That provoke skill has to be S-Rank to have that strong of an effect because if it isn't then that's just flat out plot armor and MC would have no way of leveling up that skill
And speaking of S-Rank skills, those skills that were S-Rank seem pretty weak since S-Rank means being the pinnacle rank. With that said, MC could've definitely "escape" those bugbears with stealth or accelerate simply by stealthing into the crowd to cause a confusion or just evade the hell out of them with accelerate since he has shown to be able to dodge their attacks even with physical enhancement, which accelerate should be faster than it. So unless the skills in this series work by "having stronger growth rate" or something along those lines this was pretty sloppy writing in terms of skill power scaling and MC's decision making.