I Killed the Demon King. It Was a Mistake.
Chapter 164
Barre chased after the fleeing doppelgangers.
They made quick decisions, releasing their human and ogre forms to transform into smaller creatures.
Mice, birds, even insects.
They burrowed into the ground or took to the sky.
But they couldn’t escape Barre’s grasp.
“Two down.”
Barre instantly caught a doppelganger that had transformed into a bird and tried to fly away.
The small lark caught in Barre’s massive hand couldn’t withstand the grip and eventually transformed back into an ogre.
“Uaaaaaah!”
“That’s better. Now this is more satisfying to beat.”
The doppelganger-turned-ogre threw a punch at Barre.
But Barre took the punch with his forehead and struck the creature’s forehead with his left hand.
“Kugh!”
The creature collapsed without a word, experiencing terrible pain as if its heart had stopped.
If it had been a real ogre, it would have recovered and gotten up quickly, but this was a doppelganger.
It couldn’t possibly have regenerative abilities similar to an ogre.
Caesar began chasing the other doppelgangers, leaving the unconscious one behind.
* * *
When Mountain Lord barely opened his eyes, his head was ringing so much it was difficult to maintain consciousness.
‘…Barre!’
But soon he could remember who had subdued him and what had happened.
‘I need to escape quickly.’
The reason Mountain Lord attacked Caesar was simple.
Elijah’s order to Mountain Lord was ‘Transform into Caesar and create confusion among the beast people and Agatha.’
However, for a doppelganger to transform into a specific person, they absolutely needed the target’s blood and flesh.
So he attacked him with the purpose of subduing Caesar and collecting his flesh and blood, and when he collapsed the cave, he thought he would be able to successfully collect his blood and flesh.
But who would have thought he would be ‘Barre.’
Did Elijah know about this?
Mountain Lord thought he needed to escape this place before solving that question.
Mountain Lord looked around.
Looking ahead and to the sides, Barre was nowhere to be seen.
He couldn’t sense his presence well either.
He must have gone to catch the other doppelgangers.
Mountain Lord decided to transform into a pocket mouse and escape.
‘…?’
He tried to transform into a pocket mouse but couldn’t.
For Mountain Lord, transforming into other creatures was as easy as bending and straightening his fingers.
Even with a concussion, there’s no way he couldn’t transform into a pocket mouse.
“It’s useless no matter how hard you try to transform.”
Mountain Lord turned around startled.
Barre was looking down at him.
“I put anti-wizard handcuffs on your tail.”
He had always kept them in his space distortion bag just in case, but he never thought he’d be able to use them like this.
This is why you can’t throw away old items and keep storing them.
Barre looked at Mountain Lord’s unconscious companions.
There were ogres, and small mice, cats, dogs, and birds.
“Unfortunately, I failed to catch them all. It’s certainly not easy to catch doppelgangers.”
Barre only managed to catch 6 including Mountain Lord.
Not only did they escape quickly, but true to their doppelganger nature, they kept changing forms while fleeing, making it difficult even for Barre’s agile body to catch them.
“But you lot will be enough.”
Barre returned to Caesar’s form.
“Now then, shall we have a proper talk?”
Caesar put his foot on the creature’s body and held Thunder against its neck.
“Why did you attack me and Pepe?”
Mountain Lord kept his mouth shut.
But Caesar could read his thoughts.
“I see. Elijah ordered it. To transform into me. To transform into me and drive a wedge between me and the beast people. That bastard knows how to play dirty too.”
“…So you are a psychometrist after all?”
“Yes. So it would be better to just tell me everything. Don’t even think about lying.”
“Then I’ll end up being a burden to Lord Elijah.”
Caesar immediately read Mountain Lord’s thoughts.
“You…!”
Mountain Lord lunged at Caesar.
He swung his front paw trying to tear open Caesar’s stomach.
Caesar had no choice but to swing Thunder and cut off his front paw.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
Even while screaming horribly, Mountain Lord didn’t stop.
Instead of his damaged front paw, Mountain Lord tried to tear at Caesar’s neck with his jaws.
Caesar punched his nose.
Even while screaming horribly, he didn’t stop charging at Caesar.
