Chương 1: A Literal Salamander

The first thing I noticed was my missing rock. And the second was that thing staring at me. I was supposed to be under a nice, damp rock by the pond, thinking salamander thoughts. Which mostly involved wondering if that insect was edible, and whether the rock I was under was damp enough. Instead, I appeared to be in the middle of a long sheet of tissue paper with a huge circle drawn on it like a lily pad. Which was insulting, as lily pads were for frogs, not salamanders.

And yes, the thing staring at me was fire, and it was close. Close enough that I could feel the air itself flinching away from it. Warm and dry against my slick skin… wait, my skin was not supposed to know what dry felt like. Opposite it, fire sticks jutted from the cavern floor and walls at odd angles: some near, some buried deep in the dark where only their glow reached me.

Larger fires sat fixed along the walls, hissing faintly, throwing long shadows that stretched and bent across the stone every time they flickered. The living fire up front swayed like it was moving on purpose, and split down the middle like a mouth full of teeth. Behind it was a human with long red hair, and a black cover with red and gold at the edges. She was holding a curved stick with a string attached to both ends. Then someone laughed.

"Is that supposedly the reincarnation of the Dragon King?" I turned around. Two more humans. They also wore black covers but longer, and had something on their faces that looked ominous. One was a silver laughing face, while the other looked like a crow. Humans in my experience were large, unpredictable, and prone to stepping on things.

"It's supposed to be a scroll to revive Salamander!" The red-haired human pulled the string and a stick of fire materialized. She must be the perpetrator of all this burning, then. I need to ask her to stop. Or rather, I need to ask her to return me to my pond… unfortunately, I didn't even know what they were yapping about. Then a voice came in, uninvited. [Apologies, I failed to realize you aren't a local from this world.] [You have unlocked Translation Common.] [You can now read and understand the common language of this world.] [You have unlocked Translation Dragon.] [You can now communicate with dragons.] Oh, thank you. How considerate… wait what?! Somehow I could understand what it was talking about. I don't think being a local is the problem. Also, what dragons are you talking about? Dragonflies? But instead of answering my question, it just continued talking nonsense. [You have unlocked Regeneration.] [You can now recover or reproduce lost limbs over time.] [You have unlocked Climbing Mastery.] [You can now climb efficiently like a lizard.] Excuse me? Lizards are reptiles. I'm an amphibian. We're not even in the same class. This is like calling a mushroom a vegetable. [It's a simile.] Oh, it answered. Then it continued to ignore me. [You have unlocked Long Tongue.] [You can now use it literally or metaphorically.] Hmm…? [Telling lies is now as easy as breathing.] I'm a salamander! We don't have complex enough social structures for deception!

The most complicated social interaction I've ever had was avoiding another salamander on a log! [The previous Dragon King's element is fire. Do you want to choose it as your base element as well?] Why should I care about the previous Dragon King or anything? I don't even know what a dragon is. [You have been summoned as the reincarnation of the previous Dragon King, Salamander. A dragon is an oversized fire-breathing lizard. Some have different affinities, but most have fire.] I pretended not to hear it.

I'm an amphibian. One that would rather be underwater, not a fire-breathing lizard. Fire was scary. [Noted.] [You have unlocked Water Affinity.] [You can now learn water skills.] After that, the voice departed and didn't return. Probably off to ruin someone else's day. Then something hit my tail. I looked back. A burning pebble rested on it. I wiggled my tail to knock it off and ran in circles, desperately looking for water. The silver-faced human from earlier laughed louder.

"You've been scammed! The client told us you're a stupid mage! Looks like he was right!" Then he pointed.

"And stop being a sore loser and put out the fire already!" Fire? I glanced back at the living fire. It had doubled, tripled. Plenty enough to grill me alive even from that distance.

"Who told you that? The Duke's mistress? The butcher who was actually selling rat meat? Sam, the illegitimate child of the restaurant owner who only serves veggies?" The red-haired human released her hold on the fire stick as it moved forward. The silver-faced human sidestepped.

"You really have a lot of info that would get you killed." His black cover caught fire, and he was beating it off with his hand.

"Wait, Sam is illegitimate?!" I glared at him, hoping to make him stop provoking the red-haired human. The place was too hot already.

"Of course he is. Why else would the old man make him work the breakfast shift?" And of course the red-haired human created another fire stick.

"That… actually makes sense?" The silver-faced human was staring at the burnt edges of his cover, too busy to notice my glare.

"Dad will kill me for this…"

"Is he the one who sent you?"

