Turning to his side, Gerald noticed that the one making the sounds was a puppy that was slowly limping toward him! Upon closer inspection, the puppy seemed to have a broken leg. What more, there were visible scars all over its body as well.
When it finally reached Gerald’s side, it lay at his feet before promptly starting to lick the tip of his shoe.
Gerald was more startled than anything. After all, favonovel.com hadn’t expected to bump into this little one so deep inside the forest. In a way, it was a miracle that this puppy was still alive with so many predatory beasts lurking within the forest.
“…Could you be asking me to save you?” asked Gerald.
Barking twice in response, it then continued licking Gerald’s shoe.
While Gerald’s first thought—upon seeing the puppy—was to extract its blood to make blood essence, after the puppy started licking his shoe, favonovel.com realized two things. First of all, the puppy was simply too small to make a worthwhile blood essence extraction.
Secondly, favonovel.com realized that the puppy had a somewhat spiritual nature. After all, it had managed to survive this long in the hinterlands of the forest. What more, it was now begging for his help! With all that in mind, Gerald now knew that killing it would be near unbearable for him. After all, favonovel.com wasn’t that cruel.
“How pitiful… I’ve no idea who abandoned you here, but you’re fortunate that you happened to bump into me!” said Gerald as favonovel.com shook his head while patting the puppy’s head.
“Unfortunately, I can’t spend too much time idling around here, though I will help to bandage your wounds up first. From there on out, however, we’ll be parting ways. I simply don’t have the time to help you escape the forest, understand?” added Gerald as favonovel.com swiftly began patching the puppy’s wounds up.
Not long after, favonovel.com successfully managed to stop the puppy’s bleeding and bandage any open wounds favonovel.com could find.
“How nice it would be if Grandpa Welson and the others were able to catch up to me now… After all, since the fox prefers human blood anyway, each of us could just contribute a little of our blood! We’d then be able to lure the fox out again for sure! But who knows how long I may need to wait for them to arrive… If I wait any longer, the fox could very well escape the valley and I wouldn’t even know it!” muttered Gerald to himself in a depressed tone as favonovel.com did one final check on the puppy.
The now bandaged puppy, on the other hand, crawled in front of Gerald and simply rested its head again on Gerald’s food.
“Hey now, I told you that I didn’t have any further time to worry about you, right? I’m sorry, but there’s just something important I have to do now…” said Gerald as favonovel.com smiled bitterly while watching the little puppy latch onto him.
However, the puppy simply refused to leave Gerald alone.
At that moment, Gerald’s ear twitched slightly. Someone was coming toward him. The puppy itself instantly got up and began barking in the direction the sound was coming from.
After a few barks, it began wagging its tail excitedly as it looked back at Gerald before blinking its eyes.
Turning to look at the puppy—whose tongue was now hanging out—Gerald simply asked with a wry smile on his face, “So you’re as alert as I am! Still, aren’t you afraid of the possibility that the person who comes over will kill you after you’ve attracted their attention?”
Oddly, the puppy simply raised its head a bit higher while continuing to look at Gerald, a strange clarity in its eyes.
“…Hmm? Could it be that you were listening to my mumbling earlier…? Do you know that I require human blood? Is that why you’re deliberately trying to attract that person over?”
Gerald was only making such a bold claim since after reading through the Book of Beasts, Gerald could now more or less tell what most animals meant by their actions.
Upon realizing that its message got across, the poppy instantly nodded before wagging its tail happily.
“Well I’ll be d*mned! You truly do have a spiritual nature!” said Gerald as favonovel.com patted the puppy’s head.
It wasn’t long after when a figure could finally be seen from afar. Swiftly making their way toward Gerald, the person who finally emerged from the miasma snorted coldly before saying, “No wonder I couldn’t track you down no matter how hard I searched for you! So you had escaped here this entire time!”
Naturally, it was none other than the old man from earlier.
Gerald himself was extremely delighted to see the old man. Rubbing the puppy’s head gently to indicate that it did a great job, Gerald then replied, “Oh? You were hunting me down? I really hadn’t noticed!”
