[You are hungry! Satiety: 90%]

Presuming that I had started at 100 percent satiety, that meant that I had exhausted 10 percent since hatching, just...an hour ago? If 10 percent satiety was only enough to get me through an hour, that meant I had to eat to full satiety at least once every ten hours, or more than two meals to full satiety each twenty-four hour day. However, I didn't really have any idea of how much time had passed, or if days here were twenty-four hours.

If I had the time, I could find something that cast a shadow to construct a rudimentary sundial, but sundials didn't measure time in absolute terms; since they were based on the movement of the sun, they only gave an idea of how much time had passed relative to the length of the day. There was no telling whether days here were the same twenty four hours I was used to. Though, rather than measuring the duration of day based on the length of an hour, it probably made more sense to measure the duration of an hour based on the length of a day.

It seemed safe to assume that the days in this world had a fixed length, and that length could then be partitioned into twenty four equally-sized units of time which I could call "hour." If the definition of an "hour" in this world differed from the hours I was used to back on earth, it didn't really matter particularly, given that I hadn't brought a clock with me. The only thing I had was my own bearings and sense of time, and I didn't even have my human bearings; I had a dragon body, and the "objective" definition of an hour probably mattered a lot less than how time felt to me in this body.

Assuming I had hatched from the egg at full satiety, I had exhausted ten percent of my available food reserves, which meant that whatever unit of time had just passed, I had perhaps nine times that length of time before I hit the starvation point. Or maybe I had longer than that. I didn't know exactly how my metabolism affected my hunger rate; it could be that my metabolism was lower when I wasn't moving. At the very least, I probably burned through my food reserves slower while sleeping. And for that matter, I probably burned through them faster when moving. I had just spent quite a bit of time testing the limits of my body, and while half an hour of fairly vigorous exercise didn't seem like a lot, it was far more than my hatchling body was used to.

Whatever the case, it was time for me to find something to eat.

I eyed a small loose rock, and poked it with my claw, watching it wobble on the flat hard ground. Could this be a possible source of nutrition? Even hot-blooded mammals benefited from trace amounts of minerals, and in my monster form, maybe I could even metabolize this rock and convert it into some kind of nutrition. If I were a golem or some creature that resembled a living statue, I'd take a chance on this rock. Maybe it was still worth taking a chance on it as a dragon. In a moment of impulse, I bent down and lapped up the rock with my tongue. It slid down my throat and I swallowed it without any difficulty. The floating [hunger] meter didn't budge. On the plus side, it didn't seem to upset my stomach at all.

[Monster trait: Carnivore. Consume the remains of fallen creatures as food.]

"Fallen creatures" had an ominous sound to it. It also left the interesting question of whether a rock golem, if defeated, would count as a "fallen creature" eligible for consumption. Then again, the question of whether rock golems and other non-fleshy creatures existed in this world still remained to be answered. Having seen evidence of elves, cyclopes, and dragons, I assumed anything was on the table, but maybe only flesh-beasts roamed this world.

Well, at least my little experiment with consuming a rock had given me a bit information. In addition to rocks apparently not being nutritionally useful, it seemed like plant life was also off the table. That was something interesting to contend with: being a "carnivore" meant fruit wasn't viable as a food source, even if I was lucky enough to find it. Still, where there was fruit, I could probably find fruit-eating fauna, and fruit-eating fauna seemed like the type of fauna least likely to fight back if I decided to make a meal out of it.

But from where I stood I could see no fruit, nor any trees, for that matter.

It seemed that there was no nutrition available here, unless birds intended to descend from the sky and willingly offer themselves as tribute, and I saw no birds, not even the self-preserving sort of birds that might know better than to fly within reach of hungry dragon hatchlings. However, while this plateau didn't have any prey to hunt, it did offer me one important thing: a vantage point.

I walked to the edge, taking the time to survey my surroundings in greater detail. The plateau I stood on appeared to be situated in a gorge or canyon of some sort, with large rock formations surrounding it. But was this the sort of valley that existed at a low elevation, or a winding passage that existed at high elevation, carved through the upper reaches of a mountain range? The difference mattered a great deal. If this was near mountainous peaks, then my pursuit of food would probably best be served by heading to a lower elevation. But if this was a point of low elevation, then maybe my best move was to ascend. So, which was it?

