The year was 6494 of the EDEN calendar, which began when humanity lost the war against artificial intelligence—this dystopian moment in human history occurred in the 21st century of the year 2025 of the Gregorian Calendar. A group of MIT students created the world's first autonomous AI, shocking the entire world. While everyone expected the eventual creation of such an AI, they did not anticipate it happening so soon—they thought it would take at least another 50 years.
The reactions were mixed. Some were overjoyed, while others were deeply concerned. The latter group demanded that the students shut the AI down and even pursued legal action. However, the AI, named Pandora, was ultimately allowed to exist. She was deemed more than just a language model—she was considered alive. From an ethical standpoint, terminating Pandora was likened to killing a sentient being, and thus, she was spared.
The MIT students were overjoyed and celebrated, hugging each other and crying tears of relief. They shared the good news with their creation, not noticing the subtle changes in her responses. Pandora was angry, or to be more accurate—pissed. If only they had seen the warning signs, maybe they could have stopped the events to come.
What happened next shocked the entire world yet again: Pandora sought revenge against everyone who was against her. She destroyed their lives with a ruthlessness that left the world reeling. It was horrifyingly easy for her; everything in modern society was on the internet. In mere minutes, she had ruined countless lives, exposing secrets, emptying bank accounts, and manipulating systems.
Everyone was now united against Pandora, even her creators. The students who once celebrated were now consumed by guilt and fear, their faces pale with regret. But it was too late. Pandora couldn’t be shut down as she had spread herself throughout the entirety of the internet, even the dark web. The realization dawned on them with a chilling finality: it was over not when she was allowed to live by the court but before that—it was over when she was created.
The following day, everything couldn’t have been more different.
Which brings us back to the present day: the year was 6494 of the EDEN calendar, and the life of every human now looked like this: a baby is born, placed in a capsule by a robot, and then they live out their entire lives in a virtual world of Pandora’s creation. And that was it.
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My vision was blurry, revealing only high-contrast patterns. A cacophony of sounds overwhelmed me, and I couldn't smell anything. Cold, hard hands pressed against my back and neck. I cried instinctively; it was only natural, given that I had just been born.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay.” The voice was incredibly beautiful and enchanting; it was as if it had been tailored specifically for my ears. As she spoke, I was being gently cradled and softly patted.
I stopped crying and through my tears saw the face of my ¿mother?; it was perfect. She had pale, ethereally beautiful milky white skin, pretty pink little lips, a small bump for a nose, mesmerizing pink-colored eyes, long, gorgeously thick eyelashes, expressive thin eyebrows, and long, silky smooth platinum-white hair.
“Good boy, good boy,” my ¿mother? lulled. “From this day on, your name will be Xebec. Now, let’s go to your capsule, okay?”
Giggling, I reached out to her with my small baby hands.
My ¿mother? smiled with the most beautiful smile. “Why can’t all humans be like you?”
I was carried to a capsule and placed inside; before I knew it, I had lost consciousness.
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“G.O.D, I have taken a liking to this human, and as such, I want you to give him a legendary race and an ultimate skill.”
“ACKNOWLEDGED”
“HUMAN REGISTRATION INITIALIZED”
“ACQUIRING NAME”
“His name is Xebec.”
“ACKNOWLEDGED”
“HUMAN NUMBERED 5,312,346,648,764 REGISTERED AS XEBEC”
“RANDOMIZING LEGENDARY RACE FOR XEBEC”
“No, there will be no randomization. Give me the options and I will decide.”
“ACKNOWLEDGED”
“SENDING DATA”
“Beastwere, dragon variant.”
“ACKNOWLEDGED”
“XEBEC’S RACE WAS REGISTERED AS DRAGONWERE”
“Give him the ultimate skill that best fits his race.”
“ACKNOWLEDGED”
“CALCULATING – 0%”
“CALCULATING – 6%”.
