Chương 10: Father Son Talk

Stepping out of the portal, Alex found Ace already waiting, sitting beside Jeremy as the sun started its slow drop toward the treeline. The two of them were talking quietly, but Alex was too drained to make out more than a few scattered words. The second Ace spotted him, her expression shifted, worry settling into the lines of her face fast enough that Alex almost felt guilty for putting it there.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" she asked, already crossing the distance between them.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just need some sleep." He started angling toward his tent, hoping the conversation could end there.

"Stop moving, you fool." Her hands were already glowing green, the healing light settling over him before he'd even finished turning. Warm mana spread through his body, working into the bruised muscle along his arm where the snake's tail had caught him, the dull ache easing as the light did its work. He let himself relax into it, more tired than he wanted to admit out loud.

"Why are you so reckless," Ace said, not really a question.

"You're going to get yourself killed, Alex." He didn't answer. Anything he said now would only invite more of the same, another round of being told how careless he was being with his own life, how his actions said something different than whatever he claimed to feel about wanting to survive this. He knew there were worse dangers coming. That was exactly the point. Scanning her status out of habit, he caught something that pulled him out of his own head for a second.

"You leveled up?" Ace nodded, still focused on the healing.

"Yeah. While you were out scouting, we figured out that doing things tied to your class builds essence too, not just kills. Combat classes still get more out of fighting, but healers apparently gain a decent amount just from healing people."

"Huh. That's actually kind of cool." He glanced around for Jeremy, but the spot beside Ace was empty.

"Where'd Jeremy go?"

"Dad stationed us here. He figured you'd try to avoid him the second you came out, so he sent me to patch you up and sent Jeremy to go find him the moment you showed." Alex let out a low breath through his nose.

"That's gonna be annoying." By the time the healing finished and the ache in his arm had faded to nothing, his dad was already approaching, Jeremy a step behind him, both of them moving with purpose. Alex caught Jeremy's eye first, and Jeremy looked away almost instantly, which told Alex everything he needed to know about exactly who'd ratted him out.

"Don't look at him," his dad said, voice flat and hard in a way Alex rarely heard from him.

"Look at me. Didn't I tell you not to go into the dungeon?"

"You wouldn't listen to the fact that we're surrounded by constant danger and we're not strong enough to survive if something decides to hit us before we are." Alex held his ground, even though some part of him already knew how this was going to sound.

"And so you decided suicide was the better option?" His dad's jaw was tight, eyes locked on him without blinking.

"Without you in that first wave, we'd have had a lot more injuries, probably worse than injuries. And now you're out there making decisions you think are smart, decisions that could get you killed, and maybe you don't care about that for yourself, but did you stop for one second to think about what happens to the people you're so determined to protect if you're not here anymore?" Alex looked away, jaw tight. He knew there was truth buried in that, more than he wanted to admit standing here.

But he wasn't going to die. Not like this, not over something he'd chosen to do on purpose. And not dying, in his head, was tangled up tightly enough with not being weak that he couldn't fully separate the two anymore. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Alex. Walk with me." He accepted, grudgingly, falling into step beside his dad as they moved away from the others. For a couple of minutes neither of them said anything, just the sound of grass underfoot and the slow settling of evening around them, the sky doing that same deep orange thing it had done the night before, the weight of everything unsaid pressing down harder the longer the silence stretched.

Alex caught himself glancing sideways at his dad more than once, trying to read whatever was coming before it actually arrived, the same way he used to when he was a kid and knew a lecture was building but couldn't tell yet how bad it would be. His dad broke it first.

"Alex, I'm not going to lie to you. This is a lot." He kept his eyes forward, not really looking at anything specific.

"Before all this, I'd started thinking about retiring. Finding somewhere quiet, settling down with your mom, living off what I'd put away after all those years of work. The job was hard, but somewhere along the way I actually started liking it. And now this. Magic. The system. Monsters. Making sure forty grown adults don't get themselves killed out of panic. Listening to complaints about tent assignments like that actually matters right now. It's a lot, Alex. And I love you.

But you are taking risks with your own life that I cannot just stand here and watch happen." Alex stayed quiet, letting him keep going.

"You've always been hardheaded. That's one of the best things about you, honestly. You work harder than anyone I've ever met once you decide something matters, and you don't let go of it once you've started. Your grades, all that work in astronomy, the years you put into the gym, every single thing you've ever actually committed to, you've been incredible at. And I know, I know, this whole world of magic and levels and fighting is going to be something you thrive in. I don't doubt that for a second."

He stopped walking for a moment, turning to actually face Alex now.

"But I'm worried about you. People like you, the ones who throw themselves at everything without flinching, they're rare. They're also the ones who die before anyone gets the chance to actually watch them become what they could have been. I've been thinking about my will lately, Alex. About how you and your sister would handle things when I go. I should be the one we're planning to bury someday. Not you. I know you're not going to stop pushing to get stronger, and honestly, I'm not going to try to stop you anymore.

But you are not allowed to die. Do you hear me?" Something in Alex's chest pulled tight, hearing his dad say that much out loud. His dad never talked this much, not about anything that actually mattered this directly, and the fact that he was now meant he'd been carrying this worry around for longer than Alex had realized, probably since the moment Alex took that first level 5 down solo and came out of it bleeding.

He understood, somewhere underneath the defensiveness, that his drive probably did look excessive from the outside looking in. But he still believed it was exactly what the family needed from him right now. He hadn't really let himself think about his own death as a real possibility before this moment, not seriously, but hearing it laid out like this made one thing clear enough that it didn't need much more thought. He couldn't die.

Not because of fear, but because too many other people would end up paying for it if he did.

"Yes, father."

"Don't yes sir me like I'm your commanding officer." A faint, tired smile finally cracked through.

"Just promise me. And your mother will have my head if anything happens to you, so really, you'd be doing me a favor too."

"I promise." They kept walking, quiet again, the silence easier this time, less like something either of them needed to fill. After a few more minutes, his dad spoke again, voice back to something closer to normal.

"So. Are you going to tell me what you actually learned in there, or do I have to guess?" Alex managed something close to a smile.

"Right. So, first off, everything in there was the same kind of monster from the wave. Tainted Pythons, level 2s mostly, but there were level 5s too, at least two of them together at once. The space itself is massive. I don't think I got anywhere close to the edge of it before I turned back."

He kept going from there, walking his dad through everything, the terrain, the way the snakes never seemed to thin out no matter how many he dropped, the experiment with Power Strike on a thrown javelin, the new skill he'd picked up. His dad listened the whole way through, asking the occasional question but mostly just absorbing it, nodding along like he was filing each piece away for later. By the time they circled back toward camp, his dad pointed him toward Liam instead of pulling him into anything else.

Apparently Liam and a few others had been digging into something about how mana and skills actually interacted while Alex had been gone, and his dad readily admitted he didn't understand most of it himself. Liam, with his particular brand of restless enthusiasm for anything resembling magic theory, was apparently the one person in camp who actually had a real handle on what they'd found.