I had been a man once but slowly I became demonized by the people I trusted most false accusations lies and vile people pushed me to become cold. I had once been a dedicated good guy but through their actions I was warped and then I died before I could truly unleash my vile resentment upon the world. I had crafted a weapon so evil that when I died its meare existence condemned me to the darkest pits and as death claimed me I shouted out my last words in hatred as blood pooled beneath my cooling body and with my last words I cursed existence itself.
I found myself in a black void of nothingness there was nothing at all and after some time I heard a voice like the sounds of nails on a chalkboard the grating sound painful to my ears but by that point I'd realized id lost my way I had re-watched my life and realized that jealousy was behind all of their attempts to bring me down a victim of my own success it seemed and with that relevation I had been ready to accept my fate and then the voice spoke. " Oh mortal you have condemned yourself to the deepest darkest of hells yet I pity you, so I the great monarch of death and life An-Baliel have decided to give you a second chance however you have accrued such a karmic debt that I cannot simply give you a human body once again but must instead give you a lesser form but in that I can give you a choice, so now choose mortal choose your next form and recover your debt may you strive to do good in the new world you find yourself in". After the voice spoke I saw three forms appear a pathetic goblin and I saw its stats it was a neutral creature not strong nor fast but it was neither evil or good the second a kobold and it was the same as the goblin though it had a clear evolutionary path from basic kobold to the mightiest of dragons however kobolds were hunted by all races and then the last form appeared and it was blocked from my view a total unknown essentially a random choice and while I thought about just taking it i looked back to the others finally deciding on the kobold sure I would likely die but at least I could aspire to being a great dragon one day maybe.
My choice made I spoke for the first time in what I felt was centuries "I choose to be a kobold great An-Baliel" and then the being spoke "accepted mortal" before everything fell to black and then I felt like I was falling. I awoke laying on a bed of rocks having just unconsciously dug my way out of an egg the size of a large dog from my old world but then I realized that I had retained much of my old memories though I could tell that they had been altered nothing of technology or my work remained though I did remember long hours of working on something just not what it was disconcerting but at least I retained those and my goal of being better and then above me appeared a matronly looking kobold who scooped me up and brought me what I could only describe as a school of sorts. I spent my first year eating sleeping and learning and I found out that I was a rarer type of kobold a gray scale which apparently meant that I was the lowest of kobolds as gray scales were not gifted in any profession and would forever be weaker than their breatheren I took it in stride as pennance for my failures in my old life I would work hard to become the best I could mayhap I could be the first gray scale to evolve though that could be considered an impossible task on its own. I spent my schooling days memorizing everything I could and then once my first birthday I was given simple tasks by my people haul water dig latrines and harvest mushrooms they were not difficult but they did serve a purpose strengthening me for the future and I took to them with little complaint. I lived day by day digging hauling and other simple tasks for 10 years and finally at the age of 11 I was deemed worthy of a weapon it was only a simple fire hardened spear made of wood scavenged by the scouts from the surface and with my new weapon I was sent to out to the surface to hunt. I hunted diligently and after one of the other hunters took me under their guidance I was finally able to actually get something on my hunts a meager rabbit but I was elated with my first kill and showed my elders and quickly had my rabbit taken from me with little appreciation. I suddenly knew that I was doomed to suffer in this world but I persevered and never gave up and after my first rabbit I slowly killed several more on my hunts and then after killing my twentieth rabbit i gained a skill spearmanship level 1 which didn't sound like much especially considering that the others born on the same day as me already had skills some even more than one but at least I knew I could grow and now I even had a stat page though it was pretty terrible. My stat page read
HP: 2 MP: 8 STAMINA: 5
Will 1
Strength 2
Endurance 1
Charisma 1
Luck 0
Intelligence 4
Agility 2
Skills:
Spearmanship level 1
It was abysmal but it was mine at least and so I put even more effort in working to grow my stats and skills.
I suffered greatly the first 20 years of my life but I did my best offering help to all who needed it going out of my way to aid others and attempt to improve my karma even if it was somewhat selfish of me. I had survived a long time for a kobold gray scale most of us died after all some from picking the wrong mushrooms and having a snack only to die from poisoning while others died trying to hunt bigger game in the forest and thats not to mention that we typically ended up on the menu of larger predators gray scales were considered little more than cannon fodder at best. On my twentieth birthday I was given over to the shaman as I had proved to be a worthwhile gray scale and from the shaman I received some limited training on healing magic though I only managed to learn minor healing spells like minor cure and minor heal it was mostly me struggling to cram knowledge into my brain and retain it and while some stuck like how to make simple healing salves and restorative drinks and even gained a few more skills i was by no means a master of the art of healing and attack spells I never managed to learn mostly because the shaman thought me too stupid to bother teaching me. I had gained light magic level 1 and alchemy level 1 as well as healing level 1 in the ten years I spent with the shaman as an apprentice as well as gained 2 points in strength 3 in endurance and 3 in intelligence and from my hunting days I gained another 2 in agility and 1 in will making my stat sheet look less depressing at least. Stats HP: 8 MP: 14 Stamina: 20
Strength 4
Endurance 4
Will 2
Agility 4
Intelligence 7
Charisma 1
Luck 0
Skills:
Light magic 1
Spearmanship 1
Alchemy 1
Healing 1
After assessing my stats I asked the shaman what was a normal stat range for someone my age and he had pondered a moment and then told me 5 at my current age of 30 which if im honest kind of crushed me I was so behind it was discouraging but I steadied myself I knew that I was at a disadvantage but then I asked what the average gray scale had at my age and he snorted and said "the strongest gray scale ive ever heard of reached 4 points in all of their stats by age 40" and thats when I realized that I was actually doing far better than I had any right to complain about honestly.
