D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2246 Meeting for the Missing

--- Kat ---

They’d gathered everyone into the main room once again, pausing the work to discuss this. For a few moments nobody wanted to speak, but Scar stepped up, again. Despite the fact that Maryland was nominally in charge, apparently she was willing to let Scar speak first. Though considering what Kat knew, she was probably more interested in cuddling with Vanilla then dealing with this, so maybe it wasn’t a surprise.

"Ultimately, while this is a problem, I do not see it as an immediate one. I say we simply finish the work properly, and not worry about it all," explained Scar.

"Are we not going to address the fact that she escaped then?" asked Carl.

"And what are we meant to address?" asked Scar.

"Well... perhaps who’s at fault?" asked Carl.

Scar narrowed her eyes at the elf. "Alright. You are now at fault. Congratulations. Any further questions?"

"What?!" hissed Carl. "I meant having a constructive argument about who is responsible not casting blame on me for no reason!"

Scar shrugged, "I feel like you wouldn’t have suggested we even have such a discussion without you having a culprit in mind. In the end, it doesn’t matter. She escaped, and while there might be things we could have done better the fact that Brook was able to vanish from the room implies teleportation and the chances of catching her were slim when we noticed, and likely non-existent now.

"Now, I admit we could argue about blame, but why? None of us thought of it, clearly, and we assumed that nothing would change. Heck, we weren’t even waking her up to feed her so the idea that she had the cognisance to teleport away is a surprise. Though perhaps someone else triggered the teleportation and was there to pick her up? Regardless, I don’t see why we should dig into that now."

"I notice you’re deliberately not mentioning that it was Appoline who was completely responsible for both the dosage, administration, and making the potion," Carl commented. Kat kinda wanted to hit him for that... but Appoline was pretending to be asleep... or no she might have actually fallen asleep. Regardless she clearly wasn’t bothered and Scar was dealing with it. Why they had to deal with it at all was annoying. Why did Carl have an issue with her?

"Well I wasn’t exactly addressing it was I Carl? Appoline warned us that not everyone reacts the same to the different sleeping potions. Just because you didn’t listen to that conversation doesn’t mean we weren’t informed," countered Scar. *

"Is that really true, or is it just an excuse?" asked Carl.

Kat decided to step in for this one. "I can at the very least confirm that Appoline believes it to be true... and I don’t know anyone in the room with more experience in potions then her. So I’d be inclined to believe her."

Lan slapped the table, hard, pulling attention his way. "Alright I get that some people," Lan looked at Carl, "Want to play the blame game. Fine whatever. What I want to know, is do we need to update the wards AGAIN because I thought they accounted for teleportation already."

"They do... somewhat," agreed Scar. "From my understanding though, at least from the plans, it only stops people and things teleporting IN but not OUT. It was simply easier to set up that way and we’re already packing quite a lot into this barrier as it stands. Adding more teleportation defences would be difficult."

Lan shrugged, "Well as long as there’s no extra work, I frankly, do not care who is at fault. If there was extra work, then I’d want to know who to blame."

"Aren’t you used to being underground?" asked one of the guards.

Lan turned to glare at them. "First of all. No, not really I’ve never been underground this long before because it’s NOT MY JOB. Secondly, it isn’t the being underground part that annoys me. I have been working for DAYS. My sleep has been shit because of the attacks, and I frankly, really just want to go home. I understand we have a job to do, so I don’t want to whine about it..." Kat felt her eye twitch.

"But you do want to whine about it," Scar cut in. Lan sighed and shrugged. "Look, I get it makes you feel better, and if you really want I can sit around while you complain later, but for now we do have a job to do."

Lan sighed, "Sorry I guess. This has just been... a lot,"

Scar shrugged, "Well we get good benefits even compared to other enchanters, has to be a reason for that. If it means putting up with this sort of thing for a while I consider it worth it. I’ve suffered far worse than mission but I understand you’re young."

Lan eyed Scar. "I’m really not sure our ages are that different."

"See! You’re already moving on!" cheered Scar.

Carl huffed but didn’t actually say anything. A few eyes drifted over to him before Scar turned to face Vanilla. "Alright so with that sorted... is there anything that needs changing in regards to how our defences work? Is it worth shaking them up now that Brook has had the chance to reveal what we’re working on?"

"I don’t think so?" Vanilla said after a few moments. "There’s nothing too crazy we can do with the space, and swapping things up just because they might know what’s going on probably won’t help us considering there really aren’t any better spots to sit. I mean we could maybe construct a sort of miniature fort thing out of rubble to give some cover I guess? Not sure it’s worth it... but we could do it."

"Are we expecting another attack?" asked Kat.

Vanilla shrugged, "I don’t see it as being too realistic. Surely they’ve used up a good deal of manpower, and even if they haven’t, the fact that everyone else has failed so spectacularly up until this point means that others will likely be hesitant to take the chance."

"So, is there anything else then?" asked Scar. "We can have a bit of food before we go back to work of course, but before all of that?"

"Did anyone sketch out the faces?" Kat asked as she pointed at the ice statues facing the wall in the corner. Scar glanced around while shaking her head. Everyone she looked at matched her shaking. "Alright clearly not. Do we still want to do that?"

Scar shrugged and glanced around. "I’m capable if nobody else wants to. Though it can wait until after food... assuming they’ll survive until then?"

"I thought they were dead?" added Marland.

"I meant assuming they won’t melt. From my understanding whoever is under the ice is dead," sighed Scar.

"Indeed they are, and it should last that long. I’ll add some more demonic energy to it before we start to eat," offered Kat.

"Is there still no possibility for me to go and collect more ingredients?" asked Appoline, who apparently wasn’t asleep. Kat was a bit surprised by that fact, but Kat supposed Appoline had been training for this moment. Then again... maybe she did nod off and only now woke up? Kat would’ve expected her to snipe a bit at Carl if she’d heard...

Regardless of Kat’s inner thoughts, Scar sighed at the question, "We’re nearly done here. Hopefully we can finish up and have reinforcements here early tomorrow. If you want, you can look for ingredients on the way out... but personally I’d rather we not split up until everything is finished. We’re so close it’s not worth the risk."

Appoline sighed right back, but after a few moments she nodded. At least she didn’t want to ignite the old argument about it once again. "Is there anything you need me doing?" asked Kat. "Like, guarding outside, checking on the golem, stuff like that."

Everyone glanced around at each other, mumbling questions about the golem. Mostly, "Should we check on it? Do we have the right? What were our orders regarding disturbing it? We can still feel the mana in the basement right?" and several others.

Nobody seemed to know, even as the whispers increased in volume a bit and everyone started to glance around, asking for more feedback... nobody has more answers just questions and Kat was honestly regretting the fact that she’d asked. It just seemed prudent to check on it after Brook had teleported away but apparently nobody had thought of it? Or something? Kat really wasn’t sure what was going on in their heads.