Looking up, I saw enough jagged formations that seemed to suggest the kind of rocks that might be formed by volcanoes, the kind you might find in a mountain range. The very plateau that I stood on was probably the result of volcanic activity as well, the kind you might find nearer mountains' peaks or summits. That meant that if I wanted to find fertile hunting grounds, I was probably better off trying to descend. This canyon was completely dry, but there might still be some lake if I followed it downward, or maybe an ocean.

That was old-world thinking, though. On earth, canyons and valleys only existed because something formed them, like a winding river, which you could follow to larger body of water where the river ended. But if this were an artificial sort of world that had been designed by hand, its creator might have designed things this way simply for aesthetic reasons. A mountain on earth had to have some kind of proximate cause; mountains were the result of volcanic activity. A mountain formation in a story or an imagined world might exist only because its creator had a certain affinity for mountains.

So what kind of story did this setting tell?

The rocks were baked hard by the sun, much like the rocks in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near where I had moved for post-grad. I wasn't a geologist, but I knew that the sun seemed to beat harder in Denver because the air was thinner. Higher elevation suggested a summit, confirming my earlier theory. More significantly, though, this valley in which I found myself in unmistakably said "desert." More specifically, it said "hot."

I didn't feel hot. But maybe that was just a natural dragon-born affinity for heat. My character sheet didn't list any traits related to heat resistance, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I might learn about my body's heat resistance if I ever found a fire to experiment with. My reptilian scales certainly made me seem at home in a desert environment.

More specifically, this was a place where a dragon was born. What seemed like a more likely location for a dragon's birth: a valley near sea level, or the summit of a mountain?

The more I thought about this plateau being formed from hardened magma, the more it seemed to fit with the idea of a designed world. I wasn't exactly sure where I had emerged from, and the fact that my egg had been planted on a flat plateau seemed to counter the notion that dragon eggs might be forged in the fiery crucible of a volcano's interior, but the mountain peak idea just seemed to fit better. Intuitively, it seemed like it would be prudent for me to try and descend.

Intuition didn't seem like much to go on when I was betting with my life, but maybe my intuition was better than I thought. After all, most animals seemed to be born with some kind of survival instinct, something deep in their DNA that guided them toward food or spawning grounds or whatever else they needed to ensure the continuation of their genetic heritage. Was intuition so different from instinct? Or did the fact that I was evidently capable of higher reasoning mean that I was expected to reason my way through the puzzle of how to survive, rather than operate solely on instinct?

Whatever the case, it seemed clear that I had seen all there was to see, and I wouldn't find any more answers wallowing in my own thoughts. Leaving the plateau would hopefully lead me closer to food, and if I didn't find food I would at least find more information.

Earlier, I had already determined the point at which the slope down from the plateau offered the most gradual decline, so I walked across the plateau to reach that point. As I walked, I felt crunching under my feet, and looked down at a few shards of the egg I had hatched from. They looked...well, at the very least, they looked more edible than the rock I had experimented with earlier, and swallowing that hadn't hurt me. I lapped up some of the egg shell fragments. It had a sort of muted, slightly bitter flavor. That, combined with the rough grainy texture of the egg shell, made it feel chalk-like in my mouth. I swallowed, and perceived just the slightest movement in my "hunger" meter, but it stayed at 90 percent. Did it really move? I lapped up several more egg shell fragments, and again saw the meter appear to budge slightly.

I continued lapping up the remains of my egg shell until I finally saw my hunger meter change to 91 percent. Hmm. The fact that my hunger meter seemed to have moved incrementally several times before finally ticking over from 90 to 91 percent seemed to indicate that there were actually multiple discrete values that displayed as 90 percent. My "health" and "stamina" appeared to be fixed integers (HP: 20/20 and SP: 10/10, respectively), but it seemed possible my hunger was a floating point, and a reading of 90 percent could mean 90.0 percent or 90.3 percent rounded down to the nearest percentage point.