With renewed vigor i pushed myself to raise my will stat as high as I could by using everything I could think of and pushing myself to the limits of my capabilities and while my will stat struggled to raise to 3 I finally managed it and even raised my endurance another level bringing it to 5 meaning i had 10hp finally and 25 Stamina my efforts had not gone unnoticed however and so I was tasked to hunting once more. After thirty years of living as a kobold I had risen to the rank of a measly hunter but I had only begun my journey. I took ever larger game the first of which was a wild boar and in that single hunt my spearmanship raised to level 2 and I finally leveled up not that it was noticeable I was simply now a level 2 kobold after 30 years I had ranked up and for that I received +1 to every stat including my luck which had sat at 0 for so long I thought id never raise it in this life.
With a bit more of everything I was feeling more confident so I took on something I should not have I hunted a bear and that was a mistake. I had tracked down the bear to a small clearing sneaking up while it was eating berries and then I struck spear first into its flank and at that moment I received a skill sneak level 1 but it distracted me from my target for a crucial moment the bear had spun around when my spear pierced its side and nearly ripped the spear from my hands. The bear growled loudly and then attacked luckily I had managed to keep ahold of my spear so when the creature charged i attacked again ramming the spear into its chest. The bear roared its fury bloody foam on its lips and swung a paw at me slamming into my chest and as I felt scales snapping and those claws digging into my flesh. My scales had held but a moment to the beasts furious attack and I was bleeding three lines of firey pain scoring my chest yet the bear was still standing i hurriedly cast minor healing on myself i was down to 2 hp from 12 I would have been dead if not for my recent level up and that from a single attack yet tge bear still stood maw open wide roaring its fury my spear still stuck through its chest and bloody drool leaking from the beasts mouth. The crimson blood staining the ground from the wounded bear and myself was slick and I was now weaponless so I grabbed the first thing that came to hand a rock and I tgrew it with all of my meager might and while the stone was a decent chunk my strength couldn't put enough force behind the attack still though I managed to hit the bear in its eye and then the roaring stopped my hit wasn't even enough to truly harm the beast but it shut it up a moment and with one eye watering and a snarl upon its lip the bear charged me.
I jumped to the side and used my clawed hand to slice at the bears leg scoring a strike on the bears hind leg slowing the beast and wounding it more. I picked up a second rock and threw it at the bear hitting it again on the head and finally doing a bit more damage than my first attempt though it was only a small scratch on its head it slowed tge beast further as it seemed to stun it. The battle between myself and the bear took minutes the wound id made with my second attack had greatly slowed the creature and my poorly thrown rocks had battered it before it finally succumbed to its wounds and perished with a bloody froth on its lips my efforts having finally proven fatal for the beast and with its silence I could hear creatures coming my way so I wiped my claws on the grass and retrieved my spear which unfortunately had snapped inside of the bear during the fight and was likely the reason it had died in the first place while in the end I'd taken a couple of clawed strikes stripping off scales and leaving nasty gashes in my battered body while I managed to mostly heal with my minor healing spell though I was still wounded my mp having drained to nothing. I watched as others of my kind arrived and saw the still form of the bear mouths agape as they realized that I'd killed it and then I asked for assistance bringing it back to the den.
When I had slain the bear I had leveled up again to level 3 and with an extra point in every stat once more I was up to 14hp and 18 mp though I also learned that missing health and stamina did not regenerate when you leveled up. I had broken my spear in fighting the bear so I was forced to craft my own new spear so I tried to remember how my spear was made and then I realized I didn't have to make my spear exactly as it had been so I attempted to find the right stone and craft a stone spear tip for my new weapon. I spent far too long crafting just the tip of my new spear as I kept failing but eventually I crafted a new spear head a roughly forearm length of sharpened stone that I affixed to a length of oak just a bit taller than myself and it was affixed with several strands of vines and a sticky pine sap that would harden up in a fire which i promptly used to strengthen my spear and I even gained a couple skills stone crafting level 1 and wood crafting level 1 for my efforts.
With my fame for being the first gray scale to slay a bear i was actually a bit popular amongst the other kobolds it was actually surprising but it was not exactly shocking since gray scales were considered little more than cannon fodder. I kept to my hunting daily and then nightly I'd work to increase my stats and skills as best I could often simply meditating and crafting and then I turned 40 and my stats had risen quite a bit now.
Stats:
Level 4
HP 18 MP 20 STAMINA 45
Strength 7
Endurance 9
Will 7
Intelligence 10
Agility 7
Luck 3
Skills :
Spearmanship 3
Light magic 2
Healing 2
Alchemy 2
Stone crafting 2
Wood crafting 2
Unarmed combat 1
Defense 1
I had gained greatly from my efforts slaying first the boar then the bear and then the other creatures i fought over the years though i took several other hits over the years and been forced to use my fists on a few occasions giving me both Defense and unarmed combat skills which made me quite a bit stronger than otherwise might be the case and certainly beyond what the average gray scale ever manages. I learned that I might evolve if I reached level 10 so I put in the effort to raise myself to that point apparently rare was the kobold that ever achieved that noble goal. It took me reaching the age of 80 to finally reach the level of 10 and then I evolved into a greater kobold a rarer form of kobold doubling my stats and making me no more a simple gray scale goblin I had become greater kobold and gained the status of a greater gray kobold a even rarer type of kobold as none have ever been lucky enough to evolve all gray kobolds i had seen had died young most before ever reaching level 2.