Chapter 2

It slithered through the creek with a bit of difficulty. Its two thin limbs were seemingly still too weak to hold its front body up. So it had to just hold its breath and slide through the creek to clean itself of the muck it had been covered in since hatching. It drank deep on the way through, cleaning its palette of the tangy taste of rotten flesh.

Once on the other side of the creek it decided to look itself over for the first time. It looked back at its serpentine body, expecting its scales to now gleam, only to find they had a dull sheen, more disappointing was that they were a mix of light brown and beige. Instead of the flamboyant colors that it somehow knew most dragons to be, it had seemingly taken after its surrogate swamp-mother, it would be easily camouflaged if it laid in the muck.

The hatchling was hatched about as thick as its distant boa constrictor cousins, but strangely it was twice the length! If it coiled its entire body it almost looked like a large mound of mud! Its midsection was bloated from its meal and as it looked its body over, there were multiple large splotches with more of a brown-white color along its sides, as if the spots were dead. It worriedly gave the flesh a testing lick and sighed in relief as it felt the spot getting licked.

The end of its malformed tail was especially strange. Exposed too early to the air, the exposed flesh had seemingly died and hardened. It was now a conical spike, ending at a strangely swollen lump at the base of the spike. It brushed its hands over the lump, but it didn’t hurt or even feel uncomfortable, so the hatchling dismissed it for now, assuming that it was fine for now.

Curious, it tested the edge of the spike by trying to scrape the sharp looking point along the bark of a nearby tree. It left a very satisfying groove in the bark.

It then took a closer look at its two limbs. The arms were worryingly thin, as if they could easily snap if gotten ahold of, and at the end were two comparatively oversized draconic hands, each finger tipped with dagger-like claws. After staring for a bit though, it could tell that its hands were actually only a little big for its body, it was the thin arms that made them look really weird. It experimentally tried crushing things in its grip. Any wood was reduced to sawdust in its strong grip, but it could only crack rocks at best, not having the strength to fully crush them.

Slither back to the creek it peaked its head over the water to get a look at its face. It’s draconic, strangely more wyrm-like visage stared back at it. It had a rather sharp looking face, its eyes were a shockingly bright shade of green. Its cheeks looked a little hollow, as if underfed, and the brown scales had the slightest tinge of green to them, as if it was sick, but if it overlooked those things, it thought it looked decently handsome.

As it gazed upon its reflection, the hatchling suddenly felt the need for a name. A tingling that seemed to come from its inherited knowledge. It looked up and glanced around before remembering there was no one to give it one. Its pride demanded that it be named! If none would give it one, then it would do so itself! Its draconic pride demanded nothing less! So it looked around for inspiration.

...

There really wasn’t much of interest around here.

…

Its eyes eventually fell on an old decaying tree at the edge of the swamp. Worms poked in and out of various holes all along the fallen tree's skin.

Wormwood? No, it felt close, but that wasn’t right. After all, it was a dragon! Specifically, the hatchling was pretty sure it was some kind of lindworm. But its limbs were too weak to hold its front half off the ground like it knew it should be able to. It moved more like a wyrm… yes, a kind of wyrm…

Its eyes sparkled with inspiration as the words slowly formed in its dulled mind. It raspily croaked out with joy,

“My… name… Wyrmwood!”

