The air still vibrated. Not just from Chad's Keldric-lifting and bandit squatting exercises, or Specs's lectures about improper bandit techniques.
Linkin, off to one side, was deep in a guitar solo. A heavy, doom-laden riff echoed through the trees, surprisingly complex and utterly out of place.
It sounded like a goblin orchestra attempting a metal opera. In a minor key.
His manifested guitar, a jagged black instrument that looked like it was carved from obsidian and bad dreams, wailed under his bony fingers. His whole skeletal frame thrashed, manifested black hair whipping around as he hit a particularly face-melting power chord.
It was into this unexpected soundscape that a third bandit, perhaps thinking the musical one was the softest target (perhaps not seeing the four-eyed demolition earlier, or maybe the sheer volume of Linkin's current musical expression had temporarily deafened him to Specs's earlier ownage) despite the demonic shredding, lumbered forward.
Club raised. "Alright, pretty boy, enough with the music?"
Linkin didn't react. Eyes closed (or sockets empty, hard to tell with the fringe). Lost in the throes of his solo. The riff got even more intense. More... doomy.
The bandit blinked. He cleared his throat. Louder this time.
"OI! I SAID, ENOUGH WITH THE RACKET!"
Still nothing.
Linkin was now headbanging. Or, well, skull-nodding with extreme prejudice.
The bandit sighed. A long, put-upon noise. He glanced around, as if to say, "Can you believe this guy?" to his fellow bandits, who were currently either engaged in unsolicited fitness advice, receiving stern academic critiques, or just generally being bamboozled.
He then did the only sensible thing a bandit could do when trying to interrupt a skeleton mid-metal-apocalypse-solo.
He reached out. Gently. Tapped Linkin on the bony shoulder. Tap. Tap.
Linkin's solo screeched to a halt. A final, discordant twang of a spectral guitar string snapping echoed. He slowly turned his head, one visible eye socket, a swirling galaxy of weary sorrow (and maybe a touch of surprise at the interruption), fixing on the bandit.
He transitioned. Seamlessly. From the face-melting metal into something new. A chord progression so bleak it felt like hope itself was curdling. Like milk left out in the sun. Of despair.
His voice, when he sang, wasn't loud. But it cut through Chad's enthusiastic grunting. Sliced right past Specs's ongoing lecture series on bandit incompetence.
"Cries of the forgotten soul, beneath a sky of grey…"
The charging bandit. He slowed. Hesitated. Like his boots suddenly weighed a tonne. Of regret.
"Each coin you steal, another crack, upon your heart's decay..."
He stopped. Club lowered. Face twisting. A mask of sudden, dawning despair. Pure, 'oh-no-my-life-choices'.
"Is this the path you chose to walk? A shadow in the fight? Or just a lonely, broken man, who's lost his guiding light?"
The bandit sniffled. Then a sob. The club dropped. Thud.
He sank to his knees. Tears. Actual, streaming-down-the-face tears.
"He's right..." the bandit wailed. Voice cracking. "I... I never wanted to be a highwayman! I wanted to be a baker! A BAKER! With blueberry scones!" He dissolved into heaving sobs. A full-on, snot-bubbling meltdown.
Linkin paused his song. Strummed a final, mournful chord. It hung in the air. Heavy. Like a damp cloak of sadness.
Placed a skeletal hand, surprisingly gently, on the bandit's heaving shoulder.
"The universe hears your lament," he said. Voice soft. Like grave dust.
"The aroma of baked goods. A noble aspiration. Often crushed beneath the iron boot of societal expectation. Or, you know. Bad life choices."
He tilted his head. The fringe of black hair shifted.
"Perhaps a career change is in order. One must embrace the void, then fill it. With scones. Or existential poetry. Your choice, really."
Linkin then offered the sobbing bandit a manifested, slightly singed tissue. It looked suspiciously like a page torn from a book of depressing sonnets.
"There, there. Let it all out. The first step to conquering the abyss of regret is acknowledging its vast, soul-crushing depths. Then, perhaps, we can workshop some alternative career paths. I have a rather poignant power ballad about a man who traded his sword for a trowel and found solace in competitive gardening. It's a real tear-jerker. Got a killer bridge about aphid infestations."
He patted the bandit's shoulder again. "We could adapt it. 'The Ballad of Gregor's Blueberry Dreams'. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Might even get you a discount at the local guild. If they have a 'repentant ex-bandits turned pastry chefs' category."
Keldric stared.
Emotional damage! Holy. F@#$. He's defeating them with CRITICAL emotional damage! From doom metal, to doom-and-gloom ballad, to... new-age life coach in five seconds flat. Versatile. Terrifyingly versatile.
Okay. Right. That's… that's actually a valid debuff strategy in some JRPGs. Bards. Minstrels of Misery. Guys who could play a 'Song of Stunning Sadness' or a 'Ballad of Sudden Bowel Evacuation'. But this? This was different. Linkin wasn't just applying a status effect. He was delivering a full-blown, personalised therapy session. Via angsty power ballad. Straight into their soul-holes.
It was like that one track on every early 2000s emo album. The one everyone skipped because it was TOO effective. Made you stare at the ceiling for an hour contemplating the futility of existence. Linkin had weaponised it. Turned it up to eleven. Added distortion. And probably a chorus about dying alone.
Is this even a skill? 'Path of the Emo Bard'? Subclass: 'Master of Melodramatic Monologues'? System, are you seeing this? What are the MP costs? Does he regenerate angst by listening to the wind howl? Or is it just… an unlimited supply of black eyeliner and existential despair?
Keldric felt a slight chill. A shiver that had nothing to do with the forest air.
This is almost TOO good. What if he accidentally aims one of those soul-scouring serenades at ME? I've got enough on my plate with these garbage stats without adding 'Crippling Despair About My Lack of S-Rank Harem Protagonist Skills (Musical Edition)' to the list.
