The feather mattress underneath him felt godly soft. The whole room around him was pretty elegantly furnished in fact. A dark polished desk sat in the corner, a huge wooden drawer for all the clothes he didn’t own and enough space that he didn’t know what to do with it.

In fact the room was more spacious than his old room back on Earth.

Marcel cast his gaze around the room. He had only been able to afford the first two months of rent, and most of the pay from their last contract had gone into it. That just put a little more pressure on him for the next contracts.

Even if he had been able to make some cash relatively quickly, the twins had told him that their contract had been more the exception than the rule. His next few payouts would probably be considerably less.

For now though, he was savoring the pay out he had.

He looked down at the golden medallion in his hand.

It was the other big thing he had bought, taking up the rest of the chunk of his earnings. He started squeezing it. At first, it gave the resistance you would expect from a metallic ornament. But then it gave and turned into fine golden dust in Marcel's hand. That dust started shining and was absorbed by him.

A message popped up.

“Congratulations, you have received a stat point.”

“You have four stat points remaining.”

Swiping to the side, Marcel opened his status screen. It was still a little uncanny to him how similar this felt to modern technology he was used to from his world. In the beginning he had doubted a lot whether he was just in a very developed VR game.

“Marcel Houst [Warrior of Rhea Level 4]”

Stats:

Str 7

Dex 5

Int 4

Wis 4

End 7

Vit 5

Per 4

Marcel was pretty satisfied with his progress since getting the class. His stats had almost tripled. He still felt like he wouldn’t be on par with the goblin chieftain on his own, but the next time some goons would try to jump him in the alley, he wouldn’t have to be half stabbed to death before raining down hell on them.

That thought gave him somewhat of a comfort. A quick lived comfort though, one that was torn down as soon as Marcel thought about the giant cat they had just fought.

After his latest experiences Marcel almost wanted to put these points into wisdom. The ability to have his “Heightening” skill active at the same time as his water tentacle skill was a huge boost in the last fight. It would’ve also helped a lot in his fight with the goblins, and would be pretty tremendous on solo missions.

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At the same time how many solo missions would he realistically do in the next few months? The contract with the twins had worked out perfectly and Marcel even started becoming friends with them. It was just a safer way to tackle quests, and could be even more rewarding since they could leverage each other's strengths.

Of course there was also still the aspect that Marcel didn’t really understand his class. It just didn’t fit into the usual role playing schemes.

If he was a fighter/warrior type, he would’ve gone deeply into strength and maybe endurance, but he also had his spells like the tentacles and some other skills that had rarely been of use other than the first time when he had fallen into the canal. He wasn’t a wizard though that could simply specialize in intelligence or wisdom.

Nor was he, despite his skill “Heightening” his dexterity and reaction, a classic rogue or even dexterity based fighter for that matter.

He had his spear, and he had his skills that seemed to be more on the magic side. From his years of experience Marcel’s best guess was that he was some sort of hybrid class. Maybe a combat class with spell support or something along the lines.

It was a fact he didn’t particularly embrace though. He hated hybrid classes. He would much rather have a class that was focusing in a single direction. A class where he could specialize.

And he was honest with himself. He would've mostly wished for a caster class for this.

He envied Will for his spell abilities. To throw around fireballs, magic missiles and these giant thunderbolts Marcel was marvelous to him. There was a reason why he had always chosen to play the caster in their Dnd campaigns.

But now this wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a joke that they told while playing around the table. This was real, and his experiences the last few days painfully hammered that fact home. He had been either severely hurt or close to death more times than he felt comfortable with.

He really needed to think smart about that. 5 free stat points now.

First off he put two into vitality. Then he put two into strength and another one into endurance.

If his class was really going into the direction of a hybrid all rounder, his stats needed to reflect that a little. Besides, his role in the team would be mostly on the front lines now anyways. For that he didn’t just need staying power, but also some strength to match up with their foes. His spells could be on the backburner for now.

His reason for putting two points into vitality of course was simple. He wanted to stay alive.

Especially because of the next missions they had planned.

As predicted the next two quests they did were relatively simple ones. A farm outside of the city had a little wolf problem. It was only a handful of them, and small ones at that. Nothing compared to the direwolves that some of the bigger quests talked about. The money was little, but since no one else seemed to want to do the mission, and since it was better than sitting around idly, they went for it.

The problem had been dealt with in a day. The handful of wolves had turned out to be only four of them, three of which didn’t even make it close enough to them to put Marcel at danger. The one that did was swiftly dealt with by his spear.

Truly the biggest threat on that mission had been the boredom while they were squatting in the fields, waiting for the wolves to show up.

The second mission was slightly more challenging, but only because Marcel had made a little mistake. They had been hired to protect a shrine from robbers that had threatened to break in and take its valuables.

During his part of the night shift, Marcel had managed to fall asleep, only noticing the robbers when they were in their midst. That turned the fight a lot harder, and more bloody, than it would’ve needed to be.

Will had carried quite a cute along from the aftermath of the battle. It was easily dealt with by a few healing potions, but still Messy threw him looks all the way home.

Marcel had even overheard a conversation where the two talked about his usefulness to the team. It stung quite a bit, but he had to admit that with the missions they were able to take right now, he wasn’t much of a help. Sometimes even a hindrance apparently.

After that they had a few more missions over the next month or two. Nothing as spectacular as their first one and all of them were tight.

He was sitting brooding on his bed. Rent was due soon. The small pickings from their last missions didn’t cover the rent. And the two were thinking about maybe kicking him out again.

He needed to do something.

Marcel thought back to the goblin mission he had foolishly taken on his first day. He had been ill prepared and underleveled. But he had grown a lot in the last two months of adventuring.