Newborn

Chen Jing woke from a long, hazy nightmare. The moment he opened his eyes, his whole body gave an involuntary shudder, and he blurted out, "What the hell?"

The familiar bedside table was gone. The dark red floor and the room with its blue-green wallpaper had vanished without a trace, replaced by an endless, sprawling jungle and a steaming primordial swamp.

A gaunt, pitch-black beast crouched on the ground, its yellowish, vertical pupils fixed on him.

Anyone who opened their eyes to a sight like this would struggle to stay calm.

What kind of hellhole was this? Hadn't he been sleeping at home after staying up all night? Chen Jing's mind was a blank. No matter how many explanations he came up with, there was no way he should have ended up in a place like this.

"Mm..."

The beast before him was thin and savage-looking, with little muscle on its frame, yet unusually thick joints. Its wings were made up of little more than bone and skin, and the bones in its cheeks were even more prominent. Some jutted through the skin, exposed like a skeleton's.

It stared at the hatchling that had just crawled out of its egg. Its throat bobbed, and it let out a muffled growl, its meaning unclear.

This is... a dragon?

Am I dreaming? Chen Jing licked his dry lips. The savage creature before him looked just like the black dragons in fantasy stories. As a fan of all kinds of games, he recognized it at once.

Then Chen Jing realized that in this strange, unfamiliar dream, he had become a wyrmling himself—a newborn black dragon, about the size of a foal, its body still coated in a thin layer of translucent, reddish slime.

A flash of intense pain shot through his head. A flood of unfamiliar memories poured into his brain and fused with his own.

I... really turned into a dragon?

Chen Jing shook his head. The new memories joined the chaotic jumble in his mind, finally helping him make sense of things.

"Caesar Ortorenso Targaryen."

That was his true name as a dragon. The newborn wyrmling had performed its task perfectly. But as soon as it spoke its true name, the vast inheritance of the dragons came flooding in. The hatchling hadn't had time to follow the dragon handbook's instructions and divide up and seal away the inheritance for later. The sheer volume of knowledge had blown its mind, leaving it a brain-damaged dragon idiot.

Chen Jing had taken advantage of the crisis and occupied its body.

The memories answered his confusion one by one. He didn't have to read through them or sort them out; it was as if he had experienced them himself.

Dreams had no logic, after all. They couldn't possibly present so many details. Besides, in a mere instant, he had learned Draconic and Common, the basic languages of dragons, with thousands of syllables and written characters imprinted in his mind.

This wasn't a dream. He had crossed over into a fantastical world utterly unlike Earth, going from a nine-to-five office drone to a black wyrmling of the Chromatic Dragons.

There was no answer to how something as unscientific as transmigration had happened, at least not one he could find in a hurry. He couldn't refuse the fact that he had become a beast, and there was no customer service line to call and complain. Fortunately, Chen Jing wasn't the sort to wallow in self-pity. All he could do was accept reality, keep his emotions in check, and not waste time and energy on useless things.

The one bright spot in his misfortune was that he had inherited all of the black wyrmling's original memories. Though the hatchling had failed to receive the full draconic inheritance, it had retained the most basic knowledge of dragonkind, which had merged with Chen Jing's own.

He had become a dragon—a black dragon, notorious for its foul reputation and not exactly reliable in a fight.

In fact, in this world, except for the shame of dragonkind, the White Dragons, a black dragon of the same age stood little chance against any other Chromatic Dragon or Metallic Dragon. In magic or physical strength, they could be effortlessly beaten to a pulp.

That was hardly good news, but he had a more pressing problem to deal with right now: adapting to life as a dragon.

The hatchling avoided Black Dragon Mother's gaze and quickly settled down. Under the puzzled, appraising stare of the terrifying beast, its body pitch-black from head to toe, he licked the slime coating himself clean.

He had little time to think. To keep his black dragon mother from growing more suspicious, Chen Jing immediately turned around and faced the shards he had made of his egg. He began to noisily gnaw on the shell.

The energy-rich pieces of eggshell would see him through the hunger of his first days and provide enough fuel to awaken his body and kick-start its growth. Chen Jing knew he had to get stronger as soon as possible.

Even dragons, who stood at the top of the food chain, were frail when newly hatched. They could just about manage to breathe fire, but it took several hours before they could run freely, let alone find food on their own.

The basic knowledge of dragonkind was a great help. He didn't need to sift through or read it; it simply appeared in his mind on its own, and after a brief moment of dazed silence, Chen Jing knew it all. In front of Black Dragon Mother, he looked more like a wyrmling than an outsider who had stolen her child's body.

