You know, when I said a little while ago “maybe I’m not that much of a useless [Bard] after all…”
Yeah. I was wrong.
Very wrong.
So you know all those [Magic Mouth]s I’d cast on the rocks, the ones I’d triggered to scream when I shouted “chorus”? All 63 of those damn things.
Turns out, I forgot to tell them to stop screaming.
Not sure what I thought was going to happen, I admittedly did not think that part out. I assumed they’d just end after a while I guess, just run out of air or burn through whatever battery equivalent I’d charged them with using my mana.
But no.
They just kept going.
One long, continuous, overlapping scream that refused to die.
At first, I figured it wasn’t too bad. I’d deal with it once I checked the [Rogue]’s corpse. I started walking back toward it, already thinking about how I was going to loot the body and clean this mess up.
That was when the first squirrel hit me from the side.
I reacted on instinct, slamming it down and cracking it with the knobstick before it could fully latch on. It skidded across the ground and stopped moving.
“What the?” I had breathed out in confusion.
I’d been pretty sure my anti-critter device still had a decent charge left, these guys should not be anywhere near here.
Then I saw another squirrel charging in.
“Shit.”
I had an idea then what was probably happening. The amount of screaming had to be overriding whatever the device was doing. Whatever frequency or deterrent effect it normally put out, it clearly wasn’t designed to compete with that much screaming auditory. On top of that, this much sound was probably attracting everything that could hear it.
I needed to get out of there. Fast.
Otherwise I was about to recreate the whole pond incident again, except this time without a convenient body of water to accidentally drown everything in.
Damn it.
I sprinted the short distance toward the corpse. The squirrel I’d spotted earlier was already barreling straight at me. I reached down to grab Mouthy from the body, planning to rip it free and bury it in the thing mid-leap.
I pulled. Nothing.
I blinked and looked down in surprise. The dagger didn’t come out.
And of course, that was when the squirrel jumped.
I panicked and did the first thing that came to mind. I took inspiration from Ephraim and backhanded it with my other hand which still held the knobstick.
Somehow, that actually worked.
The squirrel went flying, hit the ground, slid, then popped back up onto its feet like nothing had happened. No worse for wear, though maybe more annoyed than before.
I stared at it, breathing hard, the screaming still echoing all around me.
I guess I’m no freaking [Warrior]…
The little furry hellspawn ran and leaped at me again.
This time I caught it clean. A downward swing with the knobstick, somehow with my off hand, and it dropped to the ground and didn’t get back up. I didn’t question how I managed that. There wasn’t time.
I scanned the clearing fast. Bushes. Trees. Rocks with screaming mouths. No immediate movement headed straight for me yet.
That was when I reached down and grabbed Mouthy, intending to try pulling it free again.
It still didn’t come out.
Now that I was actually paying attention, hand tight around the hilt, I could feel it. A faint vibration. Subtle movement, like something shifting against resistance.
“Oh,” I muttered.
It was still chewing.
Still eating inside the guy.
With my hand still on the dagger, I pushed the command at it.
Stop.
Every other instruction I’d given it, it had snapped into action immediately. This time, there was a pause.
Just long enough to notice. Almost like a breath being taken. Then it let go.
Whatever it had been doing inside the body stopped, and I slid it free. Blood ran down the blade in thick, dark streaks. I grimaced and shoved the bloody thing back into the sheath anyway. Gross. Deal with it later.
I glanced down at the wound. The light hit it just right, and I could see into it.
The fact that there was space inside was… interesting.
The cavity was already filling with blood, but there was clearly more removed than I expected. More than a little mouth should have been able to manage or reach.
Okay. That was absolutely a problem for later.
I patted the body down fast. No coin pouch. No pack. Nothing obvious.
“Damn it,” I muttered. The son of a bitch must have stashed anything he had before coming after me.
Smart on his part. Sucked for me.
I kept searching, fingers moving faster now. That was when I felt something metallic on his left side on the inside of his pants.
I was already reaching into the waistband and felt my skin against his dead skin before I fully registered what I was doing, and paused.
I acknowledged that I was standing in a magical forest, surrounded by screaming rocks, under active threat from aggressive wildlife, and was currently reaching down a dead man’s pants for loot.
Then I kept going.
My fingers closed around a small bag. I yanked it free, glanced at it once, and shoved it into my pocket without thinking any further.
