news station wouldn’t face fines.

If I was going to be sacrificed to a dragon because I was too busy with my garden to have sex, then the local news channel could handle some fines.

Though, the camera panned back to the entrance of the cave as soon as a loud roar came from within.

The roar was enough to knock any lightweights onto the ground, including the reporter, and the windows on the news van shattered. The dragon was awake and coming.

For me.

Was I going to die? Was I going to be treated as some toy and then killed whenever the dragon got bored? Was I going to be turned into a toasted snack? Was I going to be forced to recite poetry and stand-up comedy to entertain the dragon?

Then I remembered I was brought to the cave because of one thing: my virginity.

Was the dragon actually some sort of pervert who was going to violate my virgin status? How would that even work? Was that even legal? Though, a dragon probably wouldn’t care about laws, and I doubt the government would care either if it meant sating a dragon’s desires to prevent the destruction of all humanity.

Another roar bellowed out from the cave. This one fluctuated in volume and intensity. If I had to describe how it sounded, I would say it sounded like that weird throat noise crocodiles make but like a yawn and about a hundred times louder.

Honestly, it took everything in me to not piss myself. Who wouldn’t be scared to the point of wetting themselves when they knew that they were being sacrificed to a powerful, ancient dragon with no knowing of what my fate would be? Sure, those entertainers that were brought before were allowed to leave, but their memories of the dragon were wiped away! What if they were only allowed to leave because they sufficiently entertained the dragon? I wasn’t a funny person. I wasn’t not creative, I was told that I have the sense of humor of a dried starfish, and – wait, I never did find out what “the sense of humor of a dried starfish” was supposed to mean.

“Can anybody see it? Is it coming?!” the reporter shouted.

I was too busy staring at the ground and holding back my bladder to look up. I was already known as the town’s greatest virgin and that guy who wouldn’t stop shouting about flowers while chained to my greenhouse’s door. I didn’t also need to be known as that guy who ruined his pants on live television.

At that point, I realized it might be a good thing if I never came back from the dragon’s cave. I wouldn’t have to deal with whatever reputation I’d have afterward if I never returned.

“We brought our town’s greatest virgin and the belongings that you requested!” the mayor shouted, standing in front of me. He was the closest one to the cave’s interior, and he was the first one to go running—almost losing his toupee in the process—once the dragon released another roar.

When I looked at my sides, I noticed that my computer, cellphone, and… a bag full of my clothes were with me.

Things were only getting more and more confusing. What would a dragon have to do with not only me, but my computer, cellphone, and clothes?

Before I was able to think about it too much, I was lifted out of the police officers’ hands that were keeping me in place, up into the air, and into the cave. It felt as if an invisible force wrapped around my entire body, squeezing me, to pull me into the cave.

My belongings were given the same treatment.

“There he goes! Good luck, Drake Hunter! Thank you for being the town’s greatest virgin! Nobody will ever forget your sacrifice!” the reported shouted with some extra sass in her voice to make up for the fines, probably.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Yeah, it was a good thing that I was probably going to die. I wasn’t dying yet, though. I was just being dragged through twisting, dark tunnels with no idea of what I was about to face.

The tunnels gradually grew wider and taller the deeper in I was pulled. Not only that, but the once-dark tunnels became illuminated by glowing crystals embedded within the walls.

I never saw crystals so beautiful before.

I didn’t care, either. I was still probably going to die by a dragon.

One final roar filled the tunnels only to be interrupted by… a cough? A gag? It sounded like the dragon was having throat problems which really sort of killed the threatening vibe going on.

As if to punish me for my thoughts on how non-threatening the gag of an interruption was, I was dropped to the ground without any warning.

It hurt my knees. Being dropped on my knees onto a hard, rocky floor wasn’t exactly a pleasant thing.

I figured that I was allowed to complain about such minor pain right before my death. If there was ever a time to be whiny, it was then.

But I was too paralyzed to whine. Not literally paralyzed, but paralyzed by fear.

I was in a massive chamber that seemed to extend forever in every direction that I looked in. Yet, no matter where I looked, the dragon was nowhere to be found. All I could see was… a small shack? From the outside, it looked like somebody tried converting a storage container into a house but had no idea of what design meant. The “windows” were just jagged holes cut into the walls, there were uneven and unmatched layers of paint coloring it, and then – and then the dragon spoke to me.

“Do you wanna play a game?” the dragon asked.

It was even worse than I thought it was going to be.

I was not only sacrificed to a dragon, but I was sacrificed to a sadistic dragon who was going to put me through all manners of torturous “games” to see how desperate I was to survive!

I knew that I was going to die and that it was likely going to be a horrible, cruel, slow death all for the dragon’s entertainment.

“Hey, come on, let’s play some vidya,” the dragon said.

The hamsters that were furiously spinning the wheel within my mind came to a halting stop, throwing them out of the wheel and around in random places to wonder what the heck was happening.

What did this dragon say? It was asking if I wanted to play… “vidya?”