In other circumstances, I might have taken the time to experiment further to get a more thorough understanding of how the hunger meter worked, but for now, it seemed like enough just to know that tiny bits of food could collectively make a modest dent in my hunger meter. I ate up the remainder of my egg shell (the hunger meter budged a bit more but the numerical reading remained at 91 percent) and made my way to the part of the plateau with the shallowest grade and considered how best to descend safely. That "shallow grade" was still pretty close to being vertical, but extremely steep was better than a sheer drop.

For a moment, I considered the idea of descending bottom first, facing the surface and gripping it with my front claws climbing down in much the same way that a human might climb up a boulder. However, my rear claws seemed equally capable of gripping the rock surface. After considering whether to slide down the grade forward on my belly or to slide backwards with my rear pointed downward, I finally settled on the latter, deciding that if I lost control of my descent and slid out of control, I would probably be doing myself a favor by not descending head first. Besides, my center of mass was closer to my tail than my head, so descending tail first would make it easier to maintain my balance.

I gripped the surface of the plateau with my front claws and swung my tail and back legs downward, quickly finding purchase with my rear claws. I began by moving tentatively, moving one claw at a time while using the other three to stable myself. I continued at this cautious pace for several minutes until the slope became less steep, allowing me to switch to moving two claws at a time. I steadied myself with my front right and rear left claws as my front left and rear right claws swung downward, then did the same movement again, alternating between the sets of claws so that I was able to descend at a pace that felt comfortably safe without being too grueling a pace.

As I reached the bottom of the slope, I did a check on my hunger meter. 87%. At first glance, the number didn't seem too concerning, but it indicated that my descent from the plateau represented around 4% of the satiety that I had started with. Climbing a surface that was nearly vertical was time consuming, even if I wasn't working against gravity. Fortunately, the downward slope of the valley was much more gradual, meaning that I would be able to descend just by walking, rather than clinging to a sheer surface and making my way down inch by inch.

I began walking, and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement. I swiveled my scaly neck just in time to see what appeared to be a large insect scurrying away, though the word 'insect' almost didn't do it justice -- it appeared to be roughly the size of my head.

Insects. Surely insects counted as "creatures," and could therefore serve as a source of food for a growing carnivore, right? I'd always been told that crickets were a good source of protein.

I hurried after the large insect as fast as my legs would carry me.

[Ability: Sprinting. Increased movement speed while running. Drains stamina.]

As I continued running, I noticed my stamina bar was flashing. Was it worth it to spend stamina to chase down an insect? Would my stamina replenish after I was done sprinting? It seemed there was only one way to find out.

With my increased speed, I quickly closed the distance between me and the insect. It had the shape of an ant, though it was much larger than any ant I'd ever encountered. Without giving it much thought, I reached out and swiped at it with my front claw. I heard what sounded like the 'tink' of metal hitting metal as my claw bounced off the ant's rock-hard exoskeleton. Actually, more than rock hard: my claws could dig into rock (as evidenced by my successful reverse-climb earlier), but evidently they couldn't crack this ant's shell with a glancing blow.

The over-sized ant continued scurrying away from me, and I ambled after it at my more moderate non-sprinting pace before it became evident that the ant was moving faster than I was. My claws had only left a scratch mark on the ant's exoskeleton -- if they had even scratched it at all. The ant seemed too small to pose any threat to me, but continuing to chase the ant would consume more of my stamina, and I had no guarantee that I would be able to defeat it even if I did manage to catch up to it. I was pretty sure that if it came down to a fight to the death between me and the ant, I would find some way to win, but the problem with hunting prey is that it seldom wants to engage you in a fight to the death -- a creature more concerned with fleeing than fighting back has to be outsped or cornered in some way.

Maybe the ant had a limited supply of stamina that it was burning as well, and maybe if I continued to chase the ant, I might eventually catch up with it, but I got the feeling that due to its size, the ant had an easier time sprinting than I did. (It was bigger than any ant I'd ever seen, being roughly the size of my own skull, but that still made it significantly smaller than I was.) And chasing the ant to test that theory seemed like an ill-advised proposition since I still wasn't sure how my stamina worked. It seemed like simple intuition that a creature with more mass would require more energy to keep moving

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[Stamina points: 9/10]

I probed at the character sheet, hoping to invoke some kind of tooltip that might tell me at what interval I might expect my stamina to regenerate, but no such information arrived. I was beginning to get annoyed with how stingy this world's designer seemed to be with giving out information about my capabilities -- it wasn't until I had started chasing the ant that I even learned sprinting was a possibility.

