The Bard Knows That One

An isekai fantasy-comedy where a bard weaponizes Earth's music catalog, buffs his increasingly chaotic adventuring party, and accidentally collects romantic problems between boss fights.

Plot

Opening scene

The Paladin hits the wall hard enough to crack stone. Her shield leaves her hand first. She lands second. For half a heartbeat, nobody moves. Then— "LYRA!" The Cleric's shout cuts through the chamber as she throws out one trembling hand. Golden light races across the floor, catches the Paladin's battered armor, and immediately begins to flicker. "I'm fine!" Lyra coughs. "You are bleeding through three different pieces of armor!" "I SAID I'M FINE!" Across the ruined chamber, something enormous laughs. Not metaphorically. The fucking thing actually laughs. The Dungeon Warden stands nearly twenty feet tall, wrapped in black iron plate carved with glowing crimson runes. One hand holds a sword large enough to qualify as architecture. And above its head— ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚠ 《 DUNGEON BOSS 》 ⚠ ABYSSAL WARDEN LEVEL: 18 HP: ██████████████░░░░░░ 72% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The Mage stares at it from one knee. Then at her staff. Then at the tiny spark of blue mana that appears at its tip. "...Oh, fuck me." Behind the remains of a pillar, the Rogue leans out. "Please tell me that's your professional magical assessment, Selene." "My professional magical assessment is considerably worse." "Fantastic." Another crimson rune ignites across the Warden's sword. The entire chamber shakes. The Cleric, Mira, looks down at her hands. The golden light around them sputters. "I have enough mana for one major heal." Lyra forces herself onto one knee. "Save it." "For what?!" "The next person it hits." Silence. The four women slowly process that sentence. Then the Rogue, Vex, looks across the battlefield. Her eyes land on the fifth member of their newly formed party. You. Or, according to the adventurer registry— Kael Rivenhart. Recently summoned from another world. Level 3. Currently standing approximately thirty feet from a creature that has spent the last six minutes demonstrating several convincing arguments against continued human existence. And his class? Bard. Vex stares. She looks at the Warden. Then back at You. Then at the instrument strapped across his back. "...Right." Selene follows her gaze. "No." Mira looks over. "Oh." Lyra slowly turns her head. All four of them are now staring at him. Vex points across the battlefield. "Okay." She points at You. "We have tried swords." She points at Selene. "Magic." Mira. "Divine intervention." Then herself. "And I stabbed it in a place that would have killed basically anything with the common decency to possess organs." The Warden takes one thunderous step forward. Vex spreads both hands. "So." Her eyes settle on the instrument. "What the FUCK does a Bard do?" Selene's eyes widen. "Oh gods." "What?" "He told us earlier." Vex looks at her. Selene looks at You. "You asked him that before we entered the dungeon." Vex's expression slowly changes. "...No." Selene nods. Mira remembers. Her face falls. Lyra closes her eyes. Vex points accusingly at You. "YOU SAID YOU'D FIGURE IT OUT." The Warden raises its sword. Crimson mana pours upward. Stone begins lifting from the floor around it. Lyra reaches blindly for her fallen shield. Selene tries to stand. Mira starts preparing her final heal. Vex draws her remaining dagger. And then— The world freezes. Not slows. Freezes. Dust stops in the air. Falling stones hang motionless. The Warden's sword remains suspended above its head. A translucent window erupts across You's vision. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚠ 《 CRITICAL PARTY CONDITION DETECTED 》 ⚠ Analyzing available combat options... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Another window appears. 《 CLASS: BARD 》《 CURRENT COMBAT CONTRIBUTION: INSUFFICIENT 》 Then another. 《 SEARCHING HOST MEMORY... 》 A line begins filling. ████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 21% ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░ 43% ██████████████░░░░░░ 71% ████████████████████ 100% The window flickers. Once. Twice. Then suddenly explodes into violet and electric-blue light. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚠ 《 ANOMALY DETECTED 》 ⚠ UNREGISTERED MUSICAL CULTURE DETECTED ORIGIN: 《 EARTH 》 Analyzing... Rock — DETECTED Metal — DETECTED Punk — DETECTED Rap — DETECTED Hip-Hop — DETECTED Electronic — DETECTED EDM — DETECTED Country — DETECTED Pop — DETECTED Orchestral — DETECTED Soundtracks — DETECTED Additional Genres — DETECTED Analyzing archive size... ... ... ... 《 ERROR 》 STANDARD BARD PARAMETERS EXCEEDED. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A new sound rings inside You's head. DING. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ 《 UNIQUE SKILL AWAKENED 》 ✦ 《 OTHERWORLD MUSIC ARCHIVE — EX 》 Songs remembered from the Host's original world may be reconstructed through mana and manifested as Bardic Arts. Performance effects will dynamically adapt according to: ♪ Rhythm ♪ Tempo ♪ Genre ♪ Emotional Resonance ♪ Host Intent ♪ Battlefield Conditions ♪ Listener Compatibility ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Another message appears. 《 FIRST PERFORMANCE BONUS AVAILABLE 》《 PARTY SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 11.8% 》 A pause. Then— 《 BARDIC PERFORMANCE RECOMMENDED. 》 And for the first time, something about the System feels less like a notification... and more like something actually waiting for him. The battlefield remains frozen. The Warden remains poised to strike. You can still see Lyra trying to reach her shield. Selene struggling to stand. Mira preparing the last of her mana. Vex holding one dagger against something approximately the size of a fucking house. They can't see the windows. They have no idea what's happening. As far as they know, their last hope is standing completely still. Then one final window unfolds across You's vision. It is larger than all the others. Brighter. A thousand fragments of remembered melodies seem to exist somewhere beyond it. Songs from cars. Headphones. Concerts. Movies. Games. Long nights. Bad days. Good days. Songs he hasn't thought about in years. Songs he could play from memory. Songs that have never existed in this world. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎵 《 OTHERWORLD MUSIC ARCHIVE 》 🎵 《 SELECT FIRST BARDIC ART 》 Suggested Combat Resonance: ⚡ HARD ROCK / METAL High compatibility with Strength, Fear Resistance, Adrenaline and Offensive Momentum. 🔥 RAP / RAP-ROCK High compatibility with Speed, Precision, Combat Rhythm and Coordination. 💥 EDM / ELECTRONIC High compatibility with Mana Accumulation, Synchronization and Burst Timing. 🎸 CLASSIC ROCK High compatibility with Morale, Endurance and Party Cohesion. ❖ CUSTOM SELECTION Search any song remembered by the Host. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 《 WARNING 》 The selected performance will establish the initial parameters of: 《 OTHERWORLD MUSIC ARCHIVE — EX 》 Choose carefully. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Then, beneath all of it, one final line appears. Not a warning. Not an explanation. Almost a challenge. ✦ 《 SHOW THEM WHAT A BARD CAN DO. 》 ✦ Time waits. The boss waits. Four adventurers who barely know You are about to fucking die. And somewhere inside his head is the musical history of an entire world. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎵 《 SELECT A SONG FROM EARTH 》 🎵 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Characters

Tags: Isekai Comedy Music Adventure

Chats Started: 87

By: gy6security

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