Vol 5 Chapter 1

#(1)

Kapros stared at the warp magic circle where Kran and Un-o had disappeared for a long time before slowly turning around and heading towards the street. He thought for a while about Kran's puzzling statement and the sense of déjà vu he had felt, but ultimately had to conclude that it would be difficult to reach a conclusion now.

The only thing that could be a hint was the déjà vu with a heavy feeling different from usual that he had felt earlier...

'When on earth did I feel that?'

He was walking while thinking so hard that he was getting a headache for the first time in a long while when it happened.

Suddenly feeling a piercing gaze from somewhere, he immediately stopped walking. He glanced to the side, pretending not to notice, but couldn't find the owner of the gaze. However, that gaze was clearly still aimed directly at him even at this moment.

'Who is it?'

While pretending to be calm and looking into the distance, he instinctively felt for his waist, but only realized again that his sword had been broken due to the fight with Caesar. With no way to confirm the other party, he was about to open his mouth to use Blink to escape from this place when a stranger's voice came from not far away.

"It wouldn't be bad to seek safety, but it would be better not to do so now."

Stopping his movement at the calm voice, he slowly identified where the voice had come from and turned around to see someone faintly revealing themselves in a narrow alley between shops that he hadn't noticed before, watching him.

That surprisingly sharp gaze didn't make his whole body boil with combat senses like when he faced Caesar, but it made him feel uncomfortable as it strongly gave the impression of simply observing him as a subject.

"Who are you?"

Assuming the person was talking to him, Kapros asked to confirm, and the man hidden in shadows shrugged and answered.

"Let's talk over here."

Was the other person a user? Or an NPC?

"Please tell me your business first."

There was no way to know whether the other party was a user or an NPC with such a brief exchange. Intending to attack if necessary, Kapros glared at the man in the shadows without moving, and a low laugh was heard as if understanding that he wouldn't move without an answer.

"You're very cautious. It's not bad, but don't you think it's meaningless to be wary now when you didn't notice at all while I followed you from Bistale all the way here?"

'What?'

Bistale? If he had followed from there, it was when Un-o and Kran were with him, but was it really possible that none of them had noticed this person?

Even if he and Kran hadn't noticed, Un-o, perhaps because of his hunter job, was surprisingly good at sensing enemy presences. While traveling together, there hadn't been a single time Un-o failed to detect monsters entering within 500 meters of him, so his sensitivity was incomparable.

And this man was saying that Un-o and they had missed him?

Glancing around, there was no one passing by. It could be called an amazingly perfect timing, but such timing couldn't have occurred by chance. In other words, this meant it was a meticulous approach, choosing the moment when Kapros was alone.

If he had been aiming for an ambush from the start, how should Kapros act here?

As Kapros was thinking while clearing his mind to be able to cast magic at any time, the man added, saying "Ah, right."

"I forgot to tell you who I am first. It's been so long since I revealed myself... I'm a member of an underground organization in Bistale. I have no intention of harming you, so don't worry too much."

"..."

"The reason I came here is because the upper echelons showed great interest after seeing the strong man who visited us recently disappear after being wounded by you in the Colosseum. The upper echelons want to talk with you. Will you follow me?"

A strong man who disappeared after being wounded in the Colosseum?

A name soon came to mind in his puzzled thoughts.

'...Caesar!'

Kapros decided to follow him. The man seemed to know the geography of Kizalkirstum very well. After winding through narrow paths so many times that he was about to lose his sense of direction, the man suddenly disappeared into a corner of a wall.

Following him, Kapros saw that a part of the wall that seemed continuous at first glance was distorted. It looked as if a door that opened inward was slightly open outward. Thinking that there were all sorts of things, he pushed it, and the wall opened inward with a slightly heavy resistance.

Inside was a staircase leading down to a dark underground. Kapros summoned a palm-sized Fireball and let it float, then went down. At the end of the stairs, the man who had been waiting started moving forward again without hesitation.

Kapros wanted to ask when they would arrive, but he decided to just focus on memorizing the directions. He didn't know when he might need to escape from here.

At some point, the man finally stopped walking abruptly.

Looking around, there were doors here and there in a wide space that seemed to have been dug out of the ground. The man opened the door immediately to the right of the front and entered first. Kapros cautiously followed, and the door slammed shut right behind him. When he turned around again, he heard a voice that wasn't the man who had brought him here.

"Welcome."

Feeling a chill down his spine, Kapros turned his head. A man wearing a mask with only small holes for eyes, nose, and mouth on a flat base like an egg ghost was sitting in the center. Several other men were sitting around him, but their faces were bare. Among them, the man who had brought Kapros was occupying one seat.

"I'd like you to come forward and sit down."

After hesitating for a moment at those words, Kapros went to sit in the place he indicated, and the masked man nodded as if satisfied. Only after sitting in this seat where he could see the men directly did Kapros understand what the chillingly cold aura he had felt since entering this place was.

It was similar to the dark aura he had seen and felt when meeting Caesar, but the difference was that while Caesar's aura explosively surged with black energy, these men were continuously emitting a cool aura that made their surroundings look like shadows.