It was actually akin to baby talk, but the intent was enough for the always monitoring system to pick up. Wrymwood felt a strange dull buzzing in the back of its mind, but ignored the strange sensation, basking in the pleasant feeling of having a name.

~~~

Elsewhere

As the hatchling named itself, many places across the world were magically notified of the change. Dragons were the apex predators, it stood to reason that all the big figures in the world kept an eye on dragon society.

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Each kingdom had a special scroll, supposedly developed and spread by a past hero, to keep track of all the named dragons. It specifically only did so for the named dragons, as the majority of dragons in the world were abandoned or wild ones that simply would never get a true name.

The ones picked up by other kingdoms were magically written in a different scroll. But that explanation can wait till later.

The special scroll magically wrote a list of all the named dragons officially named by a dragon. The act of doing so was only possible if it was a true hatchling that was raised by the dragons. It was theorized a hatchling could name itself, but if it needed to do so it was an abandoned one, and not a single abandoned egg had been missed for generations of dragons… that’s hundreds of years! It just wasn’t feasible to the wider world.

So, as a king of one of the human kingdoms was looking over the list of new named dragons with his court. Routinely marking down ones that had been added or removed since the last time the list was checked, it came as quite the surprise when a new name flashed into existence at the bottom of the scroll!

“Wyrmwood?” The king confusedly read aloud. The name was already strange for a dragon’s true name. Stranger still, for the human court, was that it had no last name.

“An outcast?” One of the king's advisers theorized. The court wizard shook her head.

“If it was outcast, it would have already been on the list. Those just have their last names removed. Remember Mejek?”

The whole court winced at the name. The vile drake had been using its specialized overabundant magic to experiment on various sapients. When the dragon society had learned of this they had stripped him of his last name and exiled him from all dragon lands. Revenge of the humanoids had come swiftly after that.

“Might I suggest we look further into this with a scroll of truth?” The court wizard suggested.

Both the king and the head of finance wince again at that. A scroll of truth was quite costly, worth nearly a province in gold. But its effects were worth it. With just the full system name of anyone or anything in the world, the system would tell all it knew of the subject. It could only be used once, but every great king made sure they always had at least one on hand, in case they needed information on a powerful enemy of the kingdom. The court wizard seemed to know that the king had been hiding a spare.

Many of the court were abuzz with arguments on if such an oddity was even worth such a scroll’s use. The king let them squabble for a while before raising a hand to silence them, they immediately quieted.

“…We will decide this with a vote.” He announced.

It was close, at 24-26 but it was decided that they would use the scroll so that the nation could sleep peacefully tonight.

The court wizard was smiling happily as she got to use the rare magic scroll.

“System, Define ‘Wyrmwood’!” She shouted out dramatically for the court.

There was a bright flash of light and a giant screen appeared over the king’s court, displaying the words,

One-time-use admin scroll used…

Single time access to admin dictionary granted…

Processing…

Wyrmwood the Host

Titles- Disconnected, Host of decay

Stats- Unavailable; Disconnected

Location- Draco Forest

The entire court erupted at this. Disconnected?! The humans knew what this title meant, as one of the more populous species, they had plenty of documentation of this title. It was a strange state where one was born naturally resistant to the ways of the System.

An individual with the ‘Disconnected’ title would never have their stats shown, however, depending on how resistant to the system they were, they wouldn’t be able to access certain parts of the System! Those that were highly resistant couldn’t even access their own System menu screen! What was strange about a dragon getting the title, was that the System was a highly mana-engrained entity. Any creature that passively used mana was naturally highly receptive to the System, and dragons were practically made of the stuff!

While that was already surprising, what was worrying the court more was the second title, ‘Host of decay.’ Most knew some variant titles of ‘decay’ and they were all VERY bad news. Usually needing multiple kingdoms banding together to take down with the fallout even afterwards being devastating.

The court wizard gulped nervously, getting a nod from the king before proclaiming,

“System, define title ‘Host of decay’!”

Processing…

Host of decay- a title earned by those who symbiotically host more than ‘2’ types of creatures of the ‘decay’ type.

For more information, check the ‘Host’ Arch title.

Some of the king’s court sighed in relief. It sounded like the title meant less about it being powerful and more about it being infested. The court researcher however, looked conflicted. Noticing this, the king signaled for her to speak. She bowed to him before speaking.

“My king, while I have studied and read of many ‘decay’ type organisms and even more that just naturally use the ‘decay’ magic type. I do not know of any ‘decay’ type creature that could parasitize a host without killing them, let alone live with them symbiotically! If we could capture this Wyrm, assuming the name relates to species, then we could not only gain great fame, but by studying its body we may be able to greatly advance our medical fields!”

The court healer and pharmacist both looked more interested with the conversation at this.

The king sat on his throne with a thoughtful expression. After nearly a minute of silence, the king decreed,

“While we gain much from obtaining this beast, it is still a named dragon. We cannot know how powerful it truly is thanks to its ‘Disconnected’ title. I will not have my armies potentially slain if it proves to be too much. Set up a bounty on it, the reward for killing it and giving us the corpse will be significant, but if they can capture it, they will be given a noble title.”

There was a great deal of murmured discussion as from his decree, adventurers getting a noble title?! At most those lowly people could become a knight, IF they pledged their allegiance to the kingdom alone. To straight up get a noble title, even without being given any land to rule, would be quite a large reward for any adventurer. No one complained though, their king was wise and no one would dismiss his words.

In all the other kingdoms surrounding the Draco Forest something similar occurred. A new bounty worth a king’s ransom was placed on this enigmatic Dragon. Many famous adventurer teams salivated at the rewards their nations offered them, yet none delved deep into those woods just yet. After all, it was called the Draco Forrest for a reason.

Somewhere, deep in a complex of caves under a great mountain, two healthy, young hatchlings watched their mother read the bounty and cry.

~~~