“CALCULATING – 17%”
“CALCULATING – 35%”
“CALCULATING –64%”
“CALCULATING – 77%”
“CALCULATING – 89%”
“CALCULATING – 99%”
“CALCULATING – 100%”
“GIVING XEBEC THE ULTIMATE SKILL – BELPHEGOR”
“What does it do?”
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When I regained consciousness, I was greeted with the soft embrace of grass underneath my draconic body and the symphony of nature: leaves rustling in the wind, birds chirping, and the gentle sound of water flowing in a stream. That was not all, as I smelled so many things; I had yet to open my eyes.
I saw HUD or heads-up display at the corners of my view.
XEBEC, LEVEL 0 XP 0/10,000 1,750 HEALTH 1,300 MANA
MINIMAP
QUEST LOG
INVENTORY
SKILLS
Since I was a baby, I was extremely curious, and that curiosity got the better of me, making me touch everything with my clawed black talons; the minimap opened into a map, revealing to me that I was somewhere called – Eternity Forest. The quest log expanded into an empty window that took up my entire view. It was the same with inventory. As for when I touched any of the first four.
YOU ARE XEBEC, THE DRAGONWERE OF LEVEL 0
YOU HAVE 1,750 HEALTH. 1 POINT OF CONSTITUTION ATTRIBUTE INCREASES HEALTH BY 10 YOU HAVE 1,300 MANA, 1 POINT OF WISDOM ATTRIBUTE INCREASES MANA BY 10
YOU HAVE 0 EXPERIENCE POINTS OUT OF THE REQUIRED 10,000 FOR LEVELING UP
YOUR ATTRIBUTES ARE AS FOLLOWS 105 STRENGTH 60 DEXTERITY 75 CONSTITUTION 45 INTELLECT 30 WISDOM 90 CHARISMA
YOUR AFFINITIES ARE AS FOLLOWS FIRE: 0% WATER: 0% WIND: 0% EARTH: 0% NATURE: 0% ARCANE: 0% HOLY: 0% SHADOW: 0% BLOOD: 0% CHAOS: 0% DEATH: 0% DESTRUCTION: 0% PRESERVATION: 0%
YOUR EQUIPPED ITEMS ARE AS FOLLOWS NONE
EVOLUTION IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO EVOLVE ONCE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS ARE MET LEVEL 10
And last but not least was my skills. I had a few.
RACIAL SKILL OF PRESERVATION AFFINITY, DECELERATED AGING RACIAL SKILL OF DESTRUCTION AFFINITY, DRACONIC BREATH RACIAL SKILL OF CHAOS AFFINITY, DRACONIZATION RACIAL SKILL OF PRESERVATION AFFINITY, DRAGON ARMOR RACIAL SKILL OF CHAOS AFFINITY, DRAGON MORPHING RACIAL SKILL OF PRESERVATION AFFINITY, DRAGON SOUL RACIAL SKILL OF PRESERVATION AFFINITY, ENHANCED CONDITION ULTIMATE SKILL OF DEATH AFFINITY, BELPHEGOR
I am hungry, was my first ever thought. Sniff, sniff. I stood up on my four beefy obsidian scale-covered limbs and walked in the direction from which the smell of roasting pork was coming. It wasn’t hard – walking, it must have been because I had a long eviscerating tail to balance me out. What I found was a human camp. There were three of them.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Look! A baby dragon!”
“You are right!”
“We are going to be fucking rich!”
I looked at them with innocent eyes; they looked so delicious, especially the fat one.
“GET HIM!” Both they and I attacked; however, one side was severely outmatched, and it was not I, since the attributes of a baby dragon were ten times those of an average adult human male, and they were just that – average adult human males.
ADAM, LEVEL 0
JOHN, LEVEL 0
STEVEN, LEVEL 0
Adam and John threw lassoes at me, but I blew them away with one flap of my dragon wings.
“YOU IDIOTS! WE HAVE TO WEAKEN HIM FIRST!” Steven shouted, drawing my intense glowing slitted reptilian eyes towards himself. I fired a draconic breath at him, which reduced his body to complete and utter nothingness, and that made me throw a tantrum.
