It was two days after Marcel had overheard their conversation that they sat down with him on a bench.

“I think we should take a break,” Will said softly.

“You’re slowing us down,” Messy said. “We thought we would be able to get better party contracts with you along, but we still can only do missions that don’t really warrant our attention. And those we don’t need you for.”

“Are you kicking me out?” Marcel asked.

“No,” Will interjected before Messy could say anything. “We just need a few weeks of recalibration. And then, when the contracts aren’t so low again, we should go on missions again.

Marcel couldn’t really fault them, it was true. Even if Will was trying to put it nicely, in the end it didn’t change anything. Marcel was more of a burden than an asset for them. He was too weak for them to be able to take on real party missions, and he was just another draw of their resources and pay.

They truly were better off without having to drag him along.

That had taken a little toll on Marcel’s mentality for a few days. His weakness truly bothered him. But he was content to change that.

So Marcel decided to take on a solo mission. He didn’t need to shy away from scumjobs.

The air was damp, making his clothes cling to his body. His shoes and socks were wet from walking through the tunnels for the better part of an hour. Shadows flitted through the water at the edge of his torch's light, scared away by the splashing of his footsteps.

At first Marcel had been skeptical about taking on a mission in the canal systems. Even in the beginning he hadn’t considered missions on this level. In a way it felt bad to see how far he had fallen down after adventuring for over two months now, but that was just one way to look at it.

The other was that even these missions needed completing. Maybe they wouldn’t fill his pocket with quick cash, and maybe they were not glamorous, but they would provide him with the thing he needed most right now.

Experience.

When Marcel had taken this mission he hadn’t just worried, but also been warned about by Fredrik, about the apparently abhorrent smells in the sewers. As he walked through the dark tunnels underneath the city, he was surprised by their distinct lack of foul stench. It wasn’t that they didn’t smell, by the gods they did, in his old life Marcel might’ve already retched after the first few meters of his journey. It was just simply so much more bearable than the smell of the stables.

Maybe it was Marcel and his own prejudices, but the walk in the sewers smelled like a fresh spring breeze compared to the stench that horses could produce.

That sort of natural advantage did little to brighten Marcel’s mood considerably though. His contract had simply stated for him to kill the infestation of giant rats residing underneath the high part of the city. Since the only accessible sewer entrance was at the guard quarters, almost on the other side of the city, that meant quite a track through the mud and filth of dense human population.

Added to that was the fact that the sewers were constructed like a maze, and Marcel found himself backtracking multiple times.

On the upside though, he had plenty of time for practicing his skills. It had been a while since he had practiced that intently. Or rather, he hadn’t practiced that much at all since he had gotten his new class. He always promised to, and tried to, but never did it for more than twenty minutes.

Guess it takes more than the change of a world to get rid of your procrastination habits and adhd tendency, Marcel thought.

He decided to keep his [Water Tentacle] skill activated at all times, slashing the tunnels to mark his passage.

That didn’t just make it harder for him to get lost, but also helped raise his skill considerably. He had to stop the skill periodically to not overdraw his mana, still he let it run pretty low all times to get the most practice out of it. Something that he only felt confident in doing because he knew he would be able to handle the rat problem even without his skills.

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Now in the tunnel there wasn’t much else for him to do. And, more important even, he felt the drive burning now more than ever after the talk with the twins.

In the beginning his markings had been clunky scratches along the walls. He couldn’t keep them continuous and they were only chaotic criss-crosses. Every time he tried to control his ability, it just felt like talking to a wall. Playing a game he didn’t know the controls off.

It was only after a few hours of him practicing around that something finally clicked inside of him. Up until that point he had always thought of his tentacle skill as them having a mind of their own, and in fact they did have that to an extent.

But he had just never actually tried to feel for the control in them. Even in the beginning of his practice he had more or less tried to suggest spots of the wall as targets to the skill.

It all changed though when he took more of a pilot's seat.

When Marcel focused on cycling his mana and pushing it deliberately into his skill, an effort that still required almost his complete concentration, he suddenly sensed the tentacles.

Like an extension of his body he suddenly found himself able to move the two tentacles that grew out of his back. They were truly like a second pair of arms, and when he tried to, he could control them like that.

It took another hour after his discovery until he grew more proficient with it. He still didn’t manage to keep his concentration on the skill for too long, but he at least managed to cut alongside large parts of the wall at one time without any disturbances.

His levels for [Water Tentacle] shot through the roof after he started using his new method. Despite the fact that he needed frequent breaks he managed to gain 3 whole levels.

He wasn't sure if he was imagining it in the dim light, or if the cuts also seemed a little deeper, the tentacles more real. Marcel couldn't help but imagine how the goblin fight would be played out if he had his skill on that level from the beginning.

It was just while he reminisced about this fight, and his mana was almost used up, that he saw the first of them.

It was a wild, angry ball of darkness. The fur was disheveled and so smeared it was almost black, only the pair of red eyes around the height of Marcel's knee stood out. The creature had more in common with some dogs than rats.

It hissed at him angrily. Marcel found himself involuntarily taking a step backwards. The wild animal saw that as a sign of weakness and rushed towards Marcel.

The water splashed rapidly as the thing charged towards him. There was no time to activate any skill, nor was there mana for it. So Marcel followed his instincts, he threw his torch away to the side, and put his spear between himself and the rat.

What happened next, Marcel believed, was a mixture of the dim light and the rats' lack of intelligence. For the rat didn’t hesitate in its charge, it ran, and impaled itself straight onto Marcel's weapon.

He could feel the tip of the spear tearing through fur and flesh as he struggled to keep standing against the thrashing rat. Surprisingly it continued to struggle for a few more seconds, despite the spear being almost an arm length deep into its body.

At first Marcel had to fight to keep the spear steady against the thrashing canal monster, but after a while it weakened. When it stopped struggling fully, he withdrew his spear. He went over to pick up his torch, which luckily had landed with the flame above the water level. In its light Marcel realized how much blood he had sprayed on him. He looked like had just finished his apprenticeship at a butcher shop.

“Congratulations, your [Spear Proficiency] has reached level 6.”

He shrugged it off though. It was a little concerning how used to blood he was by now, but that was what his new life was, he told himself. Then he glanced at his contract again.

“Kill giant rats 1/4.”

“So on we go,” he murmured.

When Marcel left the sewer system again it was dark outside. He had entered in the earliest rays of dawn, in hopes of being able to finish his contract before lunch maybe, but he had been mistaken.

His stomach was rumbling. He was wet and bloody all over his body, for most of his stains he actually hoped it was blood rather than something else. Every step felt like he was still dragging himself through the muddy waters filled with things he would rather not think about.

But his mood was still high. He had just completed his first solo mission. He couldn’t count the goblin mission. That one he had been saved from the satyrs. Otherwise he wouldn’t be standing here.

The quest hadn’t been the most exciting, or the most challenging one, but he had managed to pull it off without any assistance. The rest of the rats had fallen quite easily, almost in the same way as their brethren. Really the most intense part had been the day of searching through the sewers.

It had been more than fruitful though. He had gained a whole level during the quest. Both points he had put in Strength. He had also raised his Water Tentacle Skill by four levels in total, which showed a lot in his new handling of the skill.

Marcel whistled as he walked down the street.

He decided it was best to not cash in his quest immediately, not the way he looked. So he visited a bathhouse first, cleaned himself up at home again afterwards, and then went for a night of sleep.