Perhaps this was the cost of choosing "power" over "knowledge." It already seemed that I had more abilities than I was aware of, which might be advantageous in the long term after I learned everything I was capable of, but for the moment, I just found it frustrating.

I marched forward on craggy ground. The ground's texture bothered me. It wasn't that the cragginess made it difficult to traverse; my legs navigated the uneven ground without any difficulty and I ambled ahead without the slightest fear of stubbing my claw or misstepping. Were I a human or some other sort of bipedal being, I might have had more difficulty, but I had the advantage of moving on four limbs, which was a lot easier than walking erect and upright. My feet were also covered in stiff protective scales, not like soft fleshy human feet that might start bleeding if forced to travel over this kind of craggy ground barefoot.

The ground's cragginess bothered me because of the story it seemed to tell: this canyon path didn't seem do be carved by flowing water or any sort of weathering or erosion. Riverbeds were covered with smooth stones, and canyons carved by the flow of water were often marked by smooth rocks, not rough and jagged ones like the ones I was stepping over. That left several possibilities: it could be this world's creator had carved this canyon with divine hands that didn't work in the same way that natural phenomena like floods or wind did. There was also another theory that didn't suggest any kind of divine sculpting: this canyon might have originally been carved by a winding river, and then later been covered by the lava of a volcanic eruption. That would explain how a canyon carved by a river could have such a rough surface. Volcanic activity would also explain the existence of the plateau that I had originally descended from.

The question was, if this ground was the result of volcanic activity, how recently had this canyon been covered with lava? It could have been years ago, or perhaps centuries ago -- a century might be a long time for a living being, but on a geological timescale it was scarcely the blink of an eye. If I found myself caught in some kind of volcanic eruption without wings to provide an easy means of escape, how would I fare? I paused for a moment and looked at my scaly feet. They looked tough, but I didn't exactly have the look of a legendary dragon with scales forged in a fiery crucible. I might be able to endure temperatures beyond what most mammals were capable of, but if I ever found myself confronted with magma, I wasn't sure I liked my chances.

Well, there was no sense in continuing to fret over it. I followed the path through the canyon, continuing my search for any sort of creature that I might make into a meal. I wandered through the basin, following a path that felt like a descent (though I couldn't be sure exactly where it led), and soon found what I was looking for as I spotted a hyena in the distance.

The hyena leered at me with glowing yellow eyes. I regarded the hyena warily. As a fellow predator, the hyena was less likely to turn tail and run than the ant I had encountered earlier, and more likely to engage me in a direct confrontation. A creature that could fight back was a potential liability, but the truth was that my only options for finding food seemed to be finding prey that I could corner or outrun, or find a fellow predator and engage them in a battle to the death. I was a dragon, albeit a young one, and though I didn't know much about the full extent of my abilities, I got the impression that dragons were a species particularly suited to a battle to the death.

I tried snarling at the hyena, but my voice came out as more of a squawk. The hyena took a step closer. Evidently I wasn't very imposing. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.

I took a step backward, feigning caution and weakness to see if I could bait the hyena into stepping forward to confront me. I took a step backward, and the hyena stepped forward. I stepped backward, and the hyena again closed the distance between us. It seemed even more confident than I was.

Was that a reason to be concerned? The hyena had more experience than I did, and it seemed to think it had the upper hand. Then again, this hyena had probably never encountered a dragon before. It could be that I had the upper hand. But would it really be so confident approaching a creature it had never seen before? Maybe it could smell creatures that had just freshly hatched. Maybe I still had the smell of egg on me, and this hyena saw me as just a giant, scaly, wingless bird that probably wouldn't put up much of a fight. This hyena had a lot of reasons to be confident if it had never encountered a dragon before.