How did this dragon even know what that meant? I only knew what that word meant because I’d seen it pop up on forums sometimes whenever looking up guides for video games. So, how did this dragon know what internet slang for video games was? And was this dragon actually asking me to play video games?

Was that my trial? Did I have to beat it in video games in order to survive? In that case, if it was something like Gardening Simulator 2019, I could easily win my survival! But, if the dragon wanted to compete in a first-person shooter or racing game, then I was screwed.

I didn’t even know what my soon-to-be-killer looked like yet, so I forced myself to lift my head to get a look at… her.

If it isn’t obvious yet, she looked nothing like how I expected her to look.

There was no black, scaly hide as tough as metal covering her. She wasn’t as large as a mountain, either. Instead, she had pale skin, was maybe five feet at most, and she had a messy head of hair that was almost distracting enough to make me skip over the fact that she had horns sticking out from her head, a pair of wings coming out from behind her waist, and a serpentine tail hanging off of her that slowly slid from side to side on the cave’s floor.

Perhaps the worst thing about this dragon’s appearance – and I mean worse as in completely expectation-defying, was that she had bags under her eyes. She looked like some young girl who had just spent all of last night playing video games and was now struggling to stay awake to ask if I wanted to play more video games!

“You’re the virgin, right?” she asked, her voice as young and feminine sounding as she looked.

“Y-yeah,” I mumbled out. “If… if you want to play video games, why did you ask for a virgin? There’s that one popular streamer in town who lives next door to me. Are you sure you don’t want to just… let me go and play games with him instead?”

“Ehhhh? Aren’t virgins supposed to be the best at games?”

“I think you just offended a large percentage of humanity.”

“Ehh… come on, let’s play already.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Why? Because not only was she – well, a girl, but she was naked. Her wings conveniently covering the front of her hips and her hair hanging down over her breasts were the only things keeping her from flashing me!

“Shouldn’t you – shouldn’t you at least put some clothes on before inviting random virgins to play games with you?!”

“Oh, yeah. Gimme,” she said, making grabby hands toward the bag next to me.

“Give you…  my clothes?”

“Yeah,” she said and yawned before rubbing her eyes.

Did those roars from earlier come from this girl? Seriously? There’s no way, right?

I stood up to take the bag of clothes to her which got the usual response I hear from people when they realize how tall I am.

“Woah! You’re like, huge!” she said, seemingly more full of energy than she just was moments ago. “Oh! That’s what she said!”

Did… she just “that’s what she said” herself? Do people actually do that?

“Hey, how tall are you?”

“Six foot three,” I answered.

“You’re like a giant! I feel so short next to you,” she laughed, using her wings to carry her closer to me.

That meant I had to look away from her. Without one of her wings covering her front, looking in her direction was dangerous.

“See?” she asked.

I looked down and saw her standing right in front of me.

Yeah, she was short alright. The tips of her horns barely reached my shoulders.

More importantly, with the fact that she was naked and now standing in front of me – that close to me, too… I had to stop looking before I got any thoughts. If anything were to happen, given our height differences, it would have been way too obvious.

“Oh, yeah, clothes.”

She took the bag from my hands, dug through it, and then made an, “aha!” sound before taking one of my shirts out of the bag.

It was a plain, white, oversized t-shirt. It was too big for even me, but I figured I would keep it just to sleep in and laze around in.

“Comfy,” she said, spinning around in the shirt before nodding a couple of times.

It’s way too big for her. That’s what she said. Shit, I just “that’s what she said” myself.

But seriously, the shirt looked about ready to slide off of her at any moment. It was only being held up by a single shoulder as the other end of it almost slid down her arm to her elbow. Plus, it was long enough to act like a dress, and it was since she lowered her wings enough to stick out through the bottom of it without pulling it up.

“I triggered a flag, right?” she asked.

“What are you talking about?” I asked back.

“You know, a flag. I chose the option to be cute and wear your shirt which means I should have triggered a flag for your route.”

“Sure,” I answered, having no idea what sort of flag she was talking about.

“That’s right,” she proudly said, nodding her head some more with her arms crossed over chest. “I am the queen of games. There is no flag that I can’t trigger and no route that I can’t clear.”

She yawned again.

That made me yawn.

Then she yawned because I yawned.

Then I almost yawned again, but I resisted which made her… smile?

I had no idea what was with this girl – this dragon. I still had no idea whether she planned on killing me or not, but she was acting nothing but friendly toward me. She treated me like some sort of friend rather than a snack, toy, or pet.

“So, what’s this uh, game you want to play?” I asked her.

“It’s one I made! Kind of,” she answered.

((This series is only officially posted to: scribblehub.com, acearriande.com, patreon.com/acearriande, and royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, please send me an email at acearriande.dmca@gmailcom. I will not be able to continue posting my stories for free if my series continue being uploaded without my consent to other platforms. If you have paid money for this on Amazon, email me, file a report, and request a refund as it has been stolen and illegally published.))