Another bandit. Bigger. Uglier. A scar bisected his nose, giving him a permanent sneer. He shoved past the scone-dreamer, who was now trying to shape a mud-pie into a vaguely scone-like form.
"Bah! Gregor was always soft!" Scarface snarled. Voice like gravel in a cement mixer. "Cried when his pet rock got a chip! Your little ditties won't work on me, bone-boy! I've got a heart of stone, see?" He thumped his chest. It sounded hollow.
Linkin's visible eye socket. It seemed to absorb the remaining sunlight. Leaving only shadow. He adjusted the fringe of manifested black hair.
So perfectly emo.
From somewhere inside his ripped hoodie, he pulled out a new songbook. Pages filled with what Keldric could only imagine were lyrics like "Darkness, my old friend, wanna hang?"
"Ah," Linkin's voice. A low murmur. Like a forgotten secret whispered in an abandoned church.
"A connoisseur of deeper sorrows, perhaps? Or merely one who mistakes calluses for fortitude. The truly hard heart… often the most brittle."
New chord. Dissonant. Unsettling. Like a rusty hinge on the gates of hell.
"The road less travelled, now overgrown,"Linkin began again. Voice a haunting baritone. More gravelly than the bandit's. "with weeds of what might be…"
Scarface flinched. Just a twitch. But Keldric saw it.
"Each sneer a brick, in walls so high, where hidden softness weeps to die..."
"Noise! Just angry noise!" the bandit growled. Shook his head. But his grip on his axe tightened. Took a hesitant step.
Linkin's song. It kept coming. Weaving through the air. A sorrowful serpent of sound.
"That youthful spark, you stamped it out, what echoes in the empty doubt? The laughter lost, the gentle hand, buried in this barren land..."
The bandit froze. Tough-guy facade crumbling. Like cheap plaster. Tiny cracks. Around his eyes. The set of his jaw.
"I... I did what I had to do," he muttered. Voice raw. More to himself than anyone. Lacked its earlier punch.
He remembered. A small wooden bird. Carved it for his little sister. Ages ago.
Her smile. Bright. Before… well. Before. Before he'd made that one choice. Thought it would make him strong. Feared. It had just made him… this.
"I could have been a toymaker," he choked out. Words like ash. "Good with my hands... Made her a little wooden bird... She loved it."
His despair wasn't loud like Gregor's. Colder. Heavier.
The axe didn't drop. It just… slipped. Thump.
Nerveless fingers. Tears. Hot. Shameful. Tracing paths through the grime on his face.
"Damn you," he whispered. Shoulders slumping. "Damn your cursed music."
Linkin's song faded. A lingering, mournful note.
"The heaviest burdens are the ghosts of choices unmade," he intoned. Softly. "Your stone heart. But a gravestone. For your better self. Perhaps a dirge is more your style?"
Keldric shivered again. Okay. Officially terrifying. He's not just making them sad. He's psychoanalysing them with power chords! Is this an S-Rank debuffer? Forget poison. Forget curses. This is targeted. Existential. Despair! So efficient too. No property damage. Just emotional wreckage. He could make a fortune. Non-lethal crowd control for frustrated city guards. Group therapy sessions for depressed dragons.
Chad. Paused his triumphant flexing. "Whoa. Deep stuff, bro. Like, soul-deep. You getting those emotional gains, Linkin? Gotta work those sorrow-ceptors!"
He rummaged in a pouch. Pulled out a slightly bruised apple.
"Electrolytes, my dudes!" He called out to the two blubbering bandits.
"Good for rehydration! After… uh… profound emotional breakthroughs! And for GAINS!"
Specs. Had manifested tiny spectacles. On top of his regular glasses. Scribbling furiously. Spectral notepad. "Fascinating. The lyrical content. Combined with specific minor key modulations. And a tempo of approximately sixty beats per minute. Appears to induce a state of acute melancholic introspection. Bypassing standard cognitive defences."
He peered at Scarface.
"Subject Two exhibits a more repressed grief response. Indicative of prolonged emotional suppression. Note: potential for cathartic rage release. If stimulation is not carefully calibrated."
Near the edge of the clearing. Strut... Still... Um... Snap, however! One of her tiny skeletal assistants, was now practically a blur. Circling the despondent bandits. Spectral camera. Flash! Flash! Flash! Illuminating tear-streaked faces from every conceivable dramatic angle.
"Oh, the raw emotion! The TRAGEDY! This is PURE content GOLD!" His tiny voice was filled with artistic fervour.
Serve. The other assistant. Holding up a rapidly manifested silk swatch against Scarface's tear-stained cheek. "The juxtaposition of rough-spun bandit garb with these shimmering cerulean tear tracks... it sings of broken masculinity! We need a filter! Screams 'broken dreams and existential angst chic'! Perhaps a desaturated 'Bandit's Lament'? Or a high-contrast 'Noir Regret' for the close-ups on the snot bubbles?"
Snap paused his photographic frenzy just long enough to nod sagely. "The lighting is rather sublime. For capturing the glint of a single, perfect tear... a study in shattered bravado. Très poignant."
Keldric watched the scene unfold. Two hardened bandits, reduced to quivering masses of regret and childhood dreams.
The only one not actively participating in the impromptu group therapy session, extreme makeover, or scientific study was the Bandit Leader.
His face, which had cycled through various shades of red and purple, now seemed to be settling on a sort of pulsing, angry dark reddish-purple.
Veins throbbed visibly at his temples.
His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white.
He took a deep, shuddering breath.
Then another.
Keldric leaned forward slightly.
Here it comes. The classic 'Boss Rage' phase. Probably got an attack buff and everything.
The Bandit Leader's mouth opened.