3 A Place to Stay

The city looked different when I got back to it; the sun was going down slowly, and the street lamps were all being lit. Master told me to find a place where travelers stay, but I didn't know this place, and I had no one to ask because there were very few people on the street, and it didn't look like those people had a place to stay either. 'Am I going to have to sleep on the street tonight?' I thought to myself. It was at this point that the excitement from the day started to wear off.

I couldn't help but start thinking about my warm bed, my apartment with a refrigerator full of food. My stomach started to growl just then, making me realize that I hadn't actually had anything to eat since this morning before I went to visit my Mom. 'My Mom.' I had managed not to think about it all day since I was so busy learning how to do my first alchemy skill. But now it was starting to weigh heavily on my mind.

Was I ever going to see her again? She had been sick for a while. I had just visited her in the hospital whenever I appeared in the tavern. 'Will she be alright while I'm gone?' At that moment a I received a tap on the shoulder.

"Excuse me? Sir?" I spun around to look at the person talking to me. It was the same purple haired girl from this morning that one that picked Paladin as her job. She was still wearing her ear/nose ring but now she wast dressed in a tunic and pants. She also had on a leather breast plate, and arm guards as well as a sword on her hip and a wooden buckler on her arm. Behind her stood the dark haired guy that had picked Cleric and he was now wearing a plain white robe and was carrying a mace latched to a leather belt.

"Yes?" I responded.

"You arrived here this morning with our group right?" I nodded in response. "Have you found a place to sleep for the night? A few of us that were able to make some money today pulled our resources and rented a small building you can come if you'd like." I was so relieved I looked at her with tears threatening to spill from my eyes.

"I'd like that very much, thank you!" She smiled at me and the guy nodded silently.

"I'm Grace, this is Timothy." She gestured to the dark haired guy behind her. I reached my hand out to shake their hands which the girl took and fervently shook. The man also shook my hand lightly and told me to call him 'Tim' instead. I introduced myself to them. They then gestured for me to follow them. We walked along for a while, at this point the sky was already dark, but our path was illuminated by the street lamps.

We walked for another thirty minutes and I realized we were heading to the very outskirts of the city. Some of the buildings out here looked like they were even worse off than Masters cottage. We wound up getting to the building shortly after, and it was even smaller than expected. The roof was falling in, the walls were cracked, a couple rats could be seen scurrying inside. 'Still' I thought, 'It's better than being out on the street.

Inside there were only two rooms one place for the boys to sleep in and the other for the girls. I was lead inside and they showed me where I could put my stuff and sleep. I could see the glow of a fire from out back and there were three more people sitting around it. We walked up to them and made introductions.

There was a pretty blonde girl an Archer named Sarah. A red headed boy with a big smile carrying a rapier, he explained that he thought fencer meant he would be mending fences his name was Derek. The last one was a nervous looking girl with dark brown curly hair who had signed up to be a witch she was called Laura.

They had all managed to make a little bit of money by selling the items they'd brought with them when they travelled to this world. Cell phones, keys their wallets or purses apparently they didn't fetch much but they were still oddities to this world so they were able to pool what they could together from it and get this place and a little bit of food. They offered me some of the bread and apologised that they couldn't offer more.

I told them that it was ok and that I was just happy to have something to eat at all.

"So what about you? What job did you pick?" Grace asked me. The whole group quieted down so they could hear my response. I gulped nervously.

"Alchemist. It was the only job available when I got to the list." They all looked at me not knowing exactly what an alchemist was.

"So what can you do?" Sarah asked. I blushed and pulled out my spade I put it to the ground and a two inch hole opened up. They all stared at me blankly before anyone spoke again, it was Tim.

"Well I'm sure that will be useful!" He smiled kindly at me.

"I promise that I won't hold you guys back, I'll figure out some way to repay your kindness." The group looked all around at each other and then back to me and smiled. We spent the next half hour getting to know each other before heading off to bed. Tommorrow would start the real work of figuring out how this world worked, and what our lives were going to be like at least for a while.

The room the boys were in was damp and there were mice and bugs running around, but in no time at all I found myself falling asleep. The following morning the sun beamed through the busted up roof waking me up. I was awake earlier than the others and decided I'd go outside and see what our place looked like in the light of day.

