Head throbbing, Max woke up, this time for real. He swore he could still feel those pangs of pain all throughout his body. For as awful as that dream was, he was glad it was over.

Strangely enough, he felt rather snug as he was. A soft warmth seemed to blanket him like... well, a blanket. He couldn't recall his bed ever being this comfortable, but he wasn't complaining. Him and coziness went together like peanut butter and jelly. His mind was already awake, unfortunately, which meant he had to at least start getting up.

Opening his eyes slowly, he noticed that everything was still dark. Though his first thought was that he just woke up in the middle of the night, he realized that he would still see the glow of his monitors. He waited for his sight to adjust before figuring out why they weren't on.

When it did, his heart dropped. This wasn't his room. He was surrounded by something that he couldn't make out with heavy darkness.

Doing his best to keep his calm, Max tried to touch it. When he failed to move at all, any semblance of calm was thrown out the window with total panic. Did somebody kidnap him? Did they bury him alive?! These horrific possibilities only made him thrash around harder and harder.

To his astonishment, his flailing actually managed to do something. Whatever it was that surrounded him had cracked. The thin streams of light now penetrating his prison spurned him further. Each violent jerk he made widened the crack. With one final push, the crack turned into a hole.

His initial joy turned to shock as he started to move towards the hole he had made. Once he reached it, the entirety of his confinement exploded, leaving him to tumble out.

The light he fought to reach blinded him as he now lay on the ground. Waiting for his eyes to adjust yet again, he patted the ground happily. His heart was still racing, and he could do little to fix that other than place a hand on his chest.

Wait... whose hand is this? Eyes given enough time to peak a bit, he looked down. It was covered in white scales and had huge nails on each digit.

His eyes jolted open at the sight, only to end up painfully squinting since they weren't quite ready. What in the world was going on here? He brought it closer. Flexing each of the fingers individually and waving it around, Max couldn't deny that this was his hand.

By the time he had finished his little experiment, his eyes were finished, allowing him to look down at the rest of his body. The first thing he noticed was the thing under his eyes. Instead of a nose and lips, he now had a long snout. He raised his strange new hand to feel at it, accidentally pricking himself with one of those wicked nails. Rubbing at the spot carefully, he noted that his depth perception was off as well.

His entire body seemed to be covered in those same white scales, except down his middle. Those down his middle were a more of a light grey and were significantly wider, looking more like stacked plates.

But of these changes, he was equal parts horrified and enraged about the singular thing that stayed the same: his weight. His belly was still so far outwards that he had issue seeing past it, and his limbs were still as thick as they'd ever been. Even now as his body was alien to him, that paunch stubbornly followed.

"Oh come on!" Max complained to nobody, surprised at how squeaky he sounded. He tested this with a few more words, sounding like one of those kids playing games that they shouldn't be. This comparison was more apparent as he uttered a couple of curses.

With his anger spent for now, he attempted to roll himself over and gather his bearings. Rocking back and forth, he managed to get onto all fours. His entire spine itched as he did, but he paid it no mind at the moment.

Attempting to stand as he normally would proved impossible. His new legs, though he couldn't see them well, didn't feel like they were bipedal friendly. That itch pestered him again, demanding he deal with it. In his effort to scratch at it, he discovered two more things; a pair of fleshy growths on his back, and a tail. Max barely even questioned it at this point.

Trying to move the tail was simultaneously a strange feeling and almost instinctive. Once in his peripheral vision, he saw that it was lined with soft ridges and ended in a point.

Seeing how thick it was gave him an idea. He tried standing up once more, this time with his new appendage as a third leg. It's addition propped him up successfully, but it felt unnatural and wrong. Making steps like this looked to be out of the cards as well; his legs weren't strong enough to keep balance by themselves, even with his tail. He learned this the hard way as he fell onto his face against the stone floor.

Grumbling as he was forced to use all fours to do anything, he finally looked at his surroundings. He was in some cave with a large hole in the ceiling, and a body of water in the corner. Moss covered a large portion of the walls near the water. Looking behind him, he saw that he had actually come out of a giant, glossy egg. Much to Max's frustration, the only way out looked to be through the ceiling hole, which may as well be impossible to reach.

"Okay Max," the young not-man started to reassure himself, "you don't know where you are, you're trapped in some random cave, and you're not human anymore. It's fine though, you'll figure this out." He looked down at his hand. "Just wish I knew what I am now."

Max unintentionally screamed in an even higher pitch as a glowing box appeared right in front of him.

