Chapter 7: Old Man Brawls with a Fenrir Bare-Handed

Yeah… if a human suddenly hugged you out of nowhere, maybe even the calmest dog would react like this.

The fluffy dog, frustrated that I dodged its attack, let out a growl.

Its howl was so piercing it made my ears ache.

Right… looks like I’ve made it thoroughly angry.

At this point, I guess I have no choice but to fight.

To be honest, I didn’t want to fight, since I was the one who made it mad in the first place…

I steeled my resolve and, with a bit of a smug look on my face, drew my sword—.

…Wait a minute… I don’t have a sword on me right now, do I?

I’d been so broke that I’d sold my only sword the other day.

Since all I ever do is run from fights anyway, there’s no point in having a weapon.

That’s how I’d justified it, but for it to backfire on me here of all places…

While I was panicking, the fluffy dog couldn’t have cared less about my circumstances.

Before I knew it, the fluffy dog was lunging at me again.

Dammit… guess I have no choice but to use my bare hands.

Half-resigned to my fate, I thrust my fist into the fluffy dog’s stomach.

My bare-knuckle punch landed—and apparently, it was a counter.

I succeeded in dealing a fair bit of damage to the fluffy dog.

The fluffy dog let out a pained whimper and ran off somewhere.

That part was fine, but I immediately noticed something was wrong with my fist.

A sharp pain was radiating through it.

It seemed my fist had gotten seriously messed up from that one punch.

Still… to get injured fighting a stray dog instead of a magical beast…

I let out a heavy sigh.

What in the world am I doing…

Everyone else is probably fighting a Fenrir right about now…

And here I am, having run away from that mission, just messing around with a stray dog…

Then again, that stray… what exactly was it?

Its fur had a silver sheen, and now that I think about it, it seemed abnormally large…

There’s no way it was just a normal stray dog.

Perhaps because the alcohol was wearing off, I was starting to think a bit more clearly.

…It might have been a high-class, pedigreed dog owned by some noble…

If that’s the case, and I harmed a dog like that…

No… I’ll just forget about it.

Luckily, there weren’t any witnesses…

I sat down right where I was, then lay back on the ground.

I looked at my injured hand.

That dog… was ridiculously tough…

No… maybe I’m just weak…

My strength stat is only 3, after all.

I didn’t have any medicinal herbs, so the only way to forget the pain was to sleep.

Fortunately, my sleepiness outweighed the pain.

Letting out a huge yawn, I drifted off to sleep.

【MIKAMI SHUZOU】

Level: 1

HP: 20 (Correction Value +80500)

MP: 0 (Correction Value +7600)

STR (Strength): 3 (Correction Value +3300)

VIT (Vitality): 5 (Correction Value +5400)

AGI (Agility): 8 (Correction Value +9991)

※As the Agility stat has exceeded the limit of 9999, subsequent correction values will be randomly distributed to other stats.

INT (Intelligence): 1 (Correction Value +1600)

Skill: 『Flee』

Grants a low probability to escape from combat.

Title: 『Master of Escape』

Acquisition Requirement: Flee from combat against an opponent of a higher level than yourself 10,000 times or more.

Title Boon: When you successfully flee, you acquire the same experience points you would have for a victory.

However, you will not level up; all experience points gained this way are instead forcibly allocated to the 『Agility』 correction value.