Chapter 305: Details Please
Seeing Rigbis was in fact alive even if he looked a little rough, Donny went towards where Rigbis and his noticeably smaller group of attendants were standing. A fight between the loyal attendants and the traitorous ones had been taking place when they were running out of the room so he wasn't surprised there were less than half left now.
After he thought this he realized he hadn't seen any bodies yet and when he looked closer he noticed there weren't even any signs a fight had gone one here almost exactly like how the hallways were devoid of the bodies and blood that should have been there. Wondering if this meant Rignis' group would know where all the gore had gone and how the damage was fixed he made a note to ask if he got a chance.
He didn't think he was allowed to just walk up to Rigbis and ask right now. Even though Rigbis didn't seem that busy at the moment Donny was sure he had asked for the guards near the stage to keep anyone from getting too close since he had almost just been assassinated. If he was in Rigbis' shoes he wouldn't be letting anyone new near him anytime soon.
After thinking this, Donny integrated into the crowd of people that were probably also waiting for whatever Rigbis planned to tell them and found a place to sit. He knew it would probably take a while for their whole group to make it inside even if there didn't end up being any Demon Worshipers hidden amongst them so there was no point in standing around watching the door for Keel.
Even if he did want to talk to Keel about what happened outside the barrier Keel would most likely wait till last to come through so he could keep everyone out there under control. He could already picture the mess that would occur when a person who a lot of people liked or were close to was discovered to be not who they said they were.
Donny could also see what he would do if a friend of his was accused, he would say he had about a 50% chance of not believing it and accusing the people who were checking them before letting them in of being the ones who were Demon Worshipers. This would cause the situation outside to quickly turn into two sides where the actual demon Worshipers would have a chance to get an upper-hand.
"Donny is that you?" Hearing his name in a voice he didn't recognize, Donny turned around to see the person talking to him had taken a seat behind him. "It's me." Donny didn't want to ask who they were since it was considered rude but he didn't deny his own identity. "I'm happy you're here. I thought I had lost my chance to thank you when I saw you lead a group of people out of the room the other day."
Donny could tell the man had been trying not to say he had thought they would die when they had run towards the gate and quickly asked. "Thank me for what?" There was a good chance this was another person who he had saved on his way to the fortress but he just wanted to make sure. "I'm one of the many people who owe you their life. I really mean it when I say this."
Donny had a lot of practice at downplaying everything he had done when saving people from the gargoyles with all the practice of having to do it multiple times a day so he just said. "Yeah we got close to dying there didn't we." As he was saying this he couldn't help but think back to Peter, one of the people he had been working with while they had been trying to stop the Demon Worshipers from doing this to the Metal Domain who hadn't made it long enough to get to the fortress.
"It was almost over for all of us for sure." Seeing his plan to make the guy start thinking about how harrowing the experience had worked in making them leave him alone he turned back to stare at the stage where Rigbis was. A few seconds after he did this he realized he had missed a chance to start a conversation with someone who had been here to see what happened while they were gone so he turned back around.
"Were you here during the battle?" This was definitely something he could just assume but he wanted to make sure. It was also a good way to start this line of questions. "Yeah I was one of the people who didn't volunteer to be part of the teams that went outside so I was here from the beginning."
"So what happened after we left?" It took a while for the guy to answer and Donny could tell it was because they were trying to sort everything in their head into an answer that was in order. "I'll start with what happened right after you left the room. The fight was already going by the time you all had left so you know that half of the people that were with Rigbis flipped. We aren't sure but we think only one of them had originally been a Demon Worshiper who had silently turned others through a few different methods."
That made a lot of sense. He had felt it was a little crazy that that many Demon Worshipers had been able to get Rigbis to trust them while staying undetected but if it was only one who turned others it made a lot more sense. The Demon Worshipers had a few common methods to make people flip sides like curses or turning them into undead so it probably hadn't taken the one very long to get ahold of the others and attack.
For all he knew most of the attendants had been completely fine up until that attack where the Demon Worshiper had placed them under some type of curse. There were plenty of curses that were meant to be used in battle so the Demon Worshiper could have launched the attack on Rigbis and flipped the people closest to him all at the same time.
"Our barrier didn't come up until the fight on the stage ended so all of us were focused on the enemies that started to come into the room. There weren't that many undead that came through the door but it still kept me from watching the fight on stage so I can't really tell you too much about it. All I know is by the time the barrier came up and I looked at the stage Rigbis was being pulled onto his feet."
Donny didn't like the way the guy was saying these details and it made him wonder if his suspicion was bleeding through even if he wasn't trying to say the people on stage could be under the control of the Demon Worshipers.
There was really no way to ever not be suspicious in situations like these unless you were able to see details about people like race and name when you looked at their stats but your perception had to be much higher than your target or you needed special skills to achieve this so people like that were rare.
This meant every person in this room would be trying to put small details together like a detective would to try and find out the truth about if Rigbis had been healed and survived, killed and revived as an undead, or placed under a curse. Wanting to get a look at the person in question Donny looked forward for a few seconds while the guy told him details about the first day of being inside the barrier, seeing Rigbis' sickly appearance Donny knew it meant nothing.
An undead looked like a normal person unless they were mindless since they tried to trick people and them looking nonhuman would be a huge disadvantage so he needed to look deeper if he really wanted to get a better clue. It was too bad he barely knew Rigbis and couldn't really even see him through the others on stage.
He guessed he could use the way the people around Rigbis were acting as a clue as to weather Rigbis was actually him or not. If Rigbis was compromised the people around him would have been the ones to do it so the fact they were kind of shielding him from view could mean he was acting weird and they didn't want people to see.
He really didn't think that was the case though but he would keep an eye on them all when Rigbis started to talk. "There you are." Looking up Donny saw Keel was finally here and held up his hand to the guy who was still feeding him details about what happened while they weren't here before asking. "How'd it go outside?"
"Like you would expect, instead of making a break for it the Demon Worshipers let the people checking everyone call them out and then tried to turn all of us against each other." Keel was right about that being what he expected to happen. "How many were there?" This was really all that mattered to him about what had happened outside the barrier while he hadn't been there.
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