Feel free to skip this section and read on — I know that a lot of people prefer to go into a story completely blind and discover things along the way. But I'm also sympathetic to the idea that life is short, and you don't want to spend a lot of time reading a new story if it's not going to suit your tastes. (I've gotten some comments from people who started reading Re: Dragonize expecting it to be something it wasn't, and I can understand their frustration: while I do think that the story synopsis accurately describes the type of story that Re: Dragonize is, a short description might not be enough for some people to feel like they've gotten the full picture of what lies ahead, hence this longer explanation.) If you're one of those readers, I hope this foreword will leave you better informed about whether Re: Dragonize is a story that you'd like to spend your time with.
Re: Dragonize is a slow-burn progression fantasy, featuring a protagonist who must start from the bottom and gradually work up to bigger and better things. (The protagonist is a dragon, but newly-born dragon hatchlings can start off quite weak and vulnerable, especially before they've grown their wings.) More specifically, it's a LitRPG story where the main character ("MC") inhabits a world with game-like mechanics like experience points, leveling, skill trees, and system notifications, and it begins with the classic isekai trope of meeting a woman who presides over the borderland between one life and the next, who has a question for each fresh soul to answer before the she sends them on their way to reincarnated into a new life.
A few themes that I wanted to focus on in Re: Dragonize:
1. This isn't a power fantasy about an overpowered MC. Things start off slowly, and Re: Dragonize is a story where progress is earned gradually. Even in situations where it seems like there might be an "easy way out" of things, actions have consequences, and the "easy" path might end up not being as easy as it first appears. (If only growing wings and flying away from your problems were so easy!) Above all, my storytelling philosophy is that rewards feel sweeter when they have been properly earned. If "delayed gratification" isn't something that speaks to you, then Re: Dragonize might be a bit slow for your tastes.
2. Our MC tends to be contemplative and cautious. When you've just been born into a new world — and find yourself unsure of your own abilities — it can feel risky to throw yourself into the thick of things right away, and our MC spends some amount of time experimenting, testing abilities, and planning contingencies before leaping into action. Expect more than a few self-indulgent philosophical digressions — after all, you don't undergo an overnight reincarnation in a fresh world without taking at least a few moments to contemplate the nature of your existence and the life that lies ahead of you. If you're someone who has lived a human life completely devoid of violence, and find yourself thrust into a new world where violence is a necessary part of life, you might have more than a few ethical hang-ups about the actions you're forced to take. That being said, in a harsh, cruel world, you have to get over those ethical hang-ups at some point: being an obligate carnivore means that in order for you to eat, some living creature has to die.
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3. I started writing Re: Dragonize specifically because I wanted to write a story about a non-human MC. This isn't a story about a shapeshifter who eventually learns to take on human form to live among human society: MC will remain a monster of the dragon variety for the duration of this story (though MC's physiology will change over time — you can't stay a 'newborn dragon hatchling' forever!) That's not to say that humans and dragons can't peacefully coexist under the right circumstances, but one of the themes I wanted to explore with this story is the difficulty of making friends when you're a monster.
Lastly, surviving in this harsh cruel world becomes a lot easier if you're able to make friends, and that's a fact that our protagonist is keenly aware of. That being said, while I intend for this to be a core theme of the story, it takes awhile before MC starts finding companions who are willing to be cooperative: making friends isn't easy, especially when most of the creatures you encounter see you as nothing but a potential meal, and it will take MC quite awhile before finding companion characters. If you're wondering how many chapters it will take for socialization to begin:
MC will make a friend for the first time some time between chapter 20 and 30. More specifically,
MC has a conversation for the first time in chapter 25.
I may populate this page with an FAQ if I get enough reader questions that specific ones start to become "frequent." In the meantime, if you have any questions about Re: Dragonize, feel free to comment below, and I'll do my best to give a straightforward response!