Chapter 298: Cleaned
Donny could tell that if he didn't get up onto his feet and start moving he would be asleep in a matter of minutes so he got up and started to stretch. "Keel, it's been seven hours since I set the barrier right?" Donny didn't actually have a real way to tell time at the moment and he knew Keel did so he wanted to know the exact amount of time that had passed.
"Seven hours and twenty minutes. Why are you thinking about dropping the barrier?" Donny nodded while giving a few of the more suspicious people in their group a glance to see if their faces reacted in a way that he felt warranted his suspicion at the news the barrier might be coming down.
Not really getting anything Donny said. "I don't think we're actually safe enough to drop the barrier because if the fortress was saved we would have seen someone by now but I do think we need to gather information." He wasn't telling the whole truth as he said this.
His real plan was to make the Demon Worshipers attack by appearing weak which would hopefully include the ones hidden amongst them. Once he knew there weren't any more traitors he would be able to leave the barrier to someone else in the group and get some rest.
Of course this plan had a load of problems but he was smart enough to know you couldn't come away from something like this without losses so he would happily trade a few of them for the safety of the rest. It wasn't like he was telling a portion of them to go on a suicide mission or anything, all of them would be in equal danger so this plan was fair.
The only regrettable thing was he was lying to the people who were listening to his orders and he wasn't a big fan of that but it was for their own good. "Wake everyone up. I'll be dropping the barrier in a few minutes." With them all sitting on the ground for the last few hours a lot of the people had fallen asleep and Donny didn't like this fact with how tired he was but he understood they would be better off rested so he had let them get a few hours.
It had left the partners they were supposed to keep from moving free to do small things but that was why he had Keel were sitting on either side of the barrier. In the last seven hours he hadn't seen anything that could be considered traitorous so all he had to go off of was the bad vibes he had felt from a few of the people in the barrier over the past hours.
Once everyone had gotten up and was ready Donny started to split the people into four groups making sure to put all the ones he had singled out as threats into separate groups so they wouldn't think he had figured them out on the off chance he was right about them. Once they were all split up Donny gave each group their jobs.
"Team one will be going to the door into the room to guard it while we have the barrier down since that will be when we will probably get attacked. All you have to do is survive for a few seconds before I will give the order to fall back towards me. Team two and three you'll be ready to receive orders from me and Keel and group four you'll be watching the other teams. I put all the mages in your group so you have the most fire power."
All the orders he had just given them meant nothing since each team most likely had traitors in their midst which would make it impossible for them to do what he said if a fight broke out when he dropped the barrier. "Alright I'll drop the barrier in five seconds, get ready."
After the five seconds passed Donny dropped the barrier and quickly backed off from everyone. As the person who had made the barrier he would be the number one target and he needed to stay away from everyone. Seeing the four teams do as he told them Donny wasn't surprised since now would be a bad time to attack with all their attention on each other.
When team one got to the door and still nothing had happened Donny gave it a few seconds of time before he said. "Open the door and tell me what you see in the hallway." Donny had really not expected for them to get this far into the fake plan but he knew just because an attack hadn't happened yet didn't mean they were safe.
He just needed to make them do a few other things that were slightly dangerous before he felt safe enough to go to sleep. After the group had checked the hallway and yelled that it was clear Donny yelled over to Keel. "What do you think?" This might actually be a chance for them to see what was going on inside the fortress.
He could set a barrier anywhere so walking around didn't really do anything but leave the gate unguarded and that didn't matter since by now the Demon Worshipers would have opened a few entrances into the fortress if they had taken it over. "We should go back to the room Rigbis was in. He's most likely dead but it wasn't confirmed when we left."
It was a long shot but if Rigbis had a good constitution or had been able to heal himself there was a chance they had turned the situation around and they were passing time until rescue in the main room like they had been here. It wasn't like the situation back there had been unwinnable; he had just decided they needed to hold the gate more than the room they had been in.
"Alright team one first." Donny knew he was giving them the worst job but he would have done it if he wasn't such a target like he had on the way here so he didn't feel bad. Plus he would be taking the back of the group so it was almost just as bad for him. "Team two and Keel go next, then team four then team three."
Once everyone was out of the room Donny made the shield formation he had used on the way here and walked out. The people in the first team knew where they were going so Donny kept an eye on the people right in front of him and hoped he would hear anything coming up behind him.
Usually the person in the back wouldn't be looking forward but surprisingly he was actually more afraid of his own group than what might or might not be behind them. He also had a very weak version of the shield right now so he was pretty sure he would be able to defend himself even if he didn't see the attack coming.
He didn't know for sure though since this was only one of the many formations that were held inside the shield and he didn't even really understand it with how complicated it was. All he was doing now was copying it out of the memory he had formed from the years of training from the shield so for all he knew this wasn't the formation that caused it to intercept attacks he didn't see coming.
He was pretty sure it was though it might not work right without all the other formations that he had to cut it off from to be able to weave it. There was really no way to know without being able to ask the person who had made it originally the God of Metal himself. "Keel have we run into anything yet?"
Keel wasn't too far from him so he didn't have to yell to ask this question. "No, it's been completely quiet up until now." Like everything else that had happened so far Donny had no idea why they hadn't been attacked but he decided it was a good thing. "Have you guys noticed how clean the hallways are?"
Donny didn't know who said it but after they had he thought back to when they had walked these hallways hours ago. There had been bloody footprints and a few bodies then and now the floor was spotless. He didn't get a bad feeling from this though so he didn't tell them to turn around and just let them all continue towards the big room.
He knew the bodies disappearing could be the Demon Worshipers turning them but he had never heard of them cleaning up blood before. It was actually usually the opposite with the places they gathered smelling like rotting bodies and so much blood you would think they used it to paint the walls. "We're here."
Donny had to guess who had yelled that out since he couldn't really see but knowing it came from the front of the group he asked Keel. "Can you handle this, I can't see anything."
"Alright." Donny felt a little weird right after saying this because he had kind of forgotten the fact he had stolen the command from Keel and what he had just done kind of felt like an order but he got over it pretty quickly. If this caused a problem between him and Keel, Donny would just fix it later.
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