DOOMED TO BE A VILLAIN



"Just for clarity, how much is this thing anyway?" Davies turned to the attendant he had been speaking to previously and asked about the price of the rare-grade power stone that he wanted to buy.

"Uh… It's ninety-five million powerstone dollars," the attendant quickly replied to the drill sergeant-like customer(Davies).

The mouth of all the people listening would have dropped open if they hadn't been expecting it to cost that much, after all, it was the most expensive piece in the building after all, but that didn't mean they weren't shocked by the mere mention of the price of the damn thing. 

Most of the people here were not here to spend more than a few million, and something that worth almost a hundred million was way out of their budget, and to be perfectly honest, such a price scared the hell out of quite a few of them.

"Oh, it's cheap, yayy," Davies said with a little mirth in his tone.

This time the mouths of the onlookers dropped in shock. 

Who was this nouveau riche that dared to call something that was almost a hundred million powerstone dollars cheap?

Even Lee Jung's mouth was about to drop open in surprise as he hadn't been expecting a power stone to cost that much, but he quickly controlled himself, not wanting to look like a gaping idiot.

Luckily, he had just about that much money in his account, so he could still afford to pay for the power stone, so he wasn't planning on giving up on trying to buy it. 

He really needed the mana that was present inside the power stone as he could feel that it could help him to strengthen and advance the "Sage's eyes" blessing, so he couldn't afford to let the stone be sold to Davies, as he had the feeling that if that ever happened he would lose an almost unredeemable opportunity.

"I can buy it," Lee Jung spoke again, doing his best to stop himself from gritting his teeth in anger at Davies who seemed to be always everywhere he went to ruin things for him.

Unknowingly to him, he had played into Davies's hands by insisting that he could buy it, even though he had just a little above that amount of money in his account. 

After meeting Lee Jung, Davies's current goals were to get the rare-grade power stone in his possession and to embarrass Lee Jung to make him lose a few fate points, and there was no better method to embarrass Lee Jung in a place such as this than by comparing wealth. 

Though it was plain bullying, to compare whatever meager wealth the system had handed over to Lee Jung, to Davies's own wealth, he didn't care. 

Why shouldn't he use whatever advantage he had over Lee Jung to set things up in his favor? 

Unlike Lee Jung, he didn't have some phenomenal force like fate behind him, so he was willing to use whatever he could get his hands on to give himself an advantage in this game of tag with the fated protagonists.

"Sure you can," Davies replied, but it was obvious from the heavy sarcasm in his tone that he did not believe a single word of what he had just said. 

Davies turned back to the attendant, obviously not paying any more attention to Lee Jung, and motioned with his hands for her to get a move on and get on with packing up the rare-grade power stone for him.

"I said I can pay for it," Lee Jung shouted again, after seeing that Davies wasn't paying any attention to him and was merely treating him as some sort of dog barking on the roadside that was not worth taking a note of (his thoughts, not Davies's, though Davies didn't think any better of him in any way).

Lee Jung's sudden shout had stopped the attendant once again and she was back to looking at Davies for confirmation as she felt that he would have something to say about Lee Jung's continuous disturbance, and she was right.

Davies made sure to not smile after Lee Jung felt such a simple method of provocation. He turned back to Lee Jung,

"Let's give you a benefit of a doubt then…"

"What bank do you have an account with?" Davies decided to ask.

Lee Jung who had been asked the question thought it was the perfect moment to show off and put his hand into his pocket to pull out a gold card with black engravings, "It says, Yorkshire Imperial bank," he read off the gold colored card like he didn't even bother to know the name of the bank he kept his money with while keeping the card up in front of his face so that the surrounding onlookers could see that he had a gold card with one of the most famous banks in the city.

Immediately, the looks of quite a few of the onlookers turned ugly as they had been mocking him for trying to buy something that he couldn't afford as that was their thoughts from his shady attitude, but now he had slapped them across the face with the gold card from Yorkshire Imperial bank.

A gold card from one of the most famous banks in the whole of Yorkshire was not something that most of them could dream of ever having, as it was only available to people with at least a billion powerstone dollars worth of assets, and at least a hundred million powerstone dollars available in liquid funds, so for Lee Jung to have a gold card, meant he had that much worth in assets and that much money available to him in liquid funds.

Even Davies's face turned a little strange, but it wasn't because he felt shocked at the wealth that Lee Jung had managed to garner in just over two weeks since he awakened as a fated protagonist, after all, he had expected that much, as fate, wouldn't be worthy of her name if she couldn't do at least this much. 

What had caused Davies's look to turn strange was that the name of the bank was quite familiar to him, 'It couldn't be, right?'

Even with a new thought appearing on his mind, he didn't miss a beat and asked another question as if Lee Jung's showing off had done nothing to his mental state,

"I'm guessing it's your name, Lee Jung, that is on there?" he asked, surprising Lee Jung, as well as the onlookers by the mention of Lee Jung's name.

Lee Jung was surprised that Davies actually remembered the name that he had only told him on their first meeting, despite the number of times he had insulted him saying he didn't remember the names of non-important people, while Fiona and the onlookers were surprised, but due to this, were able to determine that since Davies knew Lee Jung by name, then the vice versa was also most probably true and the current situation was not just a mere argument over a rare-grade power stone.

Their thoughts were correct… the enmity between Davies and Lee Jung had escalated beyond a mere battle of words and the only reason why they were not yet at each other's throats, waiting for the opportune moment to slit it open, was because, different circumstances stood in the way of both Davies and Lee Jung's goal to kill the other.

For Davies, it was because he was trying to avoid the repercussion of killing Lee Jung without draining him of fate value first, while for Lee Jung, it was simply because he was too weak and insignificant before Davies to even dare attempt such a thing.

Fate wasn't dumb enough to let Lee Jung attempt something that would send him to oblivion in mere seconds, and attempting an attack on Davies's life was on top of that list. The only reason why Davies hadn't gone into his "all consequences be damned mode", was because Lee Jung was not enough of a threat yet.

The moment he became such a threat was the day he would stop living peacefully and wouldn't even be able to trust that the air he breathed in every day wasn't poison, because Davies had many ingenious ways of killing people and he would try them all in a bid to kill the threat before it could affect him, all fate or consequences be damned.

"Yes, that is the name that my account is in," Lee Jung replied to Davies, putting aside the fact that Davies remembered his name, as to him, it was nothing worth stressing his mind over.

"Did you get all that?" Davies suddenly turned to Daniella who had been standing beside him all this while, and received a nod as she brought out her phone and typed a few things into it and a few seconds later a *ding*  sound came from her phone.

Lee Jung and the onlookers wondered what the golden-haired young man was checking on his phone on the bequest of Davies, and a few seconds later, they got their answer.