Your race is designated: Dragon (Hatchling)

Once he had settled down, Max looked at the text window, barely registering what it had said before it changed. Focused as he was on this bizarre awakening of his, he had almost forgotten about that dream. An uneasy feeling in his gut was telling him that maybe, just maybe, that wasn't a dream.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

A tutorial of the system is available to newcomers. It is recommended for those unfamiliar to the concept.

Would you like a tutorial?

[Y/N]

The concept of what? This 'system' thingy? While real-life game mechanics were about as jarring as one would expect, he'd consumed plenty of media that had touched on similar ideas. Max had at least a good idea of what this might all entail, but this could be life or death for him if he just winged it. His decision then was a no-brainer.

He raised a finger to hit yes, angling it to make sure his new nails didn't mess anything up. They weren't the problem.

Tutorial declined. Your confidence has been noted.

Max stared with his mouth agape. He fat fingered the prompt. A cold shiver crept along his spine as reality set in. Before he could express this, another box, this one red, popped into view.

M.O.M. sub-system creator Tiamat wishes to contact you.

Accept?

[Y/N]

The shiver grew worse. Whatever option he chose, Max was sure he wasn't going to like it. Ignoring a god was unlikely to be the better of them though, so he hit yes, carefully this time. The moment he did, he could feel another presence in his mind.

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?" Tiamat screamed in his head.

Max, dazed from the loud blast, responded, "Could you please chill out a little?"

"You can speak to me with your thoughts you moron. Of course, you might know this if you just took the damn tutorial!" She was still angry, but she did seem to lower her volume.

"Oh," Max thought as he tested this out, "neat."

Now sounding more disappointed than anything, Tiamat asked, "Why didn't you just take it?"

"I was going to! My stupid fat fingers got in the way!" As Max said this, he got angry himself, frowning. "Speaking of that, WHY AM I STILL SO FAT?"

"Look, making you a dragon leaves little room for fixing prior issues. You have much greater potential like this than you would otherwise. Would you rather I have made you a salamander?"

"I'd rather have stayed a human."

There was a short silence before Tiamat responded. "Well I can't make human bodies. I'm the mother of monsters, not of men."

Max also was silent for a moment. "What am I supposed to do now then?"

"Make do. You have a high aptitude, perhaps you'll be able to figure it out yourself."

Aptitude? Why that word specifically?

"Hey wait, you're not going to help me?!" Max thought with terror as his tail started jittering uncontrollably.

"I only have so much time I can give to any one chosen. My sub-system will be able to answer any questions related to itself, but nothing more. Prove you are worth more of my attention and you shall have it. Goodbye." With that, his head housed only his own thoughts once more.

This goddess literally wants the world from him, and she can't spare more than a few minutes to get him going? Certainly gets the noggin joggin'. Well, nothing else to do but try and figure out how this stuff works. He'd be a real chump if he ended up dying the same day he was reborn.

First things first, he needed to see that character sheet. All the different sources he'd seen had their own ways of bringing them out. He held out a palm and tried to imagine the screen popping up. Nada. He rattled off a few different words and phrases such as status, menu, pause, and overview. None of them did the trick.

As he was testing out the different methods, a stray thought made him think of his new body. It was a surface level thing, something he might think of in the odd occasion he decided to take a shower. Was he still Max like this? At this, the screen he had seen once before popped back up.

Name: Max Magnus Makenzie

Jobs: None

Race: Dragon (Hatchling)

Karmic Inclination: Chaotic Aggressor

HP: 50

MP: 50

END: 2

MET: 8

DEX: 6

STR: 3

APT: 10

POW: 10

Perks: Tiamat's Chosen

It looks like this system was more than willing to answer this semi-philosophical question for him. Quick to figure out how he'd done it, he tried closing it with a thought. When it did, he tried summoning it with different variations of his name, vocal and mental. It did so for every attempt he had made, even the very vague 'me'.

"Alright, got that down," he trailed as a claw of his hovered over the window, "now what does any of this mean."

While the ever present 'HP' and 'MP' spoke for themselves, some of the other stats were a different story. MET? APT? He hoped he would see a tool tip in a moment, or this could be a problem. He pressed and held a claw against the box labeled MET, holding his breath.

METTLE: 8

METTLE is your mental fortitude. This stat determines how well you handle attacks against your psyche and willpower. In addition, it makes up one half of your spell resistance.

Bingo! Max was glad that this system's UI was up to more modern standards. He planned to read over the rest of this to try and grasp how it worked, but then realized a difference in the stats.

Though a bit hazy, he swore he had seen bigger numbers before. As he focused on it more, he remembered what he had seen in that void. One, two... four of these stats were lower! Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised, given he was technically just born minutes ago, but he was annoyed all the same. The fact that what he assumed was strength stayed the same was just extra salt on the wound.