Caesar gritted his teeth.
Thud!
Caesar’s Thunder split the guy’s collarbone and severed his artery.
Only then did he stop moving.
“…You can’t take anything from me, Caesar.”
Caesar pulled out his axe.
The guy was slowly dying.
“Why are you going this far?”
“…Because that’s the reason for my existence.”
“Is it because you’re Elijah’s avatar?”
Mountain Lord looked at Pepe, who was blankly watching from behind.
“No… It’s because His Excellency Elijah is the purpose of my life.”
Mountain Lord smiled faintly as he was dying.
“By the way, thank you. Thanks to you, my tail is free now.”
Caesar instinctively looked at the handcuffs tied to the tail.
The tightly fastened handcuffs were undone.
Caesar grabbed Mountain Lord’s collar before he could transform into another form.
However, what Mountain Lord intended to do was something else.
“Caesar has figured out His Excellency’s plan.”
He used telepathy.
“You…!”
“Before Caesar figures out the entire plan, His Excellency’s avatars…!”
Caesar punched him in the jaw.
But telepathy doesn’t require speaking to be transmitted.
It can be conveyed just by thinking.
He spat out his fallen teeth and grinned.
“You… Know nothing about His Excellency, Caesar.”
His pupils dilated as he met his death.
Then, a gray smoke brushed past Caesar’s earlobe.
He looked around, wondering what had happened.
The avatars Caesar had just captured were disappearing like cigarette ash in the wind.
‘No way…!‘
Caesar let go of Mountain Lord and turned around.
“Pepe!”
Pepe’s condition was fine.
But Pepe’s eyes were shaking incessantly.
The mental shock seems to be greater than expected.
“Are you alright, Pepe?”
“…I’m fine, Caesar.”
Pepe slowly approached and checked where Elijah’s avatars had just disappeared.
“…Nothing’s left.”
Even the marks pressed by their weight, the heat emanating from their bodies, and even their blood had been washed away by the rain.
It was simply that Elijah had the ‘will’ to erase them.
Pepe had rarely felt fear.
Even on battlefields where guns and swords were mixed, even when captured by humans and sold to freak shows, he had only thought about how to accomplish his goals, never feeling fear.
But today, he learned what the emotion of ‘fear’ was.
For Pepe, fear was rainwater.
It was a broom that erased any evidence of Pepe’s existence in this world, a natural law that struck mercilessly without any possibility of prevention or resistance.
Soon, it was Elijah.
“Pepe.”
“Did those guys know they would disappear so meaninglessly, Caesar?”
Caesar found it difficult to speak carelessly.
Pepe’s emotional state was that chaotic.
“This isn’t death. The deaths I’ve seen so far were infinitely desperate or noble. But this… It’s like a potter smashing a pottery he doesn’t like with a hammer. These deaths have no meaning.”
Pepe looked at Caesar.
“Caesar… No, Barre. I want to ask you again.”
“…”
“Can you give me a noble death, unlike these pitiful guys?”
Caesar couldn’t speak.
It felt like his mouth was frozen by the cold rainwater.
Caesar’s words from this morning, saying he would definitely find a way to save him, felt as light as a feather.
“I…”
“Yes. I understand.”
Pepe transformed from a mouse into a Pegasus.
And he offered his back to Caesar.
“Let’s go. We’ve rested enough.”
Caesar hesitated to get on Pepe’s back.
Pepe’s thoughts were so chaotic and rapidly changing that he couldn’t predict what decision he would make.
Or more precisely, Caesar was afraid that Pepe might leave him and swear allegiance to Elijah.
‘How disgusting.’
Caesar was disgusted by his own fear.
Caesar put his hand on Pepe’s back.
“Pepe.”
“Are you not getting on?”
Pepe’s warm body temperature reached Caesar’s palm through the rainwater.
“Go, Pepe. Whatever decision you make, I’ll respect it.”
Pepe’s body flinched.
“And even if you disappear like dust, I’ll remember. I’ll remember what kind of life you lived and what you meant to me until the day I die.”
Caesar took his hand off Pepe’s back.
However, the warmth and weight of Caesar’s touch remained distinctly on his back.
