I sat up slowly, stretching, trying to shake off the fatigue. I needed a moment to process everything. I was still here.
Not back home. Not waking up in my own bed after a weird, anxiety-fueled dream.
Somehow, I had ended up in a world that functioned like a game, complete with experience points, levels, and class assignments. A class I didn’t get to choose.
[Bard]
I laughed, rubbing my face. That part still wasn’t sitting right with me. A Bard? Really?
I pulled up my status page with a thought, the blue text appearing in front of me like a holographic display.
Abilities:
- Musical Resonant Frequency (Level 1)
- Adonis Quintessence (Level 1)
- Magic Mouth (Level 1)
May you find your Fortune on Fortune!
The complimentary note from the first time I had opened it was gone now, leaving just the cold, hard numbers.
Level 1, with three experience points, meant I had 1,097 to go. If I wanted to level up, I would need to grind for weeks on tiny creatures.
Maybe months.
And that was assuming I didn’t die first.
I let out a slow breath. No point in dwelling. I needed to focus on what I could control.
My abilities were still a mystery. Musical Resonant Frequency, Adonis Quintessence, and Magic Mouth. I had no idea what they actually did. There was only one way to find out.
I started with the most obvious one, music.
Pursing my lips, I tried to hum a note.
Nothing happened.
I tried again, this time letting out a simple “ah” like I was warming up for a choir practice.
Still nothing.
Frowning, I pressed my fingers against my lips. Maybe I needed an instrument? Did Bards actually require one to use their abilities? The text had mentioned using an instrument as a focus, but that seemed silly. Wouldn’t a person who just sang still be considered a Bard?
I looked down at the grass, thinking. If this magic required something that could be considered an instrument, maybe I needed a tool.
I grabbed a blade of grass, pressing it between my thumbs like a kid messing around at recess and raising it to my mouth.
Blowing lightly, a sharp, reedy whistle cut through the quiet morning air.
Something in me shifted.
It wasn’t much, just a small ripple. A weird vibration in my chest, like the moment before a speaker starts humming with feedback. It was faint, but I knew it was there.
Excitement flickered in my gut. This was something.
I glanced around, my mind racing through possibilities. I had seen reeds by the lake yesterday. The Greeks had made flutes from reeds, right? Maybe I could do the same.
I wasn’t musically inclined, but there was one instrument I knew how to play.
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In fourth grade, I had been forced to learn the recorder.
Shut up.
It was the most obnoxious instrument ever conceived, just a plastic tube of suffering that every parent dreaded.
Now, it might be a shot at survival.
That was a big maybe though. I honestly did not know if I was going to be able to use my abilities in a way that would be useful.
I pushed myself up, wincing at the protest of my sore muscles, and made my way toward the lake. As I walked, I noticed something odd.
I felt… better.
I bent my legs, testing them, and while they were sore, it felt more like the ache of week-old bruises instead of wounds that had been torn open less than a day ago.
I looked at my leg. The claw marks were fully scabbed over, the edges already showing signs of healing. My chest was better too. The rough, two-inch wound looked like a giant, well-healing scab instead of an open wound.
That wasn’t normal. Nothing healed that fast.
Maybe this world had some passive magic that sped up healing? Was I regenerating faster because of my class? Or was this just how things in this world worked?
Could my nipple actually grow back?
I shook my head. Priorities.
As I reached the water’s edge, I spotted the reeds, standing tall and swaying in the morning breeze. They looked almost identical to the ones I’d seen in ponds back home. Stepping into the water, with shoes still on, I waded closer.
Carefully, I snapped off a thick, dried, dead one about a foot and a half in length, testing its hollowness. It was heavier than I expected, sturdy, and I could see light through it when I held it up to my eye, which was great for what I had in mind. Though, it did have some dried organic matter remaining inside.
Now, I just needed to turn it into an instrument.
I snapped off a thinner green reed and used it to clean out the dried gunk inside. Then I washed it in the lake, running water through it until it was completely clear.
Next was to add holes.
I reached for my house key, the one thing I had that could function as a makeshift punch. It took patience and more effort than I expected, but eventually, I managed to create a crude version of a recorder.
It was rough, uneven, and barely looked playable. Let's see what happens when I try to use it.
I brought it to my lips and blew.
The sound that came out was like that of someone who had almost figured out how to whistle. That whisper of air passing through a small hole with just a suggestion of the sound that was trying to be made.
But the moment that hint of a note filled the air, I felt something snap into place.
Like a key turning in a lock.
The air hummed, the ground vibrated slightly beneath my feet, and for a brief second, the world felt different.
My heart pounded.
This was it. I had just activated something.
My heart skipped a beat when I realized, as small as this was, that this might be actual magic.