“You made it?”

“Yeah. I got bored of this world so I made one that’s like a game and stuff. Want to go live – play there with me? We can go on adventures, hunt monsters, defeat evil demon kings, and all sorts of things! I can add anything to the world – game that I want to.”

“Wait. You said you made a world? That’s like a game?”

“Yeah. Is that weird?”

“A world. Like, a planet with trees, oceans, life, plants, animals, all of that?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that what worlds are supposed to be like?”

“And you made it like a game?”

“Yeah. Like, imagine if you’re cooking or something, and then a status window like in RPGs pops up and says you increased your cooking skill. Sounds awesome, right?”

“That sounds like it makes no sense and would never work in any realistic world.”

“It’s not supposed to be a realistic world. It’s supposed to be a fun world.”

“A fun world, that’s like a real world, but with RPG stats like a video game, that you made?”

“Yeah. Oh, and it doesn’t have any people or demon kings or anything yet. I just added all the basic stuff and some animals. Oh, and bugs, but only the cute or cool ones. I can add those if I want to, though.”

“You’re making yourself sound like some sort of god.”

“Pfffssshhhh, naaaaaahhh,” she dismissively waved one of her hands at me. “It’s nothing that impressive.”

“You literally created a world, unless I’m being stupid and you actually mean you just programmed one.”

“Well, it’s only in a uhhhhh – I guess humans would call it a pocket dimension?”

“You literally created a world inside of a pocket dimension.”

“Yeah. So?”

I was either being screwed with or facing an actual god. I didn’t know whether to call her ridiculous or to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness for all of my past sins.

“Come on, want to check it out? I haven’t even visited it myself yet, so let’s go check it out together,” she said, reaching a hand up to me.

I lifted one of my hands to hold her own but stopped when I saw her eyes narrow.

Then her eyes went wide.

“Did… did I mess up a flag? You were supposed to hold my hand and then I’d increase your love points,” she explained, sounding genuinely shocked and defeated.

“Life isn’t some sort of video game, you know,” I told her.

“That’s why this world is boring and why I made my own.”

“I can’t believe any of this.”

“Hi, I can’t believe any of this, I’m Vryala.”

“Did you just dad joke me?”

She looked up at me with a smug smile.

“By the way, you can just call me Vala,” the supposed-to-be-a-ferocious-dragon said. “What’s your name?”

“Drake Hunter.”

She snerked and asked, “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Thanks.”

 “So, want to play some vidya now?”

“If by vidya you mean apparently go into a new world in a pocket dimension that you somehow created and made like a video game… sure.”

“Sweet,” she said and grabbed my hand, tugging me along with her into her shack of a home.

That was when I learned that dragons could be slobs.

Also that she could apparently order pizza from in there.

“Don’t you ever clean this place?” I asked.

“Ehh? Cleaning is no fun,” she answered.

Her bed sheets were on the floor, there were wires and game system controllers all over the place, a computer with a screensaver on featuring girls with fox ears, cat ears, and dog ears, and she had a small fridge that was left open with nothing but sweet drinks and junk food inside of it.

“Oh yeah, go bring your computer and stuff in here,” she said.

At that point, I was just going along with whatever she said and did exactly as she wanted.

I was starting to believe that I was actually locked up in some sort of mental asylum.

“Oh, right, I have to ask you since I don’t know. There are definitely going to be survival elements in the game, but what else do you want? Like, do you want to play like a strategy game? A horror one? A puzzle game?”

“I’ve always preferred creative games,” I answered honestly.

“Like that mining and crafting one?”

“Yeah.”

“I see. Anything you don’t like? I want this to be the perfect game for both of us.”

“Uh… I don’t really like fighting or horror, and I’m really bad at racing and puzzles.”

“That’s okay, I got bored of fighting and horror and never liked the others much anyways.”

“Is… all you do in here sit around and play games?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Do you even have internet connection in here?”

“Of course! How could I live without internet?”

“How did you live before it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Oh.”

“So, survival, crafting, and what else? Let’s pick one more genre.”

“I like strategy and tower defense games, I guess.”

“That sounds like fun, let’s do it.”

“So… a real, living world with RPG stats that also happens to be like a survival, crafting, strategy and tower defense game?”

“Sounds fun, right?” she asked, tugging on my own shirt.

“Sure.”

“You look pretty tired. Were you up playing games all night, too? As expected of the town’s greatest virgin!” she declared, sounding proud of me as she nodded her head.

She couldn’t tell the difference between stress and being tired from being a no-life gamer like herself.

“Okay, you ready?” she asked me, holding one hand out to me while her other hand reached into some sort of magical, floating orb.

I didn’t think it was possible to be ready for whatever was about to happen, but I nodded my head and grabbed her hand.

“Flag triggered,” she whispered to herself. “Oh, what should we name our world?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

She did something with that orb and everything went black. Then a single status window like one from an RPG game popped up in front of me that read:

Welcome to I Don’t Know!