The iron gates of the Pit creaked open with a sound like a giant grinding his teeth. Out bounded the three Pit Hounds, looking like skinless, nightmare versions of oversized golden retrievers that had been fed nothing but lightning and pure spite.
[Warning: Silver-Rank 'Pit Hounds' are locking on to your heat signature.]
[System Advice: Try not to look like a Master. Look like a vibrating bag of nerves.]
"Right, nerves. I can do nerves," Chen whispered, his knees knocking together with a rhythmic thwack-thwack that was actually a secret Sovereign's Pulse to map the arena floor.
The first hound, a beast the size of a pony with steam whistling from its nostrils and muscles rippling under raw, red tissue, launched itself at Chen's head.
"AHHH! DOGGY!" Chen shrieked, tripping over his own feet with Oscar-winning timing.
He didn't just fall; he performed a high-speed, horizontal spin on his backside. To the Sanguine Aristocrats in the stands, it looked like a terrified boy losing his balance. In reality, the rotation allowed the hound to fly over him, missing his throat by a fraction of a millimeter. As Chen "scrambled" to get up, his elbow "accidentally" hammered into the hound's solar plexus as it passed.
OOF.
The Silver-Rank monster hit the stone wall with a thud that cracked the masonry. It slumped to the ground, its ribcage caved in from a "clumsy" elbow, its heavy carcass twitching before going still.
[Notice: 'Calculated Clumsiness' in effect.]
[The Marquis is narrowing his eyes. He thinks you have 'The Luck of the Idiot'.]
The remaining two hounds, realizing their brother had just been out-clumsied, circled Chen. They lunged simultaneously from left and right, their saliva sizzling on the sand.
"Not the face! I need that for my future career in acting!" Chen wailed. He snapped his Gilded Folding Fan open to hide his face, but as he flailed his arms in "panic," the fan's reinforced bamboo ribs caught the snout of the left hound.
CLACK.
The "Breeze of Indifference" kicked in. The air pressure shifted, creating a localized vacuum that sucked the right hound's lunge off-course. The two beasts collided mid-air with a sickening crack of skulls.
Chen, meanwhile, was doing a frantic "I'm-on-fire" dance, which involved a series of precise heel-kicks that landed squarely on the hounds' throats while they were dazed.
"Oh no! My fan! It's stuck!" Chen yelled, yanking the fan back, and—by "pure coincidence"—the motion sent a spray of sand directly into the hounds' milky, blind eyes.
The Marquis stood up from his balcony, his golden eyes glowing. "Finish him! You useless mutts!"
The three hounds—one dragging its broken body and two with massive concussions—merged into a single, desperate charge. They formed a wall of muscle and teeth, sprinting at Chen with enough force to level a building.
System, Chen thought, his eyes flashing violet behind the silk of his fan. I need a distraction that costs exactly zero Mana.
[Inventory Item Detected: One (1) Open Carton of Ten-Year-Old Strawberry Milk.]
"HAVE SOME CALCIUM!" Chen roared, reaching into his inventory and hurling the fermented, sludge-like liquid onto the floor directly in front of the charging beasts.
The Pit Hounds, moving at sixty miles per hour, hit the decade-old strawberry slip-and-slide.
What followed was a masterpiece of physics. The lead hound's paws went skyward, and the other two tripped over it, forming a rolling ball of fur and teeth that skipped across the arena floor like a stone across a pond. They didn't stop until they hit the far iron gate with a resounding GONG.
Their heavy, skinless bodies piled up against the gate in a tangled heap of limbs and strawberry-scented sludge, tongues lolling out in permanent defeat.
Chen stood in the center of the pit, his hoodie slightly singed, his fan slightly bent, and his face a mask of utter, wide-eyed horror. He looked at the three massive carcasses lying in the sand—physical proof of his "accident."
"I... I did it?" he squeaked, looking up at the Marquis. "Did I win? Is there a prize? Maybe a napkin? It smells like a very old fruit salad down here."
The Sanguine Aristocrats were silent, staring at the dead monsters. Usually, the pit was cleaned by the monsters dissolving into ash, but these stayed—a grisly, mocking monument to the boy's "luck." Some aristocrats were checking their monocles to see if they had hallucinated the "Strawberry Slip-and-Slide." Kael, up on the balcony, looked like he wanted to jump into the pit and bury himself.
[Sub-Scenario Clear!]
[Rewards Processing...]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Current Level: 10 (Bronze Max)]
[Skill Unlocked: 'Salted Fish's First Strike' — Your first attack in any encounter deals 500% damage, provided you look like you don't want to be there.]
Marquis Malphas leaned over the railing, a look of genuine, dark amusement on his face. "Luck. Incredible, stinking, strawberry-flavored luck. They didn't even have the decency to dissolve."
"Kael!" the Marquis shouted. "Clean him up. And get those... things out of my sight. I want this 'variable' kept in the Spire's guest quarters. He's too funny to kill just yet."
Chen wiped a drop of old milk off his cheek and bowed, a motion that "accidentally" caused him to bump his head on a stone pillar.
Level 10, Chen thought, a smirk hidden behind his hand as he looked at the cooling corpses. Watch out, Neo-Omaha. The Pillar of Humanity just got his first coat of paint.