After reflecting on what having access to magic meant, I decided to give this magic another go.
I stared down at the makeshift recorder in my hands, then gave it another blow. Just air again, but...there was still that sense of “moreness”.
The vibrations. I could feel them now, down to my bones.
I hadn’t noticed it before, not really. But this time, when I exhaled through the hollow reed, it wasn’t just sound I was hearing. I was sensing it. Like my whole body was aware of how the sound was being shaped. It was not just by the position of my fingers or the breath I was pushing through, but by the texture of the reed and the subtle shifts in pressure from my mouth. There was a greater shape to the sound that was larger than the sum of its parts.
There was a resonance, and it wasn’t in the air. It was in me.
That had to be the ability “Musical Resonant Frequency”. It wasn’t flashy, it didn’t shoot out a beam, or summon ghostly backup singers. But it was very real.
I adjusted my grip, shifting my fingers along the reed. It wasn’t exactly a science, I was working off vague memories of music class from elementary school, but I had a decent guess on where to place my fingers to make notes.
I took a deep breath and blew again.
This time, a clean, soft whistle emerged. Just a single note. Flat maybe, but it was intentional.
My fingers moved again, testing different holes. I found two that gave me distinctly different notes, low and higher, like the beginning of a scale. Not great, but promising.
I kept going, playing with combinations, trying to remember anything that had somehow remained from childhood. The more I experimented, the more natural it started to feel. It was not easy, but it felt like my hands were learning faster than they should. Each time I blew a note, I could almost see how the vibration formed and feel the way it echoed through the reed and into the world.
It was like the music was talking to something just beyond my senses. I didn’t know what, but I was beginning to think I could learn to understand it.
I paused, staring down at the reed in my hands.
Okay. Let’s try something stupid.
I shifted my fingers, trying to remember the notes to a song. Something simple, but emotional. Something I could hear clearly in my head.
“Hey Jude.”
I didn’t even know all the notes, but I could feel them. Like the echo of the melody was guiding my hands. Memories floated to the front of my mind, times of my dad driving with the windows open with me in the passenger seat, him loudly singing along to the song very badly.
The first few notes came out rough. It was rough but the shape of the song was there. Another note choked off halfway through like the air got stuck. I winced but kept going.
And then something shifted.
It wasn’t a big shift. Just… a small moment. A turning point.
I exhaled through the reed, and the tune that came out wasn’t perfect, but it was just about right.
A low, humming note filled the air. Then the next note followed. Then the next. My fingers moved without me even thinking about it, correcting themselves as I went. I even took a moment to adjust the flute shape by widening the holes the smallest amount and squeezing the top to adjust how the air moved through it before trying again.
The melody began to take shape.
It was still shaky. Still raw. But it was music.
The song came through, not just in tone but in feeling. The reed buzzed in my hands, and I felt the world around me respond.
The air changed.
Not literally. It might have just been my imagination but it felt like this world was… listening.
The longer I played, the more and more the notes sharpened in sound. Several times I made mistakes, and it felt like I was able to correct the stumble on the next breath. It was like something inside me was syncing up with the instrument, like I’d unlocked a secret skill I never knew I had.
I reached the chorus. I always liked it the most, it was the part that my dad would let me sing just myself.
“Na… nana na-...-na na…”
I stumbled again but the notes came out clean.
“Na-na-na-na…”
Clearer still.
“Hey Jude…”
I swear, I heard the words.
Not out loud. Not sung. But the emotion of them, the shape of them, carried in the sound. The way the vibrations resonated through the reed and echoed off the rocks around me—it was like the song itself was being whispered into the world.
My breath caught in my throat as I finished the phrase.
Silence returned.
I lowered the reed flute, heart pounding in my chest.
Nothing exploded. No Fireballs. No dramatic transformation.
But I felt charged. Like I’d tapped into something deep.
That was the first time on purpose I used whatever this stupid world had given me.
It felt amazing.
I sat there for a while just staring at the crude recorder in my hands, wondering just how far this could go. If I could already sense vibrations and bend sounds like this, what could I do with more practice? What would happen when I leveled up the skill? What about my class?
I pulled up my status page to see if anything changed. Maybe I unlocked something or gained experience points.
Still level one. Still three experience points.
Figures.
But I felt like I was getting somewhere. For the first time, I felt like a [Bard]. Not just a guy with a blue box in his face and a bunch of wounds from rodents.
If I could do that with a makeshift flute and an old Beatles song, maybe there was a lot more waiting under the surface.
I set the reed flute down beside me, taking one last deep breath.
Yeah. Things were still messed up. I was still stranded in the middle of nowhere, my chest still kind of stung, and my best weapon was a water bottle.
But I could now make music.
Cool.