"Nope, it's—" The crow-faced human grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back. He then put a finger on his beak.

"We are professionals. We don't disclose our clients' identities or drop names." I stared at the beak. It was black, long, and sharp. Beaks are scary and this human was scarier, mostly because I had no idea what a human with one was even supposed to mean.

"Sorry, Shira," the silver-faced human said. Shira sighed.

"Right after I told you not to drop names." He then looked back at the red-haired human.

"As my competent companion said, I'm Shira. We are from the Assassin Guild." He pulled out a short silver stick that shone orange with the fire.

"I apologize, but I'm afraid I need to kill you, fake archmage Ruina. Though, I suspect someone else would have hired us eventually anyway. You're a walking lawsuit waiting to happen." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"It's the Mage Guild, right?" Shira stopped mid-step. He whistled low.

"What made you think that?"

"Because they are the only ones obsessed with that title. True, I don't have much talent with magic." Ruina aimed the fire stick at him.

"But I compensate for it with archery." She released it. Shira bent his head to the side, letting the fire go past his head.

"Just to be clear, you didn't spread the lie about you being an archmage?"

"Of course not. The people I helped just end up calling me that." Ruina smiled.

"And I don't regret helping them." I hope you also help me go home, though I'm not human. I hope you consider.

"I see. So that's how it is." He put a hand under his chin. There was a pause. I watched Shira and the silver-faced human look at each other.

"Shira… are we the bad guys?"

"We're assassins. We've always been the bad guys."

"Yeah, but like, there's bad guys and then there's 'killing a woman because she was called archmage for being an archer-mage' bad guys. That's like… that's henchman-for-the-demon-king level bad."

"We're not henchmen. We're independent contractors."

"That's just henchmen with better dental." Shira's palm pressed against his crow face.

"Look, the Mage Guild already paid half. In gold. Real gold, not those copper coins with gold paint that the Duke tried to use last month."

"The Mage Guild can afford real gold," Ruina spat.

"Exactly. Good-paying client. That's rare these days. Do you know how many people try to pay us in 'exposure' now?

'Oh, you'll be the assassin who killed the tax collector, think of the street cred!' Street cred doesn't pay for poisons, Gerald," Shira said.

"My name's not Gerald." The silver-faced human put his hands on his hips.

"I'm making a point, not Gerald." Shira sighed before looking back at Ruina.

"Any last words?" She created another fire stick.

"Tell them I didn't go down without a fight."

"Sure," Shira said. Then he was in front of her. I blinked. I had been watching the humans talk, and somehow, Shira had moved from over there to right there without crossing the space between us. Ruina jumped backward. The shiny stick followed and punched into her stomach.

"Too bad, an archer or a mage is a bad matchup for an assassin one on one. Especially against two." Ruina coughed blood. The smile stayed on her face.

"I really hate speedy melee types…" She fell. Her curved stick hit the floor with a clatter as the living fire shrank and disappeared. Shira crouched beside her and reached into her side, pulling out a small flat rectangle. Ruina grabbed his hand.

"Tell me… was I wrong?"

"I'm not sure, but I'm sure it doesn't matter." He removed her hand, gently.

"As long as someone hired us, it doesn't matter."

"You could…" She coughed.

"…at least have lied… and said something… nice."

"No thanks." He stood and turned.

"That's not included in my job description." His companion fell into step beside him.

"Shira?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to feel bad about this one."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Is feeling bad extra?"

"It's complimentary. Comes with moral ambiguity." They walked into the darkness of the dungeon corridor. Neither looked back. I had seen death before. I was, after all, a salamander. Death was part of the natural order of things. The beetle died, the salamander lived, the heron ate the salamander, and so on, in the great circle of who-eats-whom. But this felt wrong… They didn't eat the other human. The red-haired human lay on the cold floor of the dungeon, trembling.

Blood was doing what blood does outside the body, which is to say, going places it shouldn't and making everything sticky. Her hand reached out and grabbed the nearest thing available, me.

"I need… a catalyst…" she gasped. I would have objected, had I possessed the vocal apparatus to do so. As it was, I could only wriggle in protest as I was lifted into the air.

"I'll kill that merchant… ask for a refund… and shove the scroll back in his ass…" Her voice was fading.

"What did I do… to deserve getting a lizard…" Again, I'm a salamander! But this human wasn't listening, because she was busy dying, and dying takes a lot of concentration. She placed me on top of her chest, right where the shiny stick had made its terrible introduction to her internal organs.

