Beep! Zeke pulled a cup of steaming Easy Mac out of the microwave and dumped cheese powder into it. “Hm.” He sighed as he stirred the noodles. He was going to start his life at GSU soon in a week's time, and Zeke had intended to play SeraphStar up until he started school, but he couldn’t shake this feeling of dissatisfaction. Spending three hours failing to kill much of anything wasn’t Zeke’s idea of fun. He wanted to feel more powerful and to be someone people could look up too.

“Becoming the strongest bard in SeraphStar is gonna take longer than I’d thought” Mumbling, Zeke shoved cheesy macaroni into his mouth. “Hm, I’ll give it another shot, I guess” He set his noodles aside, walked out of his kitchen and into his bedroom. Plopping onto his oversized mattress, he threw on his headset and connected the neurotransmitter to the back of his head.

SeraphStar only works whilst asleep, so the artificial neurotransmitter, a small cone shaped tube, forces the user asleep and begins to rework their neural stimuli. Whilst the user may feel great inside the game, being in this state for too long has been known to cause potential health problems.

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Zeke logged into his account and reentered the world of SeraphStar. The illustrious city of Mindel was just as bustling as before. Weaving past a crowd of higher level players, Zeke navigated to the shopping district of the city, a long stretch of class specific stores. Each store held large windowed displays of ornate weapons and armor. Large battle axes, shiny long swords, elegant longbows and enchanting staffs decorated the interiors of the marketplace. Finally, lying at the very end of the row, was a small thatch roofed shop named ‘Commonnote’.

Zeke peered his head into the dark, empty store and walked inside. The wares here were significantly less shiny and flashy as the ones in other stores, yet still this is what Zeke had to work with. Most of the bard’s weapons are string based. Lutes, harps, guitars and violins are most bards instrument of choice. Even so, horns, and percussion instruments are still available.

Starting out with a mere hundred credits and only gaining thirty-three more from combat earlier, Zeke couldn’t afford a thing. The cheapest weapon there was an oaken guitar, priced at eight hundred gold. “That’s only three points of damage higher than what I have now!” Zeke audibly complained.

“I’d better start grinding then.” Before leaving there was one last thing Zeke wanted to look at. “What’s the most expensive instrument here?” Hung up at the front of the shop, a red electric guitar paraded the main display. Priced at a million credits, the guitar dealt three thousand more points of damage than Zeke’s starting guitar. He stared at the instrument for a moment and smirked. “Well, it ain’t gonna buy itself.” Zeke said as he left the shop.

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Zeke returned to the crystal forests of Mindel to hunt slimes. Each slime here on average gave one to five gold, that means he was going to have to kill a lot of slimes if he ever hopes to buy that oaken guitar.

Bards are a support class. This means their attack power is incredibly low and they lack many damage oriented abilities. For comparison, a level ten warrior with the starting steel sword can deal thirty eight to forty damage with each blow, when a level ten bard with the starting birch guitar can only deal three to five damage. This large gap in damage is meant to balance out bard, and its abilities. Most classes only start with one or two abilities they can use, yet bard starts out with four different abilities.

These spells are all support based and are meant to be used in conjunction with abilities from other classes. The first of these abilities is called ‘Consumption’. Zeke strummed his guitar and cast the spell. A large translucent pink field of gas erupted around Zeke. Essence started to erupt from two blue slimes, one in front of him and the other behind, and flow into Zeke’s body.

Each ability Zeke uses requires a certain amount of mana. At his current level he can cast three spells before having to wait for about a minute to recharge. Consumption recharges mana exponentially based on the number of creatures within the field. The spell lasts for thirty seconds, so Zeke can keep casting and recharging during that time.

His Mana recharging, Zeke casted next spell ‘Power Burst’. After strumming his guitar, a large red quarter note emerged and began floating in the air. Similarly to consumption, this spell creates an AoE effect, except the range on power burst can not be physically seen like consumption’s can. Enemies within this range have their damage slightly reduced and allies have their damage increased. This spell can also nullify certain status effects and spells.