"Tastes good."

Chen Jing muttered in Draconic. The hard eggshell shattered in the wyrmling's mouth like a potato chip, and to him, it tasted about the same, too.

Mm, seaweed flavor.

All sorts of stray thoughts popped into the muddled wyrmling's head. With his mind seamlessly fused with the dragon's memories, he felt less fear toward the dark beast nearby than a sense of respect.

Just as Chen Jing was happily sucking the slime off his eggshell, his younger siblings in the draconic sense were born, too. Two wyrmlings emerged from their eggs with shrill, ringing cries, reciting a long string of true names that was enough to make anyone's head ache.

Compared with adult black dragons, newborn wyrmlings had short, stumpy limbs and limp wings. Their heads made up a large proportion of their bodies. Though they could barely stand, their sharp teeth had already begun to take shape.

Chen Jing stared at the newborn dragons and saw himself in them.

At the same time, while the female wyrmling beside him lifted her head and roared to receive her inheritance, he quietly shifted his body and awkwardly extended a tiny claw. Shamelessly, he snagged a piece of eggshell that she had cracked open.

Mm!

The moment he bit down, his eyes narrowed like a squirrel's.

It tasted different!

Cumin flavor!

Chen Jing happily crunched up the stolen eggshell and swallowed it, then reached out with his tiny claw again while the little female dragon wasn't looking.

Just as he gleefully grabbed another piece, a huge, bony mouth reached over, snatched up the thieving little dragon, its limbs flailing and tail wriggling, and after a few bounces, dumped him somewhere else.

The black dragon's eyes were tinged with pale yellow, their pupils narrow and vertical like a cat's. Her vision stretched far and wide.

Black Dragon Mother stared at him, her eyes full of warning. She let out a displeased growl, as if scolding him.

The little female dragon noticed what was happening, too. She was slightly smaller than Chen Jing, with two slender horns extending back from her head behind her ears. The newly formed bone on her nose was still soft, and her wings were too weak to lift, drooping limply at her sides.

The little female dragon glared angrily at Caesar and let out a childish hiss, green acid dripping from her mouth.

Black dragons were the most ill-tempered and selfish dragons. Even as her sibling, Chen Jing's actions were enough to enrage his sister. If their mother hadn't kept them in check, the two newborn wyrmlings would have started fighting at once.

—Even though they could barely stand.

But Caesar had already put the incident out of his mind. He didn't answer his sister's hissing. Instead, he wobbled away on his not-yet-fully-adjusted limbs and rolled off to one side to think about his dragon life.

To a wyrmling, that looked like an admission of weakness. The little female dragon gave a couple of proud snorts, lowered her head, and began gnawing on her own eggshell. She stopped bothering her brother, who looked "so ugly" to her.

"An unknown world."

As a visitor from another world, Chen Jing couldn't help worrying about his future. A fantasy world with dragons was sure to be far more dangerous and brutal than the Earth where he had once drifted through life doing the bare minimum.

Still, he had been pretty lucky. At least he hadn't become a Kobold, a gnome, or a lowly Goblin. And having Black Dragon Mother around gave Chen Jing a good deal of reassurance.

With that thought, he quickly swam toward the bank, staying within Black Dragon Mother's sight. He reached a shallow spot, buried his body in the mud and sand at the edge of the great marsh, and left only the top of his head above the surface to survey his surroundings.

The area was a forest blanketed in thick fog. A roaring waterfall rushed in the distance, and swift currents along the riverbanks surged in every direction, forming countless Marshlands.

This place didn't seem too bad. It was an uninhabited primeval rainforest, so at least there'd be no shortage of food.

That made sense. Their mother was in the prime of her life. A black dragon of her age wouldn't mate and lay eggs wherever it pleased out in the wilderness. Dragons like her chose their nesting grounds carefully and knew to protect their offspring as they grew.

He had become a frail black wyrmling, but his birth mother was watching over him. He wasn't on his own, so all in all, this was a pretty good start.

"A black dragon? All right."

Chen Jing gazed down at the somewhat ugly hatchling reflected in the lake and said quietly, "From now on, I'm Caesar Ortorenso, of House Targaryen."

Before he could think it over, the irresistible drowsiness overtook the little wyrmling, Caesar. A dragon's first sleep came swiftly and fiercely. He had only just sunk into the mud and sand when he fell fast asleep.