"Never thought I'd be using Merge Flesh…" Wait, what— A dim red light began to glow. I felt myself being pulled, stretched, merged. It was unpleasant, like being turned inside out. Then darkness. [Hastening heart regeneration…] The voice was there again. [Regeneration complete.] I could hear a beat. Thump. Thump. Thump-thump. Oh, that's better. I remember breathing! I opened my eyes. [Organizing new skills…] I got new skills? [Yes, from your new body.] My new what? My body sat up. I stared at my hands.

They had five digits each. No webbing. Deeply impractical for swimming. [You have unlocked Hawk Eye.] [Your eyesight has improved.] [You have unlocked Merge Flesh.] [A rare skill acquired from a chimera. You can now recover or reproduce lost limbs by using flesh.] Sounds the same as regeneration. [The difference is the requirement. Regeneration requires time. Merge Flesh requires flesh.] I see… [You have unlocked Fire Affinity.] [You can now learn fire skills.] Huh? Didn't I just tell you I hate fire?

It decided to ignore me. [You have unlocked Fire Arrow.] [You can now create an arrow made out of fire.] [You have unlocked Rooted Flameling.] [You can now summon a small monster made out of fire that stays in place. Grows bigger by absorbing mana from the environment and anyone near it.] Must be the fire that was staring at me. I sighed. I looked at the wall. There were torches hanging on it. Somehow I knew they were called torches. I tilted my head. Where did I learn that?

Then a migraine hit, sharp and sudden, like a heron's beak driving straight down through the water. Memories arrived all at once: Seventeen ways to disarm a trap, the proper technique for skinning a goblin, the complete layout of the second floor of this very dungeon, how to create arrows out of debris, the proper breathing to regenerate mana faster— And then the more specific information arrived: Marta, the Adventurer Guild receptionist in Liveron, had a crush on the blacksmith but would never admit it.

The viscount's wife in Stonebrook and the guard captain were having an affair, which everyone knew except the viscount, who was either oblivious or playing a very long game. I observed this with bewilderment. The human brain loved gossip. Social dynamics, it informed me, were more dangerous than monsters. You could recover from a kobold's axe. You could not recover from telling Marta that her haircut made her look like a man. There was a faint memory of Marta dragging someone by the hair.

The human brain did not confirm whether said someone was still breathing. A fly buzzed past. Food/Disgusting, I thought, both at the same time. My body, operating on instincts that were 90% amphibian and 10% confused human, lunged after the fly with single-minded determination. I opened my mouth as the human brain watched my tongue grow longer. I caught it. I ate it. It tasted wonderful. The human brain registered horror. I registered protein.

Moments passed, and my stomach growled. A fly was enough to make a salamander survive a day. Unfortunately, the math was no longer in my favor given my new body size. A human body, I discovered, required significantly more calories than an amphibian one. My stomach was making its opinions known with increasing volume and urgency. I tried to dig into this body's memory. The human brain offered a pleasant answer. The place I was in was called the Chittering Depths Dungeon. Well, the name wasn't important.

Names rarely were, in my experience. What mattered was function. A rock by any other name was still a rock, and would still be adequately damp or inadequately damp regardless of what you called it. But the fact that it was loaded with bugs? That was very important. The human brain informed me that the Chittering Depths was famous for its insect population.

Adventurers came here specifically to harvest chitin, poison sacs, and the occasional spider silk, which sold for unreasonable amounts of money to nobles who wanted evening gowns that were both elegant and capable of stopping a knife. I started searching for bugs. But before that, I paused. Something felt fundamentally wrong about my current situation, and it wasn't just the kidnapping or being mistaken for a dragon or the unexpected body-sharing arrangement. I searched around the dungeon floor with urgency.

There, a rock, roughly the size of my new hand, flat on one side. I picked it up, testing its weight. Not too big that it would slide off, or too small that it wouldn't provide adequate coverage. I placed it carefully on my head, adjusting the angle until it sat just right. The rock wasn't damp. This was disappointing. A proper rock should have at least a thin film of moisture, ideally with some moss growing on the underside.

This one was dry and dusty, probably from sitting in a dungeon for who-knows-how-long without proper maintenance. But it was a rock. It was over my head. And in that moment, with stone pressing down on my scalp in that familiar, comforting way that said you are hidden, you are safe, you are exactly where a salamander should be, my chest unclenched. My breathing steadied. The panic receded slightly, pushed back by the simple amphibian certainty that everything was going to be alright. Because I had a rock.

The rock was on my head. And that was how things were supposed to be. Now to search for food.