As consumption ends, Zeke yells loudly into the air, and casts his next spell, ‘Howl’. The two blue slimes who were slowly crawling towards Zeke, suddenly stopped in their tracks. This spell sends a burst of air in all directions and briefly stuns the enemies in immediate vicinity.

With the slimes stunned, Zeke casted his final spell, ‘Bardic Inspiration’. In other games, this spell only affects others, but in SeraphStar, bards can cast it on themselves. Singing a quick auto generated tune, Zeke used the last of his mana on this ability. Bardic inspiration increases all of the stats of a single creature by thirty percent for fifteen seconds.

The combination of bardic inspiration, and power burst nearly doubled Zeke’s attack power, plus enemies stunned with howl, take twice as much damage as normal. Zeke then raised his guitar into the air and slammed it down into the slime in front of it, exploding it into a pile of blue gel. He whipped around and slashed his instrument into the other slime. “Nice!” Zeke shouted as he collected his loot.

With all of his abilities used in conjunction, Zeke can do enough damage to one shot blue slimes. Which also happens to be as much damage as warriors his level can do without using abilities.

“Whew, I got seven gold from that. Not bad.” Zeke muttered to himself and perched up onto the fence surrounding Mindel. “Ah that was really great! I couldn’t have done it without Astral’s help though. She really taught me a lot about SeraphStar’s combat system earlier. I’ve got to thank her. Now, I wonder where I could find her...”

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“You’ve gotta be kidding me!? She’s still leaning on this fence waiting?” Zeke realized Astral remained in the exact same place he found her earlier. “It’s been nearly four hours! Don’t tell me she’s been here all this time.” Zeke walked up to Astral.

“Hey! It’s good to see you!” Zeke exclaimed and waved his hands in the air.

“Oh, you’re still here, huh?” Astral crossed her arms.

“I should be saying that to you! You’ve been here for hours, haven’t you?”

“I’m just waiting for a friend, that’s all. She’s just running a bit late.” Astral responded.

“Four hours isn’t what I’d call a bit late, but to each their own! Anyways I just wanted to thank you for helping me out earlier.” Zeke eagerly said.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Oh and I was wondering if you wanted to fight some more slimes with me. It’s a better way of passing the time than standing around here.” Zeke offered.

“Yeah you’re probably right.” Astral hopped off the fence. “Though I think we can do better than that.”

“Huh? What do you mean by that?” Puzzled, Zeke replied.

“You’re level ten, you’d get a lot more experience if we took it up a notch. Let’s go challenge a dungeon.”

Zeke paused for a moment before letting the information fully process. “Oh yeah! I’d thought you’d never ask! Dungeons! Yeah, let’s explore a dungeon!” Zeke excitedly jumped up and down.

“Now, don’t get too ahead of yourself. We’re just going to do something easy.” Astral sighed.

“This is going to be awesome!” Zeke shouted.

——————-

The dungeon Astral and Zeke were about to challenge is known as Grognag’s Lair. It’s the first of the six demon lord lairs that players are tasked to beat during SeraphStar’s main story. Most players complete this dungeon at level eight to thirteen. It’s meant to be an beginner dungeon and introduce players to SeraphStar’s exploration mechanics. It provides an easy and casual experience, yet Zeke’s experience with it is anything but casual.

——————

Somewhere deep within the dark expanse of rocky, dim lit corridors called Grognak’s lair, Drimrock, an Orc Warlord stood above a small girl. His stature was large and overbearing. His long red beard accented his shiny dark armor. A platinum battle axe rested on his right side and red long sword on the other. Several other various players watched in silence as Drimrock kneeled down over a small unconscious ranger girl. “Haha.” He mumbled as he stroked her short brown hair and pierced a syringe into her head.

“Perfect. That’s all of ‘em” He quickly stood up and clasped his hands together. “Alright guys, let’s open shop!”