Skill Points Well Spent
Before I knew it, two months had passed. I learned a few things about this world in that time as well. For one, there were both animals and monsters. Though many animals were foreign to me, and a few I even mistook for monsters a time or two, there were differences that separated the two.
There were the obvious: magic and crazy super powers and the like. But just because a creature looked like a monster did not always mean it was one, and just because a monster had no magic, didn't mean they were animals either.
The single, biggest difference was in the fact that, killing a monster afforded a person experience, while killing animals- much like those fish I ate that day and many days since- does not.
A person can not gain levels by simply killing animals, as far as I could tell, at least. I wasn't even sure if I was getting 'levels' at all really.
Not in the traditional video game sense at least.
I could tell I was getting stronger, and that was a kind of 'level up', even if it didn't come with a tangible number I could track. I just wished there was some kind of 'status' menu that I could examine. But I have yet to discover one.
And I tried everything. Even asking the universe with a big, loud, "Status!" shout. Glad I was alone, as it had been pretty embarrassing. Still, no status menu.
But there was one very big thing that came from gaining experience: Skill Points.
I knew I had them, the same way I knew that I gained status levels; I would hear a voice in my head, telling me so.
It sounded like Lottie, but when I tried to speak to it the first time I heard it, she did not answer back.
That probably meant it wasn't the elderly guardian angle, but rather my own mind selecting a voice from my memory to use in the situation.
Either way, I knew about skills from it. But, I had not used them yet, even though I did see a few skills that looked like they would be quite helpful or fun...
Oh, right. When I thought about wanting to spend my points, I could see a a list of options in my head.
it was disorienting at first, given I had my eyes open at the time.
But closing them made it much easier to do.
It also made me hopeful that there might be a skill menu in my future.
Maybe I could spend points to get it, though that wasn't an option right now.
There was a reason I had been saving up my points, however. And today was the day I planned on spending them! After taking out a strange fox like monster that had been sniffing at my hiding place yesterday evening I had finally reached twenty points!
This morning, I hurried myself back down toward the lake.
I kept my eyes open for monsters, especially those bears and snakes, but saw none.
Though exploration I have come to realize that the monsters were normally fairly thin around here.
If I had to guess it had been due to my mother's presence, scaring them all away.
I wasn't sure why they still kept away, unless they were afraid of me, though I rather doubted it.
I gazed into the reflective waters and admired my pink scales. I had doubled in size over this last two months, but I was still too small to be a thing to fear for many monsters. I had not dared to take on those bears, for instance. But I was big enough to take on just about any animal now.
I spent much of my days training my body while searching out enough food to feed myself.
I, apparently, had a surprisingly voracious metabolism, and had to eat an awful lot to keep myself going.
An instinct told me it was because I was still in my baby stage.
If I had to guess, dragons likely grew like weeds until they get to a size where any normal being poses no threat.
I was still a ways off, so I had to eat a lot.
I shook my head and then stretched out my lithe body.
I was about the size of a large dog now, and getting in and out of my tree was becoming difficult.
It may be time to find a new hiding place.
Besides, dragons were not birds and it felt strange to be nesting like one.
Though, I would miss my little feathery neighbors. ..
Time to get to business.
I settled down on my stomach, tucking my paws under my chest and belly. Closing my eyes I thought about accessing my skills.
In the dark of my mind a list of skills appeared, the words lit blue with number values assigned to each one.
Most of the skills only coast one to three points.
All the one pointers seemed like lesser skills: useful but not particularly powerful.
Like a skill for heating water, or a skill that removed grime.
Basically they were quality of life skills.
I was sure that they could be used for other things if you had an out of the box way of thinking. Like boiling water to burn someone.
But the two pointers seemed like a more efficient use of points in that case.
The two pointers looked to be skills of a more industrious nature.
I could see many that were very tempting to take, after all.
There were elemental magical control skills that would start me on the path of using attack magic, like fire or water.
But, as a dragon, I would eventually gain a fire breath anyway, once I matured more.
The two pointers also had useful skills like resistances or even buffing skill, which were also pretty tempting.
As for the three pointers, they were a mix of oddities.
Many sounded super interesting, and eventually I would probably invest in them as well.
They had names that suggested that they were chain skills.
In other words, they had small, liking skill chains.
For instance, one was named 'Taming' which I assumed would unlock a chain of skills related to taming monsters.
There were also 'summoning', 'Sword Arts', and 'Enchanting'.
I think they were skills that aloud the purchaser to access skills that, without the investment of points, would require years of study to obtain.