Whether it was my judgment or my dragon instinct, I felt confident, too. Even as a fresh hatchling, I outweighed the hyena. It had fur, I had protective scales. Its claws looked pitifully small compared to mine. I also had the advantage of body weight in the form of a tail that I felt pretty confident in my ability to swing around. What did this hyena have besides its teeth?

I took a step toward the hyena, by this point close enough that I was within lunging distance. The hyena howled, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on both the left and right. A second and third hyena appeared on either side of me.

Of course. Hyenas hunt in packs. How could I have overlooked that?

I swiveled my head and saw two more hyenas approaching from behind. That was a total of five, rapidly closing in on me, and I could spot several more even further in the distance, approaching from the same direction of the first hyena.

This was very quickly starting to look like a fight that I wasn't going to win.

I spun around to face the direction I had come from and began sprinting. The two hyenas that had approached from behind placed themselves directly in my path, and I slammed into one of them with all of my weight. The hyena yelped and flew several feet through the air before landing in a bruised heap. It stirred, then stood up. I could see blood dripping from a wound on one of its legs, but it seemed undeterred by my sprinting body slam.

The other hyena leapt at me, and I swung a claw at it, failing to connect with a swipe as the hyena sunk its teeth into my neck. I felt the pressure as its jaws tightened their grip. I spun around, hoping to shake it lose, but its jaws remained firmly around my neck. I reached up with my front leg, and managed to sink my claw into it. Even as my claw pierced its skin and sunk into its flesh, the hyena continued biting down on my neck. I scratched frantically at the hyena's hide, rending its flesh in the process, and that was enough for it to release its grip on me.

I saw the other three hyenas, which looked close enough to lunge at me, and I took off sprinting again.

I didn't look back to see how close the hyenas were following, but I could hear their snarls and growling. They seemed to be keeping pace with me, but at least I was far enough ahead of them to avoid another attack.

As I sprinted, I eyed my health and stamina bar.

[HP: 14/20]

[SP: 7/10]

Only one hyena had managed to sink its teeth into me, but it had really done a number on me. If all five of them had managed to attack me in tandem, I'd probably already be dead.

My stamina bar was still flashing, bringing my mind back to the present. I was sprinting away from the hyenas, and they were sprinting after me. Eventually, I would run out of stamina. What then? Was I just going to hope that my capacity for sprinting exceeded theirs? As a level 1 baby dragon, that didn't seem like a winning proposition. The alternative was finding some place they couldn't follow me to. Or maybe finding some terrain that would let me turn the tables on them.

My lead seemed big enough that I turned my head and took a look back just to confirm the hyenas' numbers. Five were close, plus two more following further in the distance, including the ones I'd managed to damage a bit were still in pursuit. So much for hoping for one of them to bleed out.

Fighting seemed like a long shot. I needed to find a place to escape to. Some place safe, where predators like them would have a difficult time chasing. A place where a helpless infant would be safe.

I estimated my distance to the plateau. From the rate I was using stamina, I'd arrive there with roughly 5 SP. All I could do was hope that I'd be able to climb up faster than the hyenas could chase.

I reached the base of the plateau and began charging up the shallow grade until I reached the incline where I needed to sink my claws into the rock in order to climb. I tried climbing up the same way I had before, anchoring myself with two claws while lifting the other two claws, but I felt myself precariously losing my balance, and had to anchor myself with three claws, moving one claw at a time, a worryingly slow process as I ascended the nearly-vertical rock surface.

I heard the bark of the hyenas behind me, and one of them leapt up and swiped at my tail. I swung my tail, which hit the hyena right in the face and knocked it down to the ground, but I also found myself losing my balance and slid several inches down. Another hyena leapt up, biting my tail, I felt its teeth pierce my scales and sink into my fleshy tale. My health meter started blinking red. [HP: 8/20]

I steadied myself on the rock surface with all four claws as I swung my tail, trying to shake it loose. At first, the hyena didn't do anything in response, but I slammed my tail against the rock surface, and it yelped and I felt the pressure on my tail disappear.

[Ravenous Hyena defeated! Earned 60% experience toward next level.]

I steadied myself on incline, digging in deep with all four claws, ready to tail slam the next hyena that tried to get at me. One of them leapt up as I expected, and this time I managed to hit it with a tail slam before its teeth gripped me, sending it to the ground.