I went out to the back yard where we had been the night before and took a look around the house was still nothing to look at, but the back yard was a lot bigger than I remembered it being. There was a small stone wall that surrounded the yard just big enough to give us a little privacy. Not that we had neighbors to begin with. We were on the very outskirts of town away from any shops or real residential areas.

Grace walked out the back at that point pinning her wooden buckler onto her arm.

"Good morning Todd!" She said in a friendly voice. "You sure are up early." I agreed with her then asked what she was doing. "I decided I'd get up and train. Paladin wasn't a job that I really wanted but if I'm going to be one I hope to be a good one." I smiled at her thinking about how I really liked her optimistic nature.

"What about you? Do you plan on training today?" I thought about it for a second and realized that I should probably do something to train, but I didn't really know what to do. My only skill at the moment was being able to easily dig a hole and it's not like the skill got stronger the more I used it.

"I guess I'm going to try, but later today I was hoping to start looking around to see how I can start making some money. If I want to keep learning alchemy it looks like it's going to be expensive." Grace scowled at that.

"Yeah my teacher is making me pay for my lessons and gear as well. This sure is a greedy world." I nodded my head but when thinking about it, it wasn't much different from the world I came from. We had to pay taxes, and if we wanted to go to college that cost money too. Clothes and food cost a lot too.

"I guess the best we can do is figure out how to survive out here, we don't want to starve after all." Grace nodded and smiled.

"Let's do our best ok Todd?" I smiled back and agreed with her, in the back of my head I was still nervous but Grace helped put me at ease a little bit. 'I hope we're able to become good friends.' Soon after that the rest of the house started to wake up. Derek saw Grace practicing her swordmanship and decided to join her. The other Sarah told Laura to help her make breakfast for everyone. I offered to help but Sarah refused insisting that it was alright and that she enjoyed cooking.

I went back inside and saw Tim sitting on the floor with his eyes closed and his hands folded together.

"What are you doing?" I asked him.

"Daily prayers, apparently this is how clerics gain their healing powers by making a covenant every day with one of the deities of this world. Go figure." He snickered then went back to his prayers. I decided not to bother him and instead took out my tool. I looked at the magic circle on the top of it and tried to start thinking of ways I could use my skills to be helpful to the group.

I thought about digging toilet holes outside, but we already had a chamber pot apparently so that would be a little redundant I thought. 'Maybe we could do underground cooking!' but that quickly was thrown out too. I didn't know how to cook underground, and we already had a fire. I went on like that for a little while just running my hand over the magic circle. Suddenly an idea hit me and I went back outside.

I grabbed a stick from the ground and went over to an empty section of the yard I looked once more at the magic circle and started to draw it on the ground only drew it about three feet wide but I was careful to make the circle look exactly like the one on the hilt of my spade. The others stopped what they were doing and came over to take a look at me.

"What are you doing?" Derek asked while sheathing his rapier.

"I'm just experimenting with something that my master explained to me!" I said excitedly. Once the circle was finished I got on my knees and laid my hands on it. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

"Direirix." I whispered. The circle started to glow and I allowed it to for a good five minutes while it was glowing more and more dirt started to come out of the circle. I stopped it once it was about a foot deep.

"Wow." Tim had come up behind the group. "That's pretty impressive." I smiled back at him.

"I was thinking when we went out to hunt for monsters I could lay pit traps maybe make it easier to kill them!" The whole group was impressed and clapped me on the back.

"I told you that you'd be able to find something useful to do with that skill!" Tim grinned from ear to ear.

"Thanks, everybody I'm going to do my best." I looked at Grace and to the rest of the group with a determined look on my face and they all agreed they would try their best as well. After my successful expirament I filled the hole back in and we all gathered around the fire to eat our breakfast. We talked about it for a little while and decided we'd give monster hunting a try later today. The groups hopes were high that we'd be able to make some money today and maybe get to pay our teachers a little something, or fix up the house some.

It was our first day together, and although we all missed our friends and family, we were all happy that we didn't have to be alone in this new world.