But the skill I had been saving for fell into the last category.
The one I called 'Special' skills. You see, while most of the skills fell into the three point skill lines, there were a handful of skills that cost a lot more points.
Many of these higher cost skills were between 5 and ten points, but in amongst them were several that cost a crazy number of points.
Given that I gained points rather slowly, these higher cost skills were a real investment. And for an average person, who more than likely did not go out and hunt monsters everyday to eat, would take a crazy amount of time to accumulate.
And the one I wanted was a crazy twenty points.
I gazed at the name and smiled: Humanoid Shape.
When I first chose to become a dragon, I was perfectly content with the idea of being a big flying, fire breathing, lizard for the entirety of my life. And had circumstances stayed the same, I would still be content.
But the death of my mother and the taking of my unhatched siblings changed everything.
If I was chasing humans, than I would need a human shape.
As a dragon, I couldn't exactly enter buildings to get information, and being inconspicuous would be impossible.
My prey would see me coming and flee before I could approach.
So this skill would be absolutely necessary going forward.
[Spend twenty Skill Points to gain the skill 'Humanoid Shape'?] I saw appear before my closed eyes.
Yes, I thought.
Just accepting the skill didn't make me feel any different, except for the disappointment of seeing all those accumulated skill points vanishing before my eyes.
But it did mean that I had the skill now. But how to activate it. Shame this new world didn't come with a tutorial... yeah right.
Oh!
[Use the skill: Humanoid Shape?] Flashed before my eyes. Handy.
Well, that was another 'yes' from me then.
Once I was enveloped in light I felt a jolt of relief. I was a little afraid that this change would be more in line with what werewolves had to go through in the stories. I really did not want to feal all my bones snap as I went from beast to woman.
Instead, I was merely covered in a mellow light. I didn't feal a darn thing, actually. even once the light faded.
Thinking it had failed, I instinctively looked down at me paw, only to see a little hand.
"Holy Moly!" I gasped out loud. It worked!
Excited, I dashed for the edge of the lake once more to look at myself.
Unfortunately, I seemed to have forgotten what it felt like to walk on two legs, and literally tripped over my own two feet.
I let out a rather embarrassing yelp as I stumbled forward and fell face first into the lake, belly- flopping most spectacularly.
Spluttering, I sat up in the lake. Well, that had been pretty clumsy of me...
I gazed down at my pale skin, noting that I was clearly not in my old body. For one, I was a child. Small, thin limbs, and exactly zero breasts. I let the water grow still around me and gazed down at my reflection once again.
Well, shoot. I was down right adorable if I did say so myself!
Wide green eyes, thick hair the same rosy pink as my scales had been too.
But, even though his body was 'humanoid' it clearly was not human.
I opened my mouth to examine my pointy, vampire-esk k-nines.
And my skin had patches of pink scales here and there.
But most glaring of all were the thick white horns on my head.
If I wanted to pass as human I would have to keep a hood on. But this would be far easier to work around than my dragon body.
I stood up and had a time wiggling appendages and feeling my silky hair. I hadn't realized before that my dragon body had a dulled sense of touch. I mean, it made sense given I was covered in thick scales.
But my dragon shape had much better eye sight and sense of smell.
Hearing was about the same, I thought. But it was the lack of scent that was most obvious.
I knew that compared to most animals and the like- even back on Earth- human's sense of smell was fairly poor.
But having spent the last couple months with a dragon's nose, it was glaringly obvious that it was far superior to a humans.
Right now it felt like I had cotton up my nose.
Another thing that surprised me: I felt uncomfortable in this shape. given the years I had spent as a human, I would have thought that being in a human like body again would have felt natural. It really didn't. I felt cramped, slow, and fragile.
Closing my eyes and concentrating, I reverted back to my dragon shape with a sigh of relief.
I was glad I got that done, however. It felt like the first real step in finding my siblings had been accomplished at last. With any luck, I would soon be big enough to consume Mother's Heart Stone and once that was done, I decided to leave this forest.
I don't know what my human shape would look like then. Probably still rather young. It may cause problems, traveling as a child all on her own, but I would risk it. I just couldn't sit around here much longer.
For now, I would continue hunting monsters, getting more skill points so that I could unlock more abilities.
Maybe pick a magic path to go down so that I could protect myself in the human form.
A tiny child's body couldn't do much with physical combat skills, after all.
I needed to get stronger, so that I might avenge my mother's death and, most importantly, save the family I had left.