I glanced down, and saw that the four remaining hyenas seemed to be pacing, as if waiting for a moment of weakness on my part. I stayed poised, tail extended outward and at the ready, until one of them took a tentative step forward. From the bloody wound on its underbelly, I recognized it as the same hyena that had bitten my neck before. It leapt up, and I swung my tail up, avoiding its bite, then slammed my tail down, smacking it in the neck. The hyena fell to the ground, limp and lifeless. The other hyenas started to backpedal.

[Ravenous Hyena defeated! Level up!]

My character sheet began flashing with some new notification, but I quickly blinked it out of view to focus on the pressing situation at hand.

I felt a wave of euphoria rush over me. I wasn't sure whether the euphoria came from the relief of seeing the hyenas backing up, or it was something inherent to leveling up. Whatever the case, the three remaining hyenas seemed to back up.

I waited for the hyenas to retreat further, but while they seemed to keep their distance, they didn't leave.

I eyed the bloody remains of the two hyenas that I had defeated with the help of blunt impact and a little help from gravity. I tentatively started to climb downward, and the hyenas immediately began closing in on me.

I had two kills, but these hyenas weren't going to let me make a meal out of their fallen comrades without a fight, and in my current condition, that didn't seem like a fight I could win. I was already below half health, and if I let go and fell down to the ground to confront them directly, I'd be fighting with my back against a wall. Not only that, but several more hyenas were on the way, and there was no way that I could deal with these three hyenas before their friends showed up. The only way I had managed to kill two of them was that my position on the cliffside required them to jump up in order to bite me, making them easy targets for my tail swing, but I wasn't confident in my ability to connect with a tail swing against an opponent that had the benefit of standing on four legs, ready to evade a strike.

As long as I stayed perched like this on the cliffside, they couldn't profitably fight me. But as long as they stood there watching, I couldn't reasonably descend to claim the spoils of my two kills.

I noticed my stamina bar glow as it dropped. [SP: 4/10]

Evidently, staying perched on a nearly-vertical incline wasn't free. My previous descent hadn't been strenuous enough to consume any stamina, but now I was clinging to the rock surface and testing the limits of my endurance as I used my perch as an anchor for tail-swinging attacks. I couldn't stay like this forever, and with descent not seeming like a viable option, I climbed up, eventually reaching the surface of the plateau with [SP: 2/10] remaining. I looked down and saw that the hyenas were continuing to guard the remains of their fallen comrades, and several more had joined them. Six hyenas stood watchfully vigilant over the corpses of two fallen hyenas.

I certainly wasn't going to climb down to confront them now that their numbers had swelled, especially not with my health and stamina both running so low. There wasn't much for me to do other than wait to see if they would disperse, so I settled into a position where I could comfortably lie down while observing the hyenas down below.

The sun hung low in the sky, and as the plateau's shadow grew longer, I watched as the hyenas continued to guard the remains of their fallen comrades, looking up at me expectantly with their glowing yellow eyes, which seemed to only grow brighter as we entered twilight. As I shifted my weight from my legs to my belly, I realized how sore my body was. I had done quite a lot of running for a baby dragon of only one day. That, and I had been bitten quite a few times. I didn't seem to have any serious bleeding wounds, but the day had taken quite a lot out of me. If my stamina points were intended to measure fatigue, I was near the end of what my body could endure.

As I watched the hyenas down below pacing, I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open, increasingly finding comfort in the moments when I allowed myself to close them, and the longer I tried to focus on the pacing beasts below, the more difficult I found it to concentrate on anything. I felt the tension leave my body as I settled into a slumbering pose.

As I closed my eyes, the image of my character sheet came up, and I drifted off to sleep as the numbers appraising my situation sat in front of me.

Class: Baby Dragon

Level: 2

HP: 8/22

SP: 2/11

Satiety: 55%

Strength: 7

Dexterity: 6

Constitution: 4

Perception: 5

Will: 4

Charisma: 2

Claws: level 1

Scales: level 1

Mouth: level 1

Wings: level 0

[2 unspent skill points remaining]