The First Contract

Within the abandoned alley the smiling young man and the fiercely growling dog were staring at each other

"Come on don't make it hard on yourself, if you want to live then I'm your only hope"

The young man spoke but the dog only growled in response

"Meh, I'll deal with you in a sec"

He ignored the dog and looked into the empty air

"Status"

He spoke to the air and a purple screen came into being

The purple screen looked like a game interface where his body was shown on the left, and on the right there were two tabs, Status and Skill, with Status currently being shown

_________________________________

Name: YuJu

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Level: 2

Class: None

STR: 0.6

AG:0.8

VIT:0.4

INT:1.3

INS: 2.1

AP Available: 3

Titles:

-The Unseen: Your presence is shrouded by mystery

Skill "Beyond The Veil" Is Gained

_________________________________

"Oh? My Class Evolution turned into a Title? That's handy"

Taking a look at the skill tab he looks at the only skill there

"?"

For the first time since his time traversing Yuju felt confused, the reason being the skill had no description

"Weird, I've never seen a skill that only has a name"

He spent two seconds pondering about it before closing the screen, he had no time to think about other stuff right now since he needed to hurry

Looking down he saw the dog was still growling, albeit less fiercely, so he crouched down and extended his hand toward its head

"Rargh!"

The dog tried to bite his hand so he hastily retrieved it

"Don't make things hard on yourself, if you stay like this you will only end up dead"

The dog barked at him in response

He noticed it's stubborn attitude and creased his eyebrows, he didn't have time to convince it slowly, for various reasons

"It's better to build an amicable relationship between us but you will have to bear with my forcefulness for now"

Saying so he gazed into its yellow eyes, as he focused his intentions on them, the dog gazed back with full stubbornness, growling as it did

But bearing his heavy gaze the dogs growl started to become fainter and fainter with each passing second, a feeling of suffocation rose in its heart making it hard to make a sound

Soon it turned silent, but Yuju didn't cease his pressurizing gaze, morphing the dog's silence into whimpers, only then did he speak

"You are going to die"

He stopped for a second, letting the fear slowly creep into the dog's eyes

"Whether I leave you here like this or help you up you would still die on your own, you were not sent here for an opportunity to fill your stomach or advance, you were sent here as a trial, a stepping stone, a mere test for our race"

He stopped to let his words sink in, he knew the dog didn't speak his language but it was smart enough to understand most of his intentions, monsters weren't dumb, not in the least bit

"And even if you survive against all the odds and advance you will still barely be able to live, because your weak, because no matter how strong you get you would still fall behind others who were born to be strong, others who get life-changing opportunities at every turn, that's why you will always stay under their feet"

Fear receded from its eyes, replaced by indignation, it hated this unfair world that always gave it the short straw

"That's just how fate works, the world will always favour someone over the other, and they have to work twice, thrice, even many times as hard as the favoured to barely catch up to their shadow"

He let the dogs emotions build up, then he smiled

"But I can take you there, I can take you to the apex of the world"

The dog looked at him doubtingly

"It won't be an easy journey, for either of us, we will meet many misshapes as the world pits us against its chosen one's, it will help them as it does, we will feel indigent, depressed, even scared, but never give up"

A glint could be seen in the dog's pitiful eyes, a glint of determination, or maybe the desire to defy its fate? Either way, YuJu knew it was time to extend his offer

"I will pave the way for you toward the beyond, will you pave the way for me in this hell?"

As his words trialled he extended his hands but did not put them on the dog's head

Seeing the offered hand the dog closed it's eyes and nestled it in his palm, expressing its obvious intentions

YuJu also closed his eyes, he focused his intention's on his soul as he tried to extend a link toward the dog

It took him about a minute, longer than he thought it would but he had succeeded nonetheless as a tendril reached out from his hand into the dog's head

The second it touched the head it went into its soul without any resistance, continuing on until it finally reached the centre of the soul, there the tendril glowed and separated a part of it before retreating, but with a part of the dog's soul this time

After exiting the dog's soul and returning to YuJu it inserted the new part into his centre, that made the both of them shudder as they felt a cold sensation run through their soul

They both opened their eyes at the same time, YuJu removed his hand and looked at the dog, feeling a little happy about gaining his very first companion

"Though your not what I had expected to first contract I will make sure you are more than enough"

The dog gave him pitiful eyes at his first word's but wagged its tail at the end of them

"Let's get you out of here first"

He put his hand's under the fridge and tried to lift it up

"Wuu!"

