The fight over Arius’s treatment towards Foofy had been resolved at present, but Val would not forgive him so easily in the long term.

Right now, Val brought up the other issue which concerned her, more sensitive with regards to time. “Arius, when you left me alone, everyone was giving me funny looks.”

His facial expression tightened, clearly unhappy. “You will have to get used to that around me. I’ve already done as much as I can to curb my popularity. Believe me when I say that.” Arius raised his brow and looked to the side, probably having many stories to tell about that. “There should be less stares soon enough. I just got back from Gon recently.”

While he was talking, Val tried to say the thing. Her voice came out as hardly a mutter.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I think that someone took a picture of me while you were gone.”

Arius gaped at her for a solid second. “I cannot believe the nerve of some people. Which way did they go?”

“He went that way.” Val pointed in the appropriate direction of the plaza and started following Arius at once.

He took off in a fuming jog and urged her to keep up. “Come on. Do you want your picture showing up on some underbelly places on the Internet to fuel gossip?”

“I don’t know if I even got a good look at the man,” Val tried to say.

Arius did not care to listen.

The two of them running down the street together was not going to do much to stifle gossip. Frankly, she did not care enough to go on this wild goose chase.

On the other hand, Arius ran a lot faster than her, so she did not get a chance to reason him. Val hefted out a sigh. “Let’s go, Foofy.”

Together, Val and Foofy darted after Arius. They had no chance of catching up because when he came to a street with traffic, Arius merely leaped and took to flying over the vehicles.

“Arius!” Val called. She craned her neck either which way to see his red hair swishing away through the moving cars.

With Foofy, she calmly waited for a safe opportunity to cross the road. Once they were continuing in a calm walk on the either side, Val asked down to him, “You know this is stupid, right?”

Foofy kept his eyes focused on the sidewalk ahead of them.

“Of course, you do. You’re a good boy!” Here, Val had thought that Arius was strategic and made smart decisions, unlike Tavras. So far today, it looked like he was trying to prove her assumption otherwise.

After walking a bit more, Val and Foofy found where he had ended up. It did not look good.

Arius had his fist gripped around air, slammed into an average wall where he had caused structural damages. The bricks were smashed inward, forming a circular imprint with his hand at the center. All the while, his face was screwed up—pissed off.

He had better not be throwing a fit of anger because the photographer had gotten away.

Slowly approaching him, Val activated Keep the Peace. She tried to greet him with the soothing connection of their minds and an endearing call of his name. “Arius….” The disappointment and annoyance could not be kept from her voice.

Keep the Peace glanced off of him, his Mind Shield too rigid for her to touch his emotional disposition.

“Did you really think that this little trick would fool me?” Arius yelled.

Val corrected her original fear about Arius.

He had better not be throwing a fit of insanity because the Ravager was actually crazy. Though Val liked to think that she had learned a bit about him from her visions of the past, she did not actually know this god at all.

While Arius might have an imposing enough reputation to make people look the other way before, he looked too ridiculous for people ignore him now. The few people on the sidewalk stopped and stared. Traffic noticeably slowed as drivers must be turning their heads to gawk.

“H-How—?” a voice asked. A man materialized from the air in front of Arius, like a screen of invisibility falling away. The whites of his eyes flashed as he tried looking behind himself at his captor. The man possessed a youthful complexion, appearing twenty-five years old just like Arius. The usage of the Invisibility power alongside his age marked the man as a demigod.

Arius must have punched that wall and left a crater directly in front of his face to intimidate him. From there, he would have pulled back the demigod’s head by a fistful of his hair. Like that, Arius yanked his head back just barely enough for the demigod to see him. “Did you really think that a lame, little trick like that could fool me?”

“No!” the demigod said. “I would never think so low of you—” A gagging howl came from his throat.

Arius tugged on his hair, putting pressure on the demigod’s head at an odd angle. “Your intentions were practically screaming, ‘the Ravager cannot see me!’ as soon as I came within proximity.” In a low whisper, he said in his ear, “I know what you tried to do to my friend.”

“I didn’t do anything to her,” the demigod cried and stuttered. “I just took a picture of her.”

“Yes, and you were going to sell that picture to bad actors who would then defame me and her. That would make the mundane parts of my life and my friend’s life that much more annoying. I do not appreciate it when worthless demigods think that they can annoy me or anybody in my company.” Over each word that he spoke, Arius doused his speech with pointed condescension.

Gloating was only just an activity that Arius did when winning a fight against a fellow god like Tavras, but also random demigods. The witnesses with wide eyes had a right to look horrified.

“Arius,” Val said, “stop torturing this cretin. Have him delete the picture, and let’s go.”

His head snapped around to glare at her with undeserved hate. For whatever reason, he decided to lash out at Val. “I give orders. I do not take them, least of all from you.”

That made her take a full step back. “Gods,” she said under her breath. Since when did Arius get so aggressive with her? Most definitely, she had not been trying to give him any command, only offer a friendly suggestion. Some kind of power trip had gone straight to his head as soon as he had caught that demigod.

Val looked around awkwardly for help. Unable to use Keep the Peace on Arius, she had nothing that she could do.

While glancing around, she caught sight of men in uniform coming this way.

“Um, Arius, police,” she tried to alert him. Tugging at his sleeve, Val only hoped that he would not consider that an order.

On one hand, Arius would not be above the law. On the other hand, he was literally above the law as no police squad alive could force his compliance. There had to be some kind of repercussions for his extreme behavior though.

A small part of Val hoped so anyway because it was mildly embarrassing to be with Arius when he was like this.