“Because you’re my friend.”
With those final words, Caesar picked up the space distortion bag from the ground and disappeared into the forest.
Pepe stared endlessly at where Caesar had vanished, feeling the falling raindrops.
“A friend…”
Pepe left those words, breaking apart in the rain, and disappeared in the opposite direction from Caesar.
All that remained were Mountain Lord’s corpse and the beasts cautiously approaching, drawn by the smell of blood.
***
It was midnight when Caesar returned to the main camp.
If Pepe had been there, they would have found their way back quickly, but in the beast people’s forest where it was difficult to distinguish directions, finding the way itself was not easy.
As Caesar returned to the main camp, Jerry came to him.
“Battalion Commander. Wizard Raven…”
Jerry could tell with his keen sense honed from years as an officer.
Caesar’s mood was the worst of the worst right now.
He thought that if he approached Caesar wrongly now, he might face severe consequences.
What on earth had happened in the beast people’s forest?
“Jerry.”
“Yes, Battalion Commander.”
Caesar changed into dry clothes in the tent.
“I’m going to see the… Allied Commander, so make sure the unit is well-managed.”
“…Yes, understood.”
As soon as he left the tent, Raven appeared.
Raven’s expression was like that of an angry cat.
“Where on earth have you been… Are you alright?”
Raven was full of words she wanted to spit out.
But seeing Caesar’s magic fluctuations, she was at a loss for words.
Although Raven hadn’t known Caesar for long, she felt that this was the most precarious state she had ever seen him in.
It seemed like he might explode if even the smallest problem arose.
“I apologize for disappearing on my own. Let’s depart for the Black Horn clan reconnaissance we discussed this morning just before dawn tomorrow.”
“…What happened in the beast people’s forest?”
“It’s difficult to talk about it now. Well then, excuse me.”
Caesar bowed slightly to Raven and headed towards Elijah’s tent.
Raven couldn’t stop him.
When Caesar arrived in front of Elijah’s tent, the Steel Lion Knights guarding it blocked his way.
“What business do you have here?”
“Ah, you’ll do nicely.”
“…Pardon?”
Caesar swiftly extended his hand and struck the jaw of the knight on the left.
“Ugh!”
The knight on the right immediately tried to draw his sword, but Caesar raised his foot and kicked him in the forehead.
The knight’s body became like a cannonball, tearing through the tent and entering inside.
Caesar trampled on the torn tent as he entered.
Despite the commotion, Elijah was calmly drinking tea while watching Caesar.
The knight who had been kicked in the forehead got up abruptly and drew his sword.
“Your Excellency! Please take cover! Caesar is…!”
“That’s enough. Return to your post.”
“…Pardon?”
“I said put away your sword and go back. And don’t let anyone else in.”
The knight found it difficult to understand Elijah’s order.
But a commander word is absolute.
“…Understood.”
The knight glared at Caesar for a while before sheathing his sword and leaving the tent.
Elijah first used a sound-blocking artifact and then brought a rod to dry wet clothes.
“You seem to be extremely angry.”
“Of course I am. Not only did you stab me in the back, but you even openly threatened me.”
Elijah brushed past Caesar.
Caesar was infuriated by Elijah’s boldness.
He wanted nothing more than to break Elijah’s neck right now, yet Elijah approached him.
Was it because he knew Caesar’s strength alone couldn’t harm him, or was he deliberately trying to provoke Caesar…
‘Probably both.’
Elijah picked up the torn tent and placed the rod above the entrance.
Then he roughly draped the torn tent over the rod to cover the entrance.
Caesar stood straight in front of Elijah as he turned around, growling.
“I thought for over half a day while walking through the beast people’s forest. If you really wanted my blood and flesh, you should have moved yourself instead of mobilizing doppelgangers. Or at least, you should have informed Mountain Lord and the other doppelgangers that I was Barre.”
“But you didn’t do that. So why did you attack me so ambiguously? I pondered a bit, and there was only one answer.”
Caesar grabbed Elijah’s collar.
And he used psychometry.
“You’re trying to eliminate the people around me one by one.”
Elijah immediately knocked Caesar’s hand away.
“Correct, Caesar.”
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