Hero looks over his father with his inspection tool, he’ll survive, but not if he gets hit again. “You need to stay down. I’m going to-” Hero stops the second the opening is smashed in a little more, almost providing enough space for some smaller undead to slip through. At the same moment the window breaks from the kitchen behind them. That window is definitely large enough to accommodate a body.

As Hero’s lost in terrified thought, his father pushes him forward. “Get to my room. It’s the best in the house for this sort of thing.”

Hero doesn’t question it and pulls his father to his room, lit by only a small, barred window from high up.

“It’ll buy us a little time,” his father says as Hero stacks the dwarf’s book case of naughty elf magazines against the door.

“But what do we do?”

The dwarf, slouched against the wall, crosses his arms as if he were about to give Hero another one of his “elf magazines are only for true men” lectures, but his expression is dismal, sad… almost a little proud. “Hero, nothing we do can stop them from getting in here. I’m just a blacksmith of common weapons, and you’re just a lad who couldn’t speak.

I think you and I need to come to terms with the fact we’re not getting out of this one alive.”

Hero stares blankly at his father with complete horror. Hero knows how he could survive if it came to that, but he’d never do that, never. All Hero needs is to kill something, anything or anyone, and all that passive exp will crash into his spirit like a collision of planets.

“All I…” Hero clears his throat as he hears the undead horde shamble in unison to the final door as they break in from all sides of the house. “All I need is to kill one of them.”

His father, looking up at him with a pathetic smile, nods, not in understanding but in admiration of his son’s manly spirit.

“Hell yeah, son. Get one. Then it’ll be worth it, ah, shit!” The dwarf winces again as an inconspicuous [lesser bleed] gets applied. “I moved too fast, opened it back up,” he adds as he presses his hand into his side.

Hero watches in horror as the bleed ticks from [lesser bleed] to [bleed].

“What’s going on?!” Hero exclaims as the undead get to their door and begin to smash against it.

“I’m bleeding to death, dammit!” The smith scoffs with a large grin on his face as he looks to the door. “Not that I’m gonna be living much longer anyway. Hey, Hero. You were a good kid.”

Hero presses deep into his father’s wound with a nearby blanket, but the status effect isn’t going away. “What is happening! Why’s your HP still dropping?”

As “5” after “5” leaps over his father’s head in a cartoon, excitable fashion, the dwarf lets out a long, calm sigh.

“It’s internal bleeding, boy. My insides are what’s fucking me up.”

Hero watches in horror as his father’s HP bar strikes down to a tenth of his total. “No, no I won’t let you di-”

Overwhelmed with tears, he stops himself as he realizes this may be his only chance. If he even flicked his pa for one damage, he would get passive combat exp once he died. He could rise up and kill the undead as a level whatever badass bent on vengeance… and yet, there’s a part of Hero that won’t allow that. He’s too great to lower himself to that level, surely.

The young man’s eyes well up with tears as the undead smash the door’s barricade open centimeter by centimeter; this is it.

Deep inside him, Hero asks himself what kind of man he wants to be, and whether or not he’s willing to live with the thought of having had a hand in his father’s death, being hopeless to save him, or dying alongside him, and wasting his chance.

As everything collapses around Hero, his father takes another, pained breath. “When it’s all going to shit, the only thing you can keep clean is yourself. You be my legs, and I’ll be yours, kiddo. Let’s die together unafraid, alright?” He says.

Hero pauses in thought. His dad’s words have a powerful effect on him, but not in the intended way. Hero’s boyish gaze dies out to display the face of a determined man, one who looks up to the door piling heavy with undead, and tells himself: “I’m going to grind some mobs”.

He takes a stand and readies his sword as he gets into position, but first, he needs to position his father as well.

The dwarf flinches as Hero drags him to a very specific corner of the room. “Fuck you doin’, kid?”

“Creating a distraction,” he says, handing his father a pillow as Hero reaches for the arrow in his side. Hero takes a deep breath, grits his teeth, and pulls the arrow from himself, reopening his [bleed].

“The fuck you doin’?!” The dwarf reiterates in a weirded out tone.

Hero doesn’t respond, he just gets ready.

In but seconds, the door finally creaks fully under the undead squadron’s massive weight, pushing the door down and splintering it to pieces.

Laid plain at the end of the room is a wounded dwarf, gripping his limp son, either unconscious or dead. As the horse slowly, savoringly spills into the room in anticipation, they look over the arrow wound of the young man, buckler loose on the floor next to the two.

Undead were never the brightest, especially not the high STA, low INT run-of-the-mill-sort.

The very moment the front-most undead raises its chipped, rusted axe to lay waste to Hero’s father, the a faint drop of blood falls atop the back-most undead’s helmet.

*tap* goes the drop, just as Hero, holding himself high in the narrow room with the sheer force of his waning strength, drops and readies his blade with a rigid, venomous scowl.

The critical hit text leaps like the flag of a victorious army over the undead’s head, lopping a huge 586 over it before crippling the husk into a pile of flesh and bone.

No sooner does the husk hit the floor does Hero’s screen radiate with miles of text:

Hero has leveled up from level 13 to level 14! Hero has leveled up from level 13 to level 15! Hero can now progress a job cell! Hero can now learn mount riding! Hero can now use the auction house! Hero can now join a guild! Hero can now own property! Hero has leveled up from level 15 to level 16! Hero has leveled up from level 16 to level 17!

On and on, seemingly neverending as it scrolls rapidly across his screen in the blink of an eye.

Amidst the confusion and turmoil as all of the undead rail their weapons against Hero, his eyes rest on his upper left character tooltip:

Hero - Level 5,000,000

HP - 4999999999992843/5000000000000000

MP - 4999999999999950/5000000000000000

Aside from that glorious, unbelievable sight of his exp bar being maxed to full, he too can hear his father’s dying breaths.

He’s decided now. Hero’s going to be a legend, and legends do not allow the insult of death to those they love.