Vol 6 Chapter 40

"Do I have to catch every flying fly? I'm only here for my business, so stop being so self-conscious and get lost before I feel like killing you."

This guy? Hearing him compare Kapros to a fly almost made his anger surge, forgetting the seriousness, but he barely held it back. From their conversation so far, Caesar didn't seem to have any intention of attacking him now. Though his responses were rough, the thought that this was practically their first proper conversation made Kapros's feelings complicated.

When Kapros neither answered nor left as told, Caesar turned his head away again as if deciding to completely ignore him, staring into the distance. The exhaustion was evident around his dark-tinged eyes.

Though Kapros usually didn't like bothering people in this state, he couldn't just pass by after seeing Caesar's inexplicably strange behavior. He remained standing in front of Caesar and began studying his face.

The silvery hair that was almost gray still felt somewhat unfamiliar, but the sharp, dark eyes beneath it and the stubbornly closed lips were exactly like the Jeong Seung-jo he had met recently. That day when he first met Seung-jo in reality and somehow ended up fighting and drawing blood. Though no traces of those wounds could be found on their game avatars, Kapros still vividly remembered the smell of blood from when Seung-jo had come to return his cane on the day he was discharged from the hospital, leaving only a warning before disappearing.

Caesar's current dismissal of Kapros was exactly like how Seung-jo used to dismiss others in the past, but thinking that this attitude of treating him like a complete stranger was better than that day's attitude when he had faced pure hatred and had his neck bitten made Kapros feel somewhat depressed.

While he was thinking this, Caesar finally seemed unable to bear Kapros's persistent gaze any longer and turned back with an even more ominous expression than before, suddenly grabbing Kapros's collar and pulling him close.

"Ugh!"

It happened so suddenly that Kapros almost fell, but fortunately his hood stayed on despite the commotion.

"Am I funny to you? I told you to get lost."

When those thin, long fingers, unlike the thick ones of ordinary men, twisted his collar with unimaginable strength, Kapros couldn't help but cough.

"If you're here thinking about trying to kill me, just say so. In my current mood, I think I could do that for you."

"Cough, cough. Wait, just-"

This guy, really. He seemed somewhat like this before too, but he was so extreme and wouldn't listen to others at all.

Kapros grabbed Caesar's hand that wouldn't let go while imagining a weak Lightning Bolt and spoke the incantation in his mouth.

"Lightning Bolt."

Zap! Crackle!

When the small blue current that leaked out just enough to sting slightly according to Kapros's will touched Caesar's hand, he flinched and let go. Finally freed, Kapros took deep breaths while straightening his severely crumpled clothes.

"You're quite impatient. Why is it okay for you to follow and attack our party as you please, but not okay for me?"

When Kapros spoke while moving his lips widely to make sure his smirk was clearly visible under the hood, Caesar's expression turned strange.

"Of course it would be a good opportunity if I could kill you here. But I don't accept opportunities given like favors from someone who's given up. If you want to die, go look elsewhere."

Caesar's eyes, which had flickered dangerously for a moment as if about to enter a complete state of rage, went dark like a power outage. After looking Kapros up and down with an incredulous expression, he laughed as if dumbfounded. "Ha."

"Not bad. For just one of my toys."

Toys... It was a statement that instantly made sense of Caesar's capricious behavior of appearing and disappearing as he pleased to attack them without ever listening to anything they said. Though Kapros's expression also hardened immediately, Caesar didn't seem to notice since only his nose and part of his mouth were visible under the hood.

'So that's how you thought about it... No wonder when Kion-hyung and his group first met this guy and tried to resolve things peacefully through dialogue regardless of the quest, he just attacked them as he pleased, acting entirely on his own whims.'

Kapros strongly felt that while Caesar's ability to manipulate them so freely while standing alone in the position of the Demon God's Knight against the seven hero quest performers was partly due to his strong power, it was also because of this attitude.

How could anyone predict and defeat someone who wielded power recklessly without valuing his own life? Though that same "recklessness" had given Kapros the chance to talk with him now, learning that the enemy they had been fighting until now thought so little of them was enough to wound his pride. Was this how it felt to fight a child who was just disgustingly strong?

Kapros firmly decided to keep this information to himself and not tell the others.

"Who are you calling toys? Looking at your attitude, you seem far too young to be playing with toys."

Though he was deliberately continuing to provoke Caesar, he was half serious. You're clearly too young to be playing with toys when you openly treat people like playthings.

Caesar smirked as if understanding the implied meaning.

"Brave. I don't know why you keep provoking me, but I'm done playing along. This is the last time. Get lost."

However, hearing those words spoken as a final warning, Kapros recalled Jeong Seung-jo from before. Though he couldn't remember all the specific reasons now, almost every time when Seung-jo got angry first and wouldn't say anything, if Kapros approached and prodded him, he would always act all prickly like a chestnut burr just like this.

Perhaps because they were friends, though he never directly said to get lost, when he could no longer bear the constant prodding and burst out with anger-filled words like "I'm telling you for the last time, leave," Kapros had learned from long experience that this was the best opportunity to help him release his emotions.

As soon as that thought occurred to him, the words he had always said at those times flowed unconsciously from his mouth.

"For someone who says 'last time' so easily, you sure are good at starting things. We're going to keep seeing each other anyway. Unless you're going to give up the quest and not show up anymore."