Rou knew the surgery was fucked the moment his surgeon walked in smelling like a distillery.
"Mom, I'll be fine," he said, watching her try not to cry in the prep room bed next to his. Three months of dialysis had turned her into someone he barely recognized, all yellow skin and bruised arms from the needles.
"Baby, you don't have to—"
"Mom, respectfully, shut up, we've had this conversation like fifty times and I'm not letting you die over some kidney when I have a spare."
'Plus I already sold my car to cover what insurance won't, so we're locked in.'
The nurse came in doing that thing where they smile but their eyes are dead inside. "Ready for surgery, Mr. Rou?"
His mom grabbed his hand. Her fingers felt like chicken bones.
"See you on the other side, Mom."
'Unless this drunk asshole kills me first.'
The OR was basically a walk-in freezer that smelled like pennies and hand sanitizer. The anesthesiologist, at least, seemed sober when she told him to count backward from ten.
"Ten, nine, eight..."
The surgeon stumbled, like actually stumbled. The nurse caught his arm and whispered something that looked a lot like "are you fucking serious right now?"
"Seven, six..."
'Oh I'm so dead.'
"Five..."
Black.
Then noise. Everything going wrong at once.
"Shit shit shit, I nicked the artery—"
"Doctor, he's bleeding out!"
"Get me the— no not that, the fucking—"
Rou was floating above his body watching this dude panic like he was speedrunning medical malpractice. Blood everywhere. Mom still unconscious in the next room, no idea her son was getting murdered by someone who definitely pregamed surgery.
'Bro really said first do no harm then showed up wasted.'
Flatline.
'Mom's gonna be so pissed, sue these fuckers.'
The sound stretched on forever, that long beep that meant game over. He felt himself getting pulled away from the scene, away from his body, away from everything.
'At least he tried... yeah right, fucker just killed me for nothing.'
Then nothing.
---
He woke up to the sound of dripping water and the worst headache of his life, which was saying something considering he just died.
'Wait, I died.'
He tried to sit up and immediately smacked his head on a rock. His hands went to his head to check for damage but stopped halfway when he saw them. Scales. Actual scales, like a lizard but black and way cooler looking.
"What the..."
His voice came out deeper, rougher, like he'd been drinking deep voice protein for 10 years. The cave around him was massive, way bigger than it looked at first, and there were bodies everywhere. Dragon bodies.
Real dragons, not Game of Thrones CGI, but actual massive corpses with wings and tails and—
'Holy shit, that one's missing half its head.'
The smell hit him then, death and something else, something that made his stomach turn even though he wasn't sure he had the same kind of stomach anymore. Some of the dragons were small, maybe the size of house cats and others were massive, taking up entire sections of the cave, their scales dulled and cracked.
Then memories started flooding in, not his memories, someone else's, playing in his head so fast he could barely process them. Dragons flying through clouds, hunting deer in forests, living in mountain cities carved from stone, then humans coming with glowing weapons and heroes in stupid armor.
The massacre.
His sister screaming at him to hide, shoving him into this cave, using the last of her magic to seal it.
"Stay hidden, Kairos, please, just stay hidden until—"
The memory showed her face, purple scales that shifted to pink in the light, eyes like melted gold, tears streaming down as humans wrapped chains around her neck, chains that burned white-hot against her scales.
Then she was gone, dragged away while humans laughed about breeding experiments and dragon blood potions, how much gold they'd make from a living dragon, especially one so young.
'Kairos? That's... me?'
More memories crashed in, this body's life playing out in fast-forward. Being born in a nest high in the mountains, learning to fly before he could properly walk, his sister teaching him to hunt, to hide, to survive.
Their parents dying in the first wave of attacks, holding the line while the younglings escaped. Then the second wave, the third, each one with stronger heroes, better weapons, until only a handful of dragons remained.
The body's owner, the real Kairos, had been fifteen in dragon years, basically like being two in human years, just a kid who watched everyone he knew get slaughtered for gold and glory. He'd cried out to anyone, anything, any god or force that would listen, begging for someone to save his sister, to get revenge, to make the humans pay.
And somehow, Rou answered.
'I'm in another world, in a dragon's body, because some kid needed help?'
He looked down at himself properly for the first time. Humanoid but covered in black scales, wings folded against his back that twitched when he thought about them, a tail he kept almost stepping on, and horns that curved back from his skull.
He was wearing the remains of what looked like leather armor, probably Kairos's last attempt at protection, now torn and useless.
[System Initialized]
[Welcome, Rou]
[You have inherited the Dragon Prince Legacy]
The text appeared in front of him, floating in the air, with golden letters.
"What the fuck, what the fuck, WHAT THE FUCK!"
He scrambled backwards and tripped over his own tail, landing hard on his ass. The floating text followed him.
"Get away from me!"
He swung at it but his hand went right through, and seeing that scaled, clawed hand that wasn't supposed to be his made him want to throw up.
"No no no no, this isn't real, this is some dying brain hallucination shit, I'm still on the table and they're trying to save me, this is just neurons firing randomly or whatever—"
[Tutorial Quest: Survive the Cave]
[Reward: Basic Status Unlock]
[Time Limit: None]
[Warning: You are not alone]
"Tutorial? What is this, a fucking video game? I don't even play video games!"
Something moved in the darkness between the corpses, making wet sounds that were getting closer. He pressed himself against the cave wall, hyperventilating except the breathing felt wrong because his lungs were different, everything was different.
Those things were getting closer, so close he could see them now, translucent blobs sliding over dead dragon bodies.
"This isn't happening, this isn't—"
One jumped at him.