He used all his force and much more but only moved it up just a little before it fell back on the dog's legs making it whimper in pain

"Damn, I can't lift it"

He looked at the fridge for a few seconds then sighed

"Haah never thought I would have to use my first few points for a fridge"

Opening his status screen he distributed his AP, Ability Points, into his strength stat, skyrocketing it into 3.6

This time he only had to apply a little pressure to lift the fridge up a lot, enough for the dog to use the uninjured legs to crawl away

Bang!

He let the fridge fall back on the ground causing a rather loud noise

"Alright, let me take a proper look at you"

By that, he meant taking a look at its status

_________________________________

Name: None

Race: Hound

Gender: Female

Level: 3

Class: N/A

STR: 0.9

AG:4.4

VIT:3.5

INT:4

INS:3

Titles: None

AP:0

Special Status: Contracted Master: Yuju

_________________________________

Seeing the status Yuju was about to smile before he doubled back on gender

"Female? **** "

The dog that was getting closer to Yuju stopped in its tracks noticing his angry look as he cursed

"There goes my Cerberus, Haah, I wish he didn't have the prerequisite of male gender"

He stared at the fridge with a little blame, the one that got squashed under it was probably the male, he had pushed the female out to save her, but to YuJu his chivalrous act had a negative result

Looking back at the dog giving him eyes of pity a smile returned to his face and he threw away his regrets

"Who needs a Cerberus anyway? I will make you a unique legend on my own"

He rubbed the dog's head as he spoke, but then he noticed something the back of his left arm

"Is this the crest of contract?"

It was a black tattoo of a hound that looked to be howling, but on closer inspection, one could see it wasn't howling but looking up, as if it was staring at something

"Hmm so that's your current soul crest, I wonder what mine is"

He was about to check when he suddenly lifted his head toward the opening of the alley

"Hooh seems like something was attracted to the sound from earlier, well I guess we should stop wasting time anyway"

He motioned for the dog to follow while heading toward the opening

He was already halfway there but nothing came in, he knew it was still there though which means it was trying to perform a sneak attack, to that YuJu only shook his head with a laugh

"When you get past the alley wall, rollover your left and bite up"

He told the dog but it only looked at him confusedly, seeing it not understanding he motioned a roll with his hand, and then made a biting motion before finally pointing at the wall

"Rargh!"

It answered as if it understood and then limped to the entrance

Just as it was about to exit the alley a shadow jumped at it with great speed

Much to the shadows surprise it saw the dog was already rolled over whilst biting toward it, at the same time dodging its claws

"Haah, it rolled right"

YuJu saw the dogs mistake and facepalmed, he didn't go and help it though, instead, he only watched on as the dog got bitten on its already injured leg while it held the feline looking monster's waist within its mouth

The monster was half the size of the dog but looked much deadlier with its sharp long claws, and with the dog being injured and laying under the cat one would think the cat already won

"Roll right again, slam it into the wall"

Hearing its master the dog understood half his words this time and with him slamming his hand into the wall it knew what had to be done

Place its left legs which were uninjured on the ground it shifted its weight while heaving the cat toward the edge of the wall horizontally, this gave the dog the advantage, one could even say it was only a matter of time before it won, it would only take a few injuries before the feline would bleed out to death with the massive wound on its waist

The feline was about to attack as much as it could with its claws when a foot suddenly pinned its two paws to the ground, looking up it saw YuJu silently gazing at it, it hadn't even sensed there being anyone here other than the dog so his presence greatly alarmed it

Taking advantage of the cat's momentary surprise the dog let go of its waist and lunged at its neck, the feline quickly responded, or tried to, but its front paws could do nothing under YuJu's foot but struggle

Crack

With a simple twist, the dog cracked the feline's neck, ending the fight

"Good job, but you could have finished it with one bite if you had rolled left instead"

Still, he rubbed the dogs head after saying so, was really happy with its high intelligence, it would make things much easier

"Let's go now, we have another member to add before we wrap up today's work"

The lanky man and the limping yellow dog thus walked side by side toward the panic-stricken streets, plunging into the new dangerous world