Something cracked in the distance. Somehow, I heard it over the screaming.
Something heavy and big was coming.
“Shit.”
I turned and sprinted back toward my tree. I grabbed my guitar and whatever gear I could without sorting it, slung everything awkwardly, and ran.
I had to have gone a mile before I stopped hearing the screaming.
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There had been a few hours since I’d escaped the screaming trap of my own creation.
I’d finally stopped moving after a long stretch of doing nothing but putting distance between myself and that clearing. First I’d run, then I’d slowed to a jog. Eventually, I’d slowed down to a walk. Once I’d gotten far enough away from all those [Magic Mouth]s, the device keeping the animals off me seemed to start working again as none had attacked me since I left, and after that I traveled uninterrupted.
Honestly, it almost felt like hiking through the woods back home, which was a strange thing to realize given everything that had happened. Familiar in a way that made the rest of it feel even more surreal.
I sat down and took a breath. Then another.
My legs started to shake once I stopped moving. Adrenaline had been carrying me farther than I realized, and now that it was gone, everything hurt. I noticed dried blood under my fingernails and couldn’t remember when that had happened.
I felt exhausted. Disgusted. And not entirely sure what else. Relief mixed with nausea and a creeping sense that this probably wasn’t going to be the last time I ended a day like this.
I found a tree root sticking up just enough to squat against and let my legs rest.
All right. First things first.
I reached into my sheath and pulled Mouthy out to look at it. I hadn’t dismissed the mouth, so it was just there, slightly open lips on the blade like some kind of nightmare joker smile. It was still pretty bloody unfortunately. Most of it had dried, but there were streaks that were still wet. When I glanced down, I saw the inside of the sheath was smeared too.
“Oh, goddammit.”
I looked around for something to wipe it off with. I didn’t want to use my clothes, and there wasn’t any decent grass nearby that would actually help. After a moment, I looked back down at my insane little dagger and tried a different approach.
Can you lick all the blood off yourself and clean yourself off?
I hadn’t even finished the thought before it started. The mouth moved immediately, tongue sliding out and dragging across both sides of the blade. It was almost the opposite of before. Where it had felt reluctant to stop biting, now it seemed eager to start this task.
I watched closely, more than a little worried as the tongue slid over the blade’s edge, but it navigated it without hurting itself.
“Huh,” I muttered.
Interesting.
I stabbed it down into the root beside me and let it finish the job while I tried not to think too hard about how quickly this was starting to feel normal.
Once that was handled, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little pouch I’d taken off the road. It was a square of fabric with knotted strings at the corners. I flipped the flap open and found thin metal tools laid out neatly inside.
Lockpicks.
Of course the [Rogue] had lockpicks.
I rolled the pouch in my hands for a second, weighing it. Another reminder of what kind of people survived long enough in this world to reach level 23. I folded it back up and stashed it in my bag.
Finally, I looked around again. Not a quick glance this time, but a real check. I listened past the birds and the wind, past my own breathing.
Nothing moved. For the moment, at least, I was alone.
I swallowed, steadied myself, and pulled up my status screen.
Abilities:
- Musical Resonant Frequency (Level 19)
- Influence Immunity (Level N/A)
- Magic Mouth (Level 29)
- Vicious Mockery (Level 1)
- Magical Berry (Level 2)
May you find your Fortune on Fortune!
Looking over my sheets, not much had changed. The experience from the [Rogue] was a nice little bump, but it hadn’t even pushed me close to the next level.
God, this world is just maliciously designed.
The more I looked at the numbers, the more it felt intentional. Like the system actively encouraged people to kill each other. When a squirrel gives you one experience point, but a person can give you thousands, it stops being about survival and starts being about incentives. No wonder people stalk each other through the woods. No wonder towns are full of paranoia and sharp looks. Grinding animals would take thousands of hours. One bad encounter with the right target could pay out more than months of careful living.
Scanning down the list again, everything else looked the same until I reached the bottom.
[Magic Berry] was now level 2.
That caught my attention. I had been casting the spell several times a day to practice and experiment, but the results had been nothing but the same old berries which I had thrown away. I had not noticed the ability level up.
I cast the spell into my hand, half expecting nothing to happen. Instead, two berries appeared where there had always only been one before. Same size and color.
“Well,” I muttered, “that’s new.”
