Ah now that I see you are using the strapi-middleware-cache, yes in that case the middleware itself responds and stops the request chain.
For reference the cache middleware is located here: GitHub - patrixr/strapi-middleware-cache: A cache middleware for https://strapi.io
Poking @alexandrebodin to see what his thoughts are on alternatives, my only thought is having something to bypass the cache (as the entire purpose of the cache is to skip doing any DB queries and return a fast response.)