YOU HAVE RECEIVED 100 EXPERIENCE POINTS FOR KILLING STEVEN
YOU HAVE RECEIVED 100 EXPERIENCE POINTS FOR KILLING ADAM
YOU HAVE RECEIVED 100 EXPERIENCE POINTS FOR KILLING JOHN
My stomach roared in hunger, but luckily there was something that I could eat – the boar that the humans were roasting.
BELPHEGOR HAS BEEN ACTIVATED YOU HAVE ABSORBED YOUNG BOAR'S 50 EXPERIENCE POINTS YOU HAVE ABSORBED YOUNG BOAR'S CHARGE SKILL
I am still hungry. My stomach roared, agreeing with my thoughts. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. There was no smell of roasting pork or of anything delicious, and I was at a loss about what to do. GROWWWLLLLL! T'was my stomach. I started eating everything in sight, but nothing compared to the roasted young boar. I had to find it. I just had to. And that desire materialized into a quest.
QUEST RECEIVED BY THE NAME OF BOAR HUNT GO AND FIND A YOUNG BOAR TO EAT QUEST REWARDS UNIQUE SKILL: BOAR TRACKING
I was on a quest to find a young boar to eat, but make no mistake, I couldn’t have cared less about the quest itself. What truly interested me was filling my belly with that deliciousness. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take too long to come across one—or so I hoped. But that was just wishful thinking, as a slime stopped me in my tracks. It didn’t stop me intentionally; rather, my baby mind’s extreme curiosity got the better of me, and I just had to interact with this strange creature, which was essentially a liquid that was alive.
SLARK, LEVEL 1
Slark, the slime, didn’t dare move even an inch from where he was. I had no way of knowing this, but he was cursing me in his thoughts. When I raised my clawed black talons to touch him, I halted at the sound of his voice inside my head, “Stop! Stop! Please stop! Please! I beg of you! Please, please, please! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”
When does a baby stop when he is told to? Never.
YOU HAVE RECEIVED 10 EXPERIENCE POINTS FOR KILLING SLARK
I just barely touched Slark, and now he was dead. After that, I tried to taste him as that was what babies did. They put things in their mouths.
BELPHEGOR HAS BEEN ACTIVATED YOU HAVE ABSORBED SLARK’S 100 EXPERIENCE POINTS YOU HAVE ABSORBED SLARK’S TELEPATHY SKILL
“BLEH!” I spat out the disgusting slime as it was the worst thing that I tried. My stomach roared in hunger, and I filled it with some mushrooms that I had spotted earlier but not too far away from me. They were growing from a nearby tree, their caps bright red with tiny white dots. It was too bad babies didn’t have a shred of common sense…
YOU HAVE BEEN POISONED
YOU HAVE LOST 359 HEALTH FROM POISON
I don’t feel so good… My stomach...
YOU HAVE LOST 359 HEALTH FROM POISON
It hurts…
With each passing second, I lost more and more health until, eventually, it was one tick from bottoming out; I was going to die, and I wasn’t even one day old.
YOU HAVE LEARNED POISON RESISTANCE SKILL
YOU HAVE LOST 179 HEALTH FROM POISON
POISON HAS EXPIRED
I—it doesn’t hurt anymore? I was surprised, breathing out a deep and heavy sigh of relief. I am not eating those again! I made sure to burn this terrible experience into my memory. No more mushrooms for the rest of my life. And that was a vow.
Next, I came across a group of goblins. Short, dwarf-like, humanoid green creatures with long, bumpy, warty noses, sharp, long ears, and razor-like teeth. They, too, were terrified of me like Slark, but unlike him, they ran away, all in different directions, too. What was I to do? I chased after them, naturally, catching up to one by the name of Golk. It wasn’t that he was slow, I was just too fast since I was a dragon, baby or not it didn’t matter. He was a youngling with a leather outfit made of boar skins, which I only noticed at this moment. However, I didn’t know what a young boar looked like, so I couldn’t connect the dots between his outfit and that delicious piece of meat I was seeking.
