Chapter 24: Letting off steam

    Eryndor was itching to have a good fight ever since he broke through to Qi Gathering stage two last night.

    With renewed defenses in the form of Qi film over his skin, he had better guarantee of keeping himself safe.

    His Qi film didn''t have extremely high defense, but a test last night proved that it could still block a casual blow from a kitchen knife.

    Of course, his Eldritch abilities were his strongest trump cards but he preferred not to expose them.

    He put on combat gloves and approached the dog who had begun growling at him.

    This one seems to have been infected at a lesser scale.

    They had come across multiple such specimens already.

    An infected animal showed immense aggression to any and all kinds of living beings excluding trees, but some who were infected at a lesser scale displayed a comparatively lower aggression, although still high for their species.

    As soon as he crossed a certain range, the dog immediately pounced on his legs.

    Anticipating the movement, Eryndor quickly imbued his leg with Qi.

    This was the second application of Qi he found while experimenting with it last night. Any part of the body where Qi was imbued would amplify in all physical parameters.

    Instead of dodging, Eryndor swung his leg at the incoming dog. He took care to watch out for its incoming paw while aiming at its head.

    A blunt sound resounded as his enhanced leg hit the similarly enhanced head of the infected dog.

    Eryndor quickly followed up with another kick when the dog fell just beside his other leg due to its initial momentum.

    The infected animal was stunned from the hit. Trying to get rid of dizziness, it shook its head violently, resulting in its failure of dodging the kick.

    Thud.

    A heavy sound resounded as Eryndor''s leg hit its jaw, smashing its teeth together, sending another intense jolt to its brain.

    Taking advantage of the gap in its reaction, Eryndor imbued Qi in his fist and swung it on its head.

    The force sent the infected dog right into the ground as Eryndor topped it off with a stomp on its head.

    Breathing hard, Eryndor released it, muttering, "Stay down."

    "Now now, trash talking a dog are we? What''s got into you today?"

    Drakarion laughed, clamping Eryndor''s shoulder as he watched the young women deal with the animal.

    He simply shook his head with a tired sigh.

    "Nothing."

    Eryndor guessed it was likely because he was incredibly stressed.

    Looking to fight was a subconscious reaction of his body to let off some steam.

    The last fight beautifully succeeded in that as he returned to his calm self.

    I need better control over my emotions.

    The next few battles, Eryndor had some chocolate bars while watching the bloody scenes of battle.

    It was worth sitting back once in a while to observe how his teammates fought.

    No matter how relaxed he was though, he didn''t let up on keeping an eye on his surroundings.

    He always alerted his teammates as soon as a creature entered their range of sights, making sure not to alert them if the beast was far away out of their range of vision even if he had seen it coming their way through his ability.

    The next few hours were spent capturing the dogs, after which they decided to go back to the restaurant for lunch.

    They had been having packed meals for lunch and snacks, returning only for dinner.

    But since they calculated that they had plenty of time to comfortably capture all the infected animals, they decided to go easy on themselves.

    As they returned to their inn to have lunch in its connected restaurant, Eryndor notified his teammates that he would be back after changing his clothes.

    He wanted to try wearing the Sovereign''s Cloak.

    Could he get new leads into the situation?