Dragon God’s System

Hopefully, it would give me another cheat besides the ancestral memories. Realizing I was getting distracted, I refocused my attention. Twilight was not just a time of day or night. It could also mean obscurity, uncertainty, or gloomy. The word itself can be broken down into two roots, twi-, meaning double or half, and light. Twilight is thus a second light or a half light. This was my second life, so that sort of applied. Anyway, a lot of people associate twilight with night. This would tie in with Nox ancestry. There was even a goddess of the night called Nyx. 

Realizing I was wasting time, I dismissed those thoughts and concentrated on my information sheet. My primary abilities were dexterity and intelligence. The only reason I knew what the DEX and INT stood for was because I had played a lot of roleplaying games when I was growing up. The information sheet I was looking at looked like those I might find in a Dungeons and Dragons game.

My wisdom and charisma were okay. Of course, that was when comparing them to my strength and constitution. Darkvision wasn’t hard to understand. That was probably why I could see even though I was in an egg. 

Ether breath confused me though. I’d heard of fire, lightning, acid, and a few other types of dragon breath, but not ether breath. I decided to look on the bright side. At least I have dragon breath, although it did seem to be locked at the moment. 

What did locked even mean? What did I have to do to unlock the breath? The same could be asked about the quills and flight. Would I gain them automatically when I hatched? Did I need to conduct some ritual? Either way, the ether breath, quills, and flight needed to be put on the back burner, especially since they were locked anyway. 

The Draconic language I could understand, but the mining proficiency annoyed me for some reason. Just because I was born a kobold, I was considered proficient in using mining tools? That sounded quite…arbitrary. So, every single kobold was able to use mining tools effectively? I did suppose that was possible with the ancestral memories though.

I frowned when I realized that while the information sheet had given me a lot of information, it had also left out a lot. Because of this, I tried to make some educated guesses from what I knew about biology. I really needed to know more about myself, especially since I was about to hatch.

Since I was reptilian-like, I was probably cold-blooded. However, I was also in a cave. Caves generally had temperatures between fifty and seventy degrees. Since kobolds spent most of their time underground, I assumed they weren’t getting much energy from the sun to become active. Also, I don’t feel particularly lethargic right. That meant kobolds might not be endothermic or ectothermic. 

I trailed off in thought for a moment and then wondered if kobolds could be mesothermic. Mesothermic animals showed similarities to both warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals, but don’t fit into either category. Great white sharks and tuna are two examples of mesothermic animals. 

As for dinosaurs, they were probably either heterothermic or gigantothermic. Heterothermic animals would heat up when active, but cool down when hibernating or sleeping, which I found more plausible. That might explain dragons too. They didn’t need energy when they slept because they slowed down their metabolism. When they woke up, they gorged on food. Of course, dragons could regulate their body temperature just because of their immense size, much like dinosaurs, making them gigantothermic. 

Realizing that I had gotten off track yet again, I decided to come back to those thoughts later. I needed to focus on hatching. The lack of fluids in the eggshell was an indication that it was time. That might even be why I woke up. Maybe it was time for me to break out of this eggshell. Using the talon on one of my scaled fingers, I started tapping the eggshell to see if it was brittle.

The eggshell was fairly thick, but I was certain that I could break it, despite my pitiably low strength score. Before breaking out, I decided to listen to what was going on outside of the egg. I couldn’t hear anything at first so I pressed my ear…I paused as I realized I didn’t have ears any longer. 

Dismissing that train of that, I concentrated on trying to hear anything that might be happening outside the egg. “Hmm, I guess it is time to get out of here,” I said to myself as I heard cracking sounds coming from outside the egg. Apparently, the other kobolds were emerging from their shells. 

With a resolute strike, I swung my fist at the eggshell. I distinctly heard a crack right before I howled in pain. “Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch,” I squealed as I rocked inside the egg while holding my hand, which caused the egg to tip over, knocking me down so that I face-planted. 

“I hope that was the eggshell and not my fingers,” I muttered as the pain started to fade away.  Growling, I glanced at my hand before looking at where I had hit the egg. I was annoyed that I was so weak. I was tempted to try kicking the place I had hit, but I was afraid I would fall over again if I tried to kick that high. 

Sighing, I gingerly started picking away at the spot that was cracked. When the first piece of eggshell came off, I realized how hungry I was and plopped the eggshell into my mouth and started chewing without thinking. “Crunchy,” I murmured, surprised by its tastiness. Quickly, I broke through the second layer of the shell. “Odd. I didn’t know shells had two layers. You learn something new every day. Wait, this is my first day, and I have already learned something new.”

I continued to snack on the eggshell as I broke through. I wasn’t eager to break all the way through though and took my time digesting the eggshell. Eventually, I could see the other eggs. Most of the eggs were about as far along as I was in eating the eggshells. I gave a silent sigh of relief. It would have been embarrassing if I was the only one eating the shell. I continued to look around as I continued eating, wondering if I would be able to eat it all.

It appeared that there were almost a hundred eggs in the…cavern. Yes, I was in a cavern, quite a big cavern in fact. A few glowing balls of light provided just enough light to make an otherwise dark room dimly lit. I looked around but didn’t see any adult kobolds. I almost laughed when I saw some of the newly hatched kobolds trying to walk toward the single entrance to the cave. They would take a step and then flop stagger to the side as if they were drunk. 

“Yep. They are high kobolds after all,” I thought as I watched the other wyrmlings. Snickering, I stepped out of the remnants of the eggshell and promptly fell on my face as my foot caught on the edge of the shell remains. To add insult to injury, my tail ended up slapping me in the back of my head as if to say I was an idiot. It was a good thing the little horns on my head weren’t sharp or they might have stabbed my tail. 

“Oh my goodness,” I thought. “How in the world do I have such high dexterity? Maybe that is the score I will have after I have gotten used to my body. Yes, that must be it. After all, it does take some getting used to doing things again after you haven’t done them in a while.” 

That would also explain why the other kobold hatchlings were staggering around. I was so used to walking normally that I had forgotten I might need to make adjustments to my balance considering I had a tail and wings. I laid there a moment as I reflected on my new life, my right hand busily grabbing egg fragments and stuffing them into my mouth. Soon, I could feel my stomach stretching out as if I was pregnant. Still, I valiantly laid there filling my mouth with delicious egg fragments. 

Finally, I sat up after finishing off the eggshell pieces. Although I was tempted to mutter something about eating so much, I decided to shut up for once. I didn’t want to stand out too much yet. I could imagine a bunch of baby kobolds pointing at me and shouting, “Freak!” I knew they could understand Draconic to some degree, but how much could they speak it?