There was the same mana cost for the spell, with double the output. On paper, that was great. In practice, it was pretty useless as eating more than berry one at a time would have me violently regretting my life choices.
I popped one berry into my mouth and chewed slowly, letting the warmth settle in. I was just about to toss the second one away when I noticed Mouthy.
The dagger was clean now. The blade caught the light through the trees, and the mouth was slightly open.
Waiting.
It took me a second to realize what it looked like.
Expectant.
I stared at the berry in my hand, then at the dagger. “Do… you want this?” I said, then paused. “What the fuck.”
I held the berry out, half joking, half testing.
The tongue snapped out immediately, wrapped around the berry, and pulled it into the mouth. One sharp bite. Then it closed and swallowed.
I exhaled slowly.
Okay. Something was definitely going on with my dagger. Whether that was good or very bad was still an open question.
I dismissed the mouth with a thought, watching it shrink down until the blade looked normal again. I slid it back into the sheath and leaned against the root, staring up through the canopy.
What do I even do next?
I kept ending up in this same headspace. Trying to plan. Trying to be clever. Surviving by inches and improvisation. I wasn’t exactly loving the wilderness, even if I’d managed to stay alive so far. Luck runs out, traps fail, and tools break. Also, whatever that heavy thing was that I’d heard barreling toward the screaming earlier, I had no interest in meeting it on its own terms.
I sighed.
Going back to town felt risky. Staying out here felt worse.
At least this time, I had music.
Let's go try the [Bard] life.
After that, it took me three days to make my way back to town.
I didn’t rush it. After everything that had happened, I stuck to what I knew worked. I walked, stopped, listened, practiced, and then did it all over again. I kept the animal deterrent charged and stayed off obvious paths, doubling back whenever something felt off. I avoided clever plans and loud ideas, sticking to quiet routines that didn’t draw attention.
Most of that time was spent with music.
I walked with my phone playing in one ear, listening carefully to whatever songs I thought I could realistically hold onto. Things I’d grown up with. Songs I’d half-forgotten but could still feel in my chest. Anything that seemed solid enough that even if the streaming app wiped itself tomorrow, I’d still remember the shape of it. I’d hum first, then sing under my breath, then stop and write down what I could. Lyrics when I remembered them. Choruses when I didn’t. Notes about rhythm, pacing, and where my voice wanted to go.
It was slow work, and more than a little frustrating, but it was progress.
Whenever I stopped to rest, I pulled out the guitar. My fingers still hurt playing it, but not as much as before. Calluses were forming, and movements that had felt clumsy a few days ago were starting to smooth out. I still didn’t know what notes I was playing in any technical sense, but I knew where certain sounds lived on the strings. I could find them again when I wanted to.
My singing improved a little more as well. I had more control, fewer moments where I drifted off pitch without realizing it. I still had to correct myself often enough, but at least I could hear the mistakes as they happened.
At night, I camped light and kept to the same routine. Rope, tree, hammock. One berry. Recharge the device.
By the time the town finally came back into view, I felt different. Still tired, still cautious, and still very aware that one bad decision could get me killed. But my hands moved more confidently on the strings now, and I felt like I knew what I was doing.
I’d somehow come in from the east this time, approaching the city from a different angle and entering through another gate. This one actually had a name painted above it.
Newtown.
I remembered Ephraim mentioning it in passing. I let out a quiet laugh at that, realizing I’d half expected people in a fantasy world to come up with something more inspired than “Newtown” for a city name.
Inside the gate, the area immediately felt a little higher quality. Not fancy, exactly, but better maintained. The buildings looked sturdier and cleaner, and the streets felt more organized. I still saw plenty of [Warrior]s moving through the area, along with several [Mage]s, which I could tell from the class names floating above their heads. This part of town felt more established. More confident.
I passed rows of houses before the street opened up into what was clearly a commercial stretch. Shops lined the road, signs hanging out front, people moving with purpose instead of just passing through. And then I saw it.
A two-story building loomed over the rest, easily one of the largest structures I’d seen so far. It stood out not just for its size, but for how unapologetic it was about what it offered.
Painted across the front in big, bold letters was a single word.
TAVERN
I stopped short and exhaled through my nose. “Nuts.”
If I was actually going to try being a [Bard], then this was probably the place where that either worked or failed spectacularly. There wasn’t really a middle ground.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and walked forward. I pushed the doors open and stepped inside.