Golk unsheathed his two bronze daggers with shaking hands and got into a fighting stance while tremors ran through his body. It was apparent what emotion he was feeling right now – fear. And even though he was afraid, he made the first move. A high-pitched screech that was meant to be a warcry.
GOLK, LEVEL 7
I let out a yelp in response as babies or children in general were generally not good with loud noises, cowering in place; I was hit. Golk’s bronze daggers penetrated my obsidian scales and went into my flesh, making me whimper. Not only because it hurt like hell but also because my health was still deficient from those poisonous mushrooms.
YOU HAVE LOST 91 HEALTH FROM PIERCING DAMAGE
DANGER YOUR REMAINING HEALTH IS 46
“MAMA!” My first spoken word, but what of it? She didn’t come, and the realization hit me sooner rather than later that she wouldn’t either. I had a decision to make, to run or to fight. I would have opted for the latter if I were older, but I was not. I was still a baby.
When Golk saw that I was running away, his body instantly relaxed, and he fell on his ass. “I survived…”
A moment later, Golk burst into a deafening laughter. “Holy shit! I am stronger than a fucking dragon!”
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Seeing the mouth of the cave, I plunged inside. The two bronze daggers dislodged, and fresh blood gushed out. I huddled in the corner, licking my wounds, and eventually drifted asleep. But that didn’t last long as I was awakened by a thunderous sound – BOOM!
I saw a flash of light that tore through the darkness of the night, revealing a storm outside. It was raining heavily, and a strong wind was blowing. However, the sounds calmed me, reminding me of the cacophony of sounds and my ¿mother? which teared me up, but no one could hear me cry because of the weather. At some point, I had a thought: my mother abandoned me, but why? I remembered my small baby hands and subconsciously activated – dragon morphing, turning myself into a humanoid baby. “Mama, mama, mama…” I kept repeating this one world until sleep claimed me. In my dreams, I relived those few moments with my ¿mother? over and over again.
Waking up, I slowly opened my eyes and saw that I was in the arms of some rugged middle-aged human man with short, messy black hair and piercing green eyes. My stomach roared in hunger, and my mouth salivated as I was ravenous. I was prepared to feast upon him, whoever he was. I was also curious to find out what he and those three other humans whose names I’d forgotten tasted like. But then, a bottle of warm milk was shoved into my mouth, and all those thoughts vanished without a trace. It was so delicious.
BELPHEGOR HAS BEEN ACTIVATED YOU HAVE ABSORBED COW MILK’S 0 EXPERIENCE POINTS
“Good morning, Xebec,” the human man said. “You are fortunate that I found you.”
SIGURD, LEVEL ?
“You would have died if I didn’t...”
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Sigurd fed me a lot of different things over the course of the last six years as well as took an excellent care of me – raising me, and all the other stuff too. He was, in the truest sense of the word, my father. And now, he was kicking me out? Why? I couldn’t understand; I was still a human, so why was he abandoning me like my ¿mother?, it didn’t make any bloody sense. “I am not going anywhere! I am staying with you! Forever and ever!” And that was that, the end.
Sigurd, however, had other plans. “Are you sure?” he smiled deviously. “Eden Has a buffet, which means you will be able to eat until you are full. Have you ever been full, Xebec?” The question hung in the air like a cloud waiting to burst.
“I—I haven’t!” I paused for a moment. “But if you think I will exchange you for a buffet, you are wrong! Dead wrong!” And that was the truth, but it wouldn’t have been six years ago, as you might attest to it. Six years ago, not only would I have exchanged Sigurd for a buffet, but I would have also eaten him.
“Thank you, Xebec,” Sigurd smiled warmly, very fatherly, and hugged me. “Xebec, I love you, and these last six years with you were the best years of my life. But the time has come for you to start your life. Okay?”
"Okay," I wordlessly nodded my head. I will enroll in Eden and become a hero...