He screamed like someone had just told him his browser history was being livestreamed to his mom.
"HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME! ANYONE!"
The slime bounced off his chest and he scrambled sideways, nearly eating shit on dragon corpses while more slimes poured out from between the bodies.
"WAKE UP! WAKE UP YOU STUPID BODY, THIS IS A COMA DREAM, WAKE THE FUCK UP!"
He slapped himself in the face, forgetting about the claws, and immediately drew blood. The pain was real, too real, and that made him panic even more.
"MOM! MOM I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY I DIED, PLEASE SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
The slimes were surrounding him now, oozing closer from every direction. He was doing that thing where you try to climb a wall that's obviously too smooth to climb, his claws scraping uselessly against stone.
"I DON'T WANT TO DIE AGAIN, I LITERALLY JUST DIED, THIS IS BULLSHIT, THIS IS SO MUCH BULLSHIT!"
One slime got too close to his foot and he kicked it on instinct, sending it flying into three others like bowling pins made of jello. Another one dropped from the ceiling right onto his head.
"GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!"
He grabbed at it, his claws going straight through the slime and into his own scalp, which hurt like hell but also killed the slime instantly. It dissolved into smoke that smelled like burnt rubber.
"I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING!"
They rushed him all at once, maybe a dozen slimes coming from every angle, and Rou's body just moved without his permission, pure panic taking over. He was swinging wildly, screaming the entire time, his claws leaving these weird black trails in the air that seemed to cut through reality itself.
"FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF!"
His claws connected with everything, slimes, corpses, the cave wall, himself at least twice, and when he finally stopped swinging and screaming, there was nothing left but smoke and silence.
The cave entrance, which he hadn't even noticed before, now had five massive claw marks carved deep into the stone, each one glowing faintly black like someone had torn holes in the world.
He stood there panting, covered in slime residue and his own blood, staring at the destruction he'd caused.
"What the fuck did I just do?"
[Scavenger Slimes Defeated x15]
[Experience Gained: 150]
[Level Up! You are now Level 2]
[Skill Unlocked: Dragon Claw Lv.1]
[Skill Unlocked: Panic Flail Lv.1]
[Quest Complete: Survive the Cave]
"Panic Flail? That's not even a real skill, what kind of bootleg system is this?"
[Basic Status Unlocked]
[Say "Status" to view your statistics]
"I'm not saying shit, I want to go home, I want my mom, I want to not be covered in slime that smells like someone microwaved a gym sock!"
He looked at the claw marks he'd left on the entrance, each one at least three feet long and deep enough to stick his whole arm in. The black glow was fading but the marks remained, looking way too permanent for something he did by accident.
"Did I do that? How the fuck did I do that?"
The memories from Kairos tried to surface again, something about dragon claws being able to cut through magical barriers, but Rou shoved them back down because he was already at maximum freak-out capacity and didn't need more dragon facts right now.
"Okay, okay, think, you're in a cave full of dead dragons, you have a video game menu floating in your face, you just killed slimes with your bare hands, and you're apparently strong enough to carve stone like butter, this is fine, everything is fine."
[Warning: Mental Stability Decreasing]
[Recommendation: Take deep breaths]
"OHHHHH! THE FLOATING TEXT IS GIVING ME MENTAL HEALTH ADVICE NOW?"
[System Note: Mental health features are part of standard user care protocol]
"User care? I'm not a user, I'm a person who got turned into a lizard!"
His breathing was messed up, coming out in these weird huffs that made small smoke clouds.
"Okay, okay, I need to think, I can't just stand here screaming at floating text forever."
He looked around the cave properly. The dead dragons were everywhere, at least thirty of them, some piled on top of each other like they died protecting something or someone. The smaller ones, the ones that looked like kids, were in the center of the pile.
'They died trying to protect the young ones.'
The thought came with another wave of Kairos's memories, but Rou was too exhausted to fight them off this time. The dragons had made their last stand here, parents shielding children, older siblings protecting younger ones, and they'd all died anyway.
All except Kairos, hidden by his sister's magic in some deeper part of the cave.
"This is fucked up."
He just stood there for a second, looking at the dead dragons, the floating text, his scaled hands. The pain from where he'd clawed himself was still throbbing, blood still dripping down his face, and everything felt way too detailed for a dying dream.
'What if this is actually real?'
The thought made his stomach drop. His mom was probably crying over his dead body right now, the surgery completely fucked, and here he was in some other world in a dragon's body because apparently the universe thought that was fair.
'If this is real, then Kairos is dead, his whole family is dead, and somehow I'm supposed to what, get revenge for him?'
The memories kept pushing at the edges of his mind, this kid's entire life trying to download itself into his brain. It was giving him a headache on top of everything else.
"Fuck it, if this is real then I need to know what I'm working with."
He took a breath, feeling stupid but also desperate.
"Status."
A blue screen popped up in front of him, looking exactly like every generic RPG he'd ever seen.
[Name: Rou (Kairos)]
[Race: Dragon (Humanoid Form)]
[Level: 2]
[HP: 80/150]
[MP: 50/50]
[Stamina: 110/200]
[Strength: 18]
[Agility: 15]
[Durability: 30]
[Luck: 5]
[Skills: Dragon Claw Lv.1, Panic Flail Lv.1]
"My HP is almost half gone? From what, clawing myself in the face like an idiot?"
He touched his face and winced, his fingers coming away bloody. The wounds were already starting to close though, which was weird as hell but at least convenient.
"Okay so I'm a level 2 dragon with shit stats and two skills, one of which is literally called Panic Flail, this is great, absolutely fantastic start."