A flash of darkness narrowly missed his head, continuing on to slam into the wall of water that lay behind him. Although, was it right to call it a flash of darkness? Perhaps an anti-flash? An un-flash? Quite the conundrum, reall-

“Gah!” A droplet of water struck him in the forehead at high speed. Its strength was that of a particularly strong flick, not doing any real damage, but it was jarring nevertheless.

“Boy! You have that dumb look in your eyes. I know you’re not losing your focus in the middle of a fight, or I’ll start helping them instead of you.” The speaker stood in the room’s center, arms crossed, a deep frown on his face. Lately it seemed that such a frown was its default state, in fact.

Not that he’d ever been that soft or cuddly of a man, but Barb was quickly realizing that his father was much more cross with him than he’d anticipated.

Case in point, Barb had expected a stern talking-to. Perhaps some ear pulling and having his mouth rubbed out with soap. The standard. What he hadn’t expected was for his father to throw him into the settlement dungeon.

Alas, here he was. Faced with enemies that should have taken five adventurers to fell, he was here all alone, his only “ally” standing in the room’s center ringed by a low-hanging wall of water. Barb dodged another dark bolt and watched out of the corner of his eye as it moved towards his father, only for a part of the water wall to shoot upwards, the bolt dissipating harmlessly on contact.

“I don’t mean to complain overly, of course, but I’d like to point out that this seems a touch… unfair.” He reached for a razor that hung at his side, igniting it with fiery mana and launching it at one of the shades that clung to the walls of the room. It did a small pittance of magic damage, the physical razor doing next to nothing to its immaterial body. “Ignoring the fact that this is a five-person dungeon, I confess that I’m not particularly well-suited to this sort of figh-”

Another droplet of water connected with his forehead, this time harder than the first.

“I. Don’t. Care. Maybe you should have thought about that before running off from Drawgin to come here. Hells, boy, it’s a darkness dungeon. Of course it’s going to be full of shades. You should have known this wouldn’t be a good fit for you.” Despite the distance between them, Suds’ voice effortlessly filled the cavern, radiating its disapproval into every crack and crevice.

Barb sighed. Or, at least he would have if he wasn’t starting to pant. He was heavily focused on Dexterity, allowing him to nimbly dodge and duck between the projectiles that came for him. Tapping into that sort of speed at length, however, was taxing, even for someone past the first Endurance threshold.

The shade he’d just hit reached a wispy arm towards the wall — a move that Barb had unfortunately discovered would heal the monster — but before it could connect, a geyser shot up, blocking its advance. While his father wasn’t truly helping per se, he was at least keeping the shades from undoing Barb’s hard-won damage.

Still, it wasn’t enough. “I swear…” he mumbled. “Old man’s trying to kill me.”

No sooner had the final word left his mouth than another geyser formed beneath his feet, this one not even remotely gentle. It slammed into him with such a force, it shaved off a few points of health, rocketing him backwards. He failed to right himself in time, resulting in him sprawling to the ground directly in front of his father.

The ring of water surrounding them shot upwards, forming a full dome around the father and son, effectively shutting them off from the surrounding dungeon. Though that protected Barb from the attacks coming from without, it did nothing for those within.

Suds grabbed his son by the scruff, yanking him upwards as if he weighed nothing at all. “You think that’s some kind of joke, boy? Huh? I am trying to keep you alive, you little shit. If anyone here is trying to kill you, it’s you. What the HELLS were you thinking running off here? I put you in gods-damned Drawgin for a reason!”

Barb sighed. In fairness, perhaps it had been in bad taste.

Outwardly, someone viewing their current dynamic might assume Suds wasn’t the best of fathers. He certainly wasn’t the most affectionate.

At least as far as Barb was concerned, however, the truth was the exact opposite. He’d been an excellent father. And if you asked Suds himself, he’d likely tell you that he’d been too good a father.

When Barb had been far, far younger, he’d decided what he wanted to do with his life. He’d be a barber. Not some fighter class. Not a Battle Barber. Just a regular, plain-old barber.

His father had slapped him upside the head so hard it rang like a bell, and had only told him how stupid he was being at least a hundred times. When it came time to choose his class, however, Barb did it with his father’s blessing. His father, for all his strong opinions, would let him follow his own path.

Within reason.

Barb was, quite emphatically, not supposed to die of old age.

The only problem was that to keep himself alive, he needed the Constitution to do so. If he’d ever reached level 25 as a Barber and upgraded his class, then perhaps he would have done it, too.

Only, he hadn’t.

Oh, he’d tried. For decades, he’d devoted himself to his class, managing to get himself all the way up to level 22. Eventually, however, his leveling had started to stall. There were only so many haircuts people needed. Only so many class quests he could complete. As he started to see the visible signs of aging, Barb had to admit the truth to himself.

If he continued his simple life as a barber, Barb was eventually going to die.

Perhaps to many, such a realization wouldn’t mean much. Most people, after all, assume they’ll die someday. When you’re born to a family where it’s expected that you’ll take over for your father, however, there are different sorts of standards. It was always just assumed that he’d eventually get the Constitution he needed.

Ha! To be born expecting to live for centuries. What a life, no?

When it became clear, however, that he would not, his life took quite the turn.

Cashing in a number of favors, his father had helped him reset his class. Decades of class skills and the accumulated experience from his class quests had been ripped away from him just like that. In their place, he’d taken a fighting class — well known for their faster leveling speeds.

Never planned to be a fighter. And yet, here I am. I’d say it’s amusing, but that’s not quite the right word, is it? Strange, perhaps. Bittersweet?

Knowing it was a race against the clock for Barb to level up before his age caught up with him, his father had sent him away to Drawgin. It was perfect. An entire city focused on leveling and training, with practically unlimited access to its dungeon. If he could power-level through the late teen levels anywhere, it would be there.

And then, of course, Barb had decided to leave.

It was just a small trip! A skip, a jaunt, a minor vacation of sorts. And it wasn’t like he was doing nothing while he was here. The settlement did have a dungeon after all. He just wanted to support a friend, get a change of scenery. On top of that, he hadn’t expected his father to find out in the first place.

Alas, however, he had. And as far as he was concerned, what Barb had done was the height of idiocy. They both knew, after all, that he didn’t have time for breaks anymore. He’d wasted too much time already.

And in this case, to waste time was to die. Perhaps not today, or tomorrow, but someday soon all the same.

I do say, I try rather hard not to dwell on it too much. A shame. Father’s appearance means it will be quite difficult to get the thought out of my head for a while.

Needless to say, all this tended to bring the tensions rather high. Underneath all the barbs and jabs his father shot his way, however, he knew the sentiment behind them: I’m not trying to bury a son someday.

Nor was Barb overly keen on being buried.

As if sensing that his words had sobered his son up a touch, Suds let out a weary sigh and dropped him. “Twenty-five percent,” he grunted. “Not a touch more. You need the experience.”

Barb blinked at his father’s words, snapped out of his momentary reverie. Does he feel guilty? That’s fairly generous by his standards.

Well, no sense letting it go to waste.

In one smooth movement, Barb brought his massive scissors to bear, swinging them with the utmost precision at his father’s head. A mass of short-cropped hair fell to the ground, leaving Suds’ head partially bare.

Shave

You have removed 25% of your target’s hair, stealing 12.5% of your target’s stats.

Barb could feel the influx of stat points, a sensation that filled him with euphoria regardless of how many times it happened. For all that he sometimes missed his old class, he had to admit that there were perks to the new one.

Evidently not wishing to speak a moment longer, Suds brought his barrier down, returning it to its earlier reactive state. As soon it dropped, Barb was out, his body practically a blur.

A wave of bolts raced towards him, all of which he sidestepped with ease as he rushed to the side of the chamber. In an instant he was on the first of the shades. Mana pulsed and hummed into his scissors — the result of a new class skill — and he swung once, twice, thrice.

Before the shade could even react, it was already torn asunder. It didn’t reach for the wall. There was no helping-geyser from his father. Empowered as he was, Barb felt nigh on invincible.

“Well, I suppose I best get to it then, hmm?” The shades attempted to stop him, but at this point, they were moving in slow motion. Barb moved. His scissors moved. What once had been a taxing experience was now a matter of brutal efficiency. A short time later, it was done. The room fell silent.

Barb spent a moment checking his notifications, finding he’d been rewarded a wealth of experience. Admittedly, far less than he would have gotten had he truly beaten them all by himself — his father’s assistance had shaved a fair share of the experience off — but still a fair haul nonetheless.

With the battle having faded, so too did Barb’s skill. The excess stats left him, and he could feel as his body quite literally deflated. At the same time, his father started walking over to him with a grunt as his stats were returned to him.

“Always hate letting you use that nonsense. Leaves me feeling gross. And bald.”

Barb hummed noncommittally in response. Then, no longer fighting to carry on a conversation between breaths, he pounced on the opportunity.

“Now that we have a second here, are you really hoping to adopt the girl?” It was a conversation they needed to have, but he’d hardly had the chance.

“Hah! No.” Suds let loose a belly laugh, all traces of his earlier gravity gone. “I’m planning on having you adopt her! Or maybe we can convince the other houses she’s some sort of bastard kid you had a few decades back? Eh, whatever. I’ll figure something out.”

Barb went wide-eyed at that. The other houses thinking that he’d had a secret child? Well, certainly not unheard of, but a minor scandal. He sighed. No more a scandal than me disappearing off to Drawgin, I suppose.

“But why? You can’t convince me you’re doing all of this out of the goodness of your heart.” While his father was far more of a bleeding heart than he’d like to let on, he wouldn’t base something as large as this on kindness and a whim.

A heavy hand slammed down onto Barb’s shoulder, threatening to push him to the ground. “Well, somebody had to leave the capital, and that same somebody never had any kids. Unless you want me giving you some new baby brothers and sisters, we’re in sore need of some strength in the upcoming class.”

In the- “You’re not thinking of having her deal with all the others are you? She’ll- She’ll implode!”

Suds shrugged. “Eh. We’ll see. More importantly though, it’s officially none of your damn business. You have one job. Leveling. Speaking of, chop chop, boy-o. Stop yammering away and let’s get on to the second room.”

At his father’s words, the blood drained from Barb’s face. “The… The second room? One wasn’t enough?”

Suds fixed his son with an incredulous stare. “Enough? What the hells did you think we were doing here? I took off work for this, and you’re behind!”

His gaze rapidly shifted into a much more predatorial one.

“Boy